Bracebridge, may be regarded, on the strength of their different quoining
and their lack of any bond with the fabric behind, as final additions to
churches which, in point of date, we have provisionally classified with
Stow. Not infrequently, the tower and church were built together without
afterthought, as at Winterton, where the ends of the nave walls still
remain in bond with the tower, enclosed within the spacious church of the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. If we attempt to classify
these towers chronologically, however, we may try several standards. The
relative height and width of the tower arch affords no criterion; this
seems to be varied at the fancy of local masons. Again, rude attempts
at moulding, like that at Nettleton, tell us nothing; the moulded tower
arch at Corringham is so out of keeping with the tower itself that it
can hardly be part of the original design; the wide arch at Harmston
is clearly a reconstruction achieved comparatively late in the twelfth
century. But the absence of through-stone masonry, the approach to the
system of rubble core and dressed facing, indicate a growing assimilation
to “Norman” methods. The tower at Waith has a facing of rough ashlar,
which is found in no other Lincolnshire tower of the type. Another
tell-tale sign is the appearance of herring-bone work, which Norman
builders used freely in the walling of their earlier castles, and
builders of the pre-Conquest period certainly used little, if at all. The
“herring-bone” masonry of the tower at Marton is identical in style with
that in the curtain-wall of Tamworth Castle.
Can these novelties have come into use before the Conquest? If so, we
must presuppose a growing acquaintance with building methods as pursued
in Normandy. This is not improbable. Norman influence was felt in English
life during the reign of Edward the Confessor,[44] and imitations of
Norman, as at an earlier date of German, technique are not beyond
reasonable imagination. But it must be acknowledged that, while we are
fain to discover the germ of Anglo-Norman art in these simple monuments,
the constructive, purely architectural quality, which is the essence of
that art as manifested at Durham or in the west front of Lincoln, is
totally absent from them. That essential quality is not a home growth,
but a foreign importation. The chief element of structural transition in
these towers is to be found in their growing spaciousness. Areas which
are on an average oblongs of some 10 feet 5 inches long by 10 feet 8
inches broad grow at Caistor to 15½ by 17½ feet, and at Harpswell to
about 15 by 16 feet. With the growth of the area the wall thickens,
thus affording a contrast to towers like Hough, where the large area is
enclosed by thin walls. The eastern wall of the tower at Alkborough is
less than 2½ feet thick; the average thickness of such walls is about
3 feet 7 inches. At Caistor the wall is 5¾ feet thick. One cannot fail
to recognise that the slender tower of Saxon type, while keeping its
unbuttressed character and its “mid-wall” arches, is spreading out into
the ordinary broad and heavy Norman tower.
In the capitals of the mid-wall shafts a decided step is being taken
in the same direction. The plain “cubical” type may be regarded as
following a course of natural development at home which found conspicuous
perfection in the architecture of the Norman period. But in other
examples, and those fairly numerous, the end aimed at is clearly that
reminiscence of the Corinthian capital which is familiar to those who
have visited the abbey churches at Caen, with its upper volutes and its
lower band of acanthus. The best examples of this are at Scartho and at
St. Peter-at-Gowts, where the effort, if somewhat crude, is still to some
extent achieved. The effort is again seen in the capitals at Great Hale,
in which the general outline is that of the “cubical” cap, with volutes
carved on the flat upper part, and the carved under surface reeded so
as to give a suggestion of the band of acanthus. At Bracebridge, again,
in capitals of the “cubical” type, volutes and rather unusual forms of
conventional foliage appear; and in other cases, as at Glentworth, the
volute is used without much skill, but with some variety of design.
The unfinished form in which the sculpture is sometimes left suggests
forcibly that it was added after the capitals were in position. Indeed,
if this were not the case, defenders of the pre-Conquest date of these
towers would have to give up their position altogether. Unless we imagine
that English artists used their memories to reproduce classical capitals
which few of them are likely to have seen, we cannot imagine these
capitals coming into existence otherwise than under Norman influence, and
Norman influence after the Conquest. The most successful imitations of
early Norman capitals are at Harpswell, where, as we have observed, the
measurements of the tower are of a Norman and not of a Saxon type. At
Caistor, unfortunately, the original belfry windows are gone, so that we
cannot form any judgment as to the character of their capitals.
