Chaddesden.—The church was “restored” in 1859, when, I presume, it was that the rood-screen came to be surmounted by an embattled cornice. At the recent “restoration,” by Mr. Bodley, the battlements were removed, and the upper part of the screen finished more in accordance with the original design, with vaulting, on the western front The authentic portion of the screen is 9 ft. 11 in. high by 15 ft. 9 in. long. It consists of eight bays, of which the two central ones go to form the entrance, having an opening of 3 ft. 3½ in., the bays centring at 1 ft. 11½ in. The openings are 5 ft. 7½ in. high, with tracery in the heads to a depth of 3 feet, i.e., 21 inches lower than the level of the springing. The entrance has a semi-circular arch, cusped on the under side. The bottom part of the screen is 4 ft. 3½ in. high, with blind tracery in the panel heads to the depth of 12½ inches. On the west side the principal muntins are buttressed, the buttresses square in plan, with moulded bases; out of the top of the buttresses rise boutel shafts, with polygonal and embattled caps, from which the groined vaulting springs. The rood-screen stands at the entrance of the chancel, and the rood-loft must have extended only from side to side of the nave. The rood-stair entrance, now stopped and bricked up, is in the north-east corner of the south aisle. The doorway is 18 in. wide by 6 ft. 7 in. high from the floor to the crown of the arch, or obtuse angle, which is cut in the underside of the lintel. The exit from the stair on to the loft, though blocked, is traceable in the wall in the easternmost spandril of the south arcade of the nave.
Chesterfield.—The rood-loft is recorded to have been extant as late as the year 1783. There is not the slightest trace of a rood-stair entrance visible. In 1841, Sir Stephen Glynne found the nave galleried completely round, including the eastern part of it. “The gallery,” he says, “at the eastern extremity contains the organ.... In the gallery beneath the organ is incorporated a portion of wood screenwork of rather elegant character,” all which goes to show that the rood-screen stood at the western crossing, the arch there having a clear opening of 14 ft. 2½ in. In 1843, the “restoration” of the church was begun; and the building having first been thoroughly swept of its fittings, Mr. Gilbert Scott (afterwards knighted) was then called in to do the garnishing. “I found,” he writes in his Recollections, “the rood-screen to have been pulled down and sold; but we protested, and it was recovered.” In a footnote he adds, “There is no such screen now in Chesterfield church.” In this, as happily the event proved, the architect was mistaken, but his remark would seem to imply that Sir Gilbert Scott himself is not to be held responsible for the rood-screen being improperly re-erected in its present position between the north transept and its eastern chapel. The screen is 14 ft. 6 in. long, and consists of five bays, centring 2 ft. 10½ in., of which the middle bay, having a clear opening of 2 ft. 5¼ in., comprises the doorway. It is fitted with doors, but they are not original. Indeed, the screen as a whole has been much renovated. The total height of it as it stands is 13 ft. 3½ in. down to the floor. The fenestration openings are 7 ft. 3 in. high, and the pierced tracery in the head extends to a depth of 21½ inches, and contains an embattled transom, which makes a horizontal line right across the screen from side to side. At a distance of 1 ft. 11 in. below the base of the tracery a second transom intersects the screen, not, however, continuously, on account of the doorway in the middle. The bays, though fashioned in rectagonal compartments, exhibit a pronouncedly arched formation, which suggests that they should be vaulted. At the same time the spandrils are traceried and cusped, a feature inconsistent with vaulting, and such, therefore, that I am inclined to attribute to the meddling hand of the “restorer.” It only remains to add that the principal muntins are buttressed on the westward front, and that the tracery has the usual midland characteristic of a flat surface at the back.
Chesterfield Church: Part of Parclose Screen in South Transept.
