George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

It is to be noticed that there is no sign of a piscina in either of the aisles. I thought it possible at first that the arcade we discovered in the south aisle might have formed a portion of the sedilia for an altar in the aisle, but I hardly think now that this could have been the case.

The chancel consists of a western bay of seven feet in depth, from east to west, and east of this of two bays each 21 ft. 2 in. wide and 16 ft. 3 in. long, from centre to centre of the groining shafts. The west bay has no windows, but there is, as I have said, a trace of a doorway in the south wall. The other bays have each three divisions of wall arcading on marble shafts, and the east wall has four divisions of the same arcade. The spandrels of these arcades are filled in with sculptured foliage, so beautiful and delicate in its execution, and so nervous and vigorous in its design, that I believe it may safely be pronounced to be among the very best sculpture of the age that we have in this country. I shall have to enter again upon the subject of this portion of the work, in comparing it to the sculpture at Westminster. The work at Stone appears to me to be all by one man, and he seems to have been, if not the best of the Westminster sculptors, at any rate equal to the best.

There are in this chancel twenty-one of these spandrels, all different in design, but all nearly equal in merit. The aggregate amount of work bestowed here is as nothing compared with that which has been lavished in scores of cases on sculpture in our new churches: yet is there any one modern work which possesses a tithe of the value of this work? And would it not be far better to limit our nineteenth century carvers of foliage to work rather less in amount, and considerably more in merit, than that which they are wont to give us? The sculpture at Stone was no contract work: no exhibition of the greatest skill in covering the largest possible number of stones with the greatest possible quantity of carving: and it was executed with a delicacy of hand, a fineness of eye, a nervous sensibility so soft, that no perfunctory imitation can ever be in the least degree likely to rival its beauty. The small bosses of foliage which adorn the smaller spandrels in this arcade are very well carved; and it is worthy of remark that the same design is repeated several times. No. 1 is repeated four times, No. 2 six times, and No. 3 seven times; besides which the same design is used, simply reversed. It looks as though a model had been cut, and then copies made of it.

The walls of the chancel are only 2 ft. 3½ in. thick, but the great size of the buttresses amply compensated for this, and preserved them from suffering at all by the thrust of the groining. Before the restoration the state of the chancel was a sad falling off from its old state. The arcade at the base of the walls was perfect all round. The lower part of the groining-shafts remained, as also did the whole of a cluster of shafts on each side between the short western bay already mentioned and the next. The groining was all destroyed, but marks of it remained against the wall, and it was easy therefore to obtain its exact section. The treatment of the western bay was peculiar. It was clearly never covered, as the rest of the chancel was, with a quadripartite vault. The mark of a vault remained against the wall above the chancel arch, whilst the side walls showed that a barrel-vault had sprung from them. The cluster of three shafts between this bay and the next remained to be explained. One of them only was the groining-shaft answering to the others; but upon a very close examination of a fragment of the wall above them and of the marks on the caps themselves, I was able to ascertain beyond doubt that the two other shafts had carried an arch moulded on the east face, the soffit of which, continued westward, formed the pointed barrel-vault over the western bay. This has now been all restored, and with so much certainty as to all its parts, that I trust it will not be opened to the criticisms to which too many restorations are liable, of being rather ingenious than true. I should mention that the new groining-ribs are of the same section as the old. The window in the north wall has been exactly restored after the old remains, some of which have indeed been incorporated with the new work. It is of three uncusped lights, with tracery composed of three cusped circles. The cusping was let into a groove, and a sufficient number of fragments remained to give the exact number of cusps, etc. On the exterior the jamb has two engaged shafts, with caps and bases, and on the inside the monials are well moulded and have each a detached marble shaft, whilst the jambs have two marble shafts and are richly moulded. Internally the arch and tracery mouldings are very delicate, whilst externally they consist of bold chamfers and hollows only. The detail of the sculpture of the capitals of the monials was managed with rare skill, as seen by a fragment found in the north wall. This window is now treated in the same way as that at the east end of the north aisle, being partly below the roof of the Wilshyre chantry. An old arch existed behind the arcade under it, and this has been replaced by one of stone, so that the chantry is now sufficiently open to the chancel for the purpose of use by the congregation.

On the south wall of the chancel is the old piscina, under one of the divisions of the arcading. The arcade is continued across the east wall of the chancel, in four divisions; and treated exactly in the same way as at the sides; it is pretty clear, therefore, that it can never have been intended to place the altar against the wall, and it was no doubt brought forward a few feet (with perhaps a low wall or reredos behind it) in the way so common in the case of apsidal chancels, and of which we have examples at Arundel and at Warfield in the case of square-ended chancels. In the two divisions of the arcade we found, on removing the whitewash and plaster, a painted cross pattee, enclosed within a circle: it was red on a white ground, and outlined with black. Whether this was a dedication cross, or only painted in connection with the altar, it is impossible to say.[74]

In the chancel floor are some ancient grave-stones, among which those of John Lumbarde, Rector, a fine brass cross of the fourteenth century, and the little brass of Sir John Dew, are well known, and of much value. They have been carefully relaid in connection with a new pavement round the altar. The altar-rail has also been brought forward; the altar set on a footpace about three feet from the east wall, with a low stone perpeyn wall at its back, capped with marble, and showing the old arcade above it.

It remains to mention a few ancient fragments which have been discovered during the progress of the works.

They are:

1. A fragment of very richly cusped thirteenth-century tracery, very delicately moulded. This has not formed part of a window, and perhaps belonged to the reredos, if there was one.

2. A fine head of a monk (small).