TE XVII.

CHURCH OF TAMERVILLE.

[Illustration: Plate 17. CHURCH OF TAMERVILLE.]

This church is situated at the distance of half a league from the town
of Valognes, near the road which leads to Barfleur and La Hougue.

The whole building is ancient, with the exception of the western portal
and a chapel to the north of the choir. Its general style of
architecture, the columns which support the tower, the buttresses, the
corbels, and the small windows of the nave, especially those fronting
the north, are all indicative of a production of the early days of
Norman rule, and, probably, of the period immediately preceding the
descent upon England. This period of comparative peace and tranquillity
was a time, when, to use the language of two nearly contemporary
historians, "the noblemen of Normandy emulated each other in erecting
churches upon their domains: they thus filled their continental
territory; and they shortly afterwards did the same in England."

The steeple represented in the plate is in excellent preservation: it is
of beautiful proportions; and, to an architect, is peculiarly
interesting for the cylindrical buttress, which runs nearly to the top
of the first story on the southern side, and is probably the only
instance of the kind known to exist.[20] To an English antiquary,
however, it may be allowed to have a claim to greater interest, on
account of its general shape and proportions. In these respects it
forcibly recalls the round-towered churches of Norfolk and Suffolk, most
of them surmounted by octagonal lanterns. Two of the churches of the
former county, those at Toft-Monks, and at Bokenham,[21] preserve the
octagonal shape down to the ground; but, in both instances, it is in
conjunction with early pointed architecture; and the church of
Tamerville, it is feared, would not be of itself sufficient, as being an
insulated specimen, to justify the assigning of a Norman origin to those
just mentioned. No churches with round towers have yet come under the
author's knowledge in Normandy; and yet they might certainly have been
expected in the duchy, if there be any truth in the tradition which
ascribes those in England to the Danes. On the other hand, supposing
such report to be altogether void of foundation, it seems quite
unaccountable that not one of them probably exists, which does not
retain some traces of Norman architecture.

In early times, the barons of this great province seldom, if ever, used