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§ 43. Medieval sacristies attached to chancels, and especially to aisleless chancels, are common, and are in most cases on the north side, with a door in the north wall close to the altar. Good examples of an ordinary kind are at Islip and Aldwinkle St Peter in Northants. There is a fourteenth century sacristy at Willingham, near Cambridge, with a vaulted ceiling. The vaulted vestry at Burford is of the fifteenth century. Sometimes the sacristy contained an altar, as at Claypole and Westborough, between Newark and Grantham; and it is probable that the sacristies of several of the beautiful chancels already alluded to, as at Hawton, had their altars, which might be used occasionally for mass, but would in any case be useful for laying out and folding up vestments before and after service. The sacristy at Heckington is of two stories, the lower probably intended to be a bone-hole. At Halsall there is a handsome doorway, west of the founder’s tomb, through which a chantry chapel is entered: this may have been a sacristy in the first instance. Large sacristies of two, and even three stories are found. The upper room or solar, as at Raunds in Northants, Wath, near Ripon, and other places, was sometimes provided with a window opening into the chancel, and may have served, like the solar of the south porch at Grantham, as the treasury of the church and a room for the deacon or church watcher. But that these upper rooms may have been provided as extra chantry chapels is also probable. The very interesting vestry building between Peterhouse and its appropriated church of Little St Mary’s at Cambridge seems to have contained the chantry chapel of John Warkworth, master of Peterhouse, on its upper floor: there is also a piscina in the small lower sacristy, which stands above a bone-hole. The originally very similar building between St Benet’s church and Corpus appears to have had chantry chapels on both floors. Perhaps the best example of a two-storied sacristy is the semi-octagonal building, vaulted on both floors, at the east end of the north chancel aisle at Long Sutton, Lincolnshire. This is an exceptional situation; but there was no fixed place for the sacristy. Often, as at Darlington or as the vaulted vestry at Rushton, Northants, it is on the south side of the chancel. In certain places, as at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, and Lavenham in Suffolk, it projects from the east wall of the church, below the east window, and is entered by a doorway at one or both sides of the altar. Sometimes, again, as at Sawley and Tideswell in Derbyshire, the altar was brought forward from the east wall, and provided with a stone screen wall or reredos, the space between which and the east wall became the sacristy. A similar screening off of the east end of an aisle is found, for example, at Rushden and Higham Ferrers in Northants: in these cases, it has been effected without interfering, as at Tansor, with the proper spacing of the aisle.

§ 44. Three features which are specially noticeable in the planning of the aisleless chancel may be mentioned here. The first is the very usual provision of squints, or oblique piercings, through the backs of the responds of the chancel arch. One object of these was to enable the priest, celebrating at the aisle altar, to see what was going on at the high altar, if his mass happened to coincide with or overlap another service. They would also be of use to the ringer of the sanctus bell, when the bell-cote was above the chancel arch, and the rope hung down at the side, out of sight of the altar. The second point is the occurrence of a separate door, for the use of the priest, in the south wall of the chancel: this was provided in a very large number of cases, and, though usually small, was often treated with some architectural dignity. At Trunch in Norfolk it is covered by a small porch. The third point, which has been the cause of much controversy, is the presence of a window, usually in the south wall of the chancel, and near its west end, the level of which is generally just above the back of the chancel stalls. This is known as a ‘low side’ window. These windows are not confined to chancels, nor to one side of the chancel only: sometimes, as at Acaster Malbis, near York, and Burton Lazars in Leicestershire, they are on both sides of the chancel; here and there, as at Gretton, Northants, on the north side only. Their design also varies. Not infrequently separate windows, they are formed quite as often by lowering the sill of a single-light or two-light window, and cutting off the lower from the upper part by a transom or cross mullion. Where this arrangement was adopted, the upper part of the window was glazed, but the lower portion seems generally to have been closed by shutters. Many fanciful explanations, which have little foundation in common sense, have been given for the use of these windows. Most popular has been the idea that they were used by lepers, who could not take part in the common services of the church, but could assist at mass and even be communicated through these windows. This fancy disregards the sanitary precautions of the middle ages, which were excellent and plentiful. We may well believe that the people of Burton Lazars would have been horrified, if they had seen, one Sunday morning at mass, their two low side windows darkened by sufferers from the dreadful disease, for whom a hospital with its chapel was carefully provided in their own village. A very widely accepted theory is that low side windows were used in connexion with the consecration of the elements at mass: a small hand-bell may have been rung at the window, so as to be heard outside the church, especially where the village lay on the south side. Churches are comparatively few in which, as at March or Walpole St Peter, a special cot was provided for a sanctus bell above the chancel arch. At Hawstead in Suffolk a sanctus bell remains in position on the inner side of the chancel screen. In the aisleless church of Preen in Shropshire, where the chancel, belonging to a small cell of monks, a colony from Wenlock, was divided by a screen from the parochial nave, there is a low side window in the north wall, just west of the place where the screen originally stood with an altar against it. The window has a lowered sill, with a stone seat on either side; and its position suggests that it may have been used for the above purpose. A seat at the window, as at Morpeth, would have been useful for the server who rang the bell; but some think that it may have been used by the priest in hearing confessions. The common explanation of any unfamiliar object in a church is that it had to do with confession; and one therefore hesitates to adopt a solution of the difficulty which is so open to suspicion. But there are certainly windows which are recessed too deeply to allow of the sanctus bell being audible through them, and no existing example affords any real convenience for confessions. It is difficult, moreover, to explain, on the sanctus bell or confession hypotheses, why, at Othery in Somerset, there should be not merely a low side window in the south chancel wall, but a corresponding opening through the south-east buttress of the central tower, evidently planned in relation to the window. Also why, in some examples, is there a hook, as though for a hanging lamp, in the soffit of the window-head? Cases of this kind have been explained, with much learning, by the possible use of the ‘low side’ window as a place for a lamp, which was hung there to frighten evil spirits from the churchyard, and could be trimmed from the outside by merely opening the shutters. To those who know anything of medieval thought, this is not unlikely. No explanation yet advanced is wholly satisfactory. The difference of opinion leads to the conclusion that the use of the low side window was not one and invariable, and that it may have been intended for more than one use, but the sanctus bell hypothesis appears to fit the largest number of cases. The fact that cots for sanctus bells are, as a rule, comparatively late additions to buildings, should be taken into account in considering the use of the low side window. In our own day, it often serves the very practical purpose of giving additional light to the west end of a very dark chancel; but this can hardly have been its original object.

Fig. 13. Wensley, Yorkshire: chancel and S. aisle from S.E., shewing low side window.

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