Note 186 — INTRODUCTION. (continued 2)

Those in Britain are Cambridge, consecrated in 1101; Northampton, about 1115; Maplestead, 1118; the Temple Church, London, 1185; the small Norman church in Ludlow Castle, and the Earls’ Church at Orphir in Orkney—the only example in Scotland. “The round churches at Cambridge, Northampton, and London,” says Ferguson, “were certainly sepulchral, or erected in imitation of the church at Jerusalem” (History of Architecture, ii. p. 60). Wilson, on the other hand, supposes that the early dry-built beehive houses of the Western Islands may have served as a model for some of the earliest Christian oratories, of which that at Orphir, he remarks, is an interesting example (Prehistoric Annals, ii. p. 369). But there is no analogy whatever between the architectural features of Orphir and those of the beehive houses, nor has it any resemblance to the earlier oratories and chapels of the Western Isles.