In 1697 the choir of St Paul's cathedral was opened for public worship. The stalls differ considerably in type from those of Pre-Reformation days, as it was necessary to provide seats for the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London as well as closets at the back to accommodate the wives and families of the canons. By the removal of the western screen in the time of Dean Melvill, appointed 1856, the appearance of the choir has been completely changed. The exquisite carvings of Grinling Gibbons, says Dean Milman,[[44]] are not merely admirable in themselves, but in perfect harmony with the character of the architecture. He even goes so far as to say that they rival, if they do not surpass, all mediæval works of their class in grace, variety and richness; and keep up an inimitable unison of the lines of the building and the decoration. In the words of Horace Walpole, "there is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, and changed together the various productions of the elements with a fine disorder natural to each species." It is doubtful whether Grinling Gibbons was of Dutch or English birth. He was discovered by Evelyn in a poor solitary thatched house near Sayes Court carving a Crucifixion after Tintoretto. In this piece more than a hundred figures were introduced; "nor was there anything in nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it; and yet the work was strong." He asked Evelyn £100 for it. The frame, says Evelyn, was worth as much. Evelyn introduced "the incomparable young man" to the King and to Wren, and his fortune was made. Malcolm in his Londinium Redivivum calculates that the payments made to Gibbons for his work in St Paul's amounted altogether to £1,337. 7s. 5d.[[45]]
Space fails to tell of many noble examples of eighteenth century stallwork.[[46]] In spite of an enormous amount of destruction, e.g., by the vandals in charge of Canterbury cathedral, much still remains and awaits the historian. A fine drawing of the stallwork put up in 1704 in Canterbury choir will be found in Dart's Canterbury. The throne, carved by Grinling Gibbons, was given by Archbishop Tenison; the pulpit, two of the stalls and other fittings by Queen Mary II.;[[47]] all this has been swept away, except some pieces worked into the return stalls, to make way for stalls of the usual brand of Victorian Gothic.
CHAPTER VI
STALLS IN PARISH CHURCHES
| Sall | Trunch |
Stalls are found, but rarely with canopies, in many parochial, as well as in monastic, collegiate and cathedral churches. In the latter of course the object of them is obvious; they were intended to accommodate a large body of monks or canons with their vicars and the choristers. But they are found sometimes in the churches of quite small parishes, e.g., Sall, Trunch, Ludham, Burlingham St Edmund's in Norfolk, Weston-in-Gordano, Somerset, Norton in Suffolk, Ivychurch[[48]] in Romney Marsh, where it is pretty certain that in most cases the church was served by a single parish priest merely. At Ingham, a parish in the Norfolk Broads, there are ten stalls in the chancel; at Stowlangtoft, Suffolk, there are six stalls; and so with numerous others. How early parochial chancels had stalls is difficult to say. No existing examples are earlier than the thirteenth century. But a curious fact about the growth of our parish churches, to
which attention has not hitherto been directed, may throw some light on the subject. In early Anglo-Saxon days the normal and most common type of parish church was one which had an aisleless nave and chancel. In early Norman days also this was the most common type. In all the above churches, whether Anglo-Saxon or Norman, the chancel, whether rectangular or apsidal, was quite small. Comparatively few, however, of these chancels remain small. In the vast majority of cases they have been enlarged. Either the old chancel has been retained but has been lengthened, or it has been broadened as well as lengthened, thus producing an entirely new chancel. In most cases it happened that, in the long history of the church, aisles were thrown out afterwards, or transepts, that later the nave was lengthened westwards and was heightened to accommodate clerestory windows, and still later a western tower was added and perhaps a spire. But the enlargement of the chancel sometimes took place without any of the other alterations, and where that is so, i.e., where the church retains a comparatively small nave, the enlarged chancel bulks up very lofty and spacious, seemingly quite out of scale to the rest of the church: in some examples the chancel is actually loftier than the nave. A church with a chancel so disproportionate strikes the attention at once as one demanding explanation. Large numbers of such abnormally big chancels survive. In Kent and Sussex many of them are of the thirteenth century; e.g., Littlebourne; while over England one is struck with the very large number of lofty and spacious chancels of the fourteenth century; e.g., Norbury, Derbyshire; Oulton, Suffolk. In numerous cases the enlargements of the chancel took place more than once. At Boston the church was rebuilt with a fine chancel c. 1330; but by the end of the century even this vast chancel was judged inadequate, and it was extended still further to the east.