of so little in common with the generality of woodwork, either in
design or mode of treatment, that it is perhaps appropriate to deal
with it here, in association with stone screenwork, as occupying an
intermediate stage between the two several classes. I refer to the
remains of the rood-screens at Kirk Langley, which, unworthily made
up as they are into a box-door, placed at the west entrance, in the
ill-lighted lowest storey of the tower, seem to me scarcely to have
received the attention they might have claimed. Indeed, the deceptive
environment of modern accretions combines with the twilight to make
it extremely difficult for anyone to form a just estimate of the
work or of its proper dimensions. As far as the existing remains, in
their mutilated and altered condition, admit of a reconstruction of
the original plan of the screen, it would appear to have consisted
of two lengths of 4 ft. 6 in. each, and two doors of the same height
and pattern as the other part; so that, when the whole stood intact,
the fenestration must have formed a continuous arcade of trefoiled
lights, their average centring 8¾ inches, each of them with an ogival
crown, indenting a complete trefoil, balanced upon its apex. As the
illustration shows, the treatment of this tracery work is peculiar. The
component members of it—in plan square, with sides slightly concave—are
set angle-wise to the front, and present a series of prominent edges
without the usual fillet. Thus they have an effect of crisp and almost
metallic acuteness, unfamiliar in woodwork as also it is in stone.
The face of the cill below the fenestration is carved with a band of
quatrefoils, having each a four-petalled flower—not a rose—in the
centre. The design is of the fourteenth century, and it might possibly
have been executed towards the close of Edward III.’s reign, or not
later than the deposition of Richard II.
[Illustration: Kirk Langley Church: Detail of Former Rood-Screen in
Oak, XIV. Century Work.]
The remarks which follow should be understood to apply to screens
which are true timberwork, alike in _motif_ as in material. In
structure and proportions, Derbyshire screens for the most part
assimilate to the midland type, as exemplified at Newark and Strelley,
in Nottinghamshire, or Wormleighton, in Warwickshire, and as
distinguished from that of the south and west of England and Wales.
That is to say, not a few of them rise to a stately height, with
remarkably lofty fenestration; the latter being, in some instances,
narrow even to attenuation. Thus the rood-screen at Breadsall, as
far as can be judged by what remains of it, notably illustrates this
peculiarity; in which regard it affords a striking parallel to the
screenwork at Newark church before-mentioned.
But it is rather in parclose screens that this feature of excessive
elongation is more especially in evidence. To counteract its ungainly
appearance, without at the same time diminishing the extent of the
aperture, resort is had in the principal screens at Chesterfield to
the device of a transom to divide the fenestration about midway. This
horizontal member, being feathered underneath, not only enhances the
decorative character of the screenwork by the added effect of a lower
tier of tracery-headed lights, but also makes for structural strength
by providing a latitudinal junction from muntin to muntin.
Another point of similarity between Derbyshire rood-screens and the
typical midland screens at (_e.g._, at Somerton, in Oxfordshire; Blore,
in Staffordshire; Wormleighton, in Warwickshire; and Strelley, in
Nottinghamshire), and of divergence between the former and southern
examples, is that, where the design comprises vaulting, the springing
of the ribs is not necessarily in line with the cord or base of the
pierced tracery of the bay-heads (as is practically the rule for it
to be in Kent, Devonshire, and Somerset), but at a higher level,
sometimes with a discrepancy of nearly two feet between the two levels.
The result of this arrangement is not altogether happy. For traceried
ornament that extends below the limits of a tympanum, failing to define
the springing-point, tends to make the vaulting itself look dwarfed and
curtailed. For the latter to show to best advantage, the ribs should
have an obvious correspondence with the sweep of the fenestration arch
from spring to crown. Wherever it is otherwise, a sense of lack of
homogeneity between the parts cannot but be felt.
