Memorials of old Derbyshire

by Unknown

That this screen dates from the first half of the fifteenth century, maybe, perhaps, as early as about 1430, I infer from the character of its fenestration. The latter, consisting of a single panel of pierced tracery in each bay, is an exact counterpart of the stone window-tracery of the period. It differs from the method of timber screen construction evolved subsequently, in which the muntins run from top to bottom of the openings, and in which the effect of tracery in each several bay-head is obtained by a combined series of separate units of pierced work let into grooves sunk in the upper part of the muntins. In the Chesterfield rood-screen, on the contrary (as also in the fourteenth century rood-screen at Kirk Langley, already described), the upright shafts in each bay merely support from below the tracery above in the head, instead of holding it in position as between two sides of a frame. Neither, again, in the Chesterfield example does the spacing of the batement lights correspond with that of the three lights at the bottom. The uneven number of the latter is abnormal. It became far more usual, as timber screen-work developed, for the fenestration to be divided by a central muntin into two lights (as at Breadsall and Fenny Bentley), or (as in other parts of England) for the central muntin, remaining a constant factor, to be supplemented by one pair or more pairs of muntins, as the case might be, so that the number of lights comprised in a single bay would, in all events, work out to an even number.

And now to describe the sculptured figure work at Chesterfield in detail, beginning at the north end of it, and proceeding from left to right. First, then, is an eagle; and next, a composite beast, having the head and horns of an antelope, the snout of a boar, and a chain round the neck, clawed feet, and the body and tail of an ox. Although, therefore, the one represents St. John, it is out of the question that the other can ever have been intended for an evangelistic symbol, notwithstanding they are both accompanied by scrolls. Then succeed six demi-angels, clothed in albs, and issuant from conventional cloud-wreaths; their wings pointing downwards in an oblique direction, with the ends of the feathers crossed in saltire, every one’s over his neighbour’s. Each angel bears one or more emblems or instruments of the Passion: the first, the crown of thorns; the second, the cross; the third, the seamless coat, together with the dice; the fourth, a shield displaying the five sacred wounds; the fifth, the lance and three nails; the sixth, the scourge and hammer. That this series was originally longer is evident from the abruptly mutilated feather-tips of another angel’s wing upon the southern or right hand extremity. He would, doubtless, have held the ladder and pincers; but even thus, the usual tale of emblems would scarcely be complete without the reed and sponge, the thirty pieces of silver, or the cock that crew thrice. How many, then, altogether of the angel figures are missing it is impossible to tell. Moreover, it seems probable enough that there would also have been animals with scrolls to balance those at the opposite end. A detail of the rood-screen and of the sculpture above it, is shown in the accompanying illustration.

Chesterfield Church: Detail of Screen in the North Transept, formerly the Rood-Screen.

The date of the angel ornament appears to be somewhere between 1465 and 1480. What remains of it now measures in length 14 ft. 6 in. by one foot in height; the figures being carved out of the solid, and occupying, in ordered row, the concave space of a band sunk between two beads. That this is no rood-beam, but a superficial ornament for the breast-summer, I can vouch, for two reasons; firstly, because the timber itself is a mere board, not exceeding four inches in thickness at the top, the thickest part of it; and secondly, because at the back are unmistakable traces of mortice holes for the joists that were fixed at right angles to it to carry the rood-loft floor. I know nothing that so much resembles this admirably appropriate ornament as that in a corresponding position in the stone pulpitum at Canterbury Cathedral; and in a wooden parclose at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. And yet I have no hesitation in pronouncing that the Chesterfield example surpasses the others in beauty and variety of design. It is, in a word, a very model of its kind.

Now that screens in churches cannot have been, by quite unanimous consent, regarded as contravening “the principles of the Protestant Reformation,” whatever is to be understood by that portentous phrase, is clear from the practice of erecting such fixtures having from time to time continued long after the demise of Derby’s benefactress, Queen Mary Tudor. Thus the chapel at Risley, erected in 1593, was furnished with a chancel-screen of curious design, comprising cherub-heads and other Renaissance details. Later on, the south aisle at the old parish church of Wilne having been prolonged eastward to form a memorial chapel to Sir John Willoughby, who died in 1602, there was set up across the archway a heavy timber screen, with gates, which bear the arms of Willoughby and Hawe. The composition as a whole affords a striking sample of the depraved taste and secular spirit of the age. Among the elaborate carved ornaments may be identified representations of Hercules with his club; a Roman lictor with fasces and axe; satyrs and centaurs; all intermingled with pompous, warlike trophies of cannons, muskets, and drums! On the back of the screen is the date of its production, 1624. Later on, a church was built at Foremark in a spurious Gothic style, and Bishop Hacket consecrated it in 1662. It contains a characteristic oak chancel-screen of massive build and lofty elevation, with four glazed openings. To the above, all of them noteworthy instances of post-Reformation screenwork in Derbyshire, must be added the screen which separates the chancel from the nave or ante-chapel in the chapel at Haddon Hall. For, though parts of its woodwork, particularly the buttressed muntins, must be assigned to an earlier date, the main portion of it unquestionably was remodelled at the close of the sixteenth or during the first half of the seventeenth century. The turned balusters, which in this case supply the place of fenestration in a Gothic screen, are, like the wainscoting which lines the chancel walls, obvious products of a later epoch.

