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Rh actual site of the altar in the apse of the eastern limb was considered as attached to this dominating central feature. In some later Romanesque churches in France, as at Issoire, Clermont, and elsewhere, parts of the transept on either side of the lantern tower are lifted above the general body of the work, thus adding to the importance of the central structure.

A central tower seems a more or less obvious arrangement, as a matter of design, where it rises at the centre of a cruciform plan, and it has sometimes been explained as a device for simplifying the intersection of the roofs. Several Norman churches, however, like the one at Iffley, have a tower rising over the choir of a long, simple, unaisled church, a little to the east of the middle of its length. Here again the tower is as typically the church as the hall is the house.

The central type of plan persisted also in palace chapels. Charlemagne's chapel was repeated at the palace of Nimeguen near the mouth of the Rhine. The palace of Goslar has a chapel with a plan resembling that of St Germigny mentioned above. William of Malmesbury has a curious note to the effect that a cathedral church built at Hereford at the end of the eleventh century was copied from the church at Aix. In the forest of Loches is a royal chapel, built in the reign of Henry II, which is circular in form. At the palace of Woodstock was another circular chapel, and a Norman chapel at Ludlow castle, which still exists, is also of this form. The English circular and polygonal chapter-houses of cathedrals, of which that at Worcester is a Norman example, must either have been adopted from such circular chapels or from the baptisteries of some of the old Saxon cathedrals. There seems to have been such a baptistery at Canterbury, and we are told that it was used for meetings as well as for its primary purpose.

The transepts of a church were an obvious means of enlarging the interior space, and as they gave a symbolic form to the plan they became normal parts of Romanesque structure. Sometimes they were of single span, at others they had one or two aisles, and from their eastern sides projected chapels, usually apses. Another type of Carolingian plan had apses at both ends of the main span. A ninth century drawing for the plan of the monastery at St Gall is of this form. And this arrangement was for long a favourite one in Germany. It doubtless conformed to ritual requirements. In England the Saxon cathedral at Canterbury and the abbey church at Ramsbury were of this type.

A plan which persisted longer was one with three parallel apses at the east end, the larger apse terminating the central space being flanked by two others at the end of the side aisles. This form of church early became the usual one in Normandy. The abbey church at Bernay, built c. 920, had transepts, and three parallel apses to the east. This plan was again repeated in the great abbey church at Jumièges, which was itself copied by Edward the Confessor for his fine new church in the Norman manner, built at Westminster from about 1050. Some remnants