Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/320

290 are in conjunction with work belonging to the time of Henry III., or Edward I., that is, long and short work in union with equilateral arches; or as in the uppermost stage of the castle at Oxford, long and short work united with late Norman, or as at Stanton Lacy with earlier Norman.

It might naturally have been supposed that a reference to the Domesday Survey would have tended to settle a question of so much obscurity as the age of several of these rude and unquestionably early churches. But little that is conclusive is supplied from this source. The precept issued for the direction of the surveyors laid no injunction upon them to make a return of churches, and therefore their notice is extremely irregular, and for this reason no direct conclusion can be drawn, nor can the question be settled by reference to this document. It mentions about 1700 churches, but whilst 222 are returned from Lincolnshire, 243 from Norfolk, 364 from Suffolk, 7 from the city of York, 84 from the county, only about 20 are returned from Shropshire, one from Cambridgeshire, and none from Lancashire, Cornwall, or Middlesex. Yet it cannot be doubted that all the counties which are passed over without any mention of their ecclesiastical structures, possessed them like those enumerated. This will at once raise the number of Anglo-Saxon churches existing at the time of the Conquest, not to the extent of 45,011, mentioned by Sprott in his Chronicle, which seems incredible, but to a very considerable number, since certainly the other counties would have a proportionable amount. Is it probable that these structures were all built in the short reigns of the Confessor, Canute, and Ethelred, a period extending only over eighty-eight years? If this period should be found too short for the completion of all these buildings, then we must suppose several to belong to what may be termed the pure age of Anglo-Saxon architecture, and then it will be a consideration whether or not several buildings now held to be Norman be not in fact of an earlier date. Again, contrast the large number of edifices throughout the country which are commonly called Norman, let the style range to the accession of John (1199), with the number mentioned in the Survey, and enquire whether all these reputedly Norman buildings were likely to have been erected in the course of a hundred and thirty-three years? And may it not be probable that several of them belong to an earlier age than we have latterly been accustomed to assign them to? Nor