Repton and its neighbourhood

by F. C. Hipkins

The square-headed south window of the “Fynderne Chapel” composed of four lights, with two rows of trefoil and quatrefoil tracery in its upper part, is worthy of notice as a good specimen of this style, and was probably inserted about the time of the completion of the tower and spire. The other windows in the church of one, two, three, and four lights, are very simple examples of this period, and, like the chancel arch, have very little pretensions to architectural merit, in design at least.

The Perpendicular Style is represented by the clerestory windows of two lights each, the roof of the church, and the south porch.

The high-pitched roof of the earlier church was lowered—the pitch is still indicated by the string-course on the eastern face of the tower—the walls over the arcades were raised several feet from the string-course above the arches, and the present roof placed thereon. It is supported by eight tie-beams, with ornamented spandrels beneath, and wall pieces which rest on semi-circular corbels on the north side, and semi-octagonal corbels on the south side. The space above the tie-beams, and the principal rafters is filled with open work tracery. Between the beams the roof is divided into six squares with bosses of foliage at the intersections of the rafters.

The south porch, with its high pitched roof, and vestry, belongs to this period. It had a window on either side, and was reached from the south aisle by a spiral staircase (see plan of church).

The Debased Style began, at Repton, during the year 1719, and ended about the year 1854. In the year 1719 a singers’ gallery was erected at the west end of the church, and the arch there was bricked up.

In the year 1779 the crypt was “discovered” in a curious way. Dr. Prior, Headmaster of Repton School, died on June 16th of that year, a grave was being made in the chancel, when the grave-digger suddenly disappeared from sight: he had dug through the vaulted roof, and so fell into the crypt below! In the south-west division of the groined roof, a rough lot of rubble, used to mend the hole, indicates the spot.

During the year 1792 “a restoration” of the church took place, the church was re-pewed, in the “horse-box” style! All the beautifully carved oak work “on pews and elsewhere” which Stebbing Shaw describes in the Topographer (May, 1790), and many monuments were cleared out, or destroyed. Some of the carved oak found its way into private hands, and was used to panel a dining-room, and a summer-house. Some of the carved panels have been recovered, and can be seen in the vestry over the south porch. One of the monuments which used to be on the top of an altar tomb “at the upper end of the north aisle,” was placed in the crypt, where it still waits a more suitable resting-place. It is an effigy of a Knight in plate armour (circa Edward III.), and is supposed to be Sir Robert Francis, son of John Francis, of Tickenhall, who settled at Foremark. If so, Sir Robert was the Knight who, with Sir Alured de Solney, came to the rescue of Bishop Stretton in 1364, and is an ancestor of the Burdetts, of Foremark.

The crypt seems to have been used as a receptacle for “all and various” kinds of “rubbish” during the restoration, for, in the year 1802, Dr. Sleath found it nearly filled up, as high as the capitals, with portions of ancient monuments, grave-stones, &c., &c. In the corner, formed by north side of the chancel and east wall of the north aisle, a charnel, bone, or limehouse had been placed in the Middle Ages: this house was being cleaned out by Dr. Sleath’s orders, when the workmen came upon the stone steps leading down to the crypt, following them down they found the doorway, blocked up by “rubbish,” this they removed, and restored the crypt as it is at the present day.

During the years 1842 and 1848 galleries in the north and south aisles, extending from the west as far as the third pillars, were erected.