Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The conditions under which the study has to be pursued seem in some degree to preclude its being followed in a strictly systematic manner. We are obliged to study buildings, of whatever date, as they may come in our way; and every building we visit is likely to be of many periods and to have undergone alterations more or less radical; so that we are almost forbidden to systematise our studies on any principle, chronological or otherwise. We must, in fact, take our examples pretty much as we happen to find them; and the best method when we set out on a sketching tour is, probably, to devote our attention to a particular district, and to follow it up, town by town and village by village, as convenience or previous information may suggest, visiting and thoroughly studying all objects worthy of it which come in our way.

Nothing can be more delightful than these excursions. If you know beforehand what you are likely to meet with, the very anticipation of what each day will bring before you will add zest to your appetite for architectural enjoyment; while if you do not know what objects of interest may lie in your course, the very speculation will give relish to the search.

Here, perhaps, you come to the site of some famous monastery, less happy in its days of ruin and desertion than some which have become the favourite haunts of the artist. It has, perhaps, been for ages the stone-quarry of the district, and now only some one gable-end with its lofty lancets shows the noble scale of the ancient church. Here, it may be, nothing stands aboveground but the bases of the pillars; farther on the wall rises to the height of the window-jambs, and shows the arcading of the walls; and there the aisle wall retains the doorways leading through into the cloister—now a farm-yard—on the eastern side of which you find the three beautiful arches, the central one of which formed the approach to the chapter-house, and round this cloister you still trace the plan of the refectory and other monastic buildings. But, scanty and now humble as are the ruins, you find the details to be of the highest order of artistic refinement. The bases of the lost columns are profiled with the most studied delicacy, the few remaining doorways are perfect models of rich though unostentatious detail, the archways, perhaps, of the chapter-house entrances are of the most elegant and studied beauty. On tracing out and measuring the plan, you find its arrangement and proportions to be of the most perfect kind; and, though so little comparatively stands in situ, the ground is strewn here and there with masses from the superstructure, from which you may trace out the design of much which has fallen down, while the fences and agricultural buildings around are perfect storehouses of mouldings, capitals, and fragments of tracery or of groining, from which you can study the detail almost as profitably as from a perfect building.

In the next village you find, perhaps, a church of the humblest dimensions and of the most unambitious architecture, yet you trace in its simple details the proofs of its having been erected by the monks of the neighbouring convent, and you feel that, plain and unpretending as they are, they were designed by as masterly a hand as the abbey church itself, and deserve to be as carefully studied and as minutely sketched and measured. Again, farther on, you find a church of noble scale, in which you trace the work of many periods. The internal pillars and arcades show a period just emerging from the Romanesque, though its rudeness has been quite cast aside, and its mouldings are, on the contrary, of the greatest refinement. The chancel, perhaps, is of more advanced Early Pointed, the aisles, the clerestory, and the tower of later periods; and the screens and the few remaining old seats are specimens of the oak-work of the fifteenth century. Here and there in corners you find encaustic tiles, in some of which you recognise patterns you had observed in the site of the ruined abbey. In the upper parts of the window-lights and scattered among the plain glazing you find fragments of glass which would do honour to any age, and such as our glass painters would do well to study, instead of turning them out with scorn to make way for a memorial to some recently departed squire.[65] The sedilia in the chancel, and the piscinæ both there and in the aisles, are any of them alone objects worthy of the most careful study, and every doorway and every window possesses more or less claim upon your attention.

In another place you find less, perhaps, to interest you in the church, for it has passed through the hands of some architect famed in the county for his successful destructiveness, but you find other objects of interest. There is an old manor-house which, though mostly of Jacobean date, retains traces of early and scarce periods of domestic architecture. Nor are its later portions unworthy of your study: its brick chimneys have a beauty about them which modern architects have striven in vain to emulate; the half-timber gable fronts are models of timber construction; within there are remnants of oak panelled ceilings, of wall linings, of doors perhaps with moulded oak door-cases, of simple but well-designed chimney-piers, and all sorts of little odds and ends, all worthy of being carefully and minutely noted, whatever may be their age; for our old house architecture is often most valuably suggestive, even down to very late periods. The cottages around, too, seem to do homage to the more dignified residence, by showing here a good timbered gable-end, there a well proportioned brick chimney; indeed, I would advise the architectural tourist never to despise the cottage architecture of our villages, but to note as they pass every fragment which has escaped the hand of time, for they are most useful and instructive, and, you may depend upon it, they will not much longer exist.[66]

