Lympne Church an Analytical Study

LYMN Norman • destroyed /[.English > destrf Decorated • a Later-Norman I oB coryecfl Modern or Restored i3l m *** 1 mi 1. Scale of feet GM.L L_ farly-Norman MJue Conjecn /oter-M>rman J/aue Jigs Ly, Arch Still an +*-l+ Jrc'ion cj novf.tsofli and roof ' of north .Jul! of tncfoi.ng /o*r*r V*^*1 flriation of vest fact of tow ( 221 ) LYMNE CHURCH AN ANALYTICAL STUDY BY GBEVTLE M. LIVETT, B.A., E.S.A. (Hon. Canon of Rochester). IN the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas, A.D. 1291, under the heading Decanatus de Lemme (B.O., Lymene), the Church of Lymne with a Chapel (JScclesia de Lemme cum Capella1) is assessed at £20, whence it appears that at that date Limpne, as it is now usuaUy written,2 was a church of sufficient importance to give its name to the rural deanery. Out of thirty-six churches in the deanery only six were assessed at a higher figure, and besides Lymne only one, Aldington, had a chapel [Smeeth] attached. In each of four other churches, namely Brenzet, Appledore, Aldington and Lydd, a vicar was separately assessed. In the case of Lymne there is no such entry, and there seems to be no record of the ordination of the vicarage there, though by the earliest extant archiepiscopal register, that of Archbishop Pecldiam, John de Otringedene was admitted to be vicar of Limene in 1292. 1 West Hythe, also known as Old Hythe, which became later a separate parish, and was entered in the Valor Eccl. of Hy. VIII as an Ecclesia appropriated to the archdeacon of Canterbury and assessed at £9 2s. Lymne appears in the Valor twice : first (p. 49) under the heading Lymme as a church appropriated to the archdeacon of Canterbury, the assessment column left blank, but a note added referring to the second entry (p. 50), where, after a dozen other entries, under the heading Lympne Thomas Kytchyn, vicar there, is assessed at £9 16d. 2 The name undoubtedly derives from the Latin Lemanae. By the genius of the English tongue the accent was thrown back and it became Limine. This was shortened into a two-syllable word, Limne or Lymne. Then, in spelling (fifteenth century) which must have followed pronunciation, the ugly p was sometimes introduced, just as it has been in Ham(p)- stead and Thom(p)son, and it became Lympne : it was actually written Limpney in the survey of 1649. And finally the pronunciation of the second syllable was dropped, but the p was sometimes retained and still persists. Somner and Battely rejected the superfluous letter, and like Scott Robertson I venture to follow their good example. 222 LYMNE CHURCH. The history of the church and rectory of Lymne goes back, however, two centuries to the time of Archbishop Lanfranc, for though Lymne is only incidentaUy mentioned (as Limes) in the Exchequer Domesday Book, under the manor of Aldington, we are told by Hasted1 that Archbishop Lanfranc, out of the revenues of his See, appropriated to the archdeaconry of Canterbury, as "the first possessions it ever had ", the church of Limne and the parsonage with its appurtenances, consisting of the house [later known as the Court House and finally as the Castle], the glebe lands, tithes and advowson2 . We seem justified, therefore, in taking it for granted that there was a church here built before the death of Archbishop Lanfranc in 1089. The aim of this Paper is to set out a study of the existing building, if so be that the plan of the original building may be revealed and the stages of its development traced. The church now comprises a massive early-Norman central tower that rises up between a short and relatively broad Early English nave and a long and narrow E. Engl. chancel; on the N. side of the tower an EMngl. chapel, which merges with continuous roof into a broad Decorated N. aisle separated from the nave by an arcade of two E.Engl. arches ; and a Dec. porch entering into the aisle. I t wiU be convenient at the outset to make a few notes of the present condition of the structure and the alterations it has undergone within the last hundred years.3 At the present time, as our ihustrations show, both nave and chancel have ridge-roofs of moderately high pitch. i History of Kent, VIII, 301. 2 In Hasted's time the parsonage consisted of " the house, buildings, etc., the tythes of this parish and West Hythe, with 112 acres of arable and pasture and 40 acres of woodland in Limne, some marsh-land in West Hythe, and a small meadow in Stanford."—History of Kent, Vol. Ill (folio ed.), p. 445, footnote. More recently the property was conveyed to the Eccl. Com., and by them sold into lay hands. The advowson is retained by the Archdeacon of Canterbury. P.S.—Eor further evidence of the early date of the foundation of the church see Add. Note at the end of this Paper. 3 See Plates II and III, the latter a reproduction of a photograph taken for this Paper by J. Charlton, of Mercery Lane, the former of a sketch kindly supplied by Captain J. B. Hewitt. ,.