The 12th century St Athernase Church is one of the finest surviving examples of an unaisled Norman style running round the exterior, surmounted by a corbel table with heads of various designs.
22.
Although the south chancel wall, with its corbel table, complete with three round-headed windows date from the 11th century and the west tower dates from the 1170s, most of the church is 13th century.
23.
The most prominent feature of the building is its tower, a five story campanile with narrow arched windows and wider arched doors on the lower levels, above which is an elaborate corbel table and a slate skirt.
24.
The corbels carrying the arches of the corbel tables in Italy and France were often elaborately moulded, and sometimes in two or three courses projecting over one another; those carrying the machicolations of English and French castles had four courses.
25.
Two years later, the First Baptist Church on West Park Street matched the scale of the new courthouse with a structure combining Gothic ( steep buttresses and a tall hexagonal tower rising from the center of the front facade ) and Romanesque elements ( round arched windows and corbel tables ).
26.
It was a weight to counteract the thrust of the vaults, particularly where there were flying buttresses; it stopped the tendency to slip of the stone copings of the gables, and counterpoised the thrust of spires; it formed a pier to steady the elegant perforated parapets of later periods; and in France especially served to counterbalance the weight of overhanging corbel tables, huge gargoyles, etc.
27.
Of what remains, the two east bays of the south wall are first half of the twelfth century and although the proportions suggest the church was large, with a nave of four or five bays, the plan of the church at that time is unknown; it may have been rectangular without a chancel . " Externally the arched corbel table, the flat east buttress, and the freize at sill level of the windows show this south wall at once to be Norman . " The walls are of Barnack stone, coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and incorporate miniature arches and rounded corbels, supporting a later battlemented parapet.
