the two piers of the eastern crossing; but, unlike the Dale pulpitum,
the Repton one was a solid structure. It measures 5 ft. 4½ in. deep
from east to west, and is pierced by a central doorway 4 ft. 4½ in.
wide. Its eastward front, against which backed the return stalls,
measures 26 ft. 2 in., the total width of the quire. The westward
façade (except for the door-jambs, which are moulded and flanked on
either side by an ornamental buttress, and when uncovered in 1883
showed traces of brilliant scarlet and black colouring) was austerely
plain. Its flatness was relieved, however, by the loft above being made
to overhang. That this was so is deduced from the fact that had the
loft-floor not projected beyond the area of the base of the pulpitum,
there would have been insufficient room for anyone ascending to the
top to turn round on emerging from the staircase. The latter, 3 ft.
2½ in. wide, was hollowed out of the solid in the northern half of
the pulpitum, and raked upwards in a straight flight from south to
north. The “pair of organs” named in the inventory, stood, it may be
assumed, on the platform at the top. That the pulpitum itself must
have been coeval (_circa_ 1275–1300) with the piers and integral in
structure with them, is manifest from the plinth that forms the base of
pulpitum and piers alike being finished with the same hollow chamfer
continuously all round it. A curious feature is that, notwithstanding
there is a step leading up from the nave to the pulpitum door, on the
east side there is a descent of one step again on to the floor of the
quire. South of the pulpitum a screen of wood shut off the quire’s
south aisle (which is ten feet wide) from the transept. Another screen,
in line with the last-named one, extending 21 ft. 9 in., _i.e._, as
far as the south wall of the transept, enclosed the spacious chapel
of Our Lady, which was situated parallel to the quire, on the south
side of the quire’s south aisle. The former existence of these screens
is proved by holes sunk in the masonry to receive the timber work.
The north transept was too ruinous to furnish any indication of its
ancient screen arrangements; but there were found some signs of a
screen having stood between the first pair of piers in the nave (which,
exclusive of the aisles, is 22 ft. 2 in. wide). This would, of course,
be the position of the rood-screen proper.
To resume, as to collegiate churches, some were provided, like
cathedrals, with a solid pulpitum, others with a rood-loft only,
which in their case had to do duty for pulpitum; that is to say,
the ceremonial singing of the Gospel was wont, as in cathedrals and
monastic churches, to take place on the top of it at High Mass on
Sundays and great feasts. The knowledge of this circumstance has
given rise, apparently, to the mistaken notion that the rood-loft in
ordinary parochial churches was used for the same purpose, which was
decidedly not the case. Nay, in some parish churches sculptured stone
desks, projecting from the north wall of the chancel, near the high
altar, were provided expressly, as authorities on the subject agree,
for the reading of the Gospel at that spot, in contradistinction to
the cathedral, monastic, and collegiate usage. The Derbyshire parish
churches of Chaddesden, Crich, Etwall, Mickleover, Spondon, and
Taddington are especially remarkable as being fitted with lecterns of
this description.
Against the east side of a pulpitum return stalls for clergy or monks
were invariably fixed; but that this arrangement was not confined
exclusively to cathedral, monastic, and collegiate churches is proved
by the fact that certain Derbyshire churches, which have never belonged
to any of those categories, and could scarcely even be described as
connected except indirectly with cells of religious houses in their
neighbourhood, _e.g._, those at Chaddesden, Elvaston, Norbury, and
Sawley, were provided with return stalls in the chancel. And again, not
least extraordinary, in the out-of-the-way parish of Chelmorton, the
ancient rood-screen, itself of stone, to this day still has a stone
bench attached to it, and running the length of its eastern side, for
clergy to occupy, backs to the screen and faces towards the altar, just
as though in a cathedral quire or in that of some religious order.
[Illustration: Norbury Church: Stall End attached to Jamb of
Rood-Screen.]