*3Sra'i!fi sitasSg aai'i..- ^ttft^^t PlATE II. LYMNE CHURCH. N.E. view. LYMNE CHURCH. 223 Early in the last century both were roofless. Hasted's History of Kent, both in the folio edition, pubhshed 1790, and in the 8vo, 1798, contains a " South View of Lymne Castle and Church " which shows both bereft of their roofs ; and in a footnote (folio edv) the author says " the north isle only is ceiled ". This is confirmed by a plate in a rare volume of Etchings in the County of Kent, by F. W. Litchfield Stockdale, published in 1810, brought to my notice by our Editor. When Stephen Glynne visited the church, in 1862, both nave and chancel had flat roofs. Of the nave Glynne tells us, in his Notes on the Churches of Kent (1877), that the W. waU had been rebuilt, " too soon and not too well " ; that the roof was "flat pitched and Perpendicular " ; and that on the S. side the windows, " originaUy Perpendicular ", had been mutilated. Of the chancel he says it had " a poor modern roof of flat pitch " and " a moulded parapet ". This evidence is abundant and precise. The poor modern roof of the chancel had probably been built in 1820, for on one of the stones of the massive flying buttress on the S. side are inscribed the initials, perhaps of the masons, perhaps of the churchwardens, W. C. and P. K. R. 1820. Canon Scott Robertson, in a paper contributed to Arch. Cant., Vol. XVIII (1898), says that Edwin Byron, vicar from 1840 to 1877, restored the chancel; that under the auspices of his successor, G. B. Coulcher, the tower and nave were restored by the architect St. Aubyn in 1878-80 ; and that " the Norman doorway in the west wall of the nave was taken down when the west waU was entirely rebuUt, many years before the restoration of the nave ". FinaUy, there is a local tradition, recently quoted (with some hesitation) by the sexton, that the rebuilding of the W. waU was done in 1859. Deferring comment upon the mention of a Norman W. doorway I gather from all this that the said flat roof of the chancel may have been built in 1820 ; that Byron may have built the flat roof of the nave in 1859 on the hnes of a Perpendicular roof which had replaced an earher highpitched roof; that the same vicar, probably towards the 224 LYMNE CHURCH. end of his incumbency, restored the chancel, replacing the said ' flat roof with moulded parapet' by the present roof ; and that Coulcher, continuing a general restoration, tackled the tower and the nave, replacing Byron's flat roof by the present one and the mutilated Perp. windows on the S. side by the existing lancets. We may now pass to a more detailed description of the existing building, drawing conclusions as to its evolution as we proceed. The reader is invited to refer frequently to the illustrations and the plate of plans, elevations and sections. The central tower (Plate III) is a massive structure strengthened at all four angles by clasping pilaster-buttresses. The waUing is faced with rough-hewn blocks of Kentish rag laid in courses. The quoins are dressed Caenstone, with here and there a block of calcareous tufa. The tower rises by four stages some fifty-four feet to the top of a plain modern parapet. The stages are marked by backsets, whereby the walls of each successive stage decrease in thickness. The first back-set, dividing the second from the ground-stage, runs along the face of the wall in the form of a sloped string-course of dressed stone, and continues on round the flanking buttresses. In the other two back-sets, dressed stone now appears only round the buttresses, but I think the second may have been similarly treated originaUy. The third is double, as seen plainly at the top of the buttresses. The tower must originaUy have been capped with a low pyramidal roof rising from eaves only a little above the tops of the buttresses. The N. and S. walls (and possibly the W. wall also) originally contained in the ground-stage a round-headed window, set centraUy just under the stringcourse. Remains of those windows are visible in the sidewalls inside the tower ; on the S. side exterior the position is indicated by a difference in the wall-facing, which can be detected in the accompanying illustration. In the second stage all sides of the tower except the E. are adorned with three recessed arches that rise from the string-course, constructed not in dressed stone but in roughhewn Kentish rag. Structurally this wall-arcading is very PLATE III. LYMNE CHURCH. S.E. view. [Photo. J. Charlton. LYMNE CHURCH. 