[Illustration: ST. MARGARET’S CHURCH TOWER, MARTON (BEFORE RESTORATION).]
When any attempt, then, is made to demonstrate the transitional character
of these towers, to form them into a link between Saxon and Norman work,
we may acknowledge at once that they have an abiding influence on the
plan of the parish church. Were it not for the tradition handed down from
the Saxon period, the towers of Boston, Grantham, Louth, or Heckington
might be in all kinds of different situations with regard to their
respective churches. But of influence upon Anglo-Norman construction,
upon architecture properly speaking, they had none. There is no seed in
them of that marvellous development of stone vaulting which, under Norman
hands in England, was to set in motion the full artistic energy of the
Middle Ages. If, again, we look at the lesser matter of architectural
detail, we must confess that the appearance of detail of a semi-Norman
kind in them shows little capacity for shaping foreign ornament and
adapting it to individual ends. All that we see is inaccurate copying.
The life, the independence of thought and aim, the power of adaptation,
the force of structural genius, which characterise the works of a
transitional period, are all to seek. Yet, in spite of these drawbacks,
on which men enlightened by contact with Norman art cannot have been
slow to comment, the survival of the Saxon type of tower in Lincolnshire
till quite late in the Norman period is a remarkable fact. The tower of
Branston Church is of the traditional Saxon form and of much the usual
Saxon proportions. The arcades in its western face on either side of the
main entrance have unmoulded arches flush with the rubble surface of
the tower, small shafts standing on high plinths of ashlar work which
form the surface of the lowest five or six feet of the wall, and double
cushion-caps, such as occur in more than one Lincolnshire tower. So far
the workman does not commit himself as to the date of his work: its
character is not inconceivably that which a mason more skilled than usual
might have given to his work before the Conquest. But the high archway of
the intervening entrance, with its edge-roll, its lesser mouldings, and
its hood, its jamb-shafts with their voluted capitals, is unmistakably
a copy—rough, but not inaccurate—of the lesser archways which flank the
western doorways of the Norman west front at Lincoln, and occur again
on the returned sides of the Norman wall. This doorway is no insertion:
it is the builder’s chosen enrichment to his tower. No one will presume
to argue that Rémi’s masons at Lincoln went for the model of their
archways to a clever piece of work which some local artist had achieved
at a small local church; and, this argument apart, the earliest date for
the tower at Branston must be about 1092. Possibly after this date few
towers of such slender and pronounced Saxon proportions were built in
Lincolnshire, but the old form persisted. The western tower of Boothby
Pagnell cannot, in its present condition, have been built before 1150:
it is probably some years later. Like Caistor and Harpswell, it is broad
in dimensions, and the walls are thick; but it keeps the unbuttressed
form, and the window with mid-wall shaft. This late survival of a type of
building which has impressed its features but little on subsequent forms
of architecture testifies to its close association with the life of the
county, and to the reluctance of the masons to abandon a feature which
was a familiar sign of the religious activity of the countryside.
KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL
BY C. HODGSON FOWLER, F.S.A.
Within a few hundred yards of the line of the outside wall of the
once-important Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead, founded in 1139, stands an
extremely beautiful chapel of the purest Early English work, the special
use of which is not known, but which was probably for the use of pilgrims
to the Abbey and was probably served from it.
It now stands solitary and desolate, greatly out of repair, with its
north and south walls much out of the perpendicular, and its vaulting
consequently twisted and its beautiful lines disturbed.
That the settlement of its walls is not all of recent date is shown by
the heavy fifteenth or sixteenth century buttress built against its north
wall, but undoubtedly its dilapidation has seriously increased of late
years.
The chapel is a simple oblong in plan, measuring inside the walls 43 feet
6 inches in length by 19 feet 6 inches in width, with side walls 2 feet 8
inches, and east and west walls about 3 feet 2 inches thick.
