Southwell minster was taken down, and a new aisled quire and presbytery
built upon lines closely akin to those of the churches of Augustinian
canons. The quire is of six bays. From the second bay from the
east, in which the high altar probably stood, projects on each side
a small transeptal chapel, with its roof on a level with that of the
adjacent aisle. The eastern bay formed the ambulatory behind the altar;
but the central body of the quire is prolonged beyond it for two bays
eastwards as an aisleless chapel. The high altar is now against the
east wall, but there can be no doubt as to the original arrangement. As
at Thurgarton, the design is marked by great restraint in the matter
of detail. The clustered columns, like those in the contemporary
work done, during the archiepiscopate of Walter de Gray, at York and
Beverley,[14] form an attached group around an inner core. Their
capitals are simply moulded. The arches depend for their effect upon
their mouldings, dog-tooth being used very sparingly in the hollows.
The upper stage, in which clerestory and triforium are combined by
the expedient of prolonging the inner arch of the clerestory to the
triforium sill, and omitting the inner clerestory passage, is treated
more richly. Dog-tooth is freely used in the ridge-rib of the vault;
the jamb-shafts of the prolonged arches have foliated capitals; the
capitals of the vaulting-shafts are foliated, and the shafts themselves
rest on corbels of great beauty, carved with stiff-stalked leaf-work.
This increased richness of the higher part of the composition gives
balance to the design, which otherwise might be almost too plain.
Taken as a whole, the composition is inferior to the transepts of York
and the magnificent quire at Beverley. The two-storeyed division of
the interior of the quire gives an effect of lowness, and the vault,
with its strongly marked ridge-rib, seems to weigh too heavily on
the building, which is rather broad in proportion to its height. The
arrangement of two tiers of four lancets, one above the other, at the
east end, is in keeping with the over-weighted impression given by the
whole elevation. At the same time, there cannot be two opinions as to
the picturesqueness of the design; for what is lost in height and
dignity is gained in the contrast of light and shade in the triforium
and clerestory stage. The vault, continued at one level through
the quire and eastern chapel, is of eight bays. Of these seven are
quadripartite, with a ridge-rib added. The eighth is, by an unusual
arrangement, quinquepartite: the upper tier of four lancets at the
east end is arranged in two pairs, between which a small shaft, with a
prominent foliated capital, carries an arched rib at right angles to
the east wall. This is brought up to the central boss of the vaulting
compartment, where it meets the ridge-rib.[15] Externally, the lowness
of elevation is less striking, and the striking projection of the
tall buttresses of the eastern chapel, with their gabled heads, adds
a vigour to the general outline which is missed in the interior of
the building. The original pitch of the outer roof has been lowered,
however, so that the complete effect is somewhat impaired.
The south chapel of the quire of Worksop priory church, the building
of which was almost contemporary with the thirteenth-century work at
Southwell, is a melancholy ruin; but its remains are still enough to
show the beauty which may be produced by the effective combination
of simple lancet forms. It may be said with some confidence that the
thirteenth-century builders at Southwell, Thurgarton, and Worksop,
and of the high vault which was added during this period to the nave
at Blyth, belonged to a school which had learned its traditions
in the beginning from the Cistercian architecture of Yorkshire.
Economy of ornament, variety in the use of simple forms, contrast
of light with shade conveyed by the alternation of bold convex and
deep hollow mouldings, are the characteristics of the twelfth- and
thirteenth-century work in churches like Byland, Fountains, and Roche.
