images, too, was—if one may so express it—a definite and perfectly
natural reflex of the life and conditions of the time. Previously to
the closing decade of the fifteenth century, the vast continent of
America still remained the dreamland Atlantis it had been to Brendan
and Meldune; the Queens Consort of Spain decked themselves in the
gorgeous bravery of their jewels, and the questing dove fretted
unavailingly against restraining bars, until at length one devoted
woman, King Ferdinand’s wife, Isabella (the same were parents of our
Catherine of Aragon, and grandparents of our own Mary Tudor), offering
up her jewels in pawn, found the wherewithal to equip and send forth
the great navigator on his momentous voyage. Nor even then could it
be otherwise than that several generations must pass away before any
practical result of Columbus’s discovery could affect the great mass
of the European population, and before cane-sugar could supersede the
old-fashioned use of honey for sweetening purposes. Meanwhile, in
Derbyshire, as elsewhere, the ancient traditions lingered long; and
year by year, when the warm weather came on, the bee-keeper of the
Peak would carry his skeps, or wheel them in a hand-barrow (choosing,
if he were a prudent man, the night hours for the transit), out on
to the moors. And there, amid the wild thyme and heather, he would
set the bees down, and leave them all the summer through to gather in
their store as long as the flowers were in bloom, bringing them back
again into shelter at the first approach of winter. The honey, then
an indispensable commodity in every household, would be carefully
strained and separated from the comb; helping to pay landlord’s rent in
kind, while the wax would go in tithes and free-will offerings to the
service of the church. Such, then, since the devotional practices of
our pre-Reformation forefathers were not aloof from their social and
domestic life, but intimately interwoven and bound up with it, not out
of joint nor harmony, but dovetailing and accordant the one with the
other; such is the economic connection between votive candle-burning
and the industry of bee-culture.
The large share of importance attached to bees, and the widespread
extent of the habit of bee-keeping in former times, has left its
mark upon the face of the country in many a popular place-name and
field-name, whose significance is not perhaps generally appreciated
by others than students of folklore and archæology. Mr. Sydney
Oldall Addy, in his learned work on Hallamshire, entitled _The
Hall of Waltheof_ (1893), enumerates the following instances in
Derbyshire:—_Honey_ Spots, a field of two acres between Hope and
_Pin_dale; _Bean_ Yard, at Ashover; _Poin_ton Cross, at Hucklow;
_Poyn_ton Wood, just outside Dore; and several fields bearing the name
of _Pitcher_ Croft in the immediate neighbourhood; and he shows how
every one of the words, or roots of words, italicised, in some way
or another preserves a directly etymological allusion to the bees or
beehives having been kept from of old in the locality so named. If
Beeley, Beelow, and Beeholme are doubtful instances in point, as being
capable of another interpretation, it is perhaps not wholly unfeasible
that the received derivation of Bentley from Benets’ _lag_, or meadow,
may have to be amended to bee-field.
But be that as it may, the olden system, in the tangible form of
payments reckoned in honey and wax (itself a computation dating from
at least as far back as the _Domesday Book_, in which two Derbyshire
manors, those of Darley and Parwich, to wit, are valued at so much
current coin of the realm and so many sextaries of honey apiece),
endured without a break all through the catastrophe of the Reformation,
and afterwards almost down to our own times. Thus, in the parish of
Hope, part of the small tithes pertaining to the vicar were paid in
honey and wax. As far back as 1254, tithes of honey formed part of the
emolument of the Vicar of Tideswell. In fact, in the Peak district
generally, it was customary for every tenth swarm of bees to be claimed
by the parson of the parish, a right which continued to be acknowledged
until nearly as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. Thus in
1743, the then Vicar of Castleton records in his journal the receipt
of a swarm of bees by way of tithe. Elsewhere, though actual payment
in kind had become obsolete, a small fixed duty, payable to the parson
in money, long survived. In some parishes, in addition to the ordinary
tithes, Easter dues upon various kinds of stock and produce were
chargeable, under which head the assessment of bee-keepers was fixed
at 2d. per head. In the parish of Twyford, as the _Terrier_ shows, the
like sum was claimed “for every hive of bees in lieu of tithe-honey
and wax”—a claim which did not cease to be recognised until the
nineteenth century, when, in a general re-adjustment and commutation,
it was abolished. So the last lingering tradition of the old order was
changed, and finally perished.
And here is the place to speak of the fate of the rood and of its
accessory loft. Now, although the destruction of rood-lofts, screens
and roods, in so far as they were involved in the destruction of the
monasteries themselves, may be said to have begun under Henry VIII. in
1536, being followed, two years after, _i.e._, in 1538, by the order
for the demolition of all roods and images alleged to be abused by
superstitious devotions and offerings—the diversion of the latter into
the hands of the King and his myrmidons being, of course, the real
motive of the attack—the general and systematic destruction of roods
did not take place until Edward VI. came to the throne, nor that of
rood-lofts until nearly the end of the third year of Queen Elizabeth.
