Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/113

Rh the same character with that of Romsey church. I merely throw out these as suggestions; perhaps some more careful antiquary may have given the subject a closer examination.

As a good specimen of pure though enriched Norman, I may name the ruined chapel of Postlip, near Winchcomb. Like many other churches and chapels in Gloucestershire, it has a fine old manor-house very near it. This is principally Elizabethan, though part of it exhibits Perpendicular features. The chapel indeed seems to have been touched by the same architects who designed or added to the hall, for its east and west windows are late Perpendicular, and its belfry evidently belongs to a later period, probably that in which the Elizabethan part of the hall was built. There are some good chimney-pieces of the last named period remaining in the house (which is now only tenanted by labourers.) Among the farm buildings is a fine old barn, which appears to be of the Tudor period; the coping of one of its gables has the figure of a man standing upright. On the right hand side of its entrance porch or transept is a niche.

But to return to the chapel. It consists of a nave and chancel, the belfry (as we have seen, a comparatively modern one) stands over the chancel-arch. On the south side is a fine doorway with a semicircular arch of one order, supported by a shaft, and enriched with chevrons on the surface of the archivolt. The label is ornamented with balls on its inner surface, and the arch is filled up with a transom covered with scale-work, above a band of work not uncommon in advanced Norman, which may be described as a series of St. Andrew's crosses. The same appears on the capitals of the shafts. The nave has one narrow Norman window on the south side, eastward of the door, and a corresponding one on the north side. It has also the remains of a north door. The chancel has one window similar to those of the nave on each side, the internal splays being very deep.

The later features are, in the nave, a pointed plain niche on the north side near the chancel-arch, and a trefoiled piscina on the south side. The roof is a timber one which seems as late as the sixteenth century. In the chancel is a plain pointed niche on the north side, which has no appearance of having been used as a piscina. There are neither sedilia, piscina, nor door, on the south side of the chancel. Put the principal feature is the chancel-arch, a round one,