It is divided on plan into three bays by vaulting inside and by
buttresses outside; and divided horizontally in two parts by strings
running round the building externally and internally. The height from the
floor to the inside string is 6 feet, and from the floor to the crown of
the vaulting 21 feet.
Both east and west gables have been taken down, and the whole building is
now covered by a low-pitched roof hipped at each end, with a poor modern
bell-cote of perhaps about the beginning of the eighteenth century.
At the east end is a triplet of unequal lancets, with well-moulded arches
internally and double-shafted jambs, the shafts having carved caps and
well-moulded bases, the outer shafts also being banded. The centre light
is 8 feet 9 inches high and 1 foot 2 inches wide, the side ones being 7
feet high and 9 inches wide.
The exterior of the west end is extremely effective, a richly moulded
doorway under the outer string, which is here raised to a height of 11
feet 10 inches, having above it a very well designed composition of three
arches, all well moulded, the outer two being blank and the centre one
containing a deeply-recessed vesica window about 5 feet 2 inches high and
2 feet 6 inches in diameter.
The two side walls have each six lancets, each about 8 feet high and 9
inches wide, all with shafted jambs internally having carved caps and
moulded bases, but plain splayed arches.
Near the west end of the north wall is a second doorway—now walled up—and
in the north-west angle a doorway leading into a stair turret.
The vaulting is quadripartite in the centre and western bays, but
sexpartite in the eastern one. The ribs spring from carved and moulded
corbels, themselves springing from the string round the building. The
vaulting ribs are about 9 inches thick, well moulded with a centre and
two side rolls and deep hollows between, the transom ribs having the
hollows filled with acutely pointed dog-tooth moulding, the diagonal ribs
being without it. The springing of these ribs is about 10 inches above
the corbels. There is no ridge rib, but there are well-carved bosses at
the intersection of the diagonal ribs, the centre and western ones being
all foliage, the eastern one foliage, with the _Agnus Dei_ in the centre.
Externally the building is divided into bays by rather flat buttresses of
about 1 foot 6 inches projection, running up into a corbel table on the
two side walls. The corbels are simply chamfered, and carry an equally
simple cornice.
At the north-west angle the two buttresses are of rather greater
projection and of considerable width, giving space inside them for the
staircase mentioned before.
The west doorway is an excellent example of good Lincolnshire
thirteenth-century work, the arches well moulded and enriched with
dog-tooth, the jambs having one attached and two detached shafts with
well-carved capitals.
The carving of these and all the other capitals in the chapel is of the
stiff “celery” stalk foliage so common in Lincolnshire work, and all,
equally with the mouldings, refined and evidently the work of high-class
masons and carvers.
Internally there are no ancient features beyond those already mentioned,
except a very simple triangular-headed piscina in the eastern bay of the
south wall. The projecting part of its basin has been broken off, but two
grooves for a wooden shelf remain.
The chapel, being a donative without restriction, was used as a
Presbyterian chapel from 1720 to 1812, and was then filled up with pews,
and a pulpit of Jacobean character, apparently previously in the chapel,
was erected in front of the east window.
Most fortunately, however, in thus fitting up the chapel, the joiner
incorporated in the pews two pieces of an Early English screen, of an
exceedingly interesting description, and which no doubt originally cut
off the eastern bay from the body of the chapel. These two pieces are
each about 6 feet long, and consist of an open arcade, the upper part
of the screen, each having six trefoil-headed openings, the heads being
cut out of boards only ⅞ inch thick and rudely pinned on to uprights 2⅞
inches square worked into octagonal shafts 1¾ inch in diameter, with
moulded caps and bases. The whole work is somewhat rude in execution, but
is an extremely valuable specimen of early woodwork.
The only other object of interest in the chapel is an effigy of Purbeck
marble of a knight, now set up against the south wall. This is thought
to represent Robert, the second Lord Tattershall, who died _c._ 1212. He
is in a hauberk of banded mail, the earliest of the five known examples,
and wears the cylindrical helmet, with convex top, having two bands
crossing in front.
