Excerpt from The Ecclesiologist, Vol. 8

Lancet windows, - faultless, it is true, -well-pointed, well-proportioned, well-splayed, deeply set, boldly architraved, -but a world too numerous, regular, and unvarying, - except where beautifully and richly relieved, as at Appledram, and All Saints', Chichester, and Bosham, with the "dark brilliance" of polished shafts of Purbeck or Petworth, spires somewhat of the shortest and dingiest, aisles but seldom, and those but narrow and penthouse - like, as at Donington and the Lavants: these are the features which are repeated with little variation in all directions. And one great want will press itself on his attention, viz., the almost total absence of Middle-Pointed specimens of architecture. In vain will he look for the easy flow of tracery, - the light and shadow of the bold and well-contrasted moulding, - the sharp triangular canopy, keenly cutting through and by contrast setting off the exquisitely enriched ogee projecting from it, - the faultlessly proportioned chapel, or chantry, or porch, and all those other features of the Perfect Gothic, which are to the genuine ecclesiologist a feast and an enchantment, - to the thoughtful symbolist "counsels of perfection." And he will naturally ask how it was that the golden age of sacred architecture never visited these parts- never laid upon these churches that plastic finger of which it may truly be said, "nihil tetigit quod non ornavit?" - a question more easily asked than answered. It is not meant to be asserted that there is positively not a trace of the work of this period in the neighbourhood: some honourable though peculiar exceptions will be mentioned presently, but the state of things generally is such as has been described.

But curious as this fact is, a more remarkable phenomenon still arising out of it remains to be stated. What this is will best appear by examples. We enter the time - honoured church of Old Bosham, - the fabulosa ecclesia" of the Bayeux tapestry, and after paying due homage to the unquestionably ante-Norman tower, with its pounding triangular-headed aperture looking into tho nave, and admiring the lofty late Romanesque chancel-arch (of which we shall have more to say), and the well-shafted lancet and other windows of the chancel itself, we turn to the nave, divided from its aisles by four goodly arches, resting on solid circular shafts, and responds. One striking peculiarity we notice, viz., that the two easternmost piers on the south side are based, not upon the floor of the church, but on a mass of masonry some four feet in height, which proves to be tho covering of a crypt: and this is, at a first glance, the only difference between the southern and northern piers, and one takes it for granted that the whole structure is coeval, belonging to the period of Transition from Romanesque to Pointed. But on closer examination, it appears, that though the capital-mouldings of the north aisle belong to this period, those of the south as certainly do not, but to the Middle-Pointed period.

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