Three of the before-named churches, viz., Chaddesden, Elvaston,
and Norbury, present (or, rather, if the handiwork of the mediæval
joiners had not been subsequently tampered with in any of them, would
present) a feature highly characteristic of Derbyshire churches in
the treatment of the outer ends of the return stalls that flank
the passage through the rood-screen into the chancel. The Norbury
specimen (see illustration), handsomely sculptured, with a panel of
vine ornament, and with a projecting elbow formed of the half-length
figure of an angel, is, however, in point of size the least accentuated
of the three. But the pair at Chaddesden, with a series of enormous
crockets climbing high up the eastward face of the muntins which form
the entrance jambs, if scarcely noticeable when the screen is
viewed from the nave, are very conspicuous from within the chancel;
so much so, indeed, as to dominate and outscale all the rest of the
screenwork to which they belong. How so strange an anomaly ever came
to be introduced into an ordinary parish church is merely conjecture.
The quire of the church of All Hallows, Derby—the sole collegiate
foundation in the county surviving as such until the sixteenth
century—must, of course, have been furnished with return stalls; but
whether they exhibited the huge proportions of those at Chaddesden, or
whether, if that were so, the Chaddesden stall ends were or were not
deliberately imitated from those of All Hallows’, one may wonder and
argue as one will, without the possibility of arriving any the nearer
to positive assurance on the subject.
[Illustration: Chaddesden Church: Detail of Rood-Screen from the
Chancel.]
In default of a cathedral church within the borders of Derbyshire,
the tendency would be to emphasize the dignity and importance of its
greater churches. Among these the grand collegiate church of All
Hallows was foremost, and as such it came to be regarded as, in some
sort, the minster and mother church of all the southern part of the
county. Thus it would, perhaps, be but natural that All Saints’,
Derby, should supply the model for numbers of churches round about,
and that its individual features should reproduce themselves even in
some of the furthest corners of the shire. The love of generations
of Derbyshire men for the fabric of this glorious church, and the
jealous pride with which they defended its ancient privileges, are
matters of history; and if it is not possible now to trace to a common
original the distinguishing features of the churches of the county in
general, which would, in all probability, have had their prototype in
All Saints’, the ever-to-be-regretted reason is that the whole of the
venerable building, with the exception of the tower at the west end,
has disappeared—wantonly and wilfully destroyed in February, 1722–3.
This irreparable loss was brought about solely through the guile and
strategy of one unscrupulous tyrant, the then minister in charge, Rev.
Michael Hutchinson, D.D., the memory of whose deed and name deserves to
be handed down in undying opprobrium.
Neither plan nor any satisfactorily complete description of the
mediæval church of All Hallows is extant; but this much is known, that
it comprised nave and aisles and quire, with a chapel on the south,
and that it contained, besides other altars, a chantry of Our Lady and
one, also, of St. Nicholas. Both of these—the fact is established by a
process of elimination, the south chapel having been appropriated to
St. Katherine—were situated in the body of the church, and would almost
certainly have been enclosed within screens such as survive in a number
of Derbyshire churches to this day.
And here, before proceeding further, it is necessary to point out how
largely the ground plan favoured in the churches of mediæval Derbyshire
has affected and determined the conditions of their screening system.
At the same time, I would add that what I am about to say does not
pretend to universal application in every individual church throughout
the county; for, in the nature of things, there are bound to be plenty
of exceptions. Nevertheless, that the main trend of development
proceeded along the lines indicated will not, I think, admit of dispute.
Now, in other districts, a church of the scale and grandeur of that,
say, of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Melbourne, Norbury, or Spondon, could
scarcely have failed to be enlarged, when extra chapels came to be
called for, by the addition of chancel aisles. And yet in every one of
these Derbyshire instances the chancel is aisleless—an anomaly, surely,
remarkable enough! Nay (albeit the important churches of Chesterfield,
Morley, and Norton, for example, testify to the contrary), it is
noticeable in how many cases almost any other device was more welcome
than that which would have involved interfering with and arcading
the side walls of the chancel. An east aisle to the transept would
occur more readily than the erection of a new aisle to the chancel in
cruciform churches (as, for instance, at Ashbourne and Bakewell), or,
in churches where there was no transept to widen nor to appropriate,
the area of the nave itself (as at Fenny Bentley), or of the nave
aisles (as at Elvaston and Sawley), would be encroached upon for the
purpose; the wealthy corporate body or individual having as little
hesitation about annexing and enclosing the amount of the parish
church’s space which they wanted for their own uses, as they would
about enclosing (provided it could be accomplished with impunity) the
people’s common land. A typical Derbyshire parclose, then, is no mere
grate within an arch, to connect the one side of it with the other,
but rather a formidable barrier fencing in, on two sides, a specific
portion of the body of the church, and even, may be, comprehending (as
in the before-mentioned instances of Elvaston and Sawley) a column or
more of the arcade itself.
