Mr Baldwin Brown
in his fine work upon "The Arts in Early England," thus speaks of it:
"The plan, as will be seen at a glance, has been set out with more than
mediaeval indifference to exactness of measurements and squareing, and
the chancel diverges phenomenally from the axis of the nave. The
elevations are gaunt in their plainness, and the now unplastered
rubble-work is rough and uncomely, but the dimensions are ample, the
walls lofty, and the chancel arch undeniably imposing." Of the bases
here he says: "These slabs are commonly attributed to the Romans, but
it is not easy to see what part of a Roman building they can ever have
formed. The truth is that they bear no resemblance to known classical
features, while they are on the other hand, characteristically Saxon.
The nearest parallel to them is to be found in the imposts of the
chancel arch at Worth in Sussex, a place far away from Roman sites. The
Worth imposts, like the bases at Bosham, are huge and ungainly,
testifying both to the general love of bigness in the Saxon builder
and to his comparative ignorance of the normal features which in the
eleventh century were everywhere else crystallising into Romanesque.
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