Identifier: essayonhistoryof00scot (find matches)
Title: An essay on the history of English church architecture prior to the separation of England from the Roman obedience
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors: Scott, G. Gilbert (George Gilbert), 1839-1897
Subjects: Church architecture Church architecture
Publisher: London, Simpkin, Marshall and co.
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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existing basilicas, have been borrowed fromthe remains of earlier buildings, possibly from de-stroyed temples, often offering in their size, ma-terials, and workmanship every possible difference;here raised to the requisite height by the additionof some spurious part, there reduced to it by theabstraction of an essential one. The columnsare connected either by arches, as is generally thecase, or by a continuous entablature in the classicmanner, as at St. Lorenzo and Santa MariaMaggiore. Above this rises the clerestory wall,pierced with simple round-headed windows. Inother cases, as at St. Laurence and St. Agnes, thereis placed above the main arches a second and sub-ordinate tier, forming a gallery. This was not amere triforium under the roof, as in a gothicchurch, but an upper aisle of equal dimensions withthat below it, and with its own range of windows.Both in St. Agnes and St. Laurence the aisle withits gallery is returned across the eastern or entranceend of the church. PLATE IV.
Text Appearing After Image:
BASILICA ULPIA.GROUND-PLAN. THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 7 The roofs are of timber, and of rather low pitch.Their construction is simply practical, and there islittle or no attempt to give to them an ornamentalcharacter. I am of opinion that the addition ofa flat wooden ceiling,coffered or otherwise enriched,was always contemplated. An open timber roofof so plain and homely a character does not seemto me at all roman in feeling ; and I cannot butthink that the magnificent carved wooden ceilingswith which many of the ancient basilicas have beenornamented since the Renaissance, are more inkeeping with the sort of effect aimed at by theoriginal builders, and represent more nearly theirintention than do the naked timbers of the un-touched churches. That the earliest christian basilicas had suchceilings, in some cases at least, we know as a factfrom the description which Eusebius gives of thechurch erected by Constantine over the HolySepulchre, where the coffered and gilded

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