The precise date of the order is 10th October, 1561. It decreed that
rood-lofts should be taken down in every church and chapel in the land.
It is essential, however, to note that at the same time that rood-lofts
were abolished, the partition of the chancel—such was the term then
used for the rood-screen—was expressly and emphatically ordered to be
maintained. It is a noteworthy fact, also, that in the set of articles
put forth for Archbishop Parker’s first metropolitical visitation
(that of 1560–1), which included the county of Derbyshire as part of
the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, no reference whatever is made
either to roods or rood-lofts. Meanwhile, however, the order of 1561
was promulgated, and Parker then entered upon the campaign in earnest.
His visitation articles of 1563 contain the inquiry: “Whether your
rood-lofts be pulled down according to order prescribed, and if the
partition between the chancel and church [_i.e._, nave] be kept?” The
same question would naturally go the round of the southern province,
within which, as is well known, Derbyshire lies. In 1565, then, when
Bentham made a visitation of the county, among the instructions issued
for the occasion is found the following:—“That you do take down your
rood-lofts unto the lower beams, and do set a comely crest or vault
upon it, according to the Queen’s Majesty’s Injunctions set forth for
the same.” This shows that Derbyshire enjoyed no exemption from the
general order already mentioned. Two years later, _i.e._, in 1567,
Parker, in his metropolitical visitation, reiterated his previous order
of 1563; evidence as to the standard that was required throughout the
country. Nor did his successor, Edmund Grindall, fail to follow his
example. In the new archbishop’s articles to be inquired of within the
province of Canterbury in the metropolitical visitation of 1576, the
question is asked: “Whether your rood-lofts be taken down and altered,
so that the upper parts thereof with the soller or loft be quite taken
down unto the cross beam” (this, of course, means not the rood-beam
but the transverse beam or breast-summer), “and that the said beam
have some convenient crest put upon the same?” Later on, when, in
1584, Overton visited the Lichfield diocese, he inquired, among other
points: “Whether your rood-lofts be clean defaced and taken away?” It
is unnecessary to pursue this phase of the subject any further; but it
is scarcely to be wondered at if, from such persistent and accumulated
hostility on the part of the authorities, as I have retailed, no
Derbyshire rood-loft has survived to this day in its complete and
original state.
According to an inventory of the year 1527, there were in All Hallows
church, Derby, a “pair” of great organs, and another small “pair”
beside. Further entries, occurring both under the dates 1569–70 and
1582–3, mention the existence of the leaden weights “which lay upon
the organs” to compress the bellows. Whence it has been inferred that
because the almost invariable place for the organ in pre-Reformation
times was the rood-loft, therefore the latter structure was still
standing in the church down to 1583. But surely the evidence on the
point is negative, and far too slight to warrant any such conclusion!
For the documents which speak of the organs are altogether silent as to
their whereabouts in the building; and even though they may have been
situated originally on the top of the rood-loft in All Saints, in the
face of the notorious fact that rood-lofts throughout the country had
been condemned twelve years previously, the bare mention of an organ
outliving the general wrecking of the rood-loft (which, indeed, it was
fully entitled to do, from the legal point of view) cannot be taken for
proof of the law in force against rood-lofts having been disregarded in
this or in any individual instance, unless there be produced some more
direct and explicit testimony to the contrary.
If Dr. Pegge is to be credited, the rood-loft was still standing in
Chesterfield church in 1783. At Staveley, it is recorded to have
stood until 1790. At Hayfield, until about 1815, it remained entire,
according to the Lysons; and according to the same authority’s
manuscript notes at the British Museum, though the fact is not recorded
in their published history of the county, the rood-loft still survived
at Taddington in or about the year 1812. Possibly, also, at Tideswell
the rood-loft, although transferred to the west end of the church,
remained until as lately as about 1820. Beside these, there are no
authenticated instances of the survival of the ancient rood-loft in
Derbyshire after the date of the general destruction.
This measure was as arbitrary as also it proved, within no great space
of time after, to have been shortsighted. It was arbitrary because,
considering the circumstances at the date of the decree being issued,
it was uncalled for and unwarrantable, once roods themselves had
ceased to be. For the ruin of roods accomplished under King Edward
had been so immense, that their restoration in the short space of
Mary’s reign could not but be partial; and already Elizabeth’s puritan
friends, acting upon her injunctions of 1559 against “monuments of
superstition,” had hastened to destroy as many images as were found
standing at the date of her accession—and that, one may be sure, with
the greater energy and thoroughness, since the Queen herself was
really suspected at first of being unsound in this very matter of the
crucifix. The order of 1561 was unreasonable, therefore, because every
one of those customs, such as the burning of lights before the rood,
or hanging up festal branches and garlands about it, clothing it with
holiday robes or Lenten wrappings, the ceremonial stations at its feet,
accompanied by sprinkling with holy water or by censings—these and,
in fine, whatsoever other observances in olden days had had the rood
for centre and object, were necessarily quashed and rendered no longer
practicable thenceforward, the rood itself having been abolished.