225 much like that which adorns the E. face of the early-Norman tower of St. Leonard's chapel, West MaUing, attributed to Bishop Gundulf, circa 1090. That tower also has clasping buttress-strips, and on the E. face between them and a central waU-strip there are two pairs of recessed arches rising, as at Lymne, from the first horizontal string. The W. waU of the nave of St. Leonard's, now destroyed, stood ten feet away from the tower, leaving the arcading free to be seen. At Lymne the fact that the arcading appears on the W. face (now enclosed by the nave-roof—see the elevation, PL I, fig. 1.) as well as on the N. and S. sides (now partly hidden by a later building on the S. side), but does not exist on the E. face (on which the chancel-roof abuts), suggests that when the church was first built the tower, now central, was a western tower and had no building abutting on its W. face. Special attention is caUed to this point. A central tower would have had no waU-arcading on its W. side, just as it has none on the E. Canon Scott Robertson's theory, expressed in the foUowing quotation from his Paper, cannot be substantiated : " From the nave, at present, we can see, above the existing tower-arch, three Norman windows (now blocked up), which in the twelfth century were open to the sky, above the level of the nave's Norman roof "—he evidently imagined a Norman roof much lower than the present roof. Against this theory the foUowing considerations can be advanced : (1) the form of the recessed arches is not that of " windows " ; (2) such openings would have been constructed in dressed stone, hke aU the other Norman windows ; (3) no indication of such later " blocking " can be detected in the waUs on the inside of the tower (just above the first floor) ; (4) the back of the recesses, plainly seen on the S. side exterior, is identical in character with the facing of the adjoining waU ; (5) lastly, and fataUy, if anyone wiU draw on my elevation (fig. 2) the hnes of the Canon's supposititious " nave's Norman roof " downwards from its apex immediately below the siU of his central " Norman window ", giving the roof only a moderately high pitch, 19 226 LYMNE CHURCH. he wiU see that the height of the nave side-walls on which the eaves would faU could not exceed three feet—quod est absurdum. It is significant, too, that on the E. face of the tower, rising from the second back-set just above the ridge of the existing chancel-roof, and on that face only, there is seen a smaU Norman loop-window. One would surely find signs of a similar window in the W. wall had there been a western nave in the original building ; but no such signs exist. The exterior stonework of the window was renewed in Bath-stone by Mr. St. Aubyn. It is splayed internaUy (see the elevation, PL I, fig. 2), and originaUy its rerearch was faced throughout with calc-tufa, but St. Aubyn restored a few blocks on either side in Kentish rag.1 The two windows in every side of the belfry-stage have likewise been renewed externaUy, while their rere-arches are faced with their original tufa unaltered. Looking through them from the inside one sees that each pair of those openings converge together in an unusual manner. It is also worth notice that in all of them the jambs of the rere-arch inchne together as they rise up to the head, after the manner of some Saxon windows. All the architectural features described in the foregoing paragraphs point to a western-tower plan, and, as suggested by the historical notices, to an early-Norman date, in other words, adopting Prof. Baldwin Brown's illuminating expression, a " Saxo-Norman overlap " date. The choice of materials is not inconsistent with that date. The use of Caen-stone in Kentish churches for quoins and other dressings is often a sign of somewhat later date, but calcareous tufa is a characteristicaUy early-Norman material. Lanfranc used both, and supphes of both may weU have been drawn from the stocks of stone assembled for the erection of his cathedral and monastic buildings. The Kentish rag of the rough walling was quarried, doubtless, from the 1 Shown in elevation in fig. 1, and in section in fig. 2. In the elevation it is drawn in broken lines—as belonging, not to the E. end of the nave with which the drawing seems to associate it, but to the E. wall of the tower, the upper part of which is delineated above the roof of the nave. [Photo. J. Charlton. PLATE IV. LYMNE CHURCH. Fig. 4 (r.). Junction of tower and chancel on S. side, showing fragment of early Norman nave. Fig. 5 (1.). N.W. impost molding. LYMNE CHUROH. 