Whatever may be thought of the propriety of this local caprice (for
what else was it which, in a county abounding with excellent building
stone, could have caused the bodies of parish churches to be thus
cut up with internal partitions, instead of extending them from
without by additional chapels and chancel aisles for the reception
of fresh chantries?), the net result has been to enrich Derbyshire
with even greater distinction in respect of its parcloses than of
its rood-screens; notwithstanding the parcloses which still remain
represent only a proportion of all those ascertained to have been
formerly in existence, but such that have now gone, many of them, and
left nothing beyond the bare record behind; or of that, no doubt,
larger quantity whereof even the very memorial has perished.
Some of them have been shifted from their original positions and made
up afresh, others have been cut short or otherwise maltreated and
defaced; but, for all that, it is not too much to say that there is not
a county in the kingdom can boast as magnificent a series of parclose
screens as this one still possesses, in more or less perfect condition,
in the respective churches of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Chesterfield,
Elvaston, and Kirk Langley. The exquisite parclose which runs the whole
length of the south transept at Chesterfield, with its vaulted cornice,
rather resembles a rood-screen. The truly characteristic variety of
parcloses, however, should be sought, not at Chesterfield, but at
Ashbourne, Bakewell, Elvaston, and Sawley. A peculiarity common to all
four is the pierced tracery panelling of the lower half of the screen.
In each case, except in the Bakewell parclose, it takes the form of a
horizontal band of ornament immediately beneath the rail or cill of the
fenestration. Such is the feature which, as I submit, constitutes the
speciality of parcloses as distinguished from rood-screens. And it is
just because of its being present also in the screenwork now made up
into a chancel-screen at St. Peter’s, Derby, that I am disinclined to
believe that this particular screen was designed in the first place for
a purpose other than that of a parclose.
[Illustration: Elvaston Church: Parclose Screen in the South Aisle.]
The history of this screen has not been uneventful. It is well known
to have belonged formerly to the church at Crich, and to have been
ejected from thence at the devastating “restoration” which befel in
1861. Conveyed to a timber-merchant’s yard, for awhile it lay there
awaiting a ruin that seemed imminent, until the late Rev. W. Hope, at
that time vicar of St. Peter’s, fortunately saw it, acquired it, and
set it up, repaired and remodelled, in its present position. To return,
now, for a moment to the matter of Crich church. It is on record that
there were two chantries founded here by William de Wakebridge in the
fourteenth century. The one, receiving episcopal licence in 1357, was
situated in the north aisle; the other, in 1368, at Our Lady’s
altar, which may be presumed to have occupied a corresponding position
in the south aisle. Both of these chantries would eventually, according
to the prevailing Derbyshire custom, have been surrounded with parclose
screenwork. Of the remains of that which stood in the north aisle,
the heraldic painter, Bassano, and also J. Reynolds, took note when
they visited Crich church, the first in 1710, the second in 1758. I
do not gather, however, that either of them recorded the existence
of a rood-screen there. This negative evidence on their part is too
significant to be set aside, and so, commonly though it is stated
that the screen at St. Peter’s, Derby, is identical with the ancient
rood-screen of Crich church, I am not convinced. I can more readily
suppose that the Rev. W. Hope was too thankful at having secured so
authentic a relic of antiquity to spend time in prosecuting any very
searching inquiry as to the precise nature of the office it might have
fulfilled in days gone by; but that, seeing his own church was bare of
a rood-screen, he very naturally adapted the screen which he had become
possessed of to supply the deficiency, although comparative study of
the design and formation of Derbyshire screens in general might have
led him, as it has led me, to conclude that this one from Crich could
not originally have been a rood-screen.