From these the builders of the great churches of Beverley, Ripon, and
Southwell, the _matrices ecclesiæ_ of the East and West Ridings
and of Nottinghamshire, learned their art; and the example of these,
little touched by the influence of the south-eastern builders, which
appears at Lincoln, or of the western builders, which makes itself
felt at Lichfield, is manifest in the larger churches within their
neighbourhood.[16]
The ruined priory church of Newstead, on the other hand, which belongs
to the second half of the thirteenth century, has few characteristics
limiting it to the work of a special school. The great west window,
which has lost its tracery, and the traceried panels of the west
front, are symptoms of a general architectural movement peculiar to
no one district. From Binham in the east, and Salisbury in the south,
to Croyland, Lincoln, and Grantham in the eastern midlands, and to
St. Mary’s at York and Guisbrough priory in the north, single lancet
openings gave place to combinations of several lights in one window,
with tracery consisting of one or more cusped circles between them
and the enclosing arch. A study of the chronology of these buildings
leads to the conclusion that this development of art made its way
northward. The west front at Newstead forms a half-way house, as it
were, between the west front at Croyland and Abbot Warwick’s work at
St. Mary’s, York. The likeness of the tracery in the flanking portions
of the design at Newstead to that in the windows of the south aisle at
Grantham church is very noticeable. The date of the work at Grantham is
about 1280.[17]
Newstead takes an honourable place among the greater achievements of
the so-called geometrical period. The south aisle of Blyth priory
church, which is probably not later than 1290, and was added to give
more accommodation to the parochial services, is a good example of
the simple and well-proportioned work of an epoch, which, in spite
of the epithet of “Decorated” so often applied to it, produced some
of the plainest and most sober work of the middle ages. The tracery
of the windows, formed by the simple intersection of the mullions, is
a special, though not exclusive, characteristic of English midland
work, common in the windows of Leicestershire and Derbyshire churches.
At Stapleford, close to the Derbyshire border of our county, there is
a good window of this type. Nearly contemporary with the south aisle
of Blyth, is the greater part of the fine church of Gedling. Here the
chancel seems to have been rebuilt during the third quarter of the
thirteenth century, the nave following after a short interval. The
whole church, with the exception of the tower and spire, was probably
finished by 1294, in which year Archbishop Romeyn consecrated here a
bishop to his suffragan see of Whithorn in Galloway.[18] The tracery
of the nave windows is of a simple geometrical character; but the
place of the cusped and heavily-moulded circle is taken by the more
angular forms and thinner stonework which mark the transition to the
developed art of the fourteenth century. Otherwise, the detail of the
work is plain, and the aim of the builders was evidently spaciousness
of design before anything else. More decorative ambition is shown
in the sculptured capitals of the nave at Bingham, in which the
tendency to naturalistic treatment of foliage is very noticeable.
The tower and spire of Bingham are among the principal achievements
of Nottinghamshire masons at this period. There is some conservatism
of feeling about the design. Bingham is near the district which
was the early home of the broach spire, and it was long before, in
that district, old traditions died out. The stepped buttresses,
the double geometrical windows in the belfry stage, and the not
more than adequately lofty spire, with its many lights, set upon
a proportionately sturdy tower, are the leading features of this
beautiful composition.[19] The tower at Thurgarton must have supplied
Nottinghamshire builders with a first-rate lesson in design, and its
influence may have been felt at Bingham. It was certainly felt in the
thirteenth-century central tower of Langar--one of the few cruciform
churches in Nottinghamshire--not far from Bingham; and this tower may
have inspired the builders at Bingham with their ambition. It may be
added, however, that these fine models were not generally followed in
the county. Apart from Newark, which can hardly be considered from
a merely local point of view, and West Retford, the most remarkable
example--later than Bingham--of spire design in the county is at
Thoroton. Other spires, such as Cotgrave, East Leake, and St. Peter’s
at Nottingham, approximate to the very plain type of tall spire
on a parapeted tower which is found so constantly, as at Sawley,
Duffield, and Morley, in the adjoining county of Derbyshire. Bingham
and Thoroton, on the other hand, are within easy call of the fine and
elaborate spires of south Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. Another
chapter in this volume deals with the spires of the county in detail.
One church upon the Lincolnshire frontier deserves special mention
at this point. This is Barnby-in-the-Willows, on the left bank of
the Witham. Here a general rebuilding took place about 1300; and the
task was evidently entrusted to a master of the works whose ideas of
decorative design were all his own. In plan and construction he had
nothing radical to offer, but, when he came to his windows, he used his
geometrical tracery in defiance of all recognised canons, inserting
pieces of tracery at the bottom or in the middle of his lights, instead
of at the top of the window. This remarkable experiment, which, owing
to the remote situation of the church, has attracted little attention,
deserves full illustration and detailed description, which it is
impossible to give in the present article. The great architectural
successes of the neighbourhood, the nave of Claypole, and the aisles
of Beckingham and Brant Broughton, were yet to come; but, unless we
postulate a village genius reared in absolute isolation, it is hardly
likely that the designer of the windows at Barnby was wholly ignorant
of the magnificent work already accomplished within no great distance
of his village at Lincoln and Grantham. These would be his nearest
models for tracery at the time, and we may perhaps assume either that
he saw them with an admiring, but careless and inaccurate eye, or that,
having seen them, he gave rein to a personal eccentricity which hoped
for improvement in a reversal of their principles. In any case, the
design is of peculiar interest, and the chancel at Barnby is in some
degree a forerunner of the splendid series to which reference will be
made presently.
