Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/646



St. Blane's, but Bute is much more favourably situated for freestone than Wigtonshire, where it is locally non-existent, and the combination of rubble and hewn work at Cruggleton is a striking testimony to the difficulty even of obtaining grit.

"The second head refers to the mode in which the strings and base courses would be stopped against the rubble. According to my drawings there has been a string on the north side of the nave, which dropped nearly two feet, has also run along the ashlar work of the chancel, but only two feet or so of it remains. On the south side this feature is entirely destroyed. The base, both on north and south sides of the nave, returns round the chancel gable and there terminates. Whether they were dropped also I cannot tell, as these drawings were made previous to the later reduction of the soil to the original level. An important point in this junction of rubble and ashlar walls must be noted, viz., that while the ashlar walls are 2 feet 7 inches thick, the rubble wall on the south side is only 2 feet 5 inches, and that on the north 2 feet 3 inches. The walls meet flush on the outside, and on the inside the ashlar corner is splayed off in accommodation to the thinner rubble, and those who managed thus would find no difficulty in such trivialities as a string or a base.

"Under the third head it is queried whether the 'Norman builders' were likely to show such tender mercy to a rubble fragment? I presume 'Norman here means Anglo-Norman, the conquering race, who looked with contempt on all that pertained to those they held in thrall. Civil changes notwithstanding, in Bute it was otherwise. There the same traditions were handed down from Celt to Scot, and the name of St. Blaan was reverenced, not merely on local grounds, but as being still more intimately associated with a northern see. The very curious melange at the east end of the chapel is attributed to one of those 'accidents' which, from a variety of sources, often befel buildings in ancient times. The late Mr John Baird, at a meeting of the Architectural Institute of Scotland held in Glasgow a good many years ago, suggested that the original termination had been an apse, but the chancel being found too small, this feature was demolished and the building extended to its present limits. Notwithstanding all that has been said, I consider both the apse and the accident theories to be at once untenable and unnecessary, and will, as briefly as possible, give three criteria on which I regard the proof of antecedency in date and construction of the rubble work ultimately to depend, and to be incontrovertible. First, in a rubble wall of any posterior date, built to conjoin with a previous ashlar one, it is only reasonable to suppose it would have been gauged to the same thickness, so that the respective wall faces might be flush, both externally and internally, so as to avoid the very awkward junction which there really has been. Second, this rubble wall must necessarily have been carried to the same height and level, in the wall-head, as the ashlar built portion, instead of being dropped nearly three feet below it, as the present rubble work really is. Third, the existing Romanesque structure shows that freestone, both red and white, was readily to be had by importation or otherwise in Bute, during the twelfth century, and ever afterwards, and it is beyond all reason and experience, that in the chancel especially rubble of some local rock should have been adopted when the superior quality previously in use could be so easily obtained.