Between Rouen and Mantes, a pause of a few hours at Pont de l’Arche enabled me to see the interesting remains of the abbey of Bonport. The refectory is nearly perfect, and there is a great deal of simple quadripartite vaulting remaining throughout the modern-looking farm-house. But of the church, the bases of one or two columns, and one respond alone remain, and these of an excellence of design which make it very much to be regretted that it should have been destroyed. The groined refectory, of five bays in length, is well worthy of a visit. The side windows are of two lancet lights, with a circle above, and at the north end is a window of four equal lancets, with small cusped openings above. The south end and entrance from the cloister are modernized. The pulpit staircase is perfect, and very ingeniously contrived; but the pulpit itself is destroyed. Among the buildings, which are of considerable extent, are some admirable examples of domestic windows; and, to conclude, the whole is of the very best early thirteenth-century style.
The church at Pont de l’Arche is one of those ambitious but very picturesque buildings, of which we have no counterpart. It is flamboyant in style, very lofty, and intended for groining throughout. This, however, was never completed, and there is a coved wooden ceiling in its place. A good deal of late stained glass, of _very_ poor detail, exists in the windows, the subject of one of them being the Tree of Jesse.
Of the ancient bridge over the Seine, at Pont de l’Arche, not a vestige, I think, now remains.
The cathedral at Mantes is in many ways of much interest. Your readers are, no doubt, well acquainted with Notre Dame, Paris, and with the singular changes which have been effected in it from time to time. In Mantes, I believe they may see almost the same kind of conception, left with such slight alterations as do not in any way conceal the original design. It is therefore of special value.
I have already referred to the western doors. They are much mutilated, and the south-west door was replaced in the fourteenth century by an immense and conceited composition of a doorway with pediment and flanking pinnacles which is very damaging to the general effect of the façade. The remainder of the front is uniform first-pointed, with two steeples connected by an open screen as at Paris. The north-west tower has been already nearly rebuilt, and the south-west tower is now suffering from the same process, “suffering” I say, because I believe firmly that the original design is being annihilated. In both the belfry stage, which rises above the screen between the towers, is now much smaller than the stage below; nothing can look much worse than such a sudden diminution in size, and I am convinced that the original intention must have been (as at Laon) to continue the shafts and arcading which surround the lower stage up to the top. I made as careful an examination of the work as was possible, and have hardly a shadow of doubt that this was the case; but whether the authorities did not know the glorious steeples of Laon, or whether they have a view of their own as to what looks best, they are certainly making the upper part of this unfortunate west front look as modern in its outline and meagre in its character as it is new and fresh-looking in its colour. It were better that old work perished altogether, than that it should be scraped, re-chiselled, cleaned and modernized in this heartless manner!