, and are closely knit together in
structural unity, is an obvious step. At this point, architectural
skill, as distinct from mere building ingenuity, comes into play.

Sec. 28. As we proceed, we shall find survivals of old plans, even at an
advanced period in the middle ages, which prove that progress in
architecture was by no means of an uniform kind. Builders in remote, and
especially in hilly, districts, from Saxon times to the present day,
have naturally restricted themselves to plans which require as little
cost as possible to carry out. Local building material is also an
important consideration. In districts where good building stone is to be
obtained on the spot, or where money is plentiful and water carriage is
possible, the development of plan is naturally rapid, and every fifty
years or so, additions to churches will be made in which the old plan
will become entirely transformed. In woodland districts, the plan will
be controlled to no small extent by the requirements of timber
construction. In such regions, Saxon churches were probably built of
wood. The only wooden church of Saxon times which remains is that of
Greenstead in south Essex, with a rectangular chancel and aisleless nave
constructed of vertical logs placed side by side, and framed originally
into a timber plinth. However, it may be stated as a general rule, that,
whatever may be the helps or hindrances to development provided by local
materials, the real starting-point of the parish church plan of the
middle ages is in every part of the country an aisleless plan; and that
this plan consists either of a nave and chancel with a longitudinal
axis, or of a nave and chancel whose longitudinal axis is intersected by
a transverse axis across transepts. Variations, no doubt, occur; but
these will never carry us far from one or other of these fundamental
plans. The aisled basilica of the continent found no scope for itself in
Saxon England; and it was through an interval of aisleless building that
the aisled plan eventually became acclimatised, and then in a form which
bears only a superficial kinship to the basilican plan.

CHAPTER III

THE AISLELESS CHURCH OF THE NORMAN PERIOD

Sec. 29. During the century after the Norman Conquest, the great abbey
churches and cathedrals represent the work of a foreign architectural
school, gradually acclimatising itself in England; while, on the other
hand, the parish church continued to be planned by local