Memorials of Old Lincolnshire

by Unknown

West of this bay was a second screen pierced with doors at either end, and having an altar in the middle against its western side. On top of this screen was the rood-loft, with the great rood and its attendant images. A bay westward was a low fence screen (the wainscot screen alluded to in the above quotation from The Rites of Durham), and the remainder of the nave was fitted up for the conversi or working brothers. At Fountains, J. T. Micklethwaite noted the same arrangement. At Bolton, in Yorkshire, where the nave is in actual use as the parish church, the altar stands precisely in the position of this Jesus or parish altar; the piscina may be seen close at hand in the south wall, and the Late Perpendicular oak screen, once in front of the altar, is now at the west end.

Where there was a parish service in the nave of a conventual church, the nave was more or less completely shut off from the choir. The parish altar then would stand, as first mentioned in the case of Bolton, against the east wall of the nave, and consequently there would be a parish rood-screen and rood-loft still farther down the nave, so as to cut off a chancel, so to speak, for the parish service. At Freiston Priory (although this eastern separating wall of the nave is modern, the choir having perished), the altar is approximately in the position of the people’s altar, and the staircase to the rood-loft, and the traces of the rood-screen (which exists in a neighbouring parish church—that of Fishtoft), show that three bays of the nave were cut off by it. Almost exactly the same arrangement exists at Dunster, where the choir was ordered, in 1499, to be used exclusively by the monks, and the nave to be appropriated to the parishioners. A coëval rood-screen extends across the nave, cutting off two eastern bays, with a rood-stair in the south aisle, showing its present position to be the original one.

At Edington Priory Church, Wiltshire, a new altar has been erected in the position of the original parish one against the screen. At Westminster Abbey the choir runs far into the nave (cutting off the five eastern bays), and is separated from it by a high and deep screen of which the inner stonework dates from the thirteenth century, but the fronting is modern. One bay west was the rood-screen; below it, on the floor of the nave, was the Jesus altar, at which mass was said in presence of the people. Above, in the rood-loft, was a second Jesus altar, from which, on certain days, the Epistles and Gospels were read.

Also, as everywhere in churches before the Reformation, there were altars in connection with the rood-screens and rood-lofts. For instance, in 1400, Lady Johanna, late wife of Sir Donald de Hesilrigg, bequeaths “To the convent of the house of Gysburgh, in Clyveland, one vestment of camaca to serve in the pulpit there, and one chalice of silver gilt.” At Grantham Parish Church, where there was a stone rood-screen, we know, from a mention in the Patent Rolls, that there was an altar in the rood-loft. In York Minster there was an altar in the loft before the image of the Saviour, on the south side of the church, for two chaplains, founded in 1475-6 by Richard Andrew, Dean of York.[101] In the same place an inventory is given, of the date 1543, of the belongings of the “altar of the name of Jhesu in the rudde loft.”

At Norwich Cathedral the pulpitum still exists as the organ loft (with a staircase north and south from central passage to loft), between the twelfth piers of the nave (from the west end), the space between these and the eleventh is taken up by the Chapel of Our Lady of Pity—the ante-choir. Between the eleventh piers is Bishop Le Hart’s screen, with central door and an altar on either side, that on the north dedicated to St. William, that on the south to St. Mary. Further west, between the tenth piers, was probably a wooden screen, and either on this or above Bishop Le Hart’s screen the rood would be placed.

An early screen at St. Albans, built by Abbot Richard, 1097-1119, is described as a wall of stone finished with a wooden capping, the altar being raised in the centre towards the nave. The present screen, called St. Cuthbert’s, cuts off three bays of the nave westwards of the lantern. In the centre is the altar of the Holy Cross, with a door on each side opening into the choir eastwards. If the rood-beam and figures were not supported by the screen, they must have been probably westwards of it (eastwards in Murray’s Cathedrals), and supported by their own screen perhaps.

The only instance in Lincolnshire of a screen of the kind just described exists in Crowland Abbey. Here the north aisle of the nave seems to have been used for the parish church (as it is now) from early times, but the arrangement in the nave is the same as that mentioned above, though I know of no remains of any eastern screen having been discovered. The splendid western Norman arch of the central tower is screened across below by a solid wall, pierced by two side doors, and on the west side there is a space betwixt them for the altar. Also, on this side, there is a band of panelling of sunk quatrefoils, extending right across the screen a little above the doors (a wooden reredos and panelling probably filling up the plain portions of this wall); while the eastern face of the screen is ornamented with a panelled band of quatrefoils alternating with shields, and the rest of the surface is covered with panelled tracery of Perpendicular date. The doorways on this side are four-centred, with square-headed mouldings above, the spandrils being filled in with foliage. This screen most likely was built by William de Croyland, who was master of the works from 1392 to 1417. In 1539, probably the whole arch was built up solid, with a square-headed two-light window in the middle, so as to allow the nave to be used as the parish church when the choir and the rest of the abbey was pulled down. The roof of the nave fell in about 1688, after which the north aisle would again be used as the parish church. It is interesting to recall the fact that at Leominster a new north aisle was built to serve as the parish church, and so also at Blyth.

This central position of the altar, with a doorway on either side, was a general arrangement in the Jubés of Germany, of which Pugin’s plates of those in Münster Cathedral, the Domkirche and the Hospital, Lübeck, the Dom at Hildersheim, and that at Gelnhausen may serve as specimens. G. E. Street gave a sketch of a choir-screen with central altar on its western front, and a door in either side, at Zamora Cathedral (Gothic Architecture in Spain, p. 92). And a rood-screen at Wechelburg, Saxony, with crucifix, SS. Mary and John, central western altar, and side doors, is figured in Fergusson’s Handbook of Architecture, vol. ii. p. 583.