Sherborne
The stalls at Hereford St Peter and Stowlangtoft are illustrated to shew that not only monastic and cathedral churches, but parish churches also possessed abundance of fine stallwork. Stowlangtoft is a remote Suffolk village; but possesses a magnificent set of the original carved benches in the nave and stalls in the chancel ([91]). The woodwork is probably of the
date of the church, which seems to have been rebuilt late in the fourteenth or early in the following century; the Hereford church is a town church; its stalls appear to be well on in the fifteenth century ([89]).
In Bristol cathedral the stalls consist of a range of traceried panels surmounted by a horizontal coved cornice. There are now twenty-eight stalls. They bear the arms and initials of Abbot Elyot (1515-1526).
At St David's a totally new departure occurs in stall design; the motif now being clearly taken from an oak screen surmounted by a parapetted loft ([109]). In the fourteenth century stalls illustrated the ogee arch was the characteristic feature; in the fifteenth century the fashion was to take an elongated ogee arch, and truncate it, employing only the upper portion with the concave curve; these semi-ogees occur everywhere both in stone and wood; they are well seen at St David's in the backing of the stalls. This work has superseded that which was ordered to be put up in 1342 by Bishop Gower, only one fragment of which remains; it was found above the present canopy and consisted of a finialled ogee canopy, agreeing nearly in detail and character with those portions of the Bishop's throne which are of Gower's time.[[23]] The present stalls, misericords, stall backs and canopy are all fifteenth century work; on the dean's stall (in this cathedral, as nowadays at Southwell, the bishop was also dean) are the arms of Bishop Tully (1460-1481), and on the Treasurer's stall is the name of POLE, who was treasurer in the bishop's latter days. The parapets above cannot have been added till the sixteenth century; for they terminate to the east in scrolls of the form common in cinquecento work.
CHAPTER IV
TABERNACLED STALLS
In the latter years of the fourteenth century we come to a new form of stall design; one in which the English carvers won their greatest triumphs, and which became the standard and typical design for English stalls. It is seen in the magnificent tabernacled stalls of Lincoln, Chester, Nantwich, Carlisle, Windsor, St Asaph, Ripon, Manchester, Westminster, Beverley and Durham. To distinguish this group, we may term it "stallwork with tabernacled canopies," or, more shortly, "tabernacled stalls." Though new, it is, like all design, based on earlier models. At Ely ([37]) two distinct and conflicting designs are combined; to those two the Lincoln carvers gave unity ([17]). The stallwork at Ely is in two stories; but they are not correlated in any way. The upper story consists of canopied niches, now containing figures, formerly probably occupied by paintings. At Lincoln the lower story was omitted, reducing the elevation to a single story; while the niches of the Ely upper story were brought low down, and made to enshrine the vested canons below. The Lincoln niches, however, are of more elaboration than those of Ely; in the latter each niche was fronted by three straight-sided pediments; in the former the pediments are hollow-sided, and in front of each is a bowing ogee arch. Then these niches are repeated above, except that each niche is single instead of being triple, and enshrines a statuette of wood, and is flanked by window tracery. Moreover, above each upper niche, as at Ely, rises a lofty spirelet with crockets and finials, encircled by a coronal of ogee gables and flanked by tall slender pinnacles, themselves also ornamented with miniature niches, crockets and finials. Also the upper portions of the shafts below are niched, crocketed and battlemented. Thus the Ely design becomes thoroughly harmonious and at one with itself.