Another feature which Derbyshire screens share in common with other
midland screenwork, is the very usual inequality which the traceried
fenestration-heads present on the obverse and reverse. In the south
and east of England both surfaces are almost invariably carved and
moulded with identical design and equal completeness; so that if I met
with a detached portion of church screen tracery anywhere in Kent,
for instance, I should at once know by its treatment to what part of
a screen it belonged. For the back would only be smooth and unmoulded
if it had been intended to fit flat against blind panelling in the
lower half of a screen, and _vice versâ_. But Derbyshire tracery,
as a rule, does not furnish such indications; and so, unless the
design bore the outline of an arch, and were therefore unmistakably
intended, like the Breadsall example illustrated, for the upper part
of a vaulted screen, it would be next to impossible to determine its
place in the composition. For even _à jour_ tracery, meant to be looked
at from either side, is usually plain and flat on one surface, as in
the case of the parclose at Elvaston (see left-hand distance in the
illustration), and that also at Fenny Bentley. The rood-screens at the
latter church and at Ashover are both of them instances in which the
upper traceries are enriched with the addition of crocketed ornament on
the westward side, while they are plain and smooth on the chancel side.
In some screens, again, though the upper tracery is not indeed quite
flat at the back, there is yet a marked difference between the degree
of elaboration on the two surfaces. Thus in the tracery of the
rood-screen at Elvaston, the western face, besides being moulded, is
further embellished with crockets and finials, carved in bold relief,
in some compartments handsomely fretted and deeply undercut, and
altogether remarkably rich and varied in character (see illustration
of detail); while the side towards the east is uniformly treated with
simple moulding only. At Chaddesden the contrast between the east
and west faces respectively of the upper part of the rood-screen is
still greater. In this particular case a difference of treatment is
necessarily entailed by the somewhat unusual plan on which the screen
itself is constructed; the overhanging rood-loft (now, of course, no
longer in existence) having been carried upon the naveward side by
groined vaulting, and by a cove, instead of vaulting to correspond,
towards the chancel. The spandrils, therefore, covered by the vaulting
on the west side are exposed on the other, and present a series of
solid triangles, which would have been bare and unsightly without
applied ornament. All of these, then, together with the reverse of
the transom in the two central bays and of the muntin between them,
cut short by the entrance arch, are decorated with low relief carving
entirely unlike the front. Moreover, although the muntins on either
side are buttressed, the buttresses on the west terminate, as is usual
in the case of vaulted screens, with boutels and caps for the springing
of the groins; upon the east side, on the contrary, the buttresses
continue nearly to the top, tapering off as they approach the lintel
into graceful crocketed pinnacles.
The only recorded instances known to me of the occurrence of painting
or gilding on Derbyshire screenwork (with the exception of the Parwich
beam referred to hereafter), are those of the rood-screens at Ashover
and Norbury, and of a parclose which divided the chancel from the north
chapel at Mugginton, and which had fifteen coats of arms blazoned in
colours upon it. The screen itself has long since vanished, but the
account of it is preserved among the Harleian manuscripts in the report
of Richard St. George’s Heraldic Visitation taken in the year 1611. As
a rule, the sort of ornament to be found upon screenwork (except in
the case of panels decorated with figures, of which Derbyshire, unless
I have been mistaken, furnishes no examples) is of so essentially
abstract, and, so to speak, non-committal a character, that the enemies
of screens are seldom able, with any pretence of reason, to avail
themselves of the pleas put forward by iconoclasts as a matter of
principle.
[Illustration: Elvaston Church: Detail of Rood-Screen.]
A small and feathered angel is introduced in the carved work above
the doorway of the rood-screen at Elvaston; and there are some
exceptionally fine half-length figures of angels along the top of one
of the screens at Chesterfield. The particular screen that this carving
rests upon (now turned, though it is, into a parclose between the north
transept and its eastern chapel) is known to have been the ancient
rood-screen in Chesterfield church, and to have stood in its place
until about 1843, not long subsequently to which time it was re-erected
in the position it now occupies.
That this screen dates from the first half of the fifteenth century,
maybe, perhaps, as early as about 1430, I infer from the character
of its fenestration. The latter, consisting of a single panel of
pierced tracery in each bay, is an exact counterpart of the stone
window-tracery of the period. It differs from the method of timber
screen construction evolved subsequently, in which the muntins run
from top to bottom of the openings, and in which the effect of tracery
in each several bay-head is obtained by a combined series of separate
units of pierced work let into grooves sunk in the upper part of the
muntins. In the Chesterfield rood-screen, on the contrary (as also in
the fourteenth century rood-screen at Kirk Langley, already described),
the upright shafts in each bay merely support from below the tracery
above in the head, instead of holding it in position as between two
sides of a frame. Neither, again, in the Chesterfield example does the
spacing of the batement lights correspond with that of the three lights
at the bottom. The uneven number of the latter is abnormal. It became
far more usual, as timber screen-work developed, for the fenestration
to be divided by a central muntin into two lights (as at Breadsall
and Fenny Bentley), or (as in other parts of England) for the central
muntin, remaining a constant factor, to be supplemented by one pair
or more pairs of muntins, as the case might be, so that the number of
lights comprised in a single bay would, in all events, work out to an
even number.
