§ 52. A nave like this would be broken up by a great variety of screen-work; for the clear vista from end to end and side to side of a building, so dear to the restorer of the middle of the nineteenth century, formed no part of the medieval ideal. A space, however, would be kept clear near the pulpit, which, at Ludlow, stood west of the first pier from the east of the north arcade. The stone pulpit at Cirencester is in much the same position; at Wolverhampton, it is on the south side of the nave; at Nantwich it is against the north-east pier; at Holy Trinity, Coventry, against the south-east pier of the central tower. The medieval pulpits of Devonshire stand just west of the rood screen; some, like Kenton, on the north; others, like Dartmouth, on the south side of the entrance. The sermon was hardly so prominent a feature in the services of the medieval church as it became at a later date; but many medieval pulpits remain, and those at Wolverhampton and Coventry, in particular, are imposing structures. The regular furniture of the nave was completed by the pulpit. However, there are some other features to notice. Each altar, or, at any rate, each of the more important altars, would have its own piscina: the chantries at the ends of the aisles sometimes had their own sedile or sedilia. On a bracket near, or in a niche behind each altar, would be a figure, carved and painted, of the saint to whom it was dedicated; and before certain altars where a light or lights were maintained there would be hanging lamps or stands for candles according to the endowment. Thomas Sibthorpe, when he founded his chapels at Beckingham, provided for lights before each altar: in the chantry certificates made under the chantry act of Edward VI, many notices are found of stocks of money by which lights were maintained to burn before specified altars. There would be a holy water stoup in the wall, on the right hand as one entered the church: often the stoup is found in the porch. In some of the Norfolk churches—Sall, Cawston, Aylsham, and Worstead are the best instances—the lower part of the tower is screened off from the nave, the screen supporting a floor which forms a ringers’ gallery. In the ringers’ gallery at Sall there is a kind of crane, by which the cover of the font, which stands close to the west end, is lifted. In a few churches, as at Weston-in-Gordano in Somerset, there are remains of a small gallery above the main doorway of the church. This is sometimes explained as a gallery used on Palm Sunday by the semi-chorus who joined in chanting the processional hymn. Such a gallery might be used by singers or minstrels on special occasions.

§ 53. The transepts, where they occur, were, as has already been said, used as chapels, or divided off into more than one chapel. Little need be said of the chapels on either side of the chancel, as the general arrangement of their altars and furniture was not very different from that of the chancel itself. The quire and chancel were divided from the nave by the rood screen. This important piece of furniture, usually of wood, but sometimes of stone, crossed the chancel arch from side to side; and was often continued, in churches where the chancel arch was omitted, across the west end of the chancel aisles. Where there was a chancel arch, the chancel chapels had their own screens. The rood screen was elaborately carved, and its lower panels were painted with figures of angels, saints, prophets, apostles, and other designs. The uprights dividing the panels were continued upwards on either side of open panels, sometimes treated as tall arched openings, at other times imitating the form of mullioned windows, and were framed into a plinth at the bottom, and a horizontal beam at the top. The central division of the screen was closed by folding doors: on either side of this entrance was sometimes, against the west side of the screen, an altar. At Ranworth in Norfolk the screen altars are enclosed by panels returned from the face of the screen: there are distinct traces of this arrangement at Weston-in-Gordano and other places; and, at Lapford and Swymbridge in Devon, there are large rectangular openings in the traceried panels of the upper part of the screens, across which painted cloths seem to have been stretched at the back of the side altars. Above the screen, with its floor-beams laid across the top, and attached to either face by a series of trusses which formed a deep coved and ribbed cornice to the screen, was the loft, gallery, or, as it was often called, the ‘solar.’ Sometimes, as at Montgomery and Llanwnog, the screen was double, the floor of the loft forming a roof to the space between. This upper story had a projecting parapet on either side, the front of which was divided into panels and painted. It was approached by a staircase, the position of which varied greatly. In churches with an aisleless chancel, the stair was contained in a turret to the north or south of the chancel arch, which was, if there was little room for it, sometimes built out into the adjacent chapel. At Dennington, however, where the loft was continued round the screens at the end of the nave aisles, the staircase is in the south wall of the south aisle. At Ropsley, near Grantham, the stair is in the outer wall of the north aisle, near the north-east corner; and the loft was approached by a bridge thrown across the end of the north aisle. In the aisleless church of Little Hereford, near Tenbury, where there is a very narrow chancel arch, the loft was approached by a straight stair in the thickness of the south half of the east wall: a right-angled turn at the top led straight into the loft. In churches with aisled chancels, the stair was commonly contained in a turret projecting from the outer side of the north or south wall, and there were lofts continued across all the screens of the chancel and its chapels. At Llywel in Breconshire, there is a fairly broad straight staircase at right angles to the loft, contained in a broad projection from the north wall of the aisleless nave: this was a favourite arrangement in Wales, and occurs at Patricio, and, in the more primitive form of a wooden stair within a projecting window, at Llanwnog in Montgomeryshire. Wooden stairs and even ladders to lofts were probably not unusual. At Totnes the chief approach to the loft of the stone screen was a stairway in a half-octagon, projecting into the north part of the chancel, from the head of which the way lay along the loft of the adjoining parclose screen. Few lofts, however, remain. The Totnes loft, which was of wood, is gone. Several Welsh lofts, owing, no doubt, to their remote position, escaped destruction when the general dismantling of rood lofts was carried out in the reign of Elizabeth. The most magnificent of these are at Patricio in Breconshire, Llanegryn in Merionethshire, Montgomery and Llanwnog in Montgomeryshire, and Llananno in Radnorshire. Less beautiful, but remarkable for the very perfect state of its painted back-board, is the loft at Llanelieu in Breconshire. But in remote English places, such as Blackawton, near Dartmouth, Cotes-by-Stow in Lincolnshire, and Hubberholm in west Yorkshire, lofts are left in a fair state of perfection.

