Excerpt from A History of the Architecture of the Abbey Church of St. Alban: With Special Reference to the Norman Structure The present Volume, devoted more particularly to an inquiry into the History of the Norman Architecture of the Abbey Church of St. Alban, is the fulfilment of an intention intimated so long since as the year 1883, in a letter upon the same subject, published in the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine. From that time until now, this venerable and very interesting structure has engaged the attention of the writers, but not without intervals of considerable length, occasioned by employment of a more urgent nature: the delay, however, has proved beneficial, inasmuch as it has afforded ample opportunities for repeated examinations of the Building, and mature investigations of those portions of its earlier architecture which remain, and much of which is so singularly intermingled with later works of different ages, that too great care could not have been bestowed in collecting evidence in support of the notion that the figure or ground plan of this Church did, when entire, exceed both in form and dimensions the opinion current upon the subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.