Warwickshire: The Land of Shakespeare

by Clive Holland

William and Adam built the tower,
Ann and Mary built the spire;

William and Adam built the church,
Ann and Mary built the quire.

Strange to relate, the tower was the first part of the church to be commenced, and this, finished in 1394, had its cost defrayed by the two brothers we have mentioned, who made yearly payments for the purpose of £100. Thirty–eight years later the spire was commenced by the sisters Ann and Mary, but the date of its completion is uncertain. Two years after the commencement of the spire these benevolent women undertook the building of the central aisle.

The tower is built in four stages, and has a height of 136 feet; the two upper stages are pierced with windows and beautified with panelling and canopied niches, which contain a considerable number of figures; the latter are a somewhat cosmopolitan collection, made up chiefly of saints, but also comprising statuettes of members of the Botoner family we have before referred to, Lady Godiva, her husband, and several English kings and their wives. The flying buttresses supporting the tower are of very great beauty and grace, two springing from each pinnacle of the main tower and resting against the angles of the octagonal lantern, above which rises the beautiful spire to a further height of 130 feet, the total elevation of the whole being just over 300 feet.

Although the spire is still of great beauty much of the detail of the original ornamentation has unfortunately disappeared, owing to the soft nature of the stone used in its construction.

The total length of the church is 293 feet, with a greatest width of 127 feet, the nave being 50 feet in height. The interior, with its long range of slender columns in the nave, and the number of large windows and the fine timbered roof, has a very beautiful effect. The chapels of the various Guilds now form the north and south outer aisles, and still go by the names which they bore at the time the members of these various organisations were in the habit of worshipping in them.

Beginning with those on the south side, next the tower, the first is the Dyers’ Chapel, on the walls of which are some interesting monuments dating from the early years of the seventeenth century onwards. Next comes the Cappers’ Room, over the south porch, with the chapel devoted to the same Guild, and known as St. Thomas’, on the east side. The Mercers’ Chapel, near by, also contains some interesting monuments of the sixteenth century, worthy of attention as marking, both in their style and the inscriptions they bear, the florid spirit of the times. From this chapel a flight of steps leads down into the vestry, an extension of the ancient sacristy, which tradition asserts was used sometimes as a prison; carved on the wall of which is a crucifix, supposed to be the work of some prisoner confined for an ecclesiastical offence.

The apse of the church, formerly the Lady Chapel, contains nothing of any great note save the fragments of ancient stained glass collected from various windows in other portions of the church, now placed in a few of those of the apse.

The reredos is partly Early English, and partly Decorated in style, and the eastern compartments contain some good sculpture. The Drapers’ Chapel, which is situated in the north aisle, is of considerable artistic interest, as it contains thirteen stalls which have finely carved standards and misereres or folding seats, the under portions of which are ornamented with humorous designs. On the north wall of the chapel is an ancient brass, dating about 1506, to the memory of Thomas Bond, Mayor of Coventry in 1497, and founder of the Bablake Hospital. Next is St. Lawrence’s Chapel, followed by the Girdlers’ Chapel; and last of all the Smiths’ or St. Andrew’s Chapel, containing some interesting tombs removed from their original position in the Drapers’ Chapel.

The pulpit, though a fine one, is modern; but the font at the west end of the chancel is in all probability the one given by John Cross, then Mayor of Coventry, to the church in 1394; it bears on a small brass plate a shield containing four crosses, the ancient merchants’ mark.