Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/339

Rh only at Llandaff the addition of the nave gave an ojtpor- tunity of constructing one important part of the church on the full cathedral type, which at Dorchester never occurred. No part of Dorchester church is older than its refoun- dation as a monastic establishment by Bisliop Alexander in 1140. No trace remains of the nonmnesque original cathedral, or of the buildings commenced by Remigius before the removal of the see to Lincoln. Indeed I greatly doubt the existence, in the present church, of any work of so early a date as Alexander himself. The most distinctive features of the earliest work now remaining, Mr. Addington truly says, cannot be earlier than about 1180. Probably till then the Saxon cathedral remained in use as the Abbey Church. This will appear from several con- siderations. Remigius is said to have begun to build ; but whatever he built, which, after all, need not have been a new cathedral, he left unfinished. The old cathedral, or part of it, would doubtless stand till the new one had advanced some way towards perfection. Now, between Remigius and Alexander, we might fancy the Saxon cathedral pulled down, but we can hardly fancy another church built. From Alexander we should naturally have looked for a new church ; but he does not appear to have built one ; at least the oldest work in the present is forty years after his foundation, and one can hardly imagine a church of his erection being swept away so ver}^ soon. Unless then the monks of Dorchester went on for forty years without any church at all, we must suppose that the Saxon cathedral survived the loss of its rank about a hundred years, and was immediately succeeded by a Transitional Norman building not earlier than 1180. To ascertain the exact nature and extent of this, the first building with which our architectural history is concerned, is the question of most difiiculty which we shall meet with in the course of our inquiries ; and even here, it is tolerably plain sailing through a good half of its dimensions. The nave was clearly co-extensive with the present one, but the extent of the chancel is less certain. The portion which fixes the date of the original church is the chancel-arch of Transitional date ; its band being contituied as a string both to the east and west, shows the whole to be of one piece. The north wall of the nave remains untouched, except by the insertion of windows and a iloor-