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Updated: May 1, 2025
The chevrons, the spiral lines and lozenges of the coloured decoration with which the semi-columns, and the salient buttress by which they are divided into two groups, are covered, should be curiously noticed. The ornament varies with each structural division. Loftus, however, was chiefly struck by the process used to build up the design.
By cautious examination of the parts walled up, it was discovered that the capitals were all perfect, and that this exquisite and grand construction, the mutilation and concealment of which it is utterly impossible to account for, was, in fact, made up of five arches, the interior and smallest supported by the two semi-columns already described, and each of the others increasing in span as it approached the front upon square and circular shafts alternately, the faces of each arch being beautifully decorated with the choicest Norman ornaments.
The ashlar and semi-columns, not being well bonded and deeply headed into the rubble cores, split and bulged, and the cores, for want of a proper proportion of lime, diminished and crushed to pieces.
In the harem wall these grooves flank the group of vertical reeds right and left, dividing each of the angle piers into two quasi-pilasters. At Warka they appear in the higher part of the façade, above the groups of semi-columns. They serve to mark out a series of panels, of which only the lower parts have been preserved.
Above the entablature, which runs round these buttresses, there stand on the two central columns two tall Ionic semi-columns, surmounted by an entablature and pointed pediment, and enclosing a large window set back in sham perspective.
In describing the discoveries led up to by the removal of the old screen, Dean Merewether says: "By cautious examination of the parts walled up it was discovered that the capitals were all perfect, and that this exquisite and grand construction, the mutilation and concealment of which it is utterly impossible to account for, was in fact made up of five arches, the interior and smallest supported by the two semi-columns, and each of the others increasing in span as it approached the front upon square and circular shafts alternately, the faces of each arch being beautifully decorated with the choicest Norman ornaments.
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