Page:St. Botolph's Priory, Colchester (1917).djvu/22

16 have been as much as 125 ft. The width of the main span is 26 ft. 9 in., and of the aisles 10 ft. and 9 ft. 6 in. respectively, the total width within the walls being 55 ft. 6 in. It is interesting to compare with these dimensions the plan of the nave of Holy Trinity Priory Church, Aldgate, as the close connection between the two houses makes it possible that the Aldgate plan owed something to St. Botolph's. The church itself has long been destroyed, but its plan is fortunately preserved to us in a Survey of c. 1592 by John Symons, now among the MSS. at Hatfield House, and reproduced in the "Home Counties Magazine," vol. ii, p. 46. The priory was founded in 1108 by Queen Maud, wife of King Henry I, and Norman, to whose influence the foundation of St. Botolph's was due, became its first prior. The church was not finished at Queen Maud's death in 1118, and was damaged by fire in 1132. No date of its actual completion is recorded, but a Lady Chapel was added to it between 1187 and 1221.

Its total internal length was about 245 ft., of which the eastern arm of five bays, with the eastern chapels, took up 100 ft., and the nave of seven bays about 105 ft. The internal width over nave and aisles was about 70 ft. and 120 ft. across the transepts.

The walls of St. Botolph's are built of flints and septaria, and all arches, quoins and dressings of red brick, with a very sparing use of stone. Much, if not all, of the brick is of Roman manufacture, as remains of Roman mortar are to be seen on it, showing that it was taken from Roman buildings. With such materials the details are necessarily very simple, but the present appearance of the ruins gives little idea of the original effect, as the whole of the masonry was formerly covered with plaster, which in the interior of the building, and possibly to a less extent on the exterior also, would have been decorated with painted designs in various colours. Some idea of the form which this decoration probably took may be obtained from the eastern part of the nave of St. Albans Cathedral, which is built of flint and bricks taken from the ruins of the Roman Verulamium, and covered with plaster on which a good deal of the twelfth century painted decoration remains. The motive is an imitation of squared stonework, intended to give the impression that the wails are faced with ashlar, as they doubtless would have been, both there and at Colchester, if stone had been available.

The nave piers are circular, 5 ft. 8 in. in diameter, and it is to be noted that in the bays where the masonry is less damaged than elsewhere they are banded with triple courses of brick at intervals; this is meant to give a good bond to the