ristianity reached the north, it had to contend
with the efforts of Celtic missionaries; and those efforts were not met
by it effectively until, in 664, the energetic leadership of Wilfrid
secured a triumph for his party at the council of Whitby. Of the Celtic
churches of the north we know but little: it seems likely that they were
for the most part plain oratories of stone or wood, with or without a
separate chancel. The simplest form, obviously, which a church can
assume is a plain rectangle with an altar at one end. As the
desirability of a special enclosure for the altar is recognised, a
smaller rectangle will be added at the altar end of the main building,
and so the distinction between nave and chancel will be formed. There
are indications of this natural growth of plan in some of the early
religious buildings in Ireland. In remote districts, as in Wales, the
simple nave and chancel plan is general all through the middle ages; and
the smaller country churches often follow the common Celtic plan of a
single rectangle with no structural division. The ruined chapel at
Heysham in Lancashire, a work of early date, is an undivided rectangle
in plan. This is the form which would suggest itself naturally to the
unskilled builder: the division of nave and chancel into a larger and
smaller rectangle is the next step which would occur to his intelligence
in the ordinary course of things. It is possible that Wilfrid and
Benedict Biscop found that their aims would be best served by adhering
in certain instances to the familiar Celtic plan, and so, while they
hired foreign masons and craftsmen to build and furnish their earlier
churches, and to set the example of building stone churches after the
manner of the Romans, they were careful to avoid the prejudice which
insistence on a new plan would have excited. The simplicity, moreover,
of a plan like that at Escomb, which requires little architectural skill
to work upon, may have been a recommendation; and the fact that the
construction of an apse is more difficult than that of a rectangular
chancel must have weighed powerfully with English masons, both at this
time and later. The fact remains that, in the early age of our church
architecture in stone, the aisled basilica was a rare exception, and the
rectangular chancel was, in the north, at least as common as the apse.

CHAPTER II

PARISH CHURCHES OF THE LATER SAXON PERIOD

Sec. 18. In later Saxon churches the aislele