Fig. 17. Banwell, Somerset: rood screen.

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§ 54. The use of the loft was, it has often been said, for the deacon to sing the gospel from at high mass on great festivals. This was certainly the case with the stone pulpita above the quire screens of collegiate and monastic churches. But, in most parish churches the stair was so narrow and inconvenient that certainly the vestments and probably the temper of the deacon who attempted to climb it would be easily spoiled. In many lofts, it is true, there was an altar. The piscina of one remains in a few churches, as at Little Hereford: there was a chantry founded in 1349 at one in Grantham church, where the screen was a large one of stone. But the habitual use of the loft was as an organ gallery; and the fine screen at Newark-on-Trent still has at its east side the rectangular projection which was occupied by a ‘pair of organs.’ The rood itself, the great cross bearing the figure of our Lord with statues of St Mary and St John upon either side, stood upon a beam which crossed the chancel arch above the loft. The beam was, of course, painted, and, in addition to the statues which it carried, bore sockets for candles, which were lighted on festival occasions. The corbels which supported rood beams are sometimes seen: beams themselves, however, do not often remain. There is a finely painted example of one at Tunstead in Norfolk; and another remains at Cullompton in Devon. Here and there, where the beam was fixed in the wall, and had to be sawn away, the end may still be seen. Some screens had no loft: in these cases the rood frequently stood upon the top of the screen. In some cases, as at Llanelieu in Breconshire and Wenhaston in Suffolk, the rood and its attendant figures were fixed upon a painted board which formed a back to the loft, and filled the upper part of the chancel arch. In other places, as at Hickleton, near Doncaster, and Llanbedr-ystrad-yw, they were fixed against the wall above the chancel arch. This would be the case where, as at Hickleton, the arch was low and narrow, and there was no room for a separate beam beneath it. No piece of church furniture is more interesting than the rood screen and its accompaniments: the variety of local design and of its arrangements, and the great beauty of the finished work, make it, of all special topics of ecclesiology, perhaps the most attractive.

§ 55. It has been said before that the hooks by which the Lenten veil was suspended across the chancel arch are still to be seen in several churches. The western part of the chancel was occupied by the quire, whose stalls were returned along the back of the screen, the rector’s stall being the end return stall on the south side. Quire stalls in parish churches were often carved with great refinement and beauty: the stalls at Walpole St Peter have each a stone canopy, formed by recessing panels in the chancel wall. The finest stalls, with their hinged seats, rightly called misericords, and wrongly misereres, are usually to be found in collegiate or chantry churches, like Higham Ferrers or Ludlow, where the chantry priests of the Palmers’ guild said their offices together in the high chancel. The stalls of the chantry college at Fotheringhay are now in the churches of Tansor and Benefield; the quire stalls of St Mary’s at Nottingham are in the suburban church of Sneinton. An excellent instance of the combination of stalls and rood screen is found in the village church of Ashby St Ledgers, near Daventry, which contains a large amount of old woodwork. In the centre of the quire or, as a gospel-desk, on the north side of the altar would stand the lectern. The number of medieval lecterns remaining in England is not great, the finest being the great brass lectern given by provost Hacomblen to King’s college, Cambridge. Lecterns in which the desk takes the form of a bird are sometimes found, as in Norwich cathedral and at Ottery St Mary.

§ 56. When interest was first revived in ecclesiology, the fashion of raising the quire and chancel above the rest of the church, by a number of steps intended to be symbolical, became very prevalent. This, however, was not in keeping with medieval practice. It is true that occasionally chancels were raised high above the rest of the church. At Walpole St Peter the chancel, rebuilt in the fifteenth century, was brought up to the churchyard boundary, and apparently interfered with a right of way which led round the back of the old chancel. It was therefore built with a floor raised high above the nave, and the right of way was preserved by piercing an arch below. St Leonard’s at Exeter has a chancel built over an archway which affords access to a narrow street. A church built on a slope, like Tansor, ascends noticeably from west to east. But the ascent is contrived, not by means of flights of steps, but by an inclined plane. As a rule, floors of churches sloped slightly upwards towards the altar. A perfectly level floor gives the false effect in perspective of a downward slope: a floor, on the other hand, with a gradual upward slope has a level effect. The floor of the quire was sometimes elevated by a single shallow step above the floor of the nave: very generally, it was on the same level: at St Michael’s, Cambridge, the level was slightly lower. The chancel, again, was a step higher than the quire, and the altar stood slightly raised upon its own oblong altar pace. The levels at Geddington in Northamptonshire remain much as they were. The quire is on a level with the nave: the chancel is a pace higher, and the altar stands upon its own pace. An inscription round the foot of the chancel wall records the making of the pavement (now renewed) and the scabella, by which the foot-paces are almost certainly implied, of the altar in 1369. Round the lower foot-pace of the south chapel is another inscription, apparently of the same date. In no respect have modern restorations been so disastrous as in the altering of original levels, in order to give the altar the elevation which was supposed by the restorers to be necessary.