The chief stimulus to local art in the early fourteenth century came
from the chapter house at Southwell. This unique masterpiece was in
process of construction about 1290, when John le Romeyn, who laid
the foundation stone of the nave at York in 1291, was archbishop. It
was closely modelled upon the chapter house at York, the fabric of
which was certainly completed about the time (1286) when Romeyn took
possession of the see. Both chapter houses have the same octagonal plan
without a central pillar; but, while the vast chapter house at York was
never covered with any but a wooden roof, the less ambitious structure
at Southwell has a stone ceiling vaulted up to a central boss. Neither
the tracery of the windows nor the details of the mouldings are much
advanced for their period: the first is composed of cusped circles,
while in the second filleted rolls predominate, in alternation with
deep hollows. In the delicate sculpture, however, of the entrance
doorway, the pediments of the niches for seats which surround the inner
walls, and the capitals of the shafts which divide the niches from one
another and bear their arches, we have the most remarkable achievement
of the age. This carving was probably the work of years, and can
hardly have been begun until the bulk of the fabric was completed. The
leading feature of the work is its naturalistic treatment, which is
in striking contrast to the conventional lines of the window tracery.
One or two capitals occur, in which the sculptor allowed himself to
use the conventional foliage of a generation earlier, and leaves which
merely suggest natural forms grow, as in the smaller capitals of the
quire and of the vestibule which leads to the chapter house, from stiff
stalks. Such foliage has the advantage of seeming to take its life from
the stonework in which its stalks are rooted. But, apart from these
isolated instances, the sculptors have entirely modelled their work
upon natural forms. Sprays cut from the hedges have, under their hands,
been translated into stone, and wreathed round capitals, spread out
on flat surfaces, or turned in garlands to fill hollow mouldings. No
trouble has been spared to reproduce natural forms exactly: leaves are
ridged and veined as in nature, and, even where they are most thickly
clustered, they are everywhere undercut, and beneath them the concealed
stems may be discovered. The delight of the sculptors in their work
is obvious, and their never-flagging invention and labour converted a
daring _tour de force_ into a triumphant success.
Only this once, however, did English carvers apply themselves to the
naturalistic treatment of stonework with a care for detail in which
they may fairly be said to rival the conventional sculptors of the
thirteenth century. Stonework does not lend itself readily to this
purely imitative handling. The artist is bound by the limitations of an
art which, to approach most nearly to nature, demands an independent
life of its own. An impartial comparison between the carvings of the
quire and chapter house must lead to the conclusion that the smaller
capitals and corbels in the quire have greater life and vigour. The
sculpture in the chapter house is decoration applied to architecture:
the sculpture of the quire is part and parcel of the architecture which
surrounds it. The effort which is maintained in the chapter house
cannot be kept up. The interval of naturalism can only lead to a new
kind of convention, in which the carvers seek to give a naturalistic
effect to the surface of their work, without going to the full pains of
realistic imitation. This can be seen in the carvings of the eastern
side of the stone _pulpitum_ which separates the nave from the
quire, and is almost the latest of the structural additions to this
interesting church, as it has come down to us. The central archway
in the eastern face, and the canopies of the stalls on either side,
are of the ogee shape, which came into fashion in the early part of
the fourteenth century: the ogee also prevails in the cusping. The
mouldings are convex without intermediate hollows. The foliage and
diaper work, still beautiful and impressive in their richness, even now
that their early glory of gilding and colour is gone, become crowded
and indistinct, a mere collection of undulations, when examined close
at hand. The small figure sculpture, and the heads which form the
finials to the cusping, are still full of life. But even the figure
sculpture of the age is seen, when we turn from the screen to the
sedilia on the south side of the eastern chapel, to lose in strength
and distinctness, and to aim at producing a distant effect, which is
not enhanced by close inspection.