227 Roman fort of Lemanae, already in ruins on the hillside below the church: they would supply abundance of material, and that would account for the absence of any quasi-herringbone facing such as is often seen in early-Norman waUs. In churches built in the neighbourhood of Roman ruins it is usual to find much Roman brick : here I have detected only one piece, immediately under the left-hand end of the impost shown in fig. 5 (PL IV). Plate I, fig. 3, shows in fuU black a plan of the tower with its side-windows and clasping buttresses, and also, east of the tower, the start of the side-walls of the early-Norman nave, which occupied the site, but not the exact lines, of the existing chancel, which is a long building (38 ft. long inside) and in width a foot greater at the E. than at the W. end. About a foot of those early walls actually remains, projecting from the E. face of the tower-buttresses (marked * on the period-plan). The one on the S. side, which has a late chancel-window hard up against it, is shown in the photographic iUustration (PL IV, fig. 4; cf. also PL III). The outer face has roughly coursed masonry like that of the tower, and the other face is manifestly a part of the rough core of the wah, the other part being covered by the end of the chancel-waU which abuts upon it. If more convincing evidence is required it is supplied by the character of the quoin formed by these two faces : if it were the quoin of an additional buttress to the tower, as has been suggested, it would be built in wrought Caen-stone like aU the Norman quoins, whereas in fact it is uneven and rough, indicating that a continuation of the waU has been broken away from i t : the iUustration shows the broken edge against the glass of the neighbouring window. On the N. side there is a " buttress-Uke bit of masonry" exactly simUar except that here the whole width of the core is exposed, giving a thickness of three feet to these destroyed side-walls of the early-Norman nave. The exact Unes of their continuation eastwards cannot be determined : probably their foundations were dug up by later builders for the sake of the material, 228 LYMNE CHURCH. for search for them by means of a probe has proved fruitless : their approximate direction is indicated conjecturaUy on the period-plan by a ' tint.' Assuming the correctness of the foregoing deductions one suspected the possibihty of finding some signs of an early-Norman chancel to the E, of the existing chancel. With the kind consent of the Vicar, the Rev. G. H. Green, and by the wiUing labours of the sexton, J. C. Finniss, I recently had a trench dug across the E. end, and another running eastwards from it. The cross-ditch yielded significant results. The remains of two waUs were found at right angles to the chancel-waU, separated from one another by an interval of 13 ft. : 26 ins. in width and 2 ft. in depth, built upon a sUghtly wider foundation of rammed chalk, they ran only 3 ft. and 2 ft. 6 ins. respectively from the edge of the gutter, which could not be interfered with. They presented broken ends and aU indications of their continuance eastwards had been destroyed by grave-digging. I have added particulars to the accompanying plan, which shows the walls at equal distances from the side walls of the early-Norman nave which I had already, plotted, conjecturaUy as aforesaid, paraUel to the Unes of the E. Engl. chancel which superseded them. There can be httle doubt, I think, that we succeeded in discovering here the remains of the early-Norman chancel. But the plan indicated is somewhat abnormal in the thinness of the waUs and the narrowness of the building. I have ventured to suggest a square-ended chancel, as being the more usual plan ; but perhaps in this case an elongated apsidal form, as indicated by dotted lines, is not unlikely. Our picture of the original plan of the church is now fairly complete : it reveals an example of the western tower + nave + chancel type, and one has only to add an entrance, which may have been by a W. doorway, as shown in fig. 3, or by one on the N. side, or possibly in both places. What then, it may be asked, is the history of the great towerarch ? It is manifestly a Norman structure, though its original round arch has been replaced by a pointed one of LYMNE CHURCH. 229 E.Engl. style and workmanship. The form of its Norman jambs and imposts is not that of a door-frame and its span is too wide ; moreover the ornament of tie imposts is of too late a character for a Lanfrancan date. It is an arch of communication, inserted in the W. wall of the tower ; and it predicates a later-Norman nave, added to the west of the tower and replaced by the existing nave in the E.Engl. period. It is astonishing that after a lapse of not much more than half a century a rebuilding of this nave should have been found necessary. But, as we have seen, the first Norman nave, east of the tower, was rebuilt at the same time ; and, seeking a reason, one reflects that the site of the church is not many yards from the crest of a cliff of clay rendered insecure from time to time by springs that, issuing near the top, caused of old the ruin of the Roman fort of Lemanae down below. It may well be that danger of similar nature threatened the stability of the walls of both nave and chancel, aheady perhaps thrust outwards by the pressure of weaklyframed roofs, while the tower, more strongly built and not subject to the same Mnd of