Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/228

152 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS IN IVER CHURCH, BUCKS. masonry beyond what was absolutely necessary for their con- struction. And this leads to a question with regard to the Perpendicular arches on the other side, where we have a continuous arcade. Possibly these were not so strictly cut through; but while the Anglo-Saxon wall was left at each end, its central portion was destroyed, and the pillars and arches built from the ground. That is, the small portion of the wall between the pillars and the sill of the clerestory windows may be contemporary with them, and not with the old fragments at each end ; a question of no great consequence, and which doubtless might easily be decided by inspecting the masonry beneath the plastering. I certainly think this is one of the strongest cases in favour of the existence not only of buildings older than the Norman Conquest, but of the existence of a distinct Anglo-Saxon style, — two questions which ought never to be confused to- gether in the way that they too often have been. To this subject I shall presently recur. In this Iver case we have Norman work, and something older. There is no possibility of mistake ; we have the marked familiar Norman work of the twelfth century introduced into an older building ; no piece of architectural history can be more certain than that these arches are more recent than the wall in which they are inserted, and the window whose mutilation they have caused. There is no room for any question as to chrono- logical sequence. The only possibility is, that they might be late Norman arches cut through an early Norman wall. Mr. Scott, however, thinks that the " northern piers and arches were probably erected about the year 1100." With every deference to so eminent an authority, I should have placed them rather later, as the bases of the responds certainly seem to me too advanced for that date. But, even putting the Norman work later in the century, we still have the fact that the earher work is not at all like early Norman, or Norman at all. There is this a priori objection to its being since 10G6, while against its being of Anglo-Saxon date, there is nothing but the disinclination which exists in some minds to admit anything to be Anglo-Saxon. And though it would prove nothing against documentary evidence or strong architectural presumption, still, without such evidence or presumption, we should be shy of supposing such frequent reconstructions of such magnitude in an obscure village