Neither, again, may the apparent exception, which the chancel-screen
in Haddon Hall chapel affords, be adduced. For, though it is true that
to-day visitors to Haddon find, beneath the fenestration cill on either
half of the screen there, a band of Gothic tracery—authentic, if of a
somewhat flamboyant type—which fits its position plausibly enough, the
view of the chapel by George Cattermole, lithographed by S. Rayner,
and published in 1839, while agreeing in every other particular with
the present unchanged aspect of the place, shows no ornament here at
all. The panels were still without tracery when, between 1880 and
1885, a photograph of the interior was taken, which is reproduced in
the third volume of _The Abbey Square Sketch Book_; and the Rev. Dr.
Cox possesses a coloured sketch, dated 1898, which does not differ in
this regard from the earlier representations. But in either event the
screen at Haddon, whether traceried or plain, is no case in point, for
the simple reason that the panelling itself is blind. In order to be
analogous to the parcloses at Ashbourne, Elvaston, and Sawley, it would
need to be perforated.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the following are the
churches which contain the most notable parclose screens:—Ashbourne,
Bakewell, Chesterfield, Darley Dale (stone), Elvaston, Fenny Bentley
(moved from its place), Kirk Langley (portions made up), and Sawley
(the lower parts only of two parcloses); while, if not now, there
existed anciently, or there are believed to have existed, parcloses
at Alkmonton hospital chapel, Ashover, Chelmorton (stone), Church
Broughton, Crich, old St. Alkmund’s, and old All Hallows’ and St.
Peter’s in Derby, Horsley, Longford, Longstone, Mugginton, Norbury,
Radburne, Tideswell, Weston-on-Trent, and Youlgreave. But all this on
the subject of parcloses is to anticipate.
[Illustration: Ilkeston Church: Stone Rood-Screen, from the Chancel.]
The earliest surviving screenwork in Derbyshire does not date back any
earlier than the beginning of the fourteenth century, and is, as might
be expected, of stone. Of this material, the most imposing specimen is
the rood-screen at Ilkeston, and that notwithstanding the excessive
“restorations” it has had to undergo at various times, particularly in
1855—ordeals out of which it has emerged in a very different condition
from that which it must originally have presented. The upper part has
been scraped and renovated; the columns smoothed and repolished. And
as for the lower part, one can only say that to afford any effective
protection to the chancel it must have been something far more
substantial than the gaunt skeleton framework it is at the present day.
The screen occupies the opening from the nave into the chancel. It
consists of an arcade of five arches, which, cinquefoil-cusped and
having pierced quatrefoils in the spandrils, spring from cylindrical
columns of grey marble, with circular moulded caps and bases. These
again rise from a horizontal moulded rail, supported on similar
columns; the whole standing upon a stone plinth. The mouldings and
capitals of the columns (some of which only are original) have an Early
English appearance, but the main part of the screen is of later style.
The markedly ogival form of the doorhead betokens a fairly developed
phase of Decorated. Along the top of the screen runs a simple coping
ridge, which, if not the original, represents well enough the type of
finish a screen of the period would have had in the days before the
introduction of rood-lofts into parish churches. The doorway centres
4 ft. 2½ in., with a clear opening of 3 ft. 10 in.; the side bays
having an average centring of 3 ft. 2½ in. The total height of the
screen, as at present made up, is 14 ft. 6 in., a dimension greatly
disproportionate to its comparatively short length of 17 ft. 4½ in.
It may be explained that the photograph was taken from the chancel
in order to avoid the halation of the east window, both sides of the
screen being alike.
The stone rood-screen at Chelmorton, if less ancient than the foregoing
by some thirty or forty years, is the more interesting, because it has
been allowed to retain its original form almost untouched. The screen
stands in the chancel arch (12 ft. 6 in. wide), and consists of two
parts, having a clear opening of four feet between them. The northern
half measures 4 ft. 3½ in. long, the southern half one inch less. The
motif is that of an embattled wall, 6 ft. 6 in. high, with a pierced
band of quatrefoils to the depth of twenty inches from the level of the
top, and, beneath, blind panelling of trefoil-headed ogival arches. The
screen wall being flat on its upper surface, might well have afforded
a foundation for timber screenwork above it; for owing to the rise of
the ground towards the east, the chancel floor is three steps higher
than that of the nave, and consequently the screen has but a moderate
elevation on its eastward side. There is, however, no sign of any
mortice holes visible in it. Built into the wall of the porch is a
slab of stone, sculptured with quatrefoils, which was dug up under the
floor, and is conjectured to have formed part of a parclose, matching
the rood-screen and screening of the south transept for a chantry
chapel.
