Belper.—In 1821 the chancel of St. John Baptist chapel was separated from the nave “by a plain screen composed of small arches and round columns of wood.” The screen itself eventually disappeared, but long afterwards the marks remained in the walls showing where it had been fixed.
Bolsover.—A new organ-chamber, built in 1878, was eloquently described as having “dwarfed the old chancel and spoilt the north aspect of the church.” The ruin which the “restoration” of the above year began, an accidental fire in 1897 completed.
Brackenfield.—The rood-screen from the old, ruined chapel, built in 1520–30, now stands in the modern church. It has suffered much, not only from exposure to the weather in the interval between the dismantling of the chapel and the transfer of the screen itself to its present position at the west end of the new building, but also from excessive repair (see illustration). The screen measures 16 ft. 9 in. long by 7 ft. 7 in. high. It is rectagonal in construction, and consists of a central bay divided into two lights above the lintel of the doorway; on either hand of the latter being two bays of three lights each. The head of all the lights is occupied to the depth of 10½ in. by tracery of Decorated design, coarsely executed, with heavy cusps and crockets. The openings of the bays are 4 ft. 5½ in. high; the bays centring from 3 ft. to 3 ft. 2½ in. The lesser muntins are arrested by the cill, the panels beneath which are wanting. The cornice and principal muntins are rudely moulded. The door has a clear opening of 3 ft. 1 in., and is 5 ft. 8 in. high to the crown of the four-centred arch of the lintel. One of the spandrils of the latter is carved with the arms of Willoughby and Beck impaled. From a drawing which is hung up, ad captandum vulgus, inside the building, it appears that a project is on foot to adapt this ancient screen to the chancel entrance of the modern church. And, as though the unfortunate screen had not suffered cruelly enough already, the scheme involves its further dismemberment by cutting out the doorway in the centre, and mounting it on the top of a fresh doorway as a scaffold for a novel and Christless cross. It is earnestly to be hoped that those in power will not have the money nor the unwisdom to inflict this last unwarrantable indignity on the venerable screen of Brackenfield chapel.
Brackenfield: Detail of Oak Rood-Screen from Dismantled Chapel.
Breadsall.—In 1826 the rood-screen is known to have been standing in its original place, defining the boundary of nave and chancel. It was then much dilapidated, “the centre portions of the ornamental work thereof being entirely gone.” It is not quite clear whether by the parts referred to as missing, the entrance gates or the traceried fenestration-heads are meant. At any rate, a drawing made thirty years later, and published in the Anastatic Drawing Society’s volume for 1856, howsoever inaccurate in detail, shows what had then become of the remains of the rood-screen. Though much of the delicate feathering is omitted from the pierced tracery ornament, the main outline unmistakably identifies it as having been made up into communion rails. And it is doubtless to this circumstance that the beautiful details of the rood-screen, when once taken down from its proper position, owe their preservation. Such as they were represented in 1856, they remained at least as late as 1877, when the church itself was “restored.” The removal, about the year 1360, of the chancel arch, the structural demarcation between nave and chancel, had rendered a rood-screen æsthetically indispensable. And so, when this prominent ornament was broken up—some time between 1830 and 1840, more probably at the former date—it left a blank so unsightly that at the “restoration” of 1877 a misdirected attempt to remedy the defect was made by the insertion of a paltry, sham-Gothic arch. At the same time the ancient levels of the building were falsified by the improper raising of the chancel floor. In 1877, “many parts of the base” of the ancient screen could “be detected in the pews of the body of the church.” Subsequently, all these fragments were collected, and, together with those portions of the screen that had been turned into communion rails, carefully stored up with a view to ultimate reconstruction. Meanwhile, however, a few strips of screen-tracery were ill-advisedly worked up into a cornice round the brim of the present pulpit, a situation for which, as anybody can see, they are in no wise suited. The restoration of the screen itself was contemplated as far back as 1877, but thirty years were destined to elapse before it could be realised. The project had long been dear to the heart of Mr. F. Walker Cox, though he did not live to see it fulfilled; and so, when he died in 1905, it was decided to restore the rood-screen as a suitable memorial to him. The work was completed by the end of July, 1907. In this case there were certain well-determined data to serve as guides for the proposed reconstruction. The width of the nave, 23 feet, had only to be divided by the unit of the bays (the remaining tracery of which demonstrated that the average centring was rather less than 2 ft. 6 in.) to show that there should be ten bays in all; while the tread of the topmost step of the rood-stair, which pierces the arcade wall and opens southwards into the nave at a height of 13 ft. 0½ in. above the floor level, indicates the proper height of the ancient rood-loft floor. Each bay is divided into two lights by a central muntin. The tracery resembles Decorated design more than Perpendicular, but certain very late details in the spandril of the ancient gates, the design of which otherwise corresponds, preclude the work from being dated earlier than the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Of the twenty pieces of tracery in the fenestration-heads, ten are original and untouched, five are old ones repaired, while five had to be supplied altogether new; the necessary carved work being ably done by Mr. H. W. Whitaker, son of the rector. There are two variations in the tracery pattern which runs along the west side of the rail. The heads of the rectagonal panels are filled with tracery to the depth of 6¾ inches.
Breadsall Church: Detail of Rood-Screen in Process of Restoration.
Breadsall Church: Showing the Remains of the Rood-Screen in 1856.