elbourne, however, there are
important variations from this plan. The chancel is short, there are no
quire aisles, and the transept apses were rounded externally. In the
larger churches of Normandy, the side apses were at the end of
the quire aisles, and were usually squared externally, while the
apses projecting from the east walls of the transepts, as at
Saint-Georges-de-Boscherville, were left rounded. At Newbald and Bampton
there seems to have been no attempt to give complete unity of design, as
at Melbourne, to the rectangular chancel and transeptal apses. In any
case, transeptal apses were the exception in the plans of our Norman
cruciform churches, although their convenience for holding altars is
obvious.

Sec. 37. The cruciform plan, beautiful as it is, was never generally
adopted. It was inconvenient for purposes of public worship, as long as
the rounded arch remained fashionable. In our own day, even in churches
where the central tower is carried on high pointed arches, and the view
of the altar is practically unhindered, the chancel is cut off from the
nave by the crossing, and the acoustic problem, which in modern church
planning is so necessary a consideration, is almost insurmountable. In
the middle ages, this problem was not so acute; but it was undesirable
that the interior of the chancel should be nearly invisible from the
nave. At Newbald the tower arches are planned upon a liberal scale: at
Bampton, on the other hand, where the eastern tower arch is left, the
others having been rebuilt in the thirteenth century, it is very low.
The low tower arches at Burford, Oxon, and the narrow arches at St
Giles, Northampton, are examples of the way in which the supports of
the Norman central tower interfered with the internal convenience of
churches. It was not until much later that this difficulty was solved,
and then only in one or two cases, when the cruciform plan had become
exceptional. The plans of Bampton, Burford, and Witney, show how the
builders of west Oxfordshire experimented in cruciform planning. The
division between chancel and nave is felt much less at Witney than in
the other two churches; for the great thirteenth century tower and
spire, resting upon massive piers joined by pointed arches, throw a
considerable portion of their weight upon nave and transept arcades,
whose exceptional massiveness gives unity to the whole design. In the
fifteenth century, however, the rebuilders of the aisleless ch