tomb of bishop hamo de hythe
(from a drawing by r. j. beale).
The Organ Screen, at the head of the flight of ten steps by which the higher level of the choir is reached, has had its face towards the nave decorated recently, in memory of the late Dean Scott, joint compiler of the famous lexicon. The four figures on each side of the original fourteenth century doorway, represent, in order from the left, St. Andrew, King Ethelbert, St. Justus, St. Paulinus, Bishop Gundulf, the sacrist William de Hoo, Bishop Walter de Merton, and Cardinal John Fisher. The whole was designed by Mr. John Pearson, R.A., and the statues were executed, in Weldon stone, by Mr. Hitch. The work is careful, but it is amusing to notice that in the model held by Gundulf, and presumably intended for his own church, there appears the great Perpendicular window, now so prominent in the west front.
Sir Gilbert Scott had, with archæological correctness, left this side of the screen bare. It was kept so originally on account of the position before it of the other screen, the one against which St. Nicholas’ altar stood. Earlier attempts than the present one have, however, been made to ornament it. In 1730 an order was given for the face towards the nave to be wainscoted, and in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for October, 1798, we read a criticism of some work then just carried out. We are told of pointed arches and tracery merely punched out, of crockets and finials barely hinted without any fine forms or beautiful relief, and of the lack of any “deep-shadowed infinity of mouldings.”
The Choir is entered through the iron gates in the central doorway of the screen. The height of its floor above that of the nave is due to the splendid crypt on which it stands. It is all, excepting one or two features which we must point out later, in the Early English style, and was finished early in the thirteenth century.
Very noticeable to everyone coming into this part of the church is the great, some think excessive, use made of the famous dark marble from the quarries of Purbeck, in the vaulting and other shafts, in their bands, and in the string-courses that divide the stories. These, though now so dull, will admit of a high polish, but, unfortunately, do not retain it long. A small specimen in the south choir transept shows how beautiful the polished stone is. Polishing would probably also relieve them of their present rather heavy effect. The shafts generally spring from the ground, from bases of the coarser Petworth or Bethersden marble, and some of them have caps of hard stone. Above the choir stalls the main groups of vaulting shafts rise from finely carved brackets, of which two are here illustrated (pp. [88], [91]), and the intermediate single ones from carved corbel heads, all of the same fine material as the shafts themselves. Some of these ornaments were, when uncovered in 1840, “very skilfully restored in mastic by Mr. Hamerton, a sculptor in the employ of Mr. Cottingham.”
the choir screen: dean scott memorial
(from a drawing by r. j. beale).