At Monks’ Dale, in Tideswell parish, was formerly a grange, with a chapel attached, supposed to have belonged to Lenton Priory. The walls of the chapel are overthrown down to the foundations. “All that remains of it above ground are the beautifully carved stones of the low ... stone screen that divided the chancel from the nave. They are of fourteenth century work”—of the date 1360, circa, according to the late Rev. Prebendary Andrew—“and exactly correspond to those ... in the chancel of Chelmorton.” This account appeared in 1877. By 1882 the aforesaid stonework had been removed to the vicarage garden at Tideswell.
Embedded in a wall in Allestree parish, near the site of the old manor house, on the road to Mackworth, is, or recently was, to be seen another fragment of worked stone, with sculptured quatrefoils, and altogether so closely resembling the before-named examples as to lead to the conclusion that it must have formed part of an ancient screen in Allestree or some neighbouring church.
Chelmorton Church:
Southern Half of Stone Rood-Screen.
Darley Dale Church:
Detail of Stone Parclose.
A rood-screen of similar design is believed to have occupied the chancel opening (13 ft. 6 in. wide) at Darley Dale church, to judge from a fragment of stone carving lying (as recorded in 1877) in the parish clerk’s garden there. In the south aisle of this church, close to the south door, stands a family pew, built out of the remains of a stone parclose and the stone frames of a couple of two-light Perpendicular windows—one having had its mullion knocked out to make the doorway, and both betraying their extraneous origin by being grooved in the usual manner for leaded glazing. That part of the enclosure which is genuine screenwork comprises two distinct, though not very incongruous, designs of the first half of the fifteenth century. Exclusive of the alien window-work, that portion of the screen running east and west measures 11 ft. 6 in. long; that portion running north and south, 3 ft. 7 in. The shorter length consists of a plain wall below a tier of cinquefoil-headed lights; the longer, of ogival panelling in eleven cusped compartments, corresponding to the same number of cinquefoil-headed lights in the upper part. A detail of it is here illustrated. The blind panelling measures 4 ft. high to the cill of the fenestration, the inclusive height of the screen being 7 ft. 6 in. It has not been ascertained whether the space enclosed by this screen represents the original position of the chantry, but more probably it was situated in some less westerly part of the building. “It was unfortunately set back,” writes the Rev. Dr. Cox, “a foot or two to give more room to the aisle in 1854, but otherwise remains as it was before the ‘restoration.’ Stone parcloses, though of fairly frequent occurrence round chantry tombs in cathedrals, are very rarely met with in parish churches.”
The stone screens, then, existing, or accountable for as known to have existed, in Derbyshire comprise those at Allestree, Chelmorton, Darley Dale, Ilkeston, and Monks’ Dale. Another one also must be included in the list, viz., the former rood-screen at Bakewell. From a description of it in 1823, while it might still be seen in situ separating the chancel from the rest of the church, it appears to have been of Decorated workmanship. Either half of it measured six feet long, exclusive of the space for the central entrance. The recorded height, 4 ft. 9 in., implies that it was the base or plinth merely, not the complete screen. At some subsequent time during the “repairs” which went on from 1841 to 1851—a sad decade of disaster for Bakewell church!—its stone screen was carried off by that notorious archæological raider, Mr. Thomas Bateman, to swell his predatory collection at Lomberdale House. The virtuoso himself being long since dead, and the contents of his museum dispersed, there is now practically no likelihood of the missing screenwork ever being traced and recovered. If it be still in existence anywhere, it should probably be sought for in the Weston Museum at Sheffield, whither most of the Derbyshire spoils from Lomberdale House are said to have found their way. If that be so, the screen ought certainly to be restored to its rightful place again at Bakewell. The loss of so venerable a monument cannot be too deeply deplored, and reflects the utmost discredit on all persons concerned in the removal of this ancient screenwork from the church to which it belonged.
The oldest actual example of timber screenwork in Derbyshire partakes of so little in common with the generality of woodwork, either in design or mode of treatment, that it is perhaps appropriate to deal with it here, in association with stone screenwork, as occupying an intermediate stage between the two several classes. I refer to the remains of the rood-screens at Kirk Langley, which, unworthily made up as they are into a box-door, placed at the west entrance, in the ill-lighted lowest storey of the tower, seem to me scarcely to have received the attention they might have claimed. Indeed, the deceptive environment of modern accretions combines with the twilight to make it extremely difficult for anyone to form a just estimate of the work or of its proper dimensions. As far as the existing remains, in their mutilated and altered condition, admit of a reconstruction of the original plan of the screen, it would appear to have consisted of two lengths of 4 ft. 6 in. each, and two doors of the same height and pattern as the other part; so that, when the whole stood intact, the fenestration must have formed a continuous arcade of trefoiled lights, their average centring 8¾ inches, each of them with an ogival crown, indenting a complete trefoil, balanced upon its apex. As the illustration shows, the treatment of this tracery work is peculiar. The component members of it—in plan square, with sides slightly concave—are set angle-wise to the front, and present a series of prominent edges without the usual fillet. Thus they have an effect of crisp and almost metallic acuteness, unfamiliar in woodwork as also it is in stone. The face of the cill below the fenestration is carved with a band of quatrefoils, having each a four-petalled flower—not a rose—in the centre. The design is of the fourteenth century, and it might possibly have been executed towards the close of Edward III.’s reign, or not later than the deposition of Richard II.