At Monks’ Dale, in Tideswell parish, was formerly a grange, with a
chapel attached, supposed to have belonged to Lenton Priory. The
walls of the chapel are overthrown down to the foundations. “All that
remains of it above ground are the beautifully carved stones of the
low ... stone screen that divided the chancel from the nave. They are
of fourteenth century work”—of the date 1360, _circa_, according to
the late Rev. Prebendary Andrew—“and exactly correspond to those ...
in the chancel of Chelmorton.” This account appeared in 1877. By 1882
the aforesaid stonework had been removed to the vicarage garden at
Tideswell.
Embedded in a wall in Allestree parish, near the site of the old manor
house, on the road to Mackworth, is, or recently was, to be seen
another fragment of worked stone, with sculptured quatrefoils, and
altogether so closely resembling the before-named examples as to lead
to the conclusion that it must have formed part of an ancient screen in
Allestree or some neighbouring church.
[Illustration: Chelmorton Church:
Southern Half of Stone Rood-Screen.]
[Illustration: Darley Dale Church:
Detail of Stone Parclose.]
A rood-screen of similar design is believed to have occupied the
chancel opening (13 ft. 6 in. wide) at Darley Dale church, to judge
from a fragment of stone carving lying (as recorded in 1877) in the
parish clerk’s garden there. In the south aisle of this church, close
to the south door, stands a family pew, built out of the remains
of a stone parclose and the stone frames of a couple of two-light
Perpendicular windows—one having had its mullion knocked out to make
the doorway, and both betraying their extraneous origin by being
grooved in the usual manner for leaded glazing. That part of the
enclosure which is genuine screenwork comprises two distinct, though
not very incongruous, designs of the first half of the fifteenth
century. Exclusive of the alien window-work, that portion of the screen
running east and west measures 11 ft. 6 in. long; that portion running
north and south, 3 ft. 7 in. The shorter length consists of a plain
wall below a tier of cinquefoil-headed lights; the longer, of ogival
panelling in eleven cusped compartments, corresponding to the same
number of cinquefoil-headed lights in the upper part. A detail of it
is here illustrated. The blind panelling measures 4 ft. high to the
cill of the fenestration, the inclusive height of the screen being 7
ft. 6 in. It has not been ascertained whether the space enclosed by
this screen represents the original position of the chantry, but more
probably it was situated in some less westerly part of the building.
“It was unfortunately set back,” writes the Rev. Dr. Cox, “a foot or
two to give more room to the aisle in 1854, but otherwise remains as
it was before the ‘restoration.’ Stone parcloses, though of fairly
frequent occurrence round chantry tombs in cathedrals, are very rarely
met with in parish churches.”
The stone screens, then, existing, or accountable for as known to
have existed, in Derbyshire comprise those at Allestree, Chelmorton,
Darley Dale, Ilkeston, and Monks’ Dale. Another one also must be
included in the list, viz., the former rood-screen at Bakewell. From
a description of it in 1823, while it might still be seen _in situ_
separating the chancel from the rest of the church, it appears to
have been of Decorated workmanship. Either half of it measured six
feet long, exclusive of the space for the central entrance. The
recorded height, 4 ft. 9 in., implies that it was the base or plinth
merely, not the complete screen. At some subsequent time during the
“repairs” which went on from 1841 to 1851—a sad decade of disaster for
Bakewell church!—its stone screen was carried off by that notorious
archæological raider, Mr. Thomas Bateman, to swell his predatory
collection at Lomberdale House. The virtuoso himself being long
since dead, and the contents of his museum dispersed, there is now
practically no likelihood of the missing screenwork ever being traced
and recovered. If it be still in existence anywhere, it should probably
be sought for in the Weston Museum at Sheffield, whither most of the
Derbyshire spoils from Lomberdale House are said to have found their
way. If that be so, the screen ought certainly to be restored to its
rightful place again at Bakewell. The loss of so venerable a monument
cannot be too deeply deplored, and reflects the utmost discredit on all
persons concerned in the removal of this ancient screenwork from the
church to which it belonged.