Shrewsbury Abbey - ii)

The alternative title of this post is 'Some Not So Random Bits of Romanesque', because I thought I'd devote a post to the original Norman fabric of Shrewsbury Abbey.

Firstly, the inevitable nave shot:-

It's not the best of nave shots - my camera as usual was having a hissy fit.  Now, if I'd only been using the work camera...  Now, this view isn't strictly showing the Norman fabric - the east end was rebuilt in the 19th century in the Gothic.  But the nice clumpy columns in the nave - they just scream 'Romanesque!!!' in no uncertain terms.  [Afficianados of Romanesque architecture in Britain will no doubt sniff in disdain, and point out that as far as pillars go, these are pretty dull.  Durham and Dunfirmline, with their incised patterns, could arguably be seen as far superior... ]

 But Shrewsbury is not without its charms, even though they can't really be described as being entirely authentic:-

Now, I'm not an expert in churches, but I couldn't help wondering if there'd been some later infill in the windows in the trifolium (that's the second of the three 'storeys'): ,sure enough, I've just opened the guide book, and it's informed me that the arches were bricked up until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the infill was removed, and replaced with this Neo-Gothic tracery (I nearly wrote 'Neolithic', which is a bit of a Freudian slip, or something...)  So once again, we're dealing with these churches which has been so thoroughly mucked around through the centuries that it's hard to figure out what's going on.

But some parts do feel pretty authentic:-

And tomorrow we'll do some archaeological detective work and take a look at some surviving fragments of Norman architecture which have been fossilised within the later, Gothic additions.

Makes a nice change from brick and concrete, I must say...