pressure, continued to stand firm. And we call to mind the roofless state of the nave and chancel and the successive rebuilding of their roofs in modern times: history repeats itself. Fear of similar danger may have prompted the erection in 1820 of the flying buttress on the S. side of the chancel. Judged by the character of its construction and impostornament the eastern tower-arch must have been built at the same time as the western one, replacing a narrower early-Norman arch of communication between the tower and the nave to the east of it. The material is suggestive : of the eight quoins of the jambs of these two arches three are composed of Caen-stone and three are built in large blocks of Kentish rag, all diagonally tooled, while the remaining two show modern reconstruction. The use of rag differentiates these arches from the work of all parts of the tower that are admittedly early-Norman, in which only Caen-stone and tufa were used for cut-stone, and so proclaims the arches to be of later date. 230 LYMNE CHURCH. The decoration of the arches confirms their post-Lanf rancan origin, but does not lead to a close estimate of their date. The bankerman who sculptured it was well acquainted with the work (circa 1100-1110) of Prior Ernulf at Canterbury. The so-caUed diamond pattern that adorns the face of three of the imposts is a copy of the ornament seen in sUghtly varying forms in Ernulf's arch-heads and stringcourses in the cathedral choir-aisles. The double billet molding, worked alternately in two rows on the chamfer of three of the imposts, remains on those of the E. arch (PL V, fig. 6), but has been hacked away from the N.W. impost. An alternating biUet occurs at Christ Church in the string-courses of St. Andrew's tower and St. Anselm's, but unfortunately those strings, being restorations by Austin, are not to be depended upon for comparison. The section, however, of the upper row in the Lymne example, reproduced in the church at Walmer (see fig. 8), bears a close resemblance in contour to that of the single threaded biUet seen in the intersecting arches of Ernulf's arcading in the second stage exterior of those towers. The remaining ornament, seen on the face of the N.W. impost, a photo of which is reproduced in PL IV, fig. 5, I believe to be a highly ornamented development of a simple X-shaped cross used by Lanfranc and also by Ernulf, but now to be seen only on stones re-used by later builders. The incised vesica-shaped arms of the cross, defined by intersecting arcs, are each adorned with a row of minute nail-heads (see PL V, fig. 7). The technique seems to be Walmer Eig. 8. DOUBLE BILLETS (£). r ® o 0 ® % 0 f , n \ i & %> IU-15 LYMNE CHURCH. 231 more advanced than anything seen in Ernulf's work, but it may well have been carved by a bankerman of his who in the course of years had gained some experience in the use of tools finer than the axe. On the other hand it is not so advanced as the work of Prior Wibert (1151-67), which was designed with less artistry but with greater precision of form, and with a profuse use of pearls and beads but no naU-heads. Perhaps it may be assigned to the third decade of the twelfth century, or thereabouts. Two or three other stones, showing the diamond pattern, were re-used in the building of the rere-arch of the aisle window, east of the porch. They are parts of a diaper, and may have come from the tympanum of the N. door of the second Norman nave.1 In PL I, fig. 3, I have shown the way in which the waUs of that nave connected with the tower, giving them the normal thickness (3 ft.) of Norman waUs; and for sake of comparison I have indicated also the lines of the existing E.Engl. waUs. Thus our analytical study of this church, assisted by legitimate imagination, which must always play its part, has led to the discovery of a stage in the evolution of the buUding which has hitherto escaped notice. We have to imagine a later-Norman nave being added to the early- Norman W. tower some fifty or sixty years after the church was built, and the opening out at the same time of two 1 Eig. 8. P.S.—These Norman ornaments demand fuller consideration and illustration than I have been able to give them in this Paper. With the Editor's leave I hope to contribute a short paper on the subject to the next volume of Arch. Cant. %c: ^CUCQyyq^g Fig. 9, RE-USED STONE (£). 