That the order was shortsighted, too, is patent from the fact that in
consequence of it there sprang up a fresh crop of difficulties, which
have never been satisfactorily settled nor disposed of to this day. I
refer, of course, to the question of organs and choristers, and of the
most convenient and suitable positions for them relatively to occupy
in a church. The rood itself had indeed vanished, but with it not all
the functions and uses of the rood-loft. That the latter had, from a
practical point of view, enormous advantages, is a fact which, lost
sight of at the time amid the frenzy of bigotry, which insisted on its
being condemned to destruction, very quickly began to be appreciated
after that the ancient rood-loft was no more.
It is a highly instructive object-lesson, and one not unprofitable
eke for our own times, to note what ensued; nor can I, with the facts
of the case before me, impugn the logic of the extreme reformers, who
were so ill-content with the disappearance of the rood-loft that they
never ceased to agitate for the prohibition of church organs as well.
This, then, happened. The opponents of instrumental music in divine
service were not allowed to have their will; and yet the retention of
an organ after the organ-platform, the rood-loft, to wit, had been
done away with, was very quickly found to be unworkable, unless some
other provision were made for it and for the singers, whose voices
the organ was meant to accompany. The removal of the rood-loft at the
east end of the nave, therefore, was inevitably followed, sooner or
later, by the erection of a gallery at the opposite end of the nave.
In some instances, indeed, portions of the old rood-loft were actually
re-erected, being incorporated in a new organ-gallery at the west end
of the church. Thus, at Parwich, when, in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, the old west gallery came to be taken down, the
main beam of it was found to have a carefully chamfered edge and to
have been enriched with painting and gilding, thus proving beyond all
question that it must have formed one of the timbers of the ancient
rood-loft, if not the original rood-beam itself.
Scarcely more than fifty years had elapsed since the demolition of
rood-lofts had been ordained before a gallery was erected at the west
end of All Hallows, Derby, and, what is more remarkable, in 1636
another, upon which the term, not void of significance, “loft” actually
occurred in the inscription to commemorate the donor’s name and
benefaction. Nor was this the only example on record. Another inscribed
“loft” was erected at the west end of Heanor church in 1633, and
another at Osmaston in 1747, while several more, though not explicitly
so inscribed, were, as contemporary evidence proves, referred to at the
time as “lofts.” Of these, the gallery at Ashover (1722), at Bakewell
(1751), and at Stanley (1765) are examples. At Marston-on-Dove, in
1712, the parish agreed to erect a “loft,” as the recorded proposal for
the scheme shows, “for ye schoolmaster of Hilton and his scholars and
ye singers to sitt in.” At Hayfield, as shown in a plan of the seating
accommodation and scale of charges for the same, under the date 1741,
“every singer upon ye organ loft” paid the modest sum of 4d. a year by
way of pew-rent. Again, at Hayfield a new “loft” was set up at the west
end of the building in 1746.
If the Osmaston example carries the tradition of the “loft” forward
as far as 1747, on the other hand the Heanor example affords a most
valuable link with the remoter past by carrying back the tradition to
the period of the pre-Reformation rood-loft. Standing until within
living memory, it bore the inscription: “This loft was built at ye
sole cost of John Clarke, of Codnor, gent., in the year 1633, who dyed
An^o. Dn^i. 1641, et Anno Ætatis 88”; on the face of it a dry and
prosaic statement of fact, but yet to all who can read between the
lines, how eloquent a tale of the times does it unfold, for this man,
who at eighty set up a singers’ gallery or loft in his parish church,
would be a child of about eight years of age at the date when the royal
decree went forth for the general destruction of rood-lofts.
If the coincidence is the more striking in the case of galleries
erected at the east end of the nave, exactly on the site of the ancient
rood-loft, as at Chesterfield and the neighbouring village of Old
Brampton, at Eyam, Mellor, and Tideswell, it must be admitted that the
west end of the nave was the more usually selected position. Western
galleries are known to have been in use in the nineteenth century in
the following churches, amongst others: Allestree, Ashbourne, Beighton,
Brailsford, All Saints’ new church in Derby, Duffield, Eckington,
Etwall, Killamarsh, Kirk Ireton, Long Eaton, Mackworth, Marston
Montgomery, Matlock, Morley, Mugginton, North Wingfield, Parwich
(old church), Smalley, Spondon, Stanley, Taddington, Tickenhall (old
church), Wilne, and Wingerworth. Although at the last-named the base
of the rood-loft remains, the destruction of the parapet had made it
unsafe for use, and necessitated the erection of the newer gallery.
