A HISTORY OF SURREY
��modern vestry and on the south a small projecting building, originally of two stories, which may have served for an anchorite's cell or for viewing relics. There is a modern coal shed on the north of the tower.
The tower has no buttresses, and is of very rude construction, built entirely of rag rubble, without any ashlar dressings to quoins and windows, the latter being narrow round-headed slits in the rubble- work ; a modern window of very incongruous design has been pierced in the west. It has no staircase, and its whole appearance suggests a date prior to the Norman Conquest. The rag-work quoins of the early nave are still visible and of the same character. The timber spire, which is fairly lofty, is probably of 14th-century date. The tower arch, plain pointed, on square piers, dates from about 1 1 60 and replaces an earlier and smaller opening. A peculiarity of the plan is that the nave contracts in width towards the east, being 1 8 in. narrower at its eastern end than at the west. Its floor is said to have been higher than that of the chancel previous to the restoration of 1843,3 fact borne out by the stilted
��square at the top with the angles canted off to a circular necking. This rests upon a short circular stem and base, and the whole upon a square table and chamfered plinth. The north aisle retains its low pitch and one of its original windows, but the walls of the south aisle were raised about 3 ft. in the 1 5th century ; one of its original windows remains in the south wall, but blocked on the inside, and another in the west wall ; the remainder are of 1 4th and ijth-century dates. In the north aisle are two shallow tomb-recesses, with depressed cusped arches, of 14th-century date. A blocked rood-loft door appears at the back of the eastern respond in this aisle. The chancel arch is of two orders, the outer circular in form, the inner obtusely pointed. These are nook-shafted with volute capitals to the outer order.
The shell of the chancel walls is perhaps of late 1 1 th-century date, though heightened and otherwise altered in subsequent periods ; three of its windows can be traced, one in each wall. The bowl of a pillar-piscina of this period has lately been found plastered up in the wall of the upper chapel, to which
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��PLAN OF COMPTON CHURCH
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��bases of the arcade-piers. These arcades, which with the aisles and the chancel arch date from about 1 160, are of three arches on each side, and with their columns are entirely worked in hard chalk. The arches are very slightly pointed, square-edged and of one order, with a flat moulded label, a rare and note- worthy feature being the coeval treatment of the thin coat of plaster on their soffits, which is cut into patterns (scallop, zigzag, and nebule) at the edges, as at Godalming and the crypt of St. James's Clerkenwell. The capitals have square abaci and are carved with varieties of the scallop, volute, and different types of foliage, those on the south being peculiarly rich. The columns and responds are circular, with round bases on square plinths. The north and south doors, which have circular heads, are both of this period, the former having a plain roll-moulding and the latter an outer order of zigzag, with a hood. In the centre of the nave at its western end is the large font of late lath-century date. The design is peculiar, and looks like a rude imitation of a Vene- tian well-head, the bowl being shaped as a capital,
��it had evidently been removed when that chapel was formed. The basin has two drain-holes an earlier and a later a circular-headed niche being made to fit the older drain. Clear proof was found during the underpinning of the chancel in 1906 that when the two-storied sanctuary was formed in its eastern half, in about 1180, the older walls were merely thickened by the addition of an independent ' skin,' about I ft. thick, on the inside, to serve as an extra abutment for the vault. The original plastering still remains on the older face, now hidden. This vault is of very low pitch, with segmental ribs, clumsily constructed, springing from a string-course, with corbels in the eastern angles. It is inclosed by a low and wide segmental arch, beautifully moulded, with nook-shafts having foliate capitals and chamfered imposts, all in chalk. The arch has a hood-moulding enriched with the dog-tooth ornament, and two orders, both moulded, the outer having a cusped or horse-shoe border in relief over a deep hollow 1 ,, which gives a very rich effect. In the south wall are A piscina and aumbry of the same period, and in thw
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