George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

The church appears to have consisted at first of a chancel, nave with north and south aisles, western tower with the aisles prolonged on either side of it, and western porch. The only subsequent additions were, in the fourteenth century, a small vestry on the north side of the east bay of the chancel, and in the sixteenth century the Wilshyre chantry, in the space between the vestry and the east wall of the north aisle. In the fourteenth century (probably during the bishopric of Haymo de Hethe) the windows at the west end of the nave and aisles, and that in the west bay of the south wall, were inserted; and at the same time the tower-piers were altered. Probably they were, like the other piers throughout the church, exceedingly delicate, and were thought to be not sufficiently solid to carry the weight of the steeple; but at any rate it is clear that the piers, with their capitals, are not earlier than circa A.D. 1350, whilst the arches have earlier mouldings, and are of the same character as the rest of the church. It was at the same time that additional support was given to the eastern piers of the tower, by the addition of bold flying buttresses, spanning the aisles, and visible only on the inside of the church. The staircase to the tower, placed against the south-west angle, appears to me to have been added at the same time; whilst the upper part of the tower retains nothing but poor fifteenth-century work, and was probably entirely rebuilt at that time, if, indeed, it is not a work of the seventeenth century, undertaken after the fire which melted the bells, in A.D. 1638.

No other alteration was made in the church before the Reformation, and in 1638 the church suffered from the fire caused by lightning, mentioned by Hasted and in the Petitions to Parliament. The roofs throughout must have been burned, and, covered as they were with shingle,[67] it is not surprising that when once set on fire no part of them was saved. Traces of the fire are very evident, particularly on the stones of the tower arches, which are reddened by its action. We found also in the upper part of the aisle walls portions of molten lead, which had run into the interstices of the stone work at the time of the fire. The Petitions of the Parishioners of Stone give most exact information as to what happened before and after the fire; from them we learn (1) that before the fire the stone groined roof existed on the chancel, but was much dilapidated, and that the glass in the chancel-windows was in a sad state of decay: (2) “that the chauncell received little damage by the late fire,” yet that a very large part of the brief-money, raised for the repair of the church, was “uncessantly wasted and bestowed on the same, soe that the church is like to remayne unfynished.” This was in A.D. 1640, and I think we may gather from it the exact date of the alterations in the chancel. Its groined roof was taken down, its walls lowered some five feet, the tracery of the window in the north wall of the chancel partly destroyed in order to lower the walls, and the window then built up; the east window and probably one in the south wall destroyed, and imitations of perpendicular windows—poor in character, but nevertheless very good for their date—inserted in the place of the original windows in the north, east, and south walls of the chancel. The wall was rebuilt on either side of these windows with numerous fragments of the old groining ribs, thus affording the final proof that the windows were inserted and the groining taken down at the same time. This discovery was most grateful to me, inasmuch as it had been objected to the restoration of the original windows in the chancel, that those which we had to remove were fair examples of perpendicular work, and valuable in their way: in truth, they were examples of Gothic work in the years 1638–40, of no value at all in relation to the architecture of the rest of the church, though undoubtedly affording very interesting evidence of the undying love of Gothic architecture in this country, and of a not unsuccessful attempt at its revival.[68]

I have been unable to learn the exact date of the repair and re-roofing of the remainder of the church. The living was sequestered in A.D. 1650, and Mr. Chase must, I should think, in the ten years between the petitions and this date, have put his church into tenantable condition. The nave roof appears to be of about this date, and is framed with tie-beams, queen-posts, and purlines, with arched braces above the collars, and, though not very ornamental, has been re-opened, with the very best result on the general effect of the church. Subsequently to the erection of the new roofs, they had been churchwardenized, in the usual way, by the addition of plaster ceilings,[69] and in a less usual way, by the addition of a second roof over the other, and supported by it to the serious damage of the walls and piers.[70] The vestry seems never to have been repaired after the fire, and the Wilshyre chantry was roofed with a steep lean-to against the north wall of the chancel, and ceiled with a flat ceiling, for which I cannot be too grateful, as it made it impossible to insert a new window at this place in the A.D. 1640 restoration, and afforded me the only chance of discovering and restoring the original chancel windows. Knowing this before making my plans, I cut into the wall at this point, and was rewarded, even beyond my greatest expectations, by the discovery of the window-jamb, the monials, and a sufficient portion of the tracery to enable me to restore it exactly to its original design in every respect.

Having thus completed the notice of the alterations in the fabric, it is time to give a proper account of all its architectural peculiarities. The church is internally a rare example of a building as nearly as possible in the same state as when it was first built. For a village church its character is unusually sumptuous and ornate; and perhaps there is no example of any first-pointed building in England in which the grace and delicacy which characterize the style have been carried to greater perfection. It is impossible, indeed, to speak too highly of the workmanship or of the design of every part, and close as is its similarity in many points to our glorious abbey at Westminster, it is a remarkable fact, that in care and beauty of workmanship the little village church is undoubtedly superior to the minster. This might well be, for with all its beauty, and with all its vigour, the mere execution of much of the work at Westminster is not first-rate, and hardly such as one might expect in so important a position.