This phase of sculpture at Southwell at once recalls the work
of the same epoch in the Lady chapels of Ely and Lichfield, and
the altar-screen and Percy tomb at Beverley. It is the belief
of the present writer, founded upon a long and close study of
fourteenth-century work in the north and midlands of England, that the
turning-point of the art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
so far as these parts of England are concerned, was reached at York,
where St. Mary’s abbey church represents the crowning achievements
of “geometrical” work, and the nave of the minster marks the first
decisive step in the direction of naturalistic sculpture, and greater
freedom in the lines of window tracery. The influence of the York
chapter house is clearly felt at Southwell, and the Southwell
sculptors worked in harmony with the masons who, under the patronage
of Archbishop Romeyn, were employed on the nave at York. In their more
modest area, they even surpassed their York contemporaries. Putting
buildings like Howden and the eastern bays of Ripon aside for our
present purposes, it seems clear that the first step of the York school
southward was made at Southwell. The close connection of Bishop Walter
Langton (1296–1321) with York[20] explains the appearance of what may
fairly be called the York manner in the eastern part of Lichfield
Cathedral. That the influence of work so splendid and distinguished
should spread into other dioceses is only likely, and it seems very
likely that, in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, it
was felt as far south as the Lady chapel at Ely, and far and wide
throughout the fens. Here other influences from the south doubtless met
it, which had been at work for some time in Essex and East Anglia. But
the community of style between such churches as Ely and Beverley, or
Patrington in Yorkshire and Claypole in Lincolnshire, at this period,
seems to be due to an activity which spread in the beginning from York.
In this dissemination of style, the southern part of the diocese of
York, which wedged its way in between the dioceses of Lincoln and
Lichfield, seems to have acted as a principal reservoir. The chancels
of Hawton, Sibthorpe, Car Colston, and Woodborough, with those, now
mutilated or destroyed, of Arnold and Epperstone, formed a band which
stretched nearly across the county, between Newark and Nottingham.
Their general characteristics are carefully dressed stonework,
profusely moulded base-courses, gabled buttresses of bold projection,
and admirably proportioned windows, with curvilinear or reticulated
tracery. Externally, ornament is used with great restraint, and almost
the whole emphasis of the design is laid upon the spacing of the bays,
and the clean and finished treatment of parapets, buttresses, and
base-courses. The tracery of the side windows is usually simple, but
the east window is generally of five lights, and is treated with more
elaboration. Internally, the chief feature, apart from spaciousness
of proportion, is the magnificent permanent stone furniture. Triple
sedilia, with a piscina to match, all adorned with crocketing and
figure carving of the same type as that of the sedilia at Southwell,
are a general possession of these fabrics. A founder’s tomb in the
north wall of the chancel, and niches for statues in the east wall
on either side of the altar, are also common. Hawton, however, has,
in addition to sedilia with a wealth of carving on the wall-surface
between their canopies, piscina, and founder’s tomb, a large permanent
Easter sepulchre in the north wall of the chancel. At Sibthorpe
there is a small Easter sepulchre, with a row of carved figures of
the soldiers sleeping at the tomb, in the wall above the recess for
the founder’s effigy. There are remains of a similar sepulchre at
Fledborough, and a large and handsome, but much mutilated, sepulchre
has been left in the rebuilt church of Arnold.
[Illustration: BARNBY IN THE WILLOWS.
(South Side of the Chancel.)]
[Illustration: CAR COLSTON.]
The actual date of these chancels is not very easy to fix. It is
clear that Car Colston, the least elaborate, though one of the most
spacious of the series, must have been rebuilt some years before the
appropriation of the church to Worksop priory in 1349.[21] The chancel
of Sibthorpe, similarly, may not be much later than 1324, when we
first read of the chantry which was gradually enlarged into a college
of chantry priests, and was celebrated in a chapel north of the
chancel.[22] At the same time, the college was not founded until 1340,
and the founder, Thomas Sibthorpe, endowed a chantry and lights in the
church of Beckingham, Lincolnshire, of which he was rector, in 1347,
when the aisles of Beckingham church were rebuilt.[23] The character
of the dated work at Beckingham is so like that at Sibthorpe as to
forbid our assigning too early a date to the latter. A chantry was
founded at Fledborough in 1343,[24] which seems to imply that the fine
fourteenth-century church which we now see had recently been rebuilt.
