Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/221

THE ABBEY CHUKCII OF DORCHESTER. IGl that account, I have seen a Welsh clj*ircli ^vhich ilhistrates those remarks more fully than any Avith Yhich I was then acquainted, and which affords a closer parallel to Dorchester than an}' other building that I have ever seen or heai'd of. This is the Priory church of Monkton, in the suburbs of Pembroke, which really, in point of general effect, may be considered as Dorchester adapted to the ruder architecture of the district. The village churches of South Pembrokeshire are highly interesting ; though of the rudest character, they are always pleasing, often from their varied and picturesque outlines, always from their strange and slender towers, half fortresses, half campaniles. Within they are indeed possessed of the finish which is ordinarily denied to English village churches ; they are very generally vaulted with stone, but the vaulting is of such a character as only to produce fresh rudeness, giving the interior in many cases the appearance of a cavern rather than a church. Aisles are rare, and when they occur, the arcades are commonly of the roughest kind. In ]Ionkton Church we have this type, adapted, one would have thought, only to the smallest and meanest chapels, developed to conventual proportions. If Dorchester, instead of the complicated ranges of arcades and clerestory usual in churches of its size, has merely aisles with distinct roofs, Monkton goes yet further ; it is without aisles at all, a mere nave and choir, with, as is not unusual in the district, a single transept. I did not measure the building, but to judge from the eye, it must be full a hundred and fifty feet long, Dorchester measuring about two hundred. A long dreary nave, as rough as those of the rudest village churches, with hardly a single window in its north side, remains as the parish church ; beyond this is a choir, now roofless, and deprived of all its ornamental work ; this must have been, when perfect, a fine specimen of Decorated architecture, but it is still only a parochial chancel on a large scale. The outline is more varied than that of Dorchester, as the tower, one of the ordinary Pembrokeshire type, is placed, as is not uncommon, at one side, in this case the south, being matched on the north by the transept now destroyed. A large ruined chapel stands close to the choir on the north side, looking from the south-east like an aisle to it, but having in reality distinct walls, and no direct communication with it, much