eferred to the arch and
pier treatment. In other respects the plan is an advance upon the plans
of Dover and Breamore. And the necessary advance upon Stow is found in
the church of Norton-on-Tees in south Durham. Here the tower, between
nave and chancel, rests on piers connected by arches. The arches have
been widened; two have been entirely rebuilt at a later date; and the
rest of the church has been subjected at different times to enlargement
and rebuilding. In spite of this, we have at Norton our earliest
surviving example of a plan in which the various portions of the
church--nave, chancel, and transepts--are gathered together in one
structural connexion. The tower is to the east of the centre of the
longitudinal axis of the church; but structurally, it is the central
point with regard to which the building is planned, and the unity of the
composition depends upon it.

Sec. 27. We have arrived thus at a centralised plan of cruciform shape, of
which the component parts are rectangular, the central space being
approximately a square. The examples which have been given cannot be
proved to follow one another in chronological order, but they represent
successive steps in planning and construction, of which Norton-on-Tees
is the highest. The importance of the inclusion of the tower in the plan
is obvious. In its early appearances, its position is unsettled, but the
natural tendency is to place it above a main entrance; and this is
usually at the west end of the building. Where the builders aim at a
simple centralised plan, the high central rectangle will form, like the
round or octagonal central space of Wilfrid's church of St Mary at
Hexham, _ecclesia ... in modum turris erecta_, and, as at
Barton-on-Humber, will possibly be heightened by a later generation into
a real tower. The distinction of the side chapel from the entrance
porches, becoming more fully recognised, will lead to the building of
transeptal chapels at the east end of the nave; and thus an important
addition will be made to the ordinary longitudinal plan. The need of
some central building, against which these additions may abut, will be
felt. The tower will thus be introduced between nave and chancel, either
as an independent structure, or as an upward extension of part of the
side walls. The transepts thus, as at Stow, can be raised to an equal
height with nave and chancel. From this to a plan in which the component
parts are recognised as interdependent