Jedburgh Abbey Author:James Watson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: even in Early English buildings, as if the architects of that time were loath to leave what they could not expect to improve; and in the second place, the nave o... more »f Jedburgh Abbey, as we have already shown, is wholly of Norman Transition character. It is no less curious than instructive to observe how gradually the one style runs into the other. Rickman, who did more, perhaps, than any other man for the classification of the various styles of Gothic architecture, says : " Many pure Norman works have pointed arches. The square abacus, however, may be taken as the best mark. The pointed arch, in its incipient state, exhibited a change of form only, whilst the accessories and details remained the same as before ; and although this change gradually led to the early pointed style in its pure state, with mouldings and features altogether distinct from those of the N6rman, and to the general disuse, in the thirteenth century, of the semicircular arch, it was for a while so intermixed as, from its first appearance to the close of the twelfth century, to constitute that state of transition called the semi- Norman." Had there been an earlier nave in Jedburgh Abbey some portion of it would doubtless have remained. The early builders were not strictly careful as to uniformity, and hence we find that, when a chapel or aisle was partially destroyed, it was rebuilt, not in its original style, but in that prevalent at the time of the restoration ; and the new parts are easily discernible by their different character. It is also worthy of remark that the fragment of the original side aisle wall of the nave which adjoins the north transept, has a base similar to that of the west gable. The whole of the base is now being restored. Another consideration which bears on the probability of there having be...« less