rthampton
and Market Harborough. Its size and the fact that Roman material has
been much re-used in its building have given rise to the tradition that
it is a secular basilica applied to the purposes of a Christian church.
As a matter of fact, the Roman brick-work has been re-used in obvious
ignorance of Roman methods; so that this circumstance alone would make
the legend improbable. The date of the building can hardly be earlier
than about 680 A.D., when a monastery was founded here by a colony of
monks from Peterborough. The plan originally consisted of (1) a western
entrance porch, with a lofty western doorway, and smaller doorways on
north and south; (2) a broad nave, divided from the aisles by arches,
which spring from large square piers of plain brick-work; (3) a
rectangular presbytery, divided from the nave by a screen-wall pierced
with three arches; (4) an apsidal chancel, entered from the presbytery
by a single arch. On each side of the chancel arch, a doorway entered
into a narrow vaulted passage below the ground level, which probably
formed an aisle round a crypt below the apse. At a later date, probably
in the period of quiet following the later Danish invasions, the apse
seems to have been rebuilt, polygonal externally, semi-circular on the
inside, and the central crypt-chamber was then possibly filled up. The
western porch was also used as the foundation for a tower, and the
western arch blocked up with a filling containing a lower doorway,
through which the circular turret for the tower-stair was entered. The
aisles, either then or at a somewhat later date, having probably fallen
into ruin, were removed. The clerestory of the nave remains, with
unusually broad round-headed windows.

Sec. 16. The original plan of Brixworth has points in common with some of
the other plans which have been noted. In its triple arched screen-wall
it recalls the Kentish type of church; its rectangular presbytery
between nave and apse is a development of the chancel space which
existed west of the spring of the apse at St Pancras. It shares its
western porch with St Pancras and two, if not four, of the northern
group of churches. In the north and south doorways of this porch it has
kinship with Monkwearmouth, and at Brixworth there are definite signs
that these doorways led into passages which may have been connected with
other buildings of the monastery, or possibly even with an _atrium_ or
fore-court. The aisled nave and the