Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/296

 226 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE. which has been accommodated to that of the nave, shewing the latter to be of later construction. Long and short work exists in a doorway in the west wall of the north transept, the threshold of which is level with the original floor. Portions of long and short work remain in several windows of the transept, and the piers of the old tower, if not the arches, are so peculiar in their construction, and so entirely dissimilar to any Norman, still more so to any pointed work, that they can hardly be assigned to any period but one previous to the Conquest. They are also so large and substantial that they may well be supposed to have been intended for some building not less important than a cathedral church. Eadmer describes the old church at Canterbury as " vetus ecclesia Romanorum opere facta;" St. Wilfrid, in 674, had learnt architecture at Rome before he began his works, and many of his earliest structures are described as built after the Roman manner. Now no language can better describe the base of the transepts and piers at Stow, than to say that they are done " more Romano ;" and the contrast they afford with the shallower foundation of the Norman nave (clearly of early Norman) is the more significant and the more important since the notion that Saxon buildings were small and unsubstantial has gained many advocates. "■ In corroboration of the opinions founded upon these architectural pecu- liarities may be adduced the following historical evidence. — " It is Avell known that the district of Lindsey was under the superintend- ance of a Saxon bishop, a see having been founded at Lindisse, or Sid- nacester, about the year 678, which continued to be the residence of the bishop till the great invasion of the Danes in 870, when the whole district was ravaged, many monasteries burned, and as Simon of Durham says, they Avintered in the town of Lindisse near to Torksig (now Torksey) the parish which adjoins that of Stow. From this time we hear no more of Sidna- cester or Lindisse, but we find Eadnoth, bishop of Dorchester, (to which see that of Lindisse had been removed after the Danisli incursion,) building a monastery at Stow, " the place," Sanctjc Marine locus ; and, as the prox- imity of Stow to Torksey goes far to identify it with Lindisse, coupled as it is with the disappearance of Lindisse, and the uprising of Stow as a designation, Avhat would be more probable than that Eadnoth should be led by old associations to the hallowed site of the old cathedral ? But, still further, we have an authentic Saxon document concerning an endowment of Stow by Earl Leofric and Gudgyfe his wife, A.D. 1052, during the episcopate of Wulfsig, which says that Eadnoth and ^Eelfric," previously bishops of Dorchester, still claimed and possessed episcopal property at Stow. It also establishes the fact that this church was more than a mere abbey, that it was a minster, in which the service was to be similar to that of St. Paul's in London. " It might be added that molten lead ^ has been found at the level of the old transept floor, and a vitrified mass with charcoal sticking in it still remains between one of the piers of the old tower and the transept wall, which, if ' A specimen of this molten lead was to tlie museum of the Institute, by Mr. luesented, at the late Lincoln Meeting, Frischiiy, of that city.