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St. Albans 275 13 4 ... 460
Bury St. Edmund's 300 15 4 3 490
The church consisted of a nave with aisles; the arches of the main
arcade were semicircular, the piers massive and rectangular; there were
no mouldings, the orders of the arches, like the piers, having
rectangular corners. There were possibly two western towers, which
stood, like those of Rouen and Wells, outside the aisles on the north
and south respectively, not at the western ends of the aisles (a far
more common position), thus giving a much greater width and imposing
appearance to the west front.
The existence of western towers of Norman date has been doubted by some
antiquaries; some indeed imagine that John de Cella's thirteenth-century
west front was built several bays further to the west than the Norman
facade, and that the foundations of the unfinished towers were laid of
old material by him. It is impossible to be absolutely certain on this
point, but the argument sometimes brought forward that the nave was
inordinately long for one of Norman date may be answered by mention of
the fact that the Norman naves at Bury and Winchester were even longer,
and that generally the Norman builders delighted in long structural
naves, the eastern bays of which, however, were, together with the space
beneath the towers, used for the choir or seats for the monks, the
eastern part of the church beyond the crossing being generally occupied
by the presbytery and the sanctuary where the high altar stood.
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