In another village you will, perhaps, find that the church has been the burial-place of some famous family of olden times. Under low arches in the aisles, and now almost hidden by the high pewing, you find the cross-legged effigies of the earlier members of the house, perhaps of oak, and hollowed out beneath, to prevent their warping out of shape; and if you examine these effigies, you will find them far from being the rude specimens of sculpture which our modern critics may suppose. You find in their attitude a dignity and stern nobility which our sculptors would find it not so very easy to emulate, while the chain armour, with its rigid lines, and the linen surcoat, with its more delicate foldings, are executed with a truthfulness and feeling which show that the man who worked them possessed both the soul and the hand of an artist. These are worthy of being carefully drawn, though to do this well demands much time. I have heard of Stoddart giving a week to one such figure! There are, perhaps, in the same church, one or two female effigies whose drapery and pose remind you of that of Queen Eleanor at Westminster, and one or two brasses well worthy of being copied, rather than rubbed off; for the object of these tours is not only to obtain possession of representations of the objects of art which you meet with, but to practise and tutor your hand and eye by practically studying from them.

Then, again, as you pass through the county, you find other objects equally worthy of note; as, for instance, the old bridges which here and there the county magistrates have permitted to remain, and which travellers but rarely see because they pass over them. The village or churchyard cross, the lych-gate, sometimes even the dovecote—all have claims upon your attention; and where a church is generally humble, and perhaps denuded by the mutilations of older ignorance or of modern conceit, there may yet remain a doorway, a pillar, a window or two worthy of attention. In one place it will be the tower which most excites your interest; in another the timber roofs; in a third you may luxuriate in carved screen-work, in chancel stalls, and rich nave seating; and in a fourth the great attraction may be the painted glass. In one tour you may take a homely series of churches like those of Essex, which, under an unpretending exterior often contain some of the most useful and valuable work; or going on farther in the eastern counties, you may visit the fine churches of Suffolk and Norfolk, with their noble timber roofs, their beautiful seating, and in many cases their richly and artistically coloured and embossed screens; or, taking another direction, you may follow the noble course of churches of Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, with their charming towers and spires. Indeed, in whatever direction you go, some new and differing characteristics will reward your labour; and in every one I would urge upon you to sketch everything which strikes you as worthy of notice, whether in the church, the castle, or the cottage, not omitting the humble brick chimney-shaft, or the brick or stone or timber gable, or even the stamped plaster of the eastern counties.

In all this course of study you will be much facilitated by the remembrance of your practical office work. You will remember puzzling questions which have occurred to you while making working details, and watch to find them solved in original work. How is the gable of an aisle connected with the eaves? and how with the parapet? How are timber overhanging eaves brought in contact with a stone gable? and how is the same done with stone eaves, or where the eaves are wood, and the roof timbers show through the gable?[67] All sorts of little questions such as these will have occurred to you in practice, and rested as doubtful points on your minds, but may be solved in many natural and pleasant ways while travelling among old examples—except, indeed, where the modern “restorer,” innocent as a babe of all such doubts, has levelled everything to his own office tariff. In such tours, be most careful accurately to sketch all the scarcer classes of examples you meet with, such as remnants of thirteenth and fourteenth century roofs and other wood-work, fragments of painted glass, specimens of iron-work, early screens and stalls, choice specimens of carved foliage or figure sculpture, traces of wall decorations, illuminations of screens, etc., and colouring on roofs. The unsparing hand of the so-called restorer has devastated and is still eagerly devastating whole districts, and clearing them of these invaluable records of ancient art; and this alone, independently of their high intrinsic value, renders it doubly important that the few remaining relics should be carefully represented. And be it ever remembered that such representations, to be really valuable, should not be mere hasty memoranda, but, if possible, careful measured drawings.

I have hitherto supposed your sketching expedition to be one of a purely rural kind, and the examples from which you study to be mainly on the scale which we find in villages. I will now transfer the imaginary tourist to the opposite extreme, and suppose him to be devoting himself to one of our greatest cathedrals, as, for example, Lincoln. Here the case is greatly changed, for he will get no great good unless he seats himself down, determinedly and long, and goes through a lengthened course of careful and minute study, not necessarily of the entire cathedral, but at least of the parts selected for special attention. It is best at once, on your arrival, to take lodgings near at hand, and to enter into some arrangement with the verger for your admission at all reasonable hours, obtaining, if needful, a carte blanche from the authorities to go where you like, and at proper times to do what you like.

Should you set yourselves the task of tracing out and studying, step by step, the course of architectural change from the Norman Conquest to the close of the Mediæval periods, there are few places more suited than Lincoln for the purpose: indeed, I only remember a single link up to the middle of the fourteenth century which is missing from the chain, and that not wholly so.