--The choir of the church ends in a semi-circular apsis,
divided into compartments by a row of pillars, rising as high as the
cornice: in the intercolumniation are windows, and under the windows
small arches, each of which has its head hewn out of a single
stone.--The roof of the choir is of stone, and the pitch of it is very
high.
Here, then, we have the exact counterpart of the Irish stone-roofed
chapels, the most celebrated of which, that of Cormac, in Cashel
Cathedral, appears, from all the drawings and descriptions I have seen
of it, to be altogether a Norman building. Ledwich asserts that "this
chapel is truly Saxon, and was erected prior to the introduction of the
Norman, and gothic styles[74]." If, we agree with him, we only obtain a
proof that there is no essential difference between Norman and Saxon
architecture; and this proposition, I believe, will soon be universally
admitted. We now know what is really Norman; and a little attention to
the buildings in the north of Germany, may terminate the long-debated
questions, relative to Saxon architecture and the origin of the
stone-roofed chapels in the sister isle.
In the burial-ground that surrounds the church of St. Nicholas, are
several monumental inscriptions, all of them posterior to the
commencement of the reign of Napoleon, and all, with one single
exception, commemorative of females.
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