Our glass-hunting tours will take us into almost every part of England.
We shall go up and down the east coast cathedrals, from York in the
north to Canterbury in the south-east. We shall also wander through the
entire range of southern counties, and see the whole coast from
Winchester, west through Salisbury and Exeter to St. Neot, far off in
Cornwall, hard by Land's End. But it will be in that corner of England
which lies between Oxford and the Welsh border, that the greatest wealth
of windows will be found. We shall arrange the tours so that the order
in which the windows are viewed will conform chronologically with the
stages of the craft's development. It will, of course, largely depend on
whether he elects to travel by rail, by automobile, or by bicycle, just
how slavishly the pilgrim follows the order in which the towns have been
set out. The trips have been arranged with an eye to geography rather
than to railway time-tables--geography is so much more stable than
"Bradshaw's General Railway Guide"! The omission from the list of sundry
important cathedrals, like Durham, Ely, Peterborough, Worcester, &c.,
is caused by the deplorable fact that all their ancient stained glass
has been destroyed.
The order of towns is as follows:
Early English Epoch Salisbury, Canterbury, Lincoln,
York.
Decorated Epoch York, Norbury, Shrewsbury,
Ludlow, Hereford,
Tewkesbury, Deerhurst,
Bristol, Wells, Exeter,
Dorchester, Oxford.
Perpendicular Epoch Oxford, Fairford, Cirencester,
Gloucester, Great
Malvern, Little Malvern,
Ross, Warwick,
Coventry, York.
Salisbury.
Winchester.
St. Neot.
Renaissance Epoch London, Cambridge, Lichfield,
Shrewsbury.
Guildford, Gatton, Knole.
In selecting the order of the above itineraries, we have ended the
first, or Early English period, at York, because that city is not only
rich in early mosaic glass, but also in that of the Decorated period,
thus making it most convenient for us there to begin the second or
Decorated tour. In the same manner we have concluded the itinerary of
the Decorated period at Oxford, for there are found not only Decorated,
but also Perpendicular windows, thus permitting us to commence the
Perpendicular tour in the same city which ends our Decorated one.
York is set down as the last of the Perpendicular trip, but if our
pilgrim has already visited that city on either the Early English
or the Decorated tour, he will doubtless also have seen all of its
Perpendicular glass, which will obviate the necessity for again making
the long journey north. In that event, with York left out of the
Perpendicular tour, it will prove to be much more condensed, both as to
territory and distance, than either of the two earlier ones. The last,
or Renaissance epoch, has but few examples in England, and these are so
widely separated that it seems best to break them up into two tours. Of
the seven places cited (London, Cambridge, Lichfield, Shrewsbury,
Guildford, Gatton, and Knole) the best English glass is at London and
Cambridge, while that at Lichfield is Flemish, and most of that at
Shrewsbury German.
For tables of distances, &c., _see_ pp. 251-254.
[Illustration: GENERAL MAP]