Tari Edit: Pest megye középkori templomai (Studia Comitatensia 27. Szentendre, 2000.)

built in the 1 1' -12' century, and rectangular ones to come from the 12* -13

1 century. A good counter-example for mechanical dating is the foundation of the church from Kardoskut-Hatablak, where the rectangular chancel belonged to the earlier church, and later a semicircular chancel was built on it.

438 So, we must be cautious about dating made on the basis of pure ground plan shape. Building material, building techniques of the churches A beautiful example of timber churches known from the records has been recently found in the southern part of county Pest, in Tápiógyörgye-Ilike part. By the moment this log church with seal-beams is unique in the Great Hungarian Plain. The simplest and most frequent building technique known from excavations is the hard puddled clay foundation placed onto the packed, puddled black earth or into the foundation ditch. This foundation was appropriate for the church built - according to the usual techniques of the age - with puddled mud walls or wickerwork, using adobe or brick. After the less durable materials of the early times, brick and stone gained a more and more important role. In the northern part of the county several quarries were reachable for stone buildings. Recent research has shown that in the stone poor territory between the Danube and Tisza stone also was used for church constructions, namely the so called field limestone that can be extracted 1 m deep from beneath the soil. We have to suggest the existence of wandering craftsmen taking an active part in the building of new churches. We could observe a mixed technique at the foundation: the massive foundation consisted of alternating layers of puddled clay and stones, or puddled clay and bricks. A stone foundation type without truss or one with strong lime mortar also had been in use. Walls were covered by large, rectangular shaped broad-stones. The usually 1 m thick wall was covered from both sides with broad-stones, and the space between the two walls was filled with a mixture of rubble and lime. This techniques resulted in very stable, thick walled building. At some places, where it was not possible to make of broad-stones the whole of the wall, only the corners were strengthened: this is the socalled quion. The church of Nagybörzsöny is one of the most beautiful Hungarian rural churches with a semicircular chancel and broad-stones. There are unusually rich architectural figurai decorations on it. At the same time the broad-stones of the Hévízgyörk church were built in under the direction of unpractised or untrained builders, which is shown by the wall sectors lacking any truss. At the same place the stone material of the earlier semicircular chancel was secondarily reused. Field limestone. This porous kind of stone can be easily carved and proved to be an excellent building material. We know examples of its use from the Árpádian Age until the Late Medieval times. This material can be found almost at all church sites, it can be considered general. Broad-stones also have been carved out of it, and irregular pieces of this limestone were used for the filling of the space in the wall between the broadstones. Brick. In the course of the excavation of the church in Pilis a detail of a brick wall with clay foundation was found. According to a note of a local historian, a brick church Méri 1964. 4-9. 251