For many of these particulars I am indebted to drawings by Mr. J. Nixon
and Mr. A. Hartshorne in the _Spring Garden Sketch Book_.
SOME SOUTH LINCOLNSHIRE CHURCHES
BY W. E. FOSTER, F.S.A.
In no part of Lincolnshire—a county famous for its ecclesiastical
buildings—can so interesting a group of churches be found as that between
Pinchbeck and Sutton St. Mary—a distance of about fifteen miles.
First we have the village church of Pinchbeck, next the Church of St.
Mary and St. Nicholas, Spalding—always the church of the town; then the
interesting village church of St. Mary’s, Weston; then within a mile
the village church of All Saints, Moulton; then within another mile
the village church of St. Mary’s, Whaplode; then we have the beautiful
Church of All Saints, Holbeach, always a town church; then we have the
two village churches of Fleet and St. Mary’s, Gedney; and lastly, the
interesting town church of Sutton St. Mary.
Any stranger visiting the district must be struck with the size and
magnificence of the village churches of Pinchbeck, Moulton, Whaplode, and
Gedney, which have always been out of all proportion to the requirements
of the inhabitants of those various places. It was not the needs of
the people that prompted the erecting of these four beautiful village
shrines; but the church-building rivalry that existed between the two
wealthy abbeys of Croyland and Spalding.
These four village churches, all within twelve miles, as the crow flies,
are probably unequalled in the kingdom, and are lasting monuments of the
energy and zeal of the two local abbeys in providing places of worship
in the villages over which they had sway.
SPALDING
The first church to which we will direct our attention is that of St.
Mary and St. Nicholas, Spalding.
This church owes its origin to a dispute between the prior and monks of
Spalding and the town’s people, about the year 1280. The history of the
foundation of this edifice is supplied by the records of the priory.
It appears that about the dawn of the fourteenth century there were
two parish churches for the town of Spalding, which were on the west
side of the river Welland. One, the Holy Rood, stood on the south side
of the present market place—on the priory walls, about the spot where
the Stamford and Spalding Bank premises are erected; the other St.
Mary, Stokes, which also stood on the priory wall, but nearer the river
Welland and to the High Bridge, that crosses that river. The bells of
these churches not only disturbed the prior and his monks, but the two
buildings being in such a dilapidated condition, the parishioners flocked
to the abbey church, near by, to the great inconvenience of the inmates
of the monastery. William Littleport, who was then the prior, came to
an agreement with the townsmen about the year 1283, and obtained leave
to pull down the two churches, which were probably small buildings with
Norman style of architecture. With contributions from the townsmen, he
agreed to erect a new church for the parish on the east side of the river
Welland, and in the year 1284 he laid the foundation-stone of the present
church. The land on which it stands was then the burial ground for the
town, and part of the mortuary chapel that was then standing was worked
into the new building, and forms part of the south and east walls of the
chancel of the present church.
[Illustration: SPALDING CHURCH NAVE, LOOKING NORTH-EAST.
HOLBEACH CHURCH NAVE, LOOKING WEST.]
When the church was restored in the year 1866, foundations of an earlier
building than the present one were discovered beneath the level of the
floor of the nave—extending westward from the chancel to midway of the
great arches of the transepts. The lines of these foundations were at
right angles with the east wall of the chancel, which is not square with
the present chancel walls, and is of much ruder worked masonry.
Most of the churches in the district, when restored, have revealed the
carved stone work of earlier edifices, which had been freely used by the
builders when either enlarging or rebuilding the churches. This is not to
be wondered at, considering the difficulty the builders had in getting
the stone from the district of Stamford—for from that neighbourhood
nearly the whole of the stone came that was used in erecting the churches
the subject of this article. It must have been costly even in those
days, when labour was cheap. It had to be quarried in the “Uplands,”
and floated on small flat-bottomed boats during the winter months down
the shallow rivers to the various churches—for the roads were well nigh
impassable for such traffic—dressed by the masons on the spot in the dark
season of the year—and built into its place in the summer months, when
the stone would be dry and so able to resist the winter frosts. Their
work was slow, but it was good and sure.
