Some wiseacres, the vicar and churchwardens, once determined to pull down their old church and build a new one. So they met in solemn conclave and passed the following sagacious resolutions:—
1. That a new church should be built.
2. That the materials of the old church should be used in the construction of the new.
3. That the old church should not be pulled down until the new one be built.
How they contrived to combine the second and third resolutions history recordeth not.
Even when the church was spared the "restorers" were guilty of strange enormities in the embellishment and decoration of the sacred building. Whitewash was vigorously applied to the walls and pews, carvings, pulpit, and font. If curious mural paintings adorned the walls, the hideous whitewash soon obliterated every trace and produced "those modest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasingly bestows." But whitewash has one redeeming virtue, it preserves and saves for future generations treasures which otherwise might have been destroyed. Happily all decoration of churches has not been carried out in the reckless fashion thus described by a friend of the writer. An old Cambridgeshire incumbent, who had done nothing to his church for many years, was bidden by the archdeacon to "brighten matters up a little." The whole of the woodwork wanted repainting and varnishing, a serious matter for a poor man. His wife, a very capable lady, took the matter in hand. She went to the local carpenter and wheelwright and bought up the whole of his stock of that particular paint with which farm carts and wagons are painted, coarse but serviceable, and of the brightest possible red, blue, green, and yellow hues. With her own hands she painted the whole of the interior—pulpit, pews, doors, etc., and probably the wooden altar, using the colours as her fancy dictated, or as the various colours held out. The effect was remarkable. A succeeding rector began at once the work of restoration, scraping off the paint and substituting oak varnish; but when my friend took a morning service for him the work had not been completed, and he preached from a bright green pulpit.
Carving on Rood-screen, Alcester Church, Warwick
The contents of our parish churches, furniture and plate, are rapidly vanishing. England has ever been remarkable for the number and beauty of its rood-screens. At the Reformation the roods were destroyed and many screens with them, but many of the latter were retained, and although through neglect or wanton destruction they have ever since been disappearing, yet hundreds still exist.[31] Their number is, however, sadly decreased. In Cheshire "restoration" has removed nearly all examples, except Ashbury, Mobberley, Malpas, and a few others. The churches of Bunbury and Danbury have lost some good screen-work since 1860. In Derbyshire screens suffered severely in the nineteenth century, and the records of each county show the disappearance of many notable examples, though happily Devonshire, Somerset, and several other shires still possess some beautiful specimens of medieval woodwork. A large number of Jacobean pulpits with their curious carvings have vanished. A pious donor wishes to give a new pulpit to a church in memory of a relative, and the old pulpit is carted away to make room for its modern and often inferior substitute. Old stalls and misericordes, seats and benches with poppy-head terminations have often been made to vanish, and the pillaging of our churches at the Reformation and during the Commonwealth period and at the hands of the "restorers" has done much to deprive our churches of their ancient furniture.
Most churches had two or three chests or coffers for the storing of valuable ornaments and vestments. Each chantry had its chest or ark, as it was sometimes called, e.g. the collegiate church of St. Mary, Warwick, had in 1464, "ij old irebound coofres," "j gret olde arke to put in vestments," "j olde arke at the autere ende, j old coofre irebonde having a long lok of the olde facion, and j lasse new coofre having iij loks called the tresory cofre and certain almaries." "In the inner house j new hie almarie with ij dores to kepe in the evidence of the Churche and j great old arke and certain olde Almaries, and in the house afore the Chapter house j old irebounde cofre having hie feet and rings of iron in the endes thereof to heve it bye."
"It is almost exceptional to find any parish of five hundred inhabitants which does not possess a parish chest. The parish chest of the parish in which I am writing is now in the vestry of the church here. It has been used for generations as a coal box. It is exceptional to find anything so useful as wholesome fuel inside these parish chests; their contents have in the great majority of instances utterly perished, and the miserable destruction of those interesting parish records testifies to the almost universal neglect which they have suffered at the hands, not of the parsons, who as a rule have kept with remarkable care the register books for which they have always been responsible, but of the churchwardens and overseers, who have let them perish without a thought of their value.
"As a rule the old parish chests have fallen to pieces, or worse, and their contents have been used to light the church stove, except in those very few cases where the chests were furnished with two or more keys, each key being of different wards from the other, and each being handed over to a different functionary when the time of the parish meeting came round."[32]