The above list might be very much extended, but there is no need to
multiply instances.
The renewal of the west gallery at Tideswell church in 1824, and the
erection of that at Sawley in 1838, or that at Beeston as late as
1840 (only, however, to be restored away again in 1871), brings the
tradition of building organ-galleries down almost to the middle of
the nineteenth century. Some, indeed, among those named in the above
list continued in position as late as the seventies of the nineteenth
century, that at Ashbourne even until 1882.
Between the earliest recorded instance of a gallery being built, in
1614, to the latest, in 1840, represents a lively stream of tradition,
uninterrupted for just 220 years, until the influence of the Tractarian
movement set the tide flowing in the contrary direction, and eventually
succeeded in compassing the doom of the old-fashioned organ-gallery
altogether. The responsibility rests not with Puritans, but with the
opposite party in the Church of England; and it is a sad, if edifying,
commentary on the fallibility of human judgment that, at the very time
when Holman Hunt was painting his mystical pre-Raphaelite picture of
“Christ wounded in the House of His Friends,” the Tractarians—they,
of all people!—were busy, from one end of England to the other,
obliterating the last historic vestiges of the ancient rood-loft in
our churches. If only these well-meaning men (and many others like
them, down to the present time) had been content to restore literally
rather than ostensibly; if, instead of introducing surpliced choirs
into parochial churches where such a thing had never been known before
in the whole course of their history; if, instead of dragging down
the organ from its antique gallery where they found it into the main
body of the building, and thereby displacing table-tombs and other
memorials of the faithful departed; shutting out the glorious light of
windows (as at Ashover), hiding their exquisite tracery, or, worse,
positively thrusting out windows and overthrowing walls, and erecting
externally (as at Ashover, Bolsover, Langwith, Littleover, Mackworth,
South Normanton, and Spondon) counterfeit Gothic organ-chambers
to accommodate this huge and vehement obstruction; if, instead of
perpetrating all these innovations and disfigurements, they had simply
been content to follow loyally the precedent of their forefathers, and
had relegated organs and singers together to a gallery situated in
the ancient place for them, viz., over the entrance to the chancel,
how much heart-burning and division might have been avoided; how many
a venerable church fabric, now irretrievably ruined in contour and
proportions, might have been saved from injury, and have retained both
in the original form in which they had come down to modern days, intact!
That which follows consists of additional particulars concerning the
present subject, arranged, in alphabetical order, under the names of
the various localities.
Alkmonton.—At this place, a township of Longford, was a hospital
dedicated under the invocation of St. Leonard. Lord Mountjoy endowed it
by will in 1474, at the same time directing that a quire and parclose
screen should be erected in the chapel attached to the hospital. The
institution was suppressed at the Reformation, and no remains whatever
of the chapel and its screenwork survive.
Allestree.—The church was entirely rebuilt in 1866–7. The length of the
ancient rood-loft, assuming that it did not exceed the width of the
nave, would have been 19 ft. 3 in., the dimensions of the old church.
For stone screenwork, supposed to have belonged to Allestree church,
see _supra_.
Ashbourne.—The eastern aisle of the north transept is screened off from
the rest of the transept and from the chancel, to form the Cockayne
chapel. The screen, which runs from north to south, is divided by a
column into two sections. The northern section is 14 ft. 3 in. long,
and comprises eight compartments, including the entrance; the southern
section is 14 ft. 8½ in. long, and comprises nine compartments. The
section of the parclose which runs from west to east is 19 ft. long,
and comprises eleven and a half compartments, including the gates,
which open into the chancel. The total height of the screen is 8 ft.
10 in., the compartments varying in centring from 1 ft. 6 in. to 1 ft.
10½ in. The tracery in the heads (rectagonal in formation) measures 13½
in. deep at the deepest. The openings in the north to south section
are 65 in. high, the lower part 3 ft. high; the openings in the west
to east section 68 in. high, the lower part 33 in. high. Immediately
below the rail, which is embattled, runs a horizontal panel of pierced
quatrefoil tracery to the depth of 8½ inches. The screen is surmounted
by a moulded cornice, with a cavetto, occupied at intervals by square
pateras. The muntins are buttressed. The whole is of Perpendicular
design of about the middle of the fifteenth century. Each compartment
of the openings is protected by an iron stanchion and saddlebar; the
stanchions being obviously modern, with cast-iron fleur-de-lys finials.
The door which opens into the stair in the south-east pier of the
central tower is 1 ft. 7 in. wide by 5 ft 9 in. high to the crown of
its two centred arch. There is no sign of the door which opened into
the rood-loft, but the stair leads to a passage which runs round all
four sides of the tower at the crossing.
[Illustration: Ashover Church: Rood-Screen.]