Page:County Churches of Cornwall.djvu/36

14 THE CHURCHES OE CORNWALL Irrespective of the wen lth of ancient crosses, and remains of early sanctuaries or oratories, there is but little left in the fabrics of Cornish churches which can be definitely termed Saxon or rather PRE- CONQUEST work. The N. side of the nave and parts of the chancel of Tintagel are late pre- Conquest. There are traces of a ground - plan earlier than Norm, days at St. Breward, and there are certain indications of masonry prior to the nth cent, in the churches of St. Clether, Laneast, and St. Stephen-by-Launceston. It is, however, quite possible that there are early remnants, now difficult to distinguish, in several other churches. Several of the churches erected in Cornwall under the influence of the Norm, manorial lords consisted merely of chancel and nave with W. bell-turret, but erelong a cruciform plan began to prevail. The typical Cornish church of Norm, days was CRUCIFORM, and even when consisting simply of chancel and nave it was not infrequently turned into the cross shape by the addition of transepts in the 13th and occasionally in the 14th cent. The occurrence of a single transept in many churches of the county used to be considered no small puzzle, and so long ago as 1781 a correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine asked for an explanation of this anomaly. The answer is that these churches were never in their origin constructed with a single transept — as unlikely an idea as a single-winged bird — but that the later aisle development of the