The exterior of the church is exceedingly simple. There are doors at the west end and in the west bay of the north aisle. In front of the former there was a groined porch, of which a small portion of the springer for the groining on one side only remains; this was brought to light by the removal of a brick porch which had been erected in its place. The string-course above the door is of the thirteenth century, but the window above it of three lights, and three other windows of two lights in the western bays of the aisles, are of the fourteenth century, and the work, probably, of Bishop Haymo de Hethe. The north aisle door is remarkable for its rich detail and peculiar character. One of the orders is adorned with a chevron on one face and with dogteeth on the other, and the inner order is enriched with a rose. The dogteeth and the carving of the rose are quite consistent in character with the date of the church, and the chevron is no doubt a curious instance of imitation of earlier work, rather than evidence of the doorway itself being earlier than the rest of the church. The dogteeth are well developed, and the roses are similar in character to those in the internal jambs and arches of the transept doors at Westminster. The windows in the side walls of the aisles are all alike on the exterior, simply chamfered with labels over them, save the western window of the south aisle, where there is no label. Those at the east ends of the aisles are more important; that to the east of the north aisle being of four lights, and that to the east of the south aisle of two lights. The buttresses are very simple, of two stages in height, with plain weatherings. The north chancel aisle is the Wilshyre chantry, a late third-pointed work, with a battlemented parapet. The erection of this chapel involved the removal of one of the chancel buttresses, and in place of it a very bold flying buttress was erected, which spans the roof of the chapel, and adds much to the picturesque effect of this side of the church. Its erection in the fifteenth century was good proof, in the absence of any other, that at that time at any rate the groined roof of the chancel was standing, for otherwise its erection would never have been required. The removal of the high, tiled, lean-to roof of the Wilshyre chantry has exposed the flying buttress, the fine east window of the north aisle, and the still finer window in the north wall, restored, as I have said, in exact accordance with the window which I was so happy as to find there. The vestry, which forms a continuation of the north chancel aisle, is lighted with two small windows, with ogee trefoiled heads. It was a roofless ruin, but now it has been re-roofed, and, as well as the chantry, is covered with a lead flat roof, which seems to have been the original covering, and has the advantage of not concealing any portion of the chancel. The east window is new, of three lights, corresponding in all respects with the restored north window, save in its dimensions, which are rather larger. So much of the east wall had been taken down and rebuilt, that it was impossible to decide exactly whether the east window was originally of three or four lights. I am rather inclined to believe that it was of four lights, for towards the end of the thirteenth century it is not at all unusual to find windows of an even number of lights in the east end; and the arcade below the window inside is of four divisions. Still, as there was no evidence whatever that this was the case, I thought it, on the whole, safer to repeat simply that in which I was certainly following the old architect, and the grandeur of the two restored windows is so remarkable that one need not wish them to be other than they are. In the south wall of the chancel one of the windows inserted circa A.D. 1640 still remains; it is of some value to the antiquary, and the contrast between it and the new windows, I hope, will amply justify the course I have adopted, in removing its two companions. The chancel buttresses are of great projection, but all their weatherings and finishings are modern, and for lack of funds remain for the present unaltered. The chancel is of two bays in length, and between its western buttress and the south wall of the nave is a space of six feet, through which, on the south, there appears to have been a doorway.[71] This would have opened into the western portion of the chancel, close to the chancel arch, and serves to prove that the chancel was not originally intended to be filled with wooden stalls.

Before the restoration of the church, the roof over the nave was steep, and flatter in its pitch over the aisles; and the chancel roof presented two gables towards the east, and had a gutter over the centre of the ceiling from end to end. All this is now altered. The nave roof has returned to its one uniform slope, simple and dignified in its effect; and the chancel walls, raised to their old height, so as to admit of the restoration of the groining, and surmounted by a high-pitched roof, finished with gable-copings and crosses, presents again the outline which no doubt it presented before the fire in A.D. 1638. The chancel roof is now much higher than that of the nave, but I hope some day to remedy whatever defect there is in the external proportions of the building, by the removal of the poor modern battlements, and the erection of a wooden spire, shingled after the common Kentish fashion. The roof of the steeple was burnt in A.D. 1638, and the heat having been so great that the bells melted, it is fair to assume that the roof so burnt was rather a spire than a flat roof, and, indeed, Hasted’s expression that the “steeple” was burnt, refers, it can hardly be doubted, to a timber spire.

I will now proceed to give a detailed description of the interior. The nave is entered by the west door, under the tower. The piers of the tower arches were re-cased in the fourteenth century, and the capitals, carved with poor stiff foliage at the same time, afford a marked contrast to the workmanship and design of the earlier capitals. The three arches under the north, south, and east walls of the tower are unaltered, of the same character as the arches in the nave, and evidently earlier than the piers which support them. The nave and aisles consist, in addition to the engaged western steeple, of three bays. The most remarkable feature in the design of this interior is the way in which the whole of the work gradually increases in richness of detail and in beauty from west to east. This will be seen immediately on an examination of the building itself. It is a very charming feature, and though one might have supposed that it would not be so very uncommon, suggested as it seems to be naturally by the respect which in almost all ages has been paid to the altar end of the church, I believe I may affirm that Stone church is unique in the studied way in which it has been done. At the risk of being very tedious, I give a detailed description of the interior, which will explain the variation of the design to which I have referred:

Western Bay (north side).—The window is of two lancets, with quatrefoil above: the inside arch chamfered, with a simple label returned, without any carving at bottom. The jambs are simply splayed: arches between nave and aisles moulded.

Middle Bay.—Windows of same shape, but the inside arch and the quatrefoil are richly moulded, and the internal jambs are finished with a moulding and stone shaft, with moulded base and carved capital. The label is enriched with dogteeth (it is the only label in the church in which they occur), and is terminated with heads of a queen on the right, and a king on the left, the latter much defaced.

The arches between the nave and aisles are moulded, but more richly than those in the western bay.