More complete than the above-named is the imposing parclose which stands in the south transept, and, extending throughout the entire length of the transept, divides it for the two chantry chapels to eastwards. These chapels were dedicated to Our Lady and St George respectively, while against the westward face of the screen stood the altar of St Michael on the left, and that of St Mary Magdalene on the right. The screen consists of ten bays, four-centred; the third bay from either end forming a doorway to lead into the corresponding chapel beyond it. The bays vary in centring from 3 ft 4½ in. to 4 ft. 1 in. The upper part of the screen expands eastwards and westwards with groined vaults (partly renovated, the interspaces traceried on the west side but plain on the east) into a wide platform of from 5 to 6 feet from front to back, and such that was apparently never finished with a loft. The elevation of the whole (exclusive of a stone plinth of 4½ inches) is 15 feet in height. The fenestration is strikingly lofty, the distance from the cill to the summit of the opening being 8 ft. 6 in., with tracery in the head to the depth of 26 inches. The base of this tracery descends 10 inches below the level of the caps and the springing of the vaults. The tracery itself is of handsome Perpendicular design, and is enriched with tall, crocketed pinnacles running up through the midst of the batement lights. The opening is sub-divided horizontally, at a distance of 49 inches from the crown of the arch, by a transom cusped and feathered on its under side. The solid part of the screen is 4 ft. 7 in. high. The rail is carved with a waving tracery pattern; the blind panelling is traceried in the head, and has a band of quatrefoil ornament along the bottom. The principal muntins are faced with clustered shafts. The more northern of the two doorways, with Tudor roses in the spandrils and cinquefoil cusping on the under side, is original, but the other doorway is an unsatisfactory piece of patch work.
With regard to the third screen, Sir Gilbert Scott, in the above-quoted Recollections, wrote: “There existed in the church, as I found it, a curious and beautiful family pew and chapel, enclosed by screenwork, to the west of one of the piers of the central tower. This was called the Foljambe chapel, and was a beautiful work of Henry VIII.’s time. What to do with it I did not know. It was right in the way of the arrangements, and could not but have been removed. I at last determined to use its screenwork to form a reredos.” Such is the “restorer’s” frank and ingenuous confession of his wanton abuse of a grand, historical monument. The remains of this chantry parclose (its openwork still disfigured by metal panels painted with the Ten Commandments, according to the fashion of the day, circa 1843–5) were forced to migrate once more in 1898, and now (March, 1907) stand against the west wall of the south transept. The screenwork is rectagonal in plan. As at present made up it is just under 22 feet long, and consists of six compartments, centring from 3 ft. 6½ in. to 3 ft. 8 in., of three lights each. The openings are 3 ft. 7 in. high, with stem-like tracery in the head to the depth of 9½ inches. The upper part is coved, projecting 35 inches from back to front. The total height from the top of the cresting to the ground just exceeds eight feet. The solid part below the openings has apparently been cut down, since it is only 2 ft. 11 in. high. The rail is carved with a band of quatrefoils and trefoils in the alternate swell and trough of a wave line, and the blind panelling is traceried in the head to the depth of 5 inches. The cornice is elaborately carved with a grape and vine pattern on a wave basis, with shields introduced; the band itself, however, absurdly turned upside down. It displays the following seven distinct coats of arms, which appear by themselves and in various combinations of impalement:—
| Ashton | A mullet. |
| Breton | A chevron between three escallops. |
| Bussex | Barry of six (represented as seven). |
| Foljambe | A bend between six escallops. |
| Leeke | On a saltire (not represented, as it ought to be, engrailed), nine annulets. |
| Loudham | On a bend, five cross crosslets. |
| Nevile | A saltire ermine. |
That the screens now standing do not represent the full complement of screenwork with which Chesterfield Church was enriched when the shock of the Reformation fell upon it, is attested by additional fragments of tracery, one of them let into the underpart of a communion table in the south-east chapel, and more in a low rail about the site of the former high altar.
Church Broughton.—In 1820, portions of the parcloses that used to shut off the chantries or side altars at the end of the aisles still existed; but in 1845–6 the church was “repaired,” with the usual result that the screens were dismembered. Considerable remains, however, of the oak tracery are embodied in a modern reredos behind the altar.
Crich.—The screen which is now in St. Peter’s, Derby, and which was originally in Crich church, is constructed on a rectagonal principle, that is to say, it was never vaulted. It consists of six compartments, each having an average opening of 13 inches and an average centring of 1 ft. 5 in. The height of the fenestration from the cill to the top of the opening is 58 inches, the head being occupied to the depth of 12½ inches by pierced tracery of Perpendicular design, with an embattled transom intersecting it in a straight line from side to side. The screen itself is divided into two halves, each 4 ft. 4 in. long, and each having, immediately below the cill, a pierced panel of cusped tracery of trellis-like design, 3 ft. 10 in. long by 6¾ in. high. For the rest, seeing that the screen has been made up for its present position, to give the dimensions of its total height and length would only be to mislead.