v. CRUCIFORM PLAN

The ground-plan of the great Savoy hospital was cruciform, which is unusual. It would appear from the p122 following extract from Henry VII’s will, that he himself superintended the architectural design:—

“We have begoune to erecte, buylde and establisshe a commune Hospital . . . and the same we entende with Godd’s grace to finish, after the maner, fourme and fashion of a plat which is devised for the same, and signed with our hande.”

When completed, this was one of the most notable things of the metropolis. In 1520, some distinguished French visitors were entertained at a civic banquet. “In the afternoon, inasmuch as they desired amonge other things to see the hospital of Savoy and the king’s chapell at the monastery of Westminster, they were conueyed thither on horseback.”[82] The engraving (Pl. XIV) shows an imposing pile of buildings.

Hospital buildings were good of their kind, and the chapels were of the best that could be provided. In Leland’s eyes Burton Lazars had “a veri fair Hospital and Collegiate Chirch”; Worcester could show “an antient and fayre large Chappell of St. Oswald”; St. John’s, Bridgwater, was “a thing notable” even to that insatiable sight-seer. Of the finest examples, most have vanished. At St. Bartholomew’s the Great, Smithfield, however, a portion survives of those “honourable buildings of pity” which astonished twelfth-century onlookers; and the noble church and quadrangles of St. Cross, Winchester (Pl. VIII), show the scale upon which some were designed. The church of the Dunwich leper-house (Pl. XXVIII) was 107 feet in length. (Ground-plan, Archæologia, XII.) Part of the apse remains, showing a simple arcade of semicircular arches, the p123 chancel being ornamented with intersecting arches. A treatise of Queen Mary’s time describes this church as “a great one, and a fair large one, after the old fashion . . . but now greatly decayed.”[83]

[♦] PLATE XIV. SAVOY HOSPITAL, LONDON

(a) HOSPITAL BUILDINGS (c) CHAPEL

The most ancient, and, from an architectural point of view, one of the most interesting chapels remaining, is that of St. Bartholomew, Rochester; the domed apse with its own arch, writes the chaplain, is rare even in the earliest Norman churches. (Ground-plan, see Journal Arch. Assoc., XI.) Norman work may be seen in chapels at Sherburn, Gloucester and Stourbridge, and in the fine hospital-hall at High Wycombe. Beautiful specimens of the Early English style remain at St. Bartholomew’s, Sandwich; the Domus Dei, Portsmouth; and St. Edmund’s, Gateshead. The latter chapel, built by Bishop Farnham about 1247, is still in use, for the graceful ruin drawn by Grimm (Pl. XXX) has been restored. It is described in Boyle’s Guide to Durham:—“The west front has a deeply-recessed central doorway, flanked by two tiers of arcades, whilst over these is an upper arcade, the alternative spaces of which are pierced by lancet lights”, etc. The chapel at Bawtry has a fine Early English window and a handsome niche at the eastern end.

Among disused or misused chapels may be named St. Mary Magdalene’s, Gloucester; St. Laurence’s, Crediton; Stourbridge; Poor Priests’, Canterbury; St. Mary Magdalene’s, Durham; some, like the last-named, are beyond restoration. St. Bartholomew’s, Oxford, and St. James’, Tamworth, long desecrated or deserted, are now being restored as houses of prayer. St. Katherine’s, p124 Exeter, has recently been given to the Church Army, for the use of the destitute poor resorting to the Labour Home.

[♦ ] 23. CHAPEL OF ABBOT BEERE’S ALMSHOUSE, GLASTONBURY

(For interior see Fig. 25)

Ancient chapels remain attached to almshouses in the following places:—

Those of Wilton (St. John), Taddiport near Torrington, and Holloway near Bath, are now chapels-of-ease; that of St. John and St. James, Brackley, is used in connection with Grammar School and Parish Church; Roman Catholics worship in St. John’s, Northampton, and French Protestants use the Anglican liturgy in p125 St. Julien’s, Southampton; the chapel of the Domus Dei, Portsmouth, is part of the Garrison Church; St. Mark’s, Bristol, is the Lord Mayor’s Chapel; St. Edmund’s, Gateshead (Holy Trinity), and St. Cross, Winchester, are Parish Churches.

[♦] p126