§ III. OF LEAD COVERINGS TO BUILDINGS.
Sheeting buildings with decorative plates of metal has been one of man’s architectural instincts. M. Chipiez, in his essay on the origins of Greek architecture, considers first:—“The temple, metallic or covered with metal, which obtained in Medea, Judaea, and in Asia Minor. Greek writers like Pausanias speak of edifices having been constructed of brass; such was the legendary temple of Apollo at Delphi, that of Athena Calkhioecos in Sparta, and the treasury of Myron, tyrant of Sicyon. In the Eneid the temple erected at Carthage by the Phœnician Dido is also of brass.” From Homer to the Arabian Nights and the mediæval romance writers, a metal-cased architecture, shining with gold, has been preeminently the architecture of the poets.
It would almost seem as if in the Merovingian age Western Europe passed through the phase of a metal-cased architecture, but in this case it was lead that formed the external vestment—an architecture of lead. “Under the Merovingian kings,” says M. Viollet-le-Duc, “they covered entire edifices, churches, or palaces, in lead. St. Eloi is said to have so covered the church of St. Paul des Champs with sheets of lead artistically wrought.”
In England Bede mentions a parallel instance. Finian the successor of St. Aidan in the See of Lindisfarne built a church after the manner of the Scots of hewn oak with a thatched roof; afterwards “Eadbert also bishop of that place (638) took off the thatch and covered it both roof and walls with lead.”
The exaggerated lead roofs of the early mediæval churches in England were in nowise dictated by utilitarian considerations. The creeping of the lead on steep surfaces, the many burnings, and the great expense in large churches which would take literally acres of lead, made maintenance a burden, but they liked this metal casing, and that was enough.
This is still more evident in the mediæval delight in the tall leaded spires, not in their aspect as mere roof coverings, but intrinsically as metal shrines, looking on them with their decorations as vast pieces of goldsmith’s tabernacle work. The steep pitch of the roof of the main building when applied to a square tower quite naturally produced leaded spires. These already appear in the drawing made of Canterbury Cathedral about the year 1160. That these metal-sheeted spires were the best loved form, and that stone was adopted at last but as a truce with fire is proved by the spires of lead which appear in the wall paintings (those that were at St. Stephen’s for instance), in the MSS., and by the splendid leaded spire of St. Paul’s which we shall speak of below. The spire so treated is not a mere roof, or a cheap substitute for stone, but takes its place in metal-cased architecture, as do also the leaded Byzantine domes of St. Sophia and St. Mark’s.
In that most splendid work of the English renaissance, the palace of Nonsuch, which was begun by Henry VIII. in 1538, the structure was what we call half-timber, the panels were filled with coloured and gilt reliefs by Italian modellers, and the timber framing is described by Pepys, who visited it in 1665, as sheeted with lead. This casing we may be sure was covered with delicate Italian arabesques. His words are, “One great thing is that most of the house is covered, I mean the posts and quarters in the walls, with lead and gilded.”