BUILDING AFTER THE RESTORATION: CHURCHES
1. After the Reformation the churches, as we have said, were much
neglected for a long time. They were used in a different way from what
they had been in the Middle Ages--a great deal more was thought of
preaching and hearing sermons. People grew to be very particular as to
where they sat in church, and to have a seat in accordance with their
dignity and importance. =Pews= became very important things. Churches
were not heated in those days, though the services were very long, for
sermons often lasted for an hour or two. No doubt one reason for making
pews so high was to keep off draughts. The great people of the parish
seemed to try to outdo each other in the height of their pews. Some
of the grand pews had canopies to them, like old-fashioned four-post
bedsteads, and they were hung round with curtains. In later times they
even had fireplaces, with poker, tongs, and shovel all complete.
2. Gradually the whole floor-space got filled up with pews, some
square, some oblong, all shut in with doors, and with seats like
shelves running round them. The fashion of having pews shut in with
doors lasted for several centuries; indeed you may see them still in
some churches, though they are not nearly as high as they once were.
3. The churches needed repairs from time to time in the seventeenth
century, and a few, a very few, new ones were built. But money was not
spent upon them as it had been in the Middle Ages. They were patched up
and mended for the most part as cheaply as possible. In very few cases
was any attempt made to make them as beautiful as the houses which were
being built at the time.
4. After the Restoration there arose a great interest in =bells= and
bell-ringing. At the end of the seventeenth century a great many rings
of bells were hung in the old steeples and belfries, which had to be
altered to receive them.
5. The =monuments= set up in the churches in the reign of King
Charles II were somewhat smaller than they had been. They were often
=tablets= on the walls, ornamented with curious carvings of skulls and
cross-bones, cherubs' heads, curtains, and festoons of flowers and
fruits, often finely carved. You will not find in churchyards many
=grave-stones= or tombs of an earlier date than 1660. The =head-stones=
were then very small, and had little on them except "Here lyeth the
body of" so-and-so, and the date.
6. A great many churches were built in London after the Fire. They
were furnished with high pews, usually all of the same height, and
having doors. The wood-work, especially of the pulpit, reading-desk,
and organ-case, in these churches is mostly very fine. A celebrated
carver of this period was Grinling Gibbons, and he and his pupils did a
great deal of such work, both in churches and houses.
7. In other parts of the country Wren's work was imitated in some of
the new churches then built, and in some of the old ones which were
altered or rearranged. One of the best specimens of work done at this
time is to be seen at Whitchurch, in Middlesex.
8. Not very many new churches, however, were built until the beginning
of the nineteenth century, except in some of the towns which had grown
up from country villages. In and round London most of the villages
increased so much in size that the little old parish church was much
too small for the population. Galleries were put up in them in all
sorts of queer places, to provide more seats. More room still being
wanted, many churches were pulled down, and larger buildings set up.
9. The new churches of the latter part of the eighteenth and the early
years of the nineteenth centuries were simply big oblong rooms. The
outsides were often copies of parts of Grecian temples. They were
crowned with towers and spires somewhat like those on Wren's churches,
but not nearly so handsome.
10. Inside, the church was fitted up with a gallery running along
two sides and across one end. In the end gallery a big organ was
placed, and on either side of it, high up, near the ceiling, were
smaller galleries, one for the charity-school boys, the other for the
charity-school girls of the parish. The galleries and floor of the
church were filled with high pews. On the floor opposite the organ were
three huge boxes, rising one above the other. The lowest box was for
the parish clerk, the middle one was the reading-desk, and the highest
was the pulpit, which was often provided with a sounding-board, not
unlike an umbrella. The altar was in a little niche behind the pulpit.
Chapels were fitted up in much the same way.
11. Under all these churches and chapels were =vaults=, in which people
were buried, but not in the earth. The coffins were placed on shelves,
one above the other, round the vault. On the walls of the church above
were often =tablets= to the memory of people lying in the vaults below.
These, by the nineteenth century, were for the most part simply slabs
of white marble, with black or grey borders. There was hardly any
carving at all on them; only inscriptions or epitaphs, and texts.
12. The =churchyards= were used for burials, and by the middle of the
nineteenth century most of them were crowded with tombstones. In London
nearly all are now laid out as open spaces; many of the grave-stones
have quite disappeared, and those which remain are rapidly perishing.
13. When we remember that the churchyards of the old churches had
been used as burial-places in many cases since the early days of
Christianity, and even before that, we can easily grasp the fact that
the earth had been used over and over again for burials. About the
middle of the nineteenth century the nation came to the conclusion that
burials in churches and crowded town churchyards should no longer be
allowed. The practice was dangerous to the living. So =cemeteries= were
opened in districts away from the towns and homes of the people. Towns
have grown so fast that many of these cemeteries are now surrounded by
houses, and are the centres of big populations.
14. About the year 1840 interest began to be taken in the old English
styles of building, and a taste for =Gothic architecture= arose again.
Since that time places of worship of all descriptions have for the most
part been built in some sort of Gothic. When you read that such and
such a church or building is in the fourteenth or fifteenth century
style, you must understand that it is not a copy of a church built
in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but that its window-heads,
doorways, arches, and fittings are _in the style_ of the fourteenth or
fifteenth century. Most of these modern buildings are of brick, only
faced or dressed with stone. It is pretty safe to say that there is no
old church standing which was built entirely in the fourteenth century,
and has remained unaltered from that day to this.
15. In our towns almost every tower and spire which we see is a modern
building, though the _styles_ may vary from Norman to Perpendicular
and seventeenth century. Modern buildings, churches, halls, public
offices, and private houses are mostly imitations of the work of past
ages. There is no nineteenth-century style of English architecture.
Some day, perhaps, England may develop a new style of architecture,
such as the world has never yet seen, but at the present time we can
only copy and adapt the work of those who have gone before us.
=Summary.=--_Pews_ came much into use in churches after the
Reformation, and the sides were very high. In the seventeenth
century very few new churches were built, but many rings of
bells were placed in the towers. The _monuments_ became tablets,
ornamented with skulls, cross-bones, &c. The oldest _tombstones_
in churchyards are not earlier than 1660. In Wren's churches there
is much fine woodwork.
In the eighteenth century the new churches built were oblong
rooms, fitted up with galleries on three sides, having _high pews
and a tall pulpit_. Corpses were buried in _vaults_ under these
churches and chapels, but by the middle of the nineteenth century
burials in town churches and churchyards came to an end.
About 1840 a liking for _Gothic architecture_ revived, and the
churches and chapels since then have been built mostly in one or
other of the Gothic styles. The nineteenth century has no style of
architecture of its own.