Fig. 1211.—King’s College Chapel. Tower, from South-East.
Fig. 1212.—King’s College Chapel. Upper Part of Tower.
The interior is divided by a wooden screen of very rich carved work, the central portion of which (Fig. [1210]) is about 9 feet 7 inches wide, with
Fig. 1213.—King’s College Chapel. Plan of Crown.
double folding doors about 5 feet 9 inches wide by 7 feet 3 inches high. The side portions of the screen within the choir form a continuation of the canopied stalls occupying each side of the choir. Owing to the circumstance of the nave having been fitted up as a library, the ancient arrangement of the screen with its rood loft, ambone, and altars on the nave side were destroyed. Dr. Macpherson, in the paper already referred to, has by illustrations and description traced its original construction, and to this the reader is referred.
The tower at the south-west corner (Fig. [1211]) is not quite square, measuring over the walls about 29 feet from north to south, and about 4 feet less from east to west. It has massive corner buttresses, with numerous stepped intakes towards the top, similar to the buttresses of the chapel, being a style of buttress of very frequent occurrence in Scottish late churches, as, for example, at Stirling Church. The tower is finished with one of the few crown steeples remaining in Scotland, being, with that of St. Giles’, Edinburgh, and the Tolbooth, Glasgow, the only three surviving of those which we could at one time boast. The general style of the structure is very similar to that of St. Giles’, but in this case there are only four arches thrown from the angles of the tower to the central lantern (Fig. [1213]), while in the case of St. Giles’ there are eight, which produce a fuller and richer effect. The tower (see Fig. [1211]) is about 63 feet in height to the top of the battlements. From that point to the base of the lantern pillars (Fig. [1212]) is about 15 feet 9 inches, from whence to the top of the cross is about 20 feet. The total height is thus about 99 feet.[120]