In fact, so persistent altogether was the tradition, and so hard to kill, that even in Dr. Hutchinson’s debased structure, which took the place of the demolished All Hallows’, the new chancel was not left unwarded, but was screened by iron grates. These, though exhibiting in their design the style of the period, yet reproduced, strange to say, quite a mediæval scheme of arrangement. A grate divided the chancel from the nave, and was continued northward and southward right across the building from wall to wall. And other grates again separated the chancel from the chancel aisles. These grates, though not altogether undisturbed, for the most part remained in position until 1873, when the interior of the building, then barely a century and a half old, was “restored,” and in the process the chancel grille itself, together with other fittings hitherto spared, was taken down. Numerous details of it are figured in the Chronicles of All Saints’, issued under the joint authorship of the Rev. Dr. Cox and Mr. W. H. St. John Hope in 1881, to which volume all who may be interested in a genuinely historic specimen of eighteenth century wrought ironwork are hereby referred.

There is one peculiar variety of mediæval screen arrangement which may be said to belong to a class by itself. It is sufficiently uncommon, being confined almost exclusively to domestic chapels, of which the former infirmary chapel of Dale Abbey, and such that now serves the purpose of parish church of Dale, furnishes an interesting example. A sketch of the interior, in 1870 or thereabouts, is given on plate xvii. of the late Rev. Samuel Fox’s History of St. Matthew’s, Morley (1872).

The chapel consists of chancel, nave, and south aisle, the latter separated from the nave by a wooden partition, formerly solid; long since, however, by its panels being sawn out, converted into open screenwork. But the main point of interest is the screen which divides the nave from the chancel. Screen and partition alike are of oak, and rest on a stone plinth. The chancel screen is very quaint in its severe simplicity. It has no tracery, but the mouldings are of the fifteenth century, the approximate date assigned to it being 1480. It consists of seven rectagonal compartments, i.e., a central doorway with three openings on either side; the muntins supporting a flat ceiling of timber, which, extending back as far as the wall, divides all that portion of the chapel westward of the screen itself into two floors. The upper one of these opens, gallery wise, into the chancel. Traces of a somewhat similar arrangement exist in a ruined oratory at Godstow Nunnery, on the banks of the upper river, near Oxford; and another instance has been noted in one of the chapels at Tewkesbury Abbey church. It is paralleled also in a sort at the private chapel of Brede Place, Sussex, but the plan of an upper storey, supported by a partition screen, does not express itself there in nearly so striking and complete a manner as at Dale. Other instances known are the chapels at Berkeley Castle and Compton Wynyates respectively. It may be mentioned that at Dale, since there is no internal communication between the gallery and the ground floor, the former has to be approached by an external staircase through a door on the upper level.

And, next, to consider the subject of the rood-loft. It would, of course, be situated at a greater height than the screen; as a rule, immediately above the latter, and connected organically with it, the structural braces being boxed within a casing of coved panel-work or of vaulting, with groins and bosses in imitation of stone masonry. As originally erected, the ancient rood-screens at Ashover, Breadsall, Chaddesden, and Norbury furnished instances of groined vaulting, now perished. The only screens, to the best of my knowledge, in Derbyshire which have not lost their vaulting are the rood-screens at Fenny Bentley and the parclose of the south transept in Chesterfield church. The first-named has been a good deal restored, and the latter has not altogether escaped. Both are examples of screens in which the irregularly shaped panels between the ribs are enriched with tracery ornament, a device that enhances the overhanging vaults with a delightful suggestion of mystery lurking within their shadowy recesses. I do not think that the Chesterfield parclose was ever surmounted, in rood-loft fashion, with a parapet, although the upper part of it expands eastwards and westwards quite far enough to have provided the accommodation of an average rood-loft had it been required.