232 LYMNE CHURCH. tower-arches to afford ample communication between the new nave and the old, the latter then coming into use as a chancel or presbytery. Whether the original smaU chancel, square or apsidal, was then destroyed or was retained as a sanctuary or altar-house cannot be determined. I t may be that the hmited space afforded by the smaU chancel prompted the re-arrangement. The Umited space between the tower and the boundary of the parsonage grounds may account for the length of the new nave being rather shorter, in comparison with its breadth, than was usual in Norman churches. I think the new nave had both a W. and a N. entrance. If Scott Robertson's information was correct the W. doorway was preserved when the E.Engl. people rebuilt the nave and was not destroyed until 1859 ; and as to the N. door, probably it was re-used in the erection of the E.Engl. aisle and was destroyed when the Dec. aisle was built. Early English works, circa 1200, comprising the chancel, nave and N. chapel that stiU stand and a narrow N. aisle that has disappeared, mark the third stage in the evolution of the building. In a plan recently published in a newspaper and reproduced in postcard-form the chancel is represented as being an E.Engl. prolongation of a short early-Norman chancel. In my opinion it is a building aU of one date. Its walUng is of the same character throughout —rubble-faced and, though much patched, quite distinct from the roughly-coursed facing of the tower-walls. It contains no indication of old quoins such as are usuaUy seen in cases of eastward extension, or of blocked windows in such positions as windows would have occupied in a short chancel. The existing windows occupy other positions. In each of the side-waUs there are two large lancets, symmetricaUy disposed, and a smaUer and lower lancet crammed in against the tower. The insertion of the latter may have been an afterthought, designed to throw hght upon the priests' choir-desks, but it was the work of the same builders. At the E. end there are three similar large lancets of equal height with a bull's-eye light in the gable. All the windows LYMNE CHURCH. 233 seem to have been rebated for outside shutters, but aU except the central E. window have undergone much reparation and some alteration. In the central E. window alone the original rebated stone-work remains. This is explained by the fact that when Glynne visited the church in 1862 that window had been " closed up by an ugly modern tablet on which is the Decalogue ". It has Kentish-rag sill and jambs and Caen-stone head. These two kinds of stone were used by the E.Engl. builders, with a certain amount of method, in aU their parts of the church. The eastern quoins of the chancel and the rere-arch and external sill of the western-most window of the S. side are ragstone. Elsewhere in the chancel Caen-stone predominates. A stone bench-table runs along the whole length of the chancel on either side. This feature, unique in a chancel, accounts for the absence of any sedilia. On the S. side it is interrupted by a tomb. On the same side there is a piscina, and to the east of it a smaU pointed niche which reminded Scott Robertson of the niche in the chancel-waU of Folkestone church at a spot where a leaden casket containing bones was found. Inside the tower, on either side of the eastern arch, there is an E.Engl. recess with depressed-pointed arch of Kentish rag, connected doubtless with altars standing under them. A double-lancet window in the S. waU gave them light. In the N. waU is an aumbry, found and opened out by Mr. Coulcher. In the same waU a taU pointed arch of ragstone was inserted to afford communication with the E.Engl. chapel on that side—see the section, PL I, fig. 2. In the S.W. corner there is an ugly, but perhaps convenient, modern winding stairway of iron, by which the tower may be ascended to study its structural features and to obtain at the top a fine view of Romney Marsh with its Martello towers, the Dymchurch redoubt, the viUage of Dymchurch, and in the far distance over the sea Dungeness and its lighthouse. The W. face of the tower as seen from the nave affords an interesting study (see the elevation, fig. 1). The high 234 LYMNE CHURCH. pointed arch (of a single order edged with large voussoirs of Kentish rag, bevelled) was substituted for the original round arch of Caen-stone for the purpose of gaining room for the erection of a rood, which, in the absence of any sign of a loft, seems (doubtless with its attendant figures of Our Lady and St. John) to have been carried on a beam only : " the Beam of the Holy Cross " is mentioned in a wih of 1481. In making this alteration the E.Engl. buUders cut back the face of the waU to the plane of the stage above, so that their arch is 6 ins. thinner than its predecessor; and they accommodated this new face to the old on either side of it by means of quoins made up of Norman axe-tooled Caen-stone which they re-used. Some of them show the vertical E.Engl. chisel-toohng. At the same time the horizontal string-course from which the three little waUarches originaUy rose was cut away aU across the face of the tower and from the face of the flanking buttress-strips. When building the side-walls of their nave they also cut back the buttress-strip on the S. side, but on the N. side they cut away only the lower part. Or possibly that was