And now to describe the sculptured figure work at Chesterfield in
detail, beginning at the north end of it, and proceeding from left to
right. First, then, is an eagle; and next, a composite beast, having
the head and horns of an antelope, the snout of a boar, and a chain
round the neck, clawed feet, and the body and tail of an ox. Although,
therefore, the one represents St. John, it is out of the question that
the other can ever have been intended for an evangelistic symbol,
notwithstanding they are both accompanied by scrolls. Then succeed
six demi-angels, clothed in albs, and issuant from conventional
cloud-wreaths; their wings pointing downwards in an oblique direction,
with the ends of the feathers crossed in saltire, every one’s over his
neighbour’s. Each angel bears one or more emblems or instruments of
the Passion: the first, the crown of thorns; the second, the cross;
the third, the seamless coat, together with the dice; the fourth, a
shield displaying the five sacred wounds; the fifth, the lance and
three nails; the sixth, the scourge and hammer. That this series was
originally longer is evident from the abruptly mutilated feather-tips
of another angel’s wing upon the southern or right hand extremity. He
would, doubtless, have held the ladder and pincers; but even thus, the
usual tale of emblems would scarcely be complete without the reed and
sponge, the thirty pieces of silver, or the cock that crew thrice.
How many, then, altogether of the angel figures are missing it is
impossible to tell. Moreover, it seems probable enough that there would
also have been animals with scrolls to balance those at the opposite
end. A detail of the rood-screen and of the sculpture above it, is
shown in the accompanying illustration.
[Illustration: Chesterfield Church: Detail of Screen in the North
Transept, formerly the Rood-Screen.]
The date of the angel ornament appears to be somewhere between 1465
and 1480. What remains of it now measures in length 14 ft. 6 in. by
one foot in height; the figures being carved out of the solid, and
occupying, in ordered row, the concave space of a band sunk between
two beads. That this is no rood-beam, but a superficial ornament for
the breast-summer, I can vouch, for two reasons; firstly, because the
timber itself is a mere board, not exceeding four inches in thickness
at the top, the thickest part of it; and secondly, because at the back
are unmistakable traces of mortice holes for the joists that were fixed
at right angles to it to carry the rood-loft floor. I know nothing that
so much resembles this admirably appropriate ornament as that in a
corresponding position in the stone pulpitum at Canterbury Cathedral;
and in a wooden parclose at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. And yet I have
no hesitation in pronouncing that the Chesterfield example surpasses
the others in beauty and variety of design. It is, in a word, a very
model of its kind.
Now that screens in churches cannot have been, by quite unanimous
consent, regarded as contravening “the principles of the Protestant
Reformation,” whatever is to be understood by that portentous phrase,
is clear from the practice of erecting such fixtures having from time
to time continued long after the demise of Derby’s benefactress, Queen
Mary Tudor. Thus the chapel at Risley, erected in 1593, was furnished
with a chancel-screen of curious design, comprising cherub-heads and
other Renaissance details. Later on, the south aisle at the old parish
church of Wilne having been prolonged eastward to form a memorial
chapel to Sir John Willoughby, who died in 1602, there was set up
across the archway a heavy timber screen, with gates, which bear the
arms of Willoughby and Hawe. The composition as a whole affords a
striking sample of the depraved taste and secular spirit of the age.
Among the elaborate carved ornaments may be identified representations
of Hercules with his club; a Roman lictor with fasces and axe; satyrs
and centaurs; all intermingled with pompous, warlike trophies of
cannons, muskets, and drums! On the back of the screen is the date
of its production, 1624. Later on, a church was built at Foremark in
a spurious Gothic style, and Bishop Hacket consecrated it in 1662.
