Memorials of old Derbyshire

by Unknown

The nearest approach (except the Fenny Bentley example before quoted) to a rood-loft survives at Wingerworth, a structure in some respects unique, in Derbyshire at any rate. Of its peculiar character the photograph conveys a better idea than any verbal description. I do not think it can have been erected earlier than 1480, nor later than 1520. Perhaps midway between the two, i.e., 1500, circa, is the most correct date to assign to it.

On the left-hand side may be observed the doorway, twenty inches wide, through which, pierced in the easternmost spandril of the north arcade, a rood-stair, now consisting of seven steps, emerges on to the platform itself. The head of this aperture consists of a stone lintel, which, being cut on its under side into the form of an obtuse angle, produces, roughly, the appearance of a four-centred arch. In the south or left-hand jamb are still fastened two iron hangers for the door, now no more, which opened navewards upon the loft.

In the early sixties of the nineteenth century, there remained on the plaster of the east wall of the nave, above the ancient loft, considerable traces of colour. In vivid contrast to this painted background showed up the bare silhouettes of a large cross, and of an upright figure on either side of it; thus marking clearly the place where the great rood, with the Mary and John, had stood in former days. At the present time nothing of these interesting relics is to be seen; the interior of Wingerworth church having been freshly distempered over with a smart coat of colour wash, while two immense hatchments, with pompous black cloth surrounds, occupy the place sacred from of yore to the memorial of mankind’s Redemption. What could be more unseemly than selecting this one, of all sites in a church, for the parading of the worldly distinctions of one’s family? Whether it is too late to save the remains of the rood-painting by scraping off the distemper which hides it, I cannot say; but there can be no question whatever but that the profane hatchments ought to be taken down as quickly as possible, and placed somewhere—anywhere—else than where I saw them in March, 1907.

The painting at Wingerworth is not the only instance of its kind known to have survived in Derbyshire down to the nineteenth century. Thus at Hayfield, according to a memorandum made on the spot by one of the brothers Lysons, who visited the old church shortly before its demolition in 1815, there was to be seen “at the back of the gallery, facing the nave ... a painting of the Crucifixion, with St. John and St. Peter ... said to have been painted (in) 1775, but probably from an ancient one which had remained undisturbed at the time of the Reformation.” That this work, for the figure of St. Peter to have been substituted for that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, must have been retouched by some post-Reformation hand, may readily be believed; but, in the same connection, the question presents itself as to whether the gallery noted by the famous topographer could by any manner of means have been the ancient rood-loft at Hayfield church.

Wingerworth Church: Base of the Rood-Loft.

But to return from speculation to facts and figures. The timber extant of the rood-loft at Wingerworth reaches from side to side of the nave, a length of 15 ft. 1 in. The distance from the floor of the nave to the base of this structure (itself barely an inch above the crown of the chancel arch) is 8 ft. 8½ in.; from the nave-floor to the platform at the top of it, 11 ft. 8½ in.; giving it an elevation of exactly three feet. The width of the platform from back to front is 38 inches. In the upper surface of the breast-summer, or main beam of the westward projection, are the remains of fourteen mortice holes (averaging 4 inches in length each, with a centring of 13½ inches), sunk to receive the tenons of the upright stiles that framed the front of the loft parapet, the height of which there is no present means of gauging. The uppermost front edge is embattled. Below, in a cavetto, at intervals, are nine square pateras of Gothic leaf ornament. The receding cove beneath the breast-summer is divided by moulded ribs into eight panels, the longitudinal ribs centred at 44 inches, and being crossed by a single latitudinal rib, with carved square bosses and Gothic leaves in the angles of intersection. This panelling occupies a superficial breadth of 32 inches between the breast-summer above and the moulded timber at the base.

The back of this structure fits close against the wall, and there is not the slightest trace of any supporting screenwork ever having touched, still less been attached to, its lower edge. I am disposed to think that the arrangements at Wingerworth must have been analogous to those of Sawley church, and that the solution of the problems they both present is to be arrived at by a comparison of the existing remains of rood-loft and screenwork in these several churches, the one supplementing the details which lack in the other, for the reconstruction of the original scheme. In both cases is a round-headed arch—that at Wingerworth is not later than the beginning of the twelfth century, while that at Sawley has been pronounced, on expert authority, to have been erected still earlier, bearing as it does the evidences of pre-Norman workmanship—an arch which, were it not for the impost at the spring on either side, resembles more than anything else (with its broad, flat soffit, no splays, no orders, no mouldings) a simple aperture cut in the solid wall. The arch at Wingerworth has an opening of 6 ft. 7 in. wide, or 7 ft. at the spring, by 8 ft. 8 in. (short measure) from floor to crown; that at Sawley, 14 ft. 1 in. wide, its height in proportion.

Now although at Wingerworth there is nothing of the sort remaining, at Sawley, on the contrary, the original fittings of the chancel have, fortunately, been preserved. These, comprising return stalls, with the rood-screen behind them, stand complete within the chancel. Nor could the screen, so placed (because of the thickness of the wall, interposing a bulk of 3 ft. 2 in. between chancel and nave), possibly have formed one organic structure, with the rood-loft on the other side, in the nave. I take it that in both cases the chancel was fully and finally furnished with its stalls and screen at a time when rood-lofts had not yet become a necessity—the fittings actually are of a heavy and somewhat primitive type of Perpendicular—and that when, later on, a rood-loft did require to be provided, circumstances left no choice open but to treat it as something entirely independent of the already erected screen. For to have set it up on the top of the latter, on the chancel side of the arch, would have defeated the primary object for which the rood-loft, as an adjunct to the performance of public worship, existed. Without doubt the only place where it could adequately fulfil the requirements of a rood-loft was against the east wall of the nave, above the chancel arch. The length, then, of the rood-loft at Sawley would be the same as the width of the nave, viz., 26 ft. 3 in.

All this is no idle theory. It is confirmed by the existence, in Sawley church, of a pair of stone corbels projecting from the masonry at the east end of the nave above the chancel arch. The level of the corbel in the north-east corner is 17 ft. 1 in. above the floor; that of the opposite one in the south-east corner, 17 ft. 3 in. These would have supported the ancient rood-beam, there being ample wall-surface at the east end of the nave for the rood, as well as for the rood-loft (containing, possibly, the “payre of orgyns” named in the inventory of the sixth year of Edward VI.), to have been situated beneath, either crossing the opening of, or (as at Wingerworth) crowning the summit of, the chancel arch.