The Easter sepulchres at Fledborough and Sibthorpe have, as already
noted, much in common. If these comparatively late dates be admitted,
the date of 1356, which has been given to the chancel at Woodborough,
is just possible. At the same time, the design of Woodborough forcibly
suggests that it was built before the great plague of 1349, which
worked such havoc throughout the country and effected such a change in
English art. The founder of the chancel at Hawton died in 1330. The
tracery of the east window and the character of much of the carving is
in general keeping with this date. But the chancel was probably built
in the founder’s lifetime, just as the noble chancel at Heckington,
near Sleaford, was undoubtedly built some years before the founder’s
death in 1345.[25] In two points especially, the mouldings of the
founder’s tomb, which are of the first quarter of the fourteenth
century, and the group of figures relieved against the wall at the back
of the sepulchre, there is reason to antedate the fabric of Hawton to a
date nearer 1320 than 1330. The figure sculpture in question is fully
equal, in naturalistic treatment, to any of the carving in the chapter
house at Southwell; while the rest of the sculpture of the sepulchre
and sedilia is closely allied to the sculpture of the Southwell
_pulpitum_. In any case, we have in these chancels a group of
buildings which extend over a period between about 1320 and the plague
of 1349, and the architectural influence which inspired them may be
traced directly to Southwell, and so to York.
Hawton, and the allied Lincolnshire chancels of Heckington and Navenby,
were probably the first-fruits of the influence of Southwell upon
local architecture. The sculpture in these three cases is of a more
delicate and carefully worked type than that of the other churches
mentioned. It is a significant fact that, if we look for the closest
parallels to Sibthorpe, Woodborough, and Car Colston, we find them
in churches which lie north of York--Patrick Brompton, Kirkby Wiske,
and Ainderby Steeple. One of these, Patrick Brompton, the best of the
series, belonged to St. Mary’s abbey at York, and appears to have been
built in the decade between 1320 and 1330.[26] It is impossible to
visit these churches without recognising the complete identity of type
between the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire examples, or realising the
close link which binds them together. As has been said, the influence
of Yorkshire masoncraft found its way into the diocese of Lichfield. At
Sandiacre and Dronfield in Derbyshire this type of chancel appears once
more: it may be recognised at Checkley in Staffordshire and Norbury
in Derbyshire, and even more clearly in the distant church of Halsall
in south Lancashire. An isolated instance occurs in the old diocese
of Lincoln, at Cotterstock in Northamptonshire: the founder of the
rebuilt chancel here in 1337 was John Giffard, a canon of York, who
was beneficed at Barnby-on-Don, near Doncaster.[27] The geographical
distribution of these monuments, taken in conjunction with their
history, is overwhelmingly in favour of their northern origin, as
against any influence from southern schools.
Newark church, were it not for the disaster of the Black Death,
would probably be the finest of all fourteenth-century churches in
Nottinghamshire. Its present plan, a vast aisled rectangle, was
conceived in the early part of the fourteenth century, and the lower
courses of the outer walls were built as far as the top of the moulded
plinth.[28] Only the outer walls of the south aisle, however, and the
tower and spire above the already completed thirteenth-century work,
were finished. The north aisle, and the lofty arcades and clerestory of
the nave were not achieved until the second quarter of the fifteenth
century, while it was not until the last quarter that the chancel with
its aisles was completed, and the old chancel was finally removed.
Later still the plan received its final addition by the building of the
north and south transeptal chapels. All this work has the fine sense
of design and sketchiness of detail which are the chief symptoms of
late Gothic work in England: the dependence of the effect of such a
building on stained glass, colour, and furniture is absolute. Fragments
only of the glass remain, and the colour is gone; but the late
fifteenth-century rood-screen, which has few rivals in the country, and
two stone chantry chapels, one on each side of the altar, still remain
to give us some idea of the former dignity and beauty of this great
town church. The spire and upper portion of the tower were suggested by
the completed work at Grantham. Although they yield the palm in height
to Grantham, and the spire is inferior to Grantham spire in beauty, yet
the design of the belfry stage, with a prominent crocketed pediment
above the two lights in each face, is at any rate comparable to the
treatment of the similar stage at Grantham. While the Grantham builders
were uncertain about their design, and apparently altered it as they
got higher, the Newark builders knew exactly what they wanted, and were
content with a plan which, if more modest, is more homogeneous.