done on the N. side a little later, when the face of the waU on both sides of the corner was adorned with painting, doubtless in connection with an altar placed there. A description of the painting, which was discovered by Mr. Coulcher and quickly faded away after exposure, is given by Scott Robertson in the Paper quoted above. The botched manner in which the side-walls of the nave abut upon the clasping buttresses of the tower, overlapping them by fuUy 3 ins. on either side, is iUustrated in the period-plan and fig. 3. The two pointed arches which form the arcade on the N. side of the nave spring from a central square pier of Caenstone and two flat responds of Caen-stone and Kentish rag. The edges are chamfered and the chamfer-stops are of the usual E.Engl. form. The construction of the arches presents a peculiar feature. The lower part of the haunches is edged with large voussoirs of Kentish rag, the upper part with smaller voussoirs of Caen-stone. At the joint where the two LYMNE CHURCH. 235 materials meet, about mid-way between springing and crown, there is in every case a forward kink in the contour of the haunch, as though it had been struck not from a single centre but from two centres, This pecuharity, when I first noticed it, gave me the impression that originaUy the arches might have been round-headed and turned entirely in Kentish rag, and that they had been altered into pointed arches afterwards. But careful measurement and plotting showed that if the lower curves were continued upwards they would stiU form pointed arches with their crown only a few inches below that of the existing arches. How they were constructed remains to me a puzzle.1 Some holes in the soffits just above the imposts remain as a mark of the hoarding which must have fiUed the arches while the nave and chancel were roofless and service could be held only in the aisle and the N. chapel. The floor of the chapel hes below the level of the ground outside, which slopes southwards towards the scarp of the hill. The footings of the foundations of the tower were covered by the ground before the chapel was built and were exposed when the floor throughout the church was levelled and paved. Such is the simple explanation of some masses of rough masonry. The chapel has windows hke those of the chancel, but smaller—two at the E. end and two at the side. I think that originaUy there must have been a third at the side, and I have indicated its probable position in the plan. I have also shown by dash-and-dot the probable lines of its W. wall and also of the side-wall of the original narrower aisle, which must have had a sloping roof—a continuation, with a slight cant, of the slope of the nave-roof. In the aisle stands a square, tabular font of Purbeck marble, supported by a central column and four corner shafts. This type was 1 This peculiar feature is seen in the chancel-arch and adjoining aisle-arches in Great Chart Church, where it is clearly the result of design on the master-builder's part. See the elevation accompanying the Paper on that churoh in A.C. I have recently noticed that in Boughton Aluph Church, built by the same master, the same peculiarity is evident not only in the chancel-arch but also in the arches of the nave-arcades. 236 LYMNE CHURCH. common towards the end of the twelfth and early in the thirteenth century. The bowl was found under the floor by Mr. Coulcher, who set it up on new supports fitted into the matrices of the old. Its sides are, or were, enriched with Mil lllli'il'i lii|ffi! i A U l|,V a t I! ' i m * m PR™ m& mmw\m\ immim I ma m as*m x Wm *m aggflg**! L/mmflMILy.ffTB* m u* EONT AND TOMB RECESS. arcading in shght rehef, abrased or cut away along the upper part, so that the design is no longer clear : some slight signs of cusping can be detected. Captain Hewitt has supplied a sketch. The destruction of the narrow E.Engl. aisle took place in the Decorated period—the final stage in the evolution of the plan, in which the widening of the aisle was effected by a westward prolongation of the side-wall of the chapel. Near the junction of the later with the earlier wall there is a recess in which hes, rather awkwardly, a tomb-slab bearing signs of a cross fleury. If a screen separated the chapel from the aisle it would cross immediately to the west of the tomb, leaving it in the chapel. The arch of the recess is trefoiled and has a depressed-pointed scroU-molding, which suggests a fourteenth-century date. It may be the tomb of the builder of the Decorated aisle. The porch seems to have been built at the same time as the aisle. Its Uttle sidewindows have wood Untels, " restored in 1879 from portions of the nave's ancient tie-beams. Brass-headed nails have LYMNE CHURCH. 