It contains a characteristic oak chancel-screen of massive build and
lofty elevation, with four glazed openings. To the above, all of them
noteworthy instances of post-Reformation screenwork in Derbyshire,
must be added the screen which separates the chancel from the nave or
ante-chapel in the chapel at Haddon Hall. For, though parts of its
woodwork, particularly the buttressed muntins, must be assigned to an
earlier date, the main portion of it unquestionably was remodelled at
the close of the sixteenth or during the first half of the seventeenth
century. The turned balusters, which in this case supply the place of
fenestration in a Gothic screen, are, like the wainscoting which lines
the chancel walls, obvious products of a later epoch.
In fact, so persistent altogether was the tradition, and so hard to
kill, that even in Dr. Hutchinson’s debased structure, which took the
place of the demolished All Hallows’, the new chancel was not left
unwarded, but was screened by iron grates. These, though exhibiting in
their design the style of the period, yet reproduced, strange to say,
quite a mediæval scheme of arrangement. A grate divided the chancel
from the nave, and was continued northward and southward right across
the building from wall to wall. And other grates again separated the
chancel from the chancel aisles. These grates, though not altogether
undisturbed, for the most part remained in position until 1873, when
the interior of the building, then barely a century and a half old,
was “restored,” and in the process the chancel grille itself, together
with other fittings hitherto spared, was taken down. Numerous details
of it are figured in the _Chronicles of All Saints’_, issued under the
joint authorship of the Rev. Dr. Cox and Mr. W. H. St. John Hope in
1881, to which volume all who may be interested in a genuinely historic
specimen of eighteenth century wrought ironwork are hereby referred.
There is one peculiar variety of mediæval screen arrangement which may
be said to belong to a class by itself. It is sufficiently uncommon,
being confined almost exclusively to domestic chapels, of which the
former infirmary chapel of Dale Abbey, and such that now serves the
purpose of parish church of Dale, furnishes an interesting example. A
sketch of the interior, in 1870 or thereabouts, is given on plate xvii.
of the late Rev. Samuel Fox’s _History of St. Matthew’s, Morley_ (1872).
The chapel consists of chancel, nave, and south aisle, the latter
separated from the nave by a wooden partition, formerly solid; long
since, however, by its panels being sawn out, converted into open
screenwork. But the main point of interest is the screen which divides
the nave from the chancel. Screen and partition alike are of oak,
and rest on a stone plinth. The chancel screen is very quaint in its
severe simplicity. It has no tracery, but the mouldings are of the
fifteenth century, the approximate date assigned to it being 1480. It
consists of seven rectagonal compartments, _i.e._, a central doorway
with three openings on either side; the muntins supporting a flat
ceiling of timber, which, extending back as far as the wall, divides
all that portion of the chapel westward of the screen itself into two
floors. The upper one of these opens, gallery wise, into the chancel.
Traces of a somewhat similar arrangement exist in a ruined oratory at
Godstow Nunnery, on the banks of the upper river, near Oxford; and
another instance has been noted in one of the chapels at Tewkesbury
Abbey church. It is paralleled also in a sort at the private chapel
of Brede Place, Sussex, but the plan of an upper storey, supported
by a partition screen, does not express itself there in nearly so
striking and complete a manner as at Dale. Other instances known are
the chapels at Berkeley Castle and Compton Wynyates respectively. It
may be mentioned that at Dale, since there is no internal communication
between the gallery and the ground floor, the former has to be
approached by an external staircase through a door on the upper level.
And, next, to consider the subject of the rood-loft. It would, of
course, be situated at a greater height than the screen; as a rule,
immediately above the latter, and connected organically with it, the
structural braces being boxed within a casing of coved panel-work or
of vaulting, with groins and bosses in imitation of stone masonry. As
originally erected, the ancient rood-screens at Ashover, Breadsall,
Chaddesden, and Norbury furnished instances of groined vaulting,
now perished. The only screens, to the best of my knowledge, in
Derbyshire which have not lost their vaulting are the rood-screens at
Fenny Bentley and the parclose of the south transept in Chesterfield
church. The first-named has been a good deal restored, and the latter
has not altogether escaped. Both are examples of screens in which
the irregularly shaped panels between the ribs are enriched with
tracery ornament, a device that enhances the overhanging vaults with a
delightful suggestion of mystery lurking within their shadowy recesses.