The present church, of which the abbey and prior were the patrons,
was dedicated to the same saints as the abbey, and was erected in the
Geometrical style of architecture of a severe character, considering
the date it was built—for at that time that style of architecture was
dying out, and was not so severe in its character—but in this district,
styles of architecture did not give place to the new till much later than
elsewhere in England and on the Continent.
The dimensions of this early church are easily defined in the present
building externally by the original buttresses on the west end of
the nave, the north and south ends of the transepts, the south-east
buttresses of the nave, and the south wall of the chancel, which had been
built upon the earlier chapel foundations as previously mentioned, and
the angle buttresses at the east end of the chancel; and visitors should
notice that in building on the old foundations, the east wall of the
chancel is not at right angles to the two other walls of the building—the
northern wall is upwards of two feet longer than that on the southern
side.
Such was the early church at Spalding, with probably a campanile or small
tower at the west end of the north aisle. At the restoration in 1866 the
foundations at that corner of the building were on examination found
to be more solid and capable of bearing a much greater weight than the
rest of the building. That a campanile or tower formed part of the early
church—and in the Early English style of architecture—is confirmed by the
fact that Early English base mouldings and windows are worked into the
present tower, as well as ledger stones of Perpendicular date and some
whole stone coffins.
In relation to this tower it is interesting to record that in 1401 there
was another dispute between the townsmen and the prior in relation to the
bells, and it was probably in consequence of that dispute the present
tower was erected and the bells hung in the same.
During the Curvilinear Period the south aisle, the south outer aisle, and
the present tower were added, with Thomas à Becket’s Chapel at the east
end of the south outer aisle. This chapel was used for a great number of
years as the Grammar School.
This Curvilinear tower was not originally intended to carry a spire,
but one was at a subsequent period added, which so severely tried the
strength of the tower that at the time of the Restoration it was in so
dangerous a condition that the bells could not be rung.
In the Rectilinear Period the church was further enlarged, and the
following were added:—
The present North Aisle.
Outer North Aisle.
North Porch.
One Buttress on the South Outer Aisle.
Two Buttresses on south side of Chancel.
South Porch.
North-east Buttress of North Transept.
Stairs to Rood-loft.
The Parish Church of Spalding presents an excellent example of how the
architects of the period transformed an Early Geometrical church into a
Rectilinear one.
Originally the nave and transepts were of one uniform height throughout,
as were also the roofs, plates, clerestory-range, arches, capitals, and
bases respectively. The pillars of the nave were heightened about 6
feet about the year 1450, when the arches were reset and the clerestory
rebuilt and the present windows inserted.
The tower (Perpendicular) should be compared with that of All Saints’,
Moulton, another church built by the Spalding monks. It is surmounted by
lofty pinnacles and flying buttresses connecting them with a crocketed
spire rising to the height of 153 feet. It is placed at the west end of
the south outer aisle.
Mr. Sharpe, in his _Lincoln Excursion_, 1871, says: “The tower and
spire rank among the finest in the country.” And writing on the church,
he says: “Although its separate features have no great merit, it
presents one of the most striking interiors to be seen in any parish
church; due in a great measure to the variety and irregularity of its
different parts, and the many singularities of designs, to which the
various alterations of form have given rise, as well as to the excellent
restoration it has received.
“The Chapel of St. Thomas à Becket is a curious building, the windows of
which have tracery of an unusual kind, in which both right and flowing
lines are introduced.
“The north porch is an important structure of somewhat late in the
Rectilineal Period, with a groined fan-tracery roof and parvise over it.”
Owing to the proximity of the priory, the rich and influential persons
who had died before the demolition of monasteries were buried in the
convent church. The parish church was most ably restored by the late Sir
Gilbert Scott in 1866. The high pews and galleries were removed. The
organ was erected in a new chapel built on the north side of the chancel.
The west window of the nave was filled with new tracery, and the whole
of the windows filled with stained glass. The roofs were thoroughly
overhauled, and new pews erected.
WESTON ST. MARY