The Shell-Implements and Other Antiquities of Barbados

Reconsideration of the evidence set out by Jackson and Fletcher in 1962 shows that it does not lead uniquely and inevitably to the complicated building history postulated by them for the apsidal chancel at Wing, whereby the present walls were supposed to have arisen in part by cutting back earlier alignments and in part by building them forward and inserting the pilaster strips. Instead it is shown that all the known evidence can be interpreted in terms of a simpler and more plausible building sequence in which the present walls of the apse arose in a single building operation which included the pilaster-strips and arcading as well as the internal plaster which separates the original walls of the crypt and apsidal chancel from the later stone vaulting of the crypt. This revised interpretation does not affect the important conclusion that the walls of the polygonal apse were built later than the main walls of the nave; but this conclusion is based upon simpler direct observation. Unfortunately the evidence at present available does not allow precise details of the building phases to be stated with certainty; a new thorough archaeological investigation would be needed to settle these questions and to provide an indication of the dates of the several phases.