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30 Kahn, D, ‘Le decor
de l’oculus dans la façade romane anglaise’, Cahiers de
civilisation médiévale, 34 (1991), 341-347 (at 343). Some recent
investigations, so far unpublished, have raised the possibility that the
wheel window was originally in an earlier building closer to the castle.
Kahn believes that the wheel window itself is older than either of
those at Barfreston and Patrixbourne, presumably on stylistic grounds; she
also suggests, rather controversially, that such circular windows are
based on an Anglo-Saxon tradition.
31 The cat masks ‘swallowing’ the spokes are
reminiscent of elements of decorated initials in eleventh- and
twelfth-century manuscripts. Examples include: Cambridge, Trinity College,
MS B. 3. 4, f.I., and Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3, f. 286, known as the
Lambeth Bible. There is a reused capital (now a water stoop) showing a
similar cat’s head in foliage at Castle Hedingham and one of the
capitals on the north door at Cintheaux is also a cat mask.
32 Circular windows of this size and type are found on
the Continent in transepts, for example at St Etienne (Beauvais, with
twelve ‘spokes’) and Notre Dame-en-Vaux (Chalons-en-Champagne). Or
they are at the west end, of which there are many examples in Italy, for
example at San Pietro at Bovara in Umbria and San Giusta in the Abruzzo.
33 Kahn, reports the find of a fragment of an animal
devouring a column very much like the heads at Barfreston in a Canterbury
garden in 1984. (‘Le decor de l’oculus’, p. 345.) There is
evidence that the window was originally incorrectly set at Barfreston,
although no similar account of nineteenth-century restoration exists for
Patrixbourne. Could it be that both windows were moved from other
locations and reused? At present there are no measurements of either
window but it would be interesting to compare them in detail to see if
they may at one time have been a pair. |
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34
G. Zarnecki, ‘The Transition from Romanesque to Gothic in English
Sculpture’, Studies in Western Art, ed. Ida E. Rubin (Princeton,
1963).
35 A good example is Cintheaux where the door is on the
south side and where there is also a priest’s door. The Marmion family
had the church built in the middle of the twelfth century (Musset, p. 31).
The Patricks were acquainted with the Marmions. In the first half of the
twelfth century at least two documents were witnessed by both William
Patrick and Roger Marmion in Normandy (Regesta Regum AngloNormannorum.
1066-1154, ed. H.W.C. Davis, p. 39). Later in the same century, the
Tesson family founded an abbey at Fontenay near Caen and Ingelram Patrick
and Geoffroy Marmion were among the donors (P. Carel, Etude sur l’ancienne
abbaye de Fontenayprès Caen (Caen, 1884), pp.41 and 42).
36 Mary’s Priory at Beaulieu is now a farm (see Map
1). The remains of the priory church in one of the present buildings show
that it was of good quality. The priory was abolished in 1772.
37 D. Power, ‘King John and the Norman Aristocracy’,
in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D Church (Woodbridge,
1999), 135. Jean de Préaux took Philippe Auguste’s side against King
John in the struggle for Normandy. Jean’s younger brother, Pierre, was
loyal to King John and they fought on opposite sides at the siege of Rouen
in 1204. Pierre remained loyal to King John and founded a priory in his
honour in the Channel Islands.
38 The Great Roll of the Pipe, Kent 9 John
Michaelmas 1207, ed. A. Mary Kirkus (Pipe Roll Society, 1946), p. 36. The
land given to them by Jean de Préaux was returned to the ‘Prior et
canonici de Patrikeburc’.
39 Boudet, M., ‘Le Prieuré de Beaulieu’,
unpublished typescript (Rouen, 1952), pp. 9-10.
40 Calendar of the Close Rolls 4, Edward III
1333-1337, (HMSO. London, 1898), p. 160. |