I do not think that the Chesterfield parclose was ever surmounted,
in rood-loft fashion, with a parapet, although the upper part of it
expands eastwards and westwards quite far enough to have provided the
accommodation of an average rood-loft had it been required.
The nearest approach (except the Fenny Bentley example before quoted)
to a rood-loft survives at Wingerworth, a structure in some respects
unique, in Derbyshire at any rate. Of its peculiar character the
photograph conveys a better idea than any verbal description. I do not
think it can have been erected earlier than 1480, nor later than 1520.
Perhaps midway between the two, _i.e._, 1500, _circa_, is the most
correct date to assign to it.
On the left-hand side may be observed the doorway, twenty inches
wide, through which, pierced in the easternmost spandril of the north
arcade, a rood-stair, now consisting of seven steps, emerges on to the
platform itself. The head of this aperture consists of a stone lintel,
which, being cut on its under side into the form of an obtuse angle,
produces, roughly, the appearance of a four-centred arch. In the south
or left-hand jamb are still fastened two iron hangers for the door, now
no more, which opened navewards upon the loft.
In the early sixties of the nineteenth century, there remained on
the plaster of the east wall of the nave, above the ancient loft,
considerable traces of colour. In vivid contrast to this painted
background showed up the bare silhouettes of a large cross, and of an
upright figure on either side of it; thus marking clearly the place
where the great rood, with the Mary and John, had stood in former days.
At the present time nothing of these interesting relics is to be seen;
the interior of Wingerworth church having been freshly distempered over
with a smart coat of colour wash, while two immense hatchments, with
pompous black cloth surrounds, occupy the place sacred from of yore to
the memorial of mankind’s Redemption. What could be more unseemly than
selecting this one, of all sites in a church, for the parading of the
worldly distinctions of one’s family? Whether it is too late to save
the remains of the rood-painting by scraping off the distemper which
hides it, I cannot say; but there can be no question whatever but that
the profane hatchments ought to be taken down as quickly as possible,
and placed somewhere—anywhere—else than where I saw them in March,
1907.
The painting at Wingerworth is not the only instance of its kind known
to have survived in Derbyshire down to the nineteenth century. Thus
at Hayfield, according to a memorandum made on the spot by one of
the brothers Lysons, who visited the old church shortly before its
demolition in 1815, there was to be seen “at the back of the gallery,
facing the nave ... a painting of the Crucifixion, with St. John and
St. Peter ... said to have been painted (in) 1775, but probably from
an ancient one which had remained undisturbed at the time of the
Reformation.” That this work, for the figure of St. Peter to have
been substituted for that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, must have been
retouched by some post-Reformation hand, may readily be believed; but,
in the same connection, the question presents itself as to whether the
gallery noted by the famous topographer could by any manner of means
have been the ancient rood-loft at Hayfield church.
[Illustration: Wingerworth Church: Base of the Rood-Loft.]
But to return from speculation to facts and figures. The timber extant
of the rood-loft at Wingerworth reaches from side to side of the nave,
a length of 15 ft. 1 in. The distance from the floor of the nave to the
base of this structure (itself barely an inch above the crown of the
chancel arch) is 8 ft. 8½ in.; from the nave-floor to the platform at
the top of it, 11 ft. 8½ in.; giving it an elevation of exactly three
feet. The width of the platform from back to front is 38 inches. In
the upper surface of the breast-summer, or main beam of the westward
projection, are the remains of fourteen mortice holes (averaging 4
inches in length each, with a centring of 13½ inches), sunk to receive
the tenons of the upright stiles that framed the front of the loft
parapet, the height of which there is no present means of gauging. The
uppermost front edge is embattled. Below, in a cavetto, at intervals,
are nine square pateras of Gothic leaf ornament. The receding cove
beneath the breast-summer is divided by moulded ribs into eight panels,
the longitudinal ribs centred at 44 inches, and being crossed by a
single latitudinal rib, with carved square bosses and Gothic leaves
in the angles of intersection. This panelling occupies a superficial
breadth of 32 inches between the breast-summer above and the moulded
timber at the base.