iple that allows such a piece of engineering
to be carried out with safety, namely, the balancing of thrust and
counter-thrust, by means of vaulting ribs and external flying buttresses,
had not been fully realized in England. In some few cases it is true that
late Norman vaults may be found, but more often where stone vaults exist
in Norman churches they were added in after times. In Romsey Abbey one of
the most noteworthy features is that very little alteration was made in
the church when once it was built. True there was a westward extension in
the thirteenth century, and some insertion of windows in the fourteenth
century, but nothing of the original church seems to have been swept away,
as was so often the case, to make room for extensions and alterations.

The #Nave# has seven bays, to the east of which is the transept, and beyond
it the choir, which has three bays. Further to the east, as we shall find
in due course, may be seen the low vaulted retro-choir or ambulatory of
one bay.

[Illustration: CYLINDRICAL PIER: NORTH NAVE ARCADE]

It is well known that Norman choirs were generally short, and that when we
find a considerable length of building eastward of the crossing, this
eastward extension was made in the thirteenth or fourteenth century; the
new building being often begun to the east of the Norman choir, and the
choir left untouched until the eastern part was finished, when very
frequently the old Norman choir and presbytery were demolished, and the
new work joined on to the transept by masonry in the later style.

The inconvenience of a short architectural choir was very often avoided by
bringing the ritual choir westward into the nave, an arrangement which
exists up to the present day at the Abbey Church at Westminster. This
seems to have been done at Romsey, the choir extending across the transept
as far as the third pillar of the nave, counting from the east. But
although the eastern bays of the nave and all of those of the choir are
Norman, yet they are by no means of an ordinary type. There is much about
this church that is unique, and certain arrangements are found only here
and at St. Friedeswide's, now Christ Church, Oxford, Dunstable Priory,
and Jedburgh Abbey. There is no strict uniformity: one bay frequently
differs from another in its details.

[Illustration: THE CLERESTORY OF NAVE: SOUTH SIDE]

[Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH BAYS OF THE NAVE]

It may be well at the outset to point out that