Note 77 — II CHURCHES IN NORTHERN GERMANY

I need not say, to those who know the north of Germany, that the arrangement of this church is, after all, only an exaggeration of a not uncommon plan. The cathedrals at Hildesheim and Naumburg, the Liebfrauen-Kirche at Halberstadt, and many others, have crypts, whose floor is but little lower than the floor of the church, whilst the floors of their choirs are raised immensely, and so shut in with solid stone screens and parcloses, that little can be seen of them from the naves. The crypt at Wimborne Minster is a rare instance of the same kind of thing in England; but this is a middle-pointed contrivance for creating a crypt in a first-pointed church, which was never intended to have anything of the kind.