Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/131

Rh and replacing, without accident, the superincumbent capitals and arches, &c., upon this rebuilt shaft. But the operation had brought to light the startling fact that the original Norman builders of the pillar had laid their foundation in ignorance of a hollow kistvaen or coffin of numerous rough slabs, directly below, and at an interval of perhaps a foot of soil, which having only partially sunk in at the thorax from the weight placed upon it was by no means solid.

Pytchley church belonged, even before the Conquest, to the abbey of Peterborough; and it appears probable that the Norman edifice, of which this pillar was part, was erected during the great church building era of that monastery, while Martin, Waterville, and Benedict were successively abbots, viz., from A.D. 1133 to A.D. 1194. The existence of these kistvaens, therefore, was not then even traditionally known, and consequently they are not later than Saxon times.

We had also to rebuild the east wall of this north aisle, and in doing so we discovered that the modern window was once a magnificently Decorated one, which had been defaced by some Goths of the last century, and that this Decorated window had itself superseded two beautiful splayed lanceolate windows of Early English style: and again that the stones of these last had previously formed part of a circular window with Norman work nearly in the same part; and out of the wall we saved a curious and beautiful Norman piscina, the carving of which corresponds with the Norman capital already mentioned. The wall had formed part of the original Norman church, but had required continual repair or rebuilding; the cause of which, on sinking the new foundation down to the rock, we found to consist in three or four kistvaens, across which the Norman builders had laid their original foundation at an interval of two feet of soil, evidently unconscious that they were building on an unsound basis. But besides this corroboration of such history as the Norman pillar had already told us, we met with another significant fact: below the foundation, though above the level of the kistvaens, there were common graves; in one of which was the skeleton of a beheaded person lying at full length, the head placed upon the breast, one of the neck bones having apparently been divided. This would indicate a long period to have elapsed between the use of the kistvaens and the erection of the Norman building, during which the locality had been used by the villagers as a burial ground, in