237 been driven into the door, forming the letters, A. G. C. W. 1708 ". Augustine Greenland was one of the churchwardens. Two little Latin crosses have been incised upon the East jamb of the door-frame—supposed to be the work of pilgrims.1 The lancet-hghts in the aisle-waU, one on either side of the porch, may have come from the destroyed E.Engl. aisle. A king-post roof covers continuously the aisle and chapel. I like to think, as suggested above, that a screen of wood carrying a rood separated these two parts. Certainly there were two roods in the church, for we learn from the wills (cited by Mr. Arthur Hussey in Testamenta Cantiana) that Ric. Knight (1480) left 3s. 4d. to the High Cross and a hke sum to the Holy Cross ; while Wm. Fordet (1491) left 8d. to the Great Cross and 12d. to the Little Cross ; and Wm. Knight (1480) bequeathed 6s. 8d. to the two Ughts of the Holy Cross. The great rood in the nave was promiscuously called Great Cross, High Cross, and Holy Cross ; and the little rood also was caUed Holy Cross. The wiUs contain, also, bequests to the light of the patron saint, St. Stephen, whose image would stand on a bracket on the N. side of the high altar ; and to " the Beam of St. Mary " ; as well as to the " Light of the Blessed Mary ", on the south. Also to " The Rood light over St. Michael's altar ". A request to be buried " before St. John Baptist ", imphes an image, or perhaps an altar ; and there were bequests to the Brotherhood of St. Nicholas, and to the Light of St. Nicholas ; also to the Light of the Holy Ghost, of the Parishioners, of the Sepulchre, and of the Torches; and " to the building of the clerk's house there " (1547). But it was intended that this Paper should deal only with architectural matters : for further items of interest members are referred to Canon Scott Robertson's Paper. 1 A similar cross, part of it out away, may be seen on a re-used stone in the rere-arch of a window in High Halden Church. Of course these crosses are common. 238 LYMNE CHURCH. ADDITIONAL NOTE. Irrefutable evidence of the existence of a church at Lymne before the end of the eleventh century is supphed by a Christ Church MS. recently brought to my notice. It is described in The 8th Report of the Hist. Comm. (part I, p. 315), and in a short Paper written for The Friends of Canterbury Cathedral by our member Dr. Gordon Ward. The Report and a rotographic facsimile of the manuscript may be seen in the Cathedral Library at Canterbury. The MS. consists of eight fohos (sixteen pages). The last three pages deal with events that happened late in the twelfth century, but internal evidence and the style of the handwriting suggest that the rest is an earher compilation, dating certainly from after the death of Lanfranc (1089) but from not much after the beginning of the twelfth century. The first three pages contain a transcription of Papers of Lanfranc's time coUected by the scribe. On page 2 there is a short list of churches in the diocese which " before the coming of lord archbishop Lanfranc " made contribution to Christ Church of honey, bread, mutton and money; to which list the scribe added a note to the effect that this " ancient institution" was confirmed by Lanfranc " of blessed memory." Lymne does not appear in that hst; nor does it appear in one of churches in East Kent that paid Romescot; nor, again, in a list (p. 1) of churches which annuaUy paid Easter dues to the archbishop. But these transcripts of early records are followed by one of importance for our present consideration. It is a list of some 136 churches and chapels arranged in twelve geographical groups after the manner of the eleven (rural) deaneries in the Taxatio of 1291. Each group takes its name from a church to which the other churches in the group are said to pertain. The first is headed Iste ecclesie pertinent ad Sanctum Martinum de doforis ; the second, more briefly, ad Folcestan pertinent; and the third, ad Limenam pertinent. Then f oUow Lyminge, Milton Regis, Newington, Teynham, Wingham, Maidstone, LYMNE CHURCH. 239 HoUingbourn, Wye and Charing. Lymne Church must, therefore, have existed in Lanfranc's time. The modern title of the MS., Domesday Monachorum, was suggested by the fact that a considerable section deals with the manors of the archbishopric and the convent of Christ Church. Clearly it is based upon the entries under the headings of the lands of the archbishop and of his monks in the Exchequer Domesday of 1086. Items in the earher document which were of Uttle interest to the stewards of the monastery are omitted in the MS., while the total value of a manor is assessed at an appropriately higher figure in cases where improvement took place in the interval. Names are often spelt differently, in some cases more correctly : under Aldington the extended form Limines replaces the puzzling form Limes of the Domesday domini regis. But the latter may be explained by an accidental omission by the earher scribe of a contraction mark over the m. G.M.L.