Function and Variety in Early Crossing Towers and their Superstructures
The history of the central tower at Westminster Abbey is known in some detail, from the time of Edward the Confessor up until the last interventions in the twentieth century, and has been admirably analysed by Dr Warwick Rodwell. These developments at Westminster can be set into their architectural context in England and on the Continent, where a wide range of surviving structures provide contemporary parallels. However, what may not be so well appreciated is that there was once a much greater diversity of superstructures above central towers than is now represented by the extant examples. In particular, we have lost all spires earlier than the twelfth century, and with them a range of types of early origin. It may, therefore, be relevant to a consideration of the background of the central tower of Westminster Abbey to draw attention here to this greater diversity that once existed, as well as to place such structures in their religious context.184
Late Antiquity
In many typical early Christian churches the altar stood towards one end of the building within an area in front of the apse, while the apse itself provided seating for the presiding clergy. The apse and the area in front of it constituted the presbytery or sanctuary of the church (the sacrarium in Westminster terminology) and this area was enclosed by low chancel screens.
A trend towards the architectural enhancement of the bay containing the altar and presbytery led to the emergence of the axial lantern tower. Such towers are first recorded in France in the sixth century, as at Nantes Cathedral and the church of Saint-Anatolien at Clermont Ferrand, but no examples of these survive. However, the type is represented by the extant church of San Salvatore at Spoleto, in central Italy. This had a low tower with lantern windows admitting a flood of light into the presbytery area. At Spoleto the tower has a stone vault, but at Clermont there was a painted ceiling.
Also in sixth-century France can be traced the origin of elaborate timber superstructures over churches; these in contemporary sources were often called machinae, ‘contrivances’. At the famous basilica of St Martin at Tours in the sixth century the tower over the east sanctuary was surmounted by such a superstructure. A later description of the church at Tours says that: ‘the machina of the church shining in the sun seemed like a small mountain of gold’. We do not know the specific architectural form that such machinae took, but from passing references it is clear that they were elaborate openwork structures built in timber and clad in lead or copper, with decoration in gilding and tinning.
The Early Middle Ages
With the growing importance of the monastic order in the early Middle Ages, appropriate space had to be found in churches for the monks. The monks occupied a status between the ordained clergy and the laity, and accordingly were stationed in churches between the screened-off presbytery and the general congregational nave. Furthermore, since the singing of the office (at matins, vespers and the other day and night hours) took up more of the daily liturgical round than the celebration of the Eucharist itself, the area of the monks’ choir attained increasing importance.
One architectural consequence of this development was that the monks’ choir came to occupy the area under the lantern tower, while the presbytery and altar were accommodated in an extended arm of the building to the east of the tower. The tower in such an arrangement might be flanked by transept arms to the north and south – whence the modern term ‘crossing tower’. Such an arrangement is shown already in the famous idealized plan of a monastery drawn for presentation to the abbot of Sankt Gallen (Switzerland) in the early ninth century.
Also in the early medieval period timber superstructures above churches (whether rising from a tower or from the main roof) became increasingly elaborate, and they frequently contained bells. In the third quarter of the eighth century at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, the king had erected over the basilica a 30-ft high casubula (‘adornment’), enriched with gilding and silvering. A generation later, in 801, the international Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin sent to the archbishop of York a quantity of tin for the roof of the bell-cote of his cathedral. At the abbey of Saint-Wandrille in Normandy an early ninth-century abbot erected over the tower of his church: ‘a pyramid, square in plan, 35 ft high, constructed of turned wood, covered with lead, tin and gilded copper, and he placed three bells in it’.
The most elaborate such tower superstructure known from the ninth century was at the abbey of Saint-Bertin in north-east France, where it replaced an earlier more modest turret. This doubled the height of the church and was constructed of timber in three stages, not including the bell-cote surmounted by an orb and cross. Each stage was circular in plan, and presumably set back above the one below it; while a central mast ran through the whole.
None of these elaborate ninth-century structures survives, but an eleventh-century illustration of the abbey of Saint-Riquier, also in north-east France, showed the contemporary church with elaborate staged superstructures rising above cylindrical towers at both the east and west ends of the building. [111]
The Later Middle Ages
A development seen in some later medieval churches was to move the monks’ choir from the crossing into a greatly extended eastern arm that contained also the presbytery – as happened at Canterbury Cathedral in the early twelfth century. In such cases the tower over the crossing was left as a somewhat meaningless architectural statement, since it surmounted an empty space. But many churches did not follow this route, and the tower remained as an emphatic point over the liturgical area between the east end of the choir and the high altar. The contemporary biography of King Edward the Confessor states that in his rebuilding of Westminster Abbey the elaborate central tower was intended to rise above the crossing ‘which was to surround the central choir of those singing to God’; while the dedications of the chapels on two levels in the transept arms to either side might be seen as joining the company of saints with the devotions of the choir. This arrangement was modified but certainly not abandoned in the rebuilding under Henry III.
During the later Middle Ages in England the crossing tower received ever greater architectural elaboration and height as, for example, at St Albans Abbey and Norwich Cathedral in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, through to Durham and Canterbury cathedrals in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Alongside such major towers built on a square plan, there appeared elsewhere in England polygonal towers rising over lesser churches; while the octagonal lantern at Westminster Abbey depicted in the Islip Roll itself shows such forms were not alien to major churches. (It may also be noted that on the Continent elaborate polygonal towers were commonplace on major Romanesque churches.) Generally speaking, later medieval English towers were either capped with simple roofs or were surmounted by lofty spires constructed in stone or lead-covered timber. The technological masterpiece in this genre, the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, has become an iconic image through the paintings of John Constable.
111 Saint-Riquier abbey. View from the south, showing the Carolingian staged lantern towers above the crossing and at the west end of the church. Hubert et al. 1970
But the preponderance of the spire among surviving examples should not lead to the assumption that this was the only form of tower superstructure adopted by the builders of the later Middle Ages. In north-east France at the abbey of Corbie an illustration of the church before its destruction at the Revolution shows a three-staged openwork structure over the west tower that, while it may perpetuate an idea going back several centuries, was clearly built in the Gothic style. [27] Meanwhile in England the famous fourteenth-century Octagon of Ely Cathedral shows the adoption of an elaborate lead-clad timber structure over the crossing: this was immediately in response to the collapse of the previous crossing tower; but at the same time the designer may have been aware of the inheritance of an earlier and continuing tradition in which the structure over the crossing of a church could be innovative and structurally exciting.
A somewhat different situation is represented by the well-known fifteenth-century west tower of St Nicholas in Newcastle (now the cathedral) and the crossing tower of the High Church of Edinburgh (St Giles), where a crown of four intersecting ogee arches rise to a central pinnacle, all built in stone. The origins of this arrangement are unknown, but conceivably lie in lost timber constructions.
Conclusions
Historical precedent shows that church towers and their superstructures originated and continued as outward architectural statements of the inward religious function of the buildings over which they rose, emphasizing the liturgical heart of the church and providing light above it.
Evidence from the sixth century onwards points to a wide variety of forms being employed in crossing towers and their surmounting superstructures. Equally there was a wide variety of materials deployed, including stone, timber and metals (lead, copper, tin, silver and gold), used for both practical and ornamental reasons.
The greatest era of experimentation may have lain in the period of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, while in the later Middle Ages there may have been a tendency towards elaboration on the basis of more standardized forms. Nonetheless, precedents do occur for the adoption of more experimental forms at later dates and show that these were not considered by contemporaries as incompatible with the Gothic style.