George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

The whole arrangement is so curious that I have dwelt at some length upon it, feeling that it certainly shows well how boldly a thirteenth century architect ventured to depart from precedent when he found a new want to be provided for, and when a before unthought of necessity had arisen. I need hardly say, that the effect of the corbelled-out passage is to divide the height distinctly into two parts, a division perhaps more difficult of satisfactory treatment than any other that one can imagine. The only variety in the tracery of the windows throughout the body of the church is, that the centre window of each apse has a sexfoil in the circle in its head, none of the other windows having any cusping whatever. The moulding of the windows is very simple,—a very bold roll and chamfer; and it is noticeable that in the tracery the roll-moulding does not mitre with the same moulding in the arch, but is just separated from it, an ungraceful peculiarity; the roll-moulding of the tracery is treated as a shaft in the monial and jambs, and has corbelled bases, the effect of which is not at all good. The buttresses run up to the eaves, but finish abruptly without pinnacles, nor is there any parapet. It seems probable that something must have been intended, but possibly never done; and I confess I should shrink from venturing now upon the introduction of either pinnacles or parapet, and I cannot but trust that in the extensive repairs now in progress, restorations of this conjectural kind will not be attempted. Better, in such a case, let well alone, rather than run the risk of destroying everything by some monstrous mistakes!

The west front is quite a thing to be considered apart from the rest of the church, later in character, and the work, I am inclined to think, of another man, who did not only this but all, or nearly all, the magnificent fittings of the interior. The first man worked under the trammels of a transitional style, endeavouring after yet not achieving the beauties which the second man was able, in all that he did at a more advanced day, so completely to realize.

The west door at once fixes one’s attention. It is very lovely: the jamb perhaps too plain, and lacking mouldings between its shafts, but the arch absolutely perfect; it has two rows of the freshest and brightest stone foliage ever seen, and the tympanum—diapered over one half with a trailing rose, and on the other with a vine, both creeping naturally upwards with exquisite curve and undulation, regular in their irregularity,—is certainly of a degree of exquisite and simple beauty such as I have never seen surpassed. In the midst of this bower stands a fine figure of S. Mary with our Lord in her arms, and on either side an angel censing. As one looks at the carving, one thinks of the prettiest perhaps of all the legends of S. Elizabeth, and it may be that the sculptor, as he struck out the bold and beautiful work, which even now surprises by its beauty and its sharpness, thought of those roses of paradise with which S. Elizabeth in the legend surprised her doubting husband.

Above this doorway a pierced parapet carries a passage in front of the fine and thoroughly geometrical west window of six lights. Another parapet, and then a row of traceries and canopies which mask the roof gable. On either side the great buttresses of the steeples give an air of solidity and plainness to the whole elevation, which I think very satisfactory. A two-light window on the same level as the great west window, and very long narrow belfry windows, also of two lights, are the only openings in the towers. The buttresses finish with pinnacles, and the towers with pierced parapets, above which, on the cardinal sides, are gables with windows, and at their summit an octangular open parapet, from which the spires then rise without further break or ornament. The composition is unusual and very good.

Besides these western steeples there is a turret of poor and modern character over the intersection of the transept and other roofs.

And now let us enter, and we shall find ourselves in what seems like a very lantern; windows everywhere, tier above tier, and admitting a flood of light which is bearable only when—as happily still in the choir—all the windows are filled with the richest stained glass.

The architectural peculiarities of the exterior are as marked but not as intelligible in the interior; and one cannot cease to regret the effect of the reiteration of the same window everywhere: otherwise, however, the interior is full of beauty; the nave piers very simple—large circles with four engaged shafts—very lofty and with finely carved capitals. The transept piers are clustered, and the groining throughout is very simple, but of exquisite proportions.

And now I must go on to describe the fittings and arrangements of this interior, which are so perfect as to make it, perhaps, the most interesting and complete church in Germany.

The choir extends to the western side of the transepts, and is finished towards the nave with a high stone screen, against the western side of which is a large people’s altar. The screen is traceried and panelled over its whole western surface, and surmounted by a delicate open arcade finished with pinnacles and gablets; the portion over the altar being elaborated so as to form a reredos rather than a screen. The only openings in this screen are a row of small windows (as one may almost call them), opening just above the backs of the stalls, which in the choir are continued not only on the north and south sides, but quite across the west side also. The only entrance to the choir, therefore, is on either side from the transepts to the east of the stalls. On the eastern face of the screen, a kind of large ambon is corbelled forward in the centre, just the width of the people’s altar; and above this rose—I say “rose,” for when I was there, it was lying on the floor, as a first step to “restoration,” which may not, I trust, mean “destruction,”—a grand trefoiled arch of timber, covered with very boldly carved natural foliage, and flanked by two massive pinnacles. All trace of the figures is gone, but there can be no doubt that this arch and the pinnacles bore on their summits the Crucifix with the figures of S. Mary and S. John; and, indeed, the marks of their having once been affixed still remain.

In the choir there is a double row of stalls round three sides, the subsellae having low original desks in front of them. These are perfect all round, and, as I need hardly say, valuable for their rarity. The stalls are finely treated, and the upper row is well raised. The effect of the whole is most singular and very new to an English eye, for though, as I had occasion to show at Naumburg, and as I saw elsewhere in the same part of Germany, stalls against the centre of the eastern side of a screen are not uncommon, I have nowhere else seen such a complete shutting-off of the choir from the church as has from the very first existed here. There is a space between the back of the stalls and the rood-screen, in which probably an entrance was originally contrived to the ambo under the rood, though of this no trace now remains.