The Following Churches Are of the Type Containing Chancel and Nave.
Church on the Island of Wyre.
This stands on a flat piece of ground about the middle of the island, in a walled burial-ground, still used. The chapel has no roof, and is much filled up with rubbish. Large parts of the south wall have tumbled, as well as smaller portions of other walls. (Fig. 80.)
It is built of grey whinstone, without any freestone dressings. The stones average about 1 foot 6 inches long by about 5 inches thick. It
consists of chancel and nave, with a door at west end—all built at the same time. (Fig. 81.) The extreme exterior length is 35 feet 10 inches, and width 18 feet 4 inches. It stands west by south and east by north. The nave is 19 feet 2 inches by 12 feet 10 inches inside.
The west entrance is 2 feet 6 inches wide at bottom, with semicircular head, the feet of which are set back at the impost 2½ inches on each side. (Fig. 82.) This mode of putting the arch on was probably done to give a support to the centre on which the arch was built. The jambs are parallel, 3 feet 2 inches thick, and have no rebate for a door, nor any traces of there having been one.[125] There is no cap. The impost is 4 feet 11 inches above original stone sill. The whole interior is from 1 foot 6 inches to 2 feet deep in rubbish.
The west wall is 3 feet 2 inches thick, the north and south about 3 feet.
There are no windows on the north or west of the nave. There are two on the south side, but only one of these appears original. This has a
clear opening of 1 foot 10 inches by 8 inches, with a flat head. The jambs splay inward to 2 feet 3 inches in width. The outer edges are broken, so that it is uncertain whether it had an external chamfer.
The upper part of the side walls is in many places destroyed, but as far as can be now ascertained, the top of the nave walls was 11 feet 5 inches above the sill of west door. The chancel walls were only 4 or 5 inches lower.
The upper part of all the gables is gone.
The chancel arch is exactly like the west entrance in every way. The jambs are 3 feet thick. A springer of the gable-coping remains at the north-east angle, 1 foot wide, 7 or 8 inches thick, and of 1 foot projection. In 1852 the springer at the south-west angle was existing. The chancel is 7 feet 10 inches by 7 feet 2 inches inside.
There is one window on the south which appears to have been round headed, and 2 feet 7 inches by 11 inches. The jambs splay inward to
2 feet 11 inches in width. The outer edges are broken, but there seems to have been an external splay. There is no ambry, and no trace of altar or altar place.
The springers of the gable-coping remain at the south-east and north-east angles. These are 1 foot wide and about 8 inches thick, and project 1 foot.
The roofs of nave and chancel were either of tie-beam construction or of rafters coupled half-way up, and covered with stone slates.
My conjectural restoration makes the ridge of the nave roof 19 feet above the sill of the west entrance. This chapel closely resembles in size and form the chapel at Lybster, in Caithness, described farther on in this work (p. 162). Probably Wyre Chapel is of the twelfth or thirteenth century, but the characteristics are not decisive enough to approximate more closely to its date. It is called “Cubberow” Chapel, from its vicinity to Cubberow Castle.
The exterior length of the nave is equal to the diagonal of the square of its exterior width. The chancel is nearly square.
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