Crowland Abbey Rood-Screen, from the East.
In all Norman cathedrals, probably, the choir extended westwards across the transepts into the structural nave. Consequently in any later erection of screens to mark the entrance into the choir, this ancient line of demarcation would be followed. The late Professor Willis remarks of the screen already alluded to at Canterbury, as described by Gervase, “that it may have remained, though in an altered form, to the Reformation. One of Winchelsey’s statutes (dated 1298) expressly commands that the two small doors under the great loft between the body of the church and the choir, which are near the altar under the Great Cross, shall remain.” Thus also at Chichester, Bishop Arundel’s Oratory (which was pulled down in 1859) stood across the western arch of the central tower. At Winchester, the rood-screen was in the second bay of the nave. At St. Albans, St. Cuthbert’s altar-screen is three bays down the nave, and at Norwich Bishop Le Hart’s screen (when complete with a vaulted extension westwards, and a screen still farther, whereon the rood-beam would be placed) takes in three bays of the nave. At Westminster four bays, at Gloucester one bay, were included in the choir: at Peterborough the organ-screen enclosed the first bay of the nave, and there was a second screen as at Norwich, one bay farther west. The choir of the monks at Ely extended westwards beyond the central tower, and after that had fallen, beyond the octagon to the second pier of the nave. At Furness Abbey the pulpitum doubtless occupied a bay between the third pair of piers in the nave. At Crowland, as has been stated above, the existing stone screen is across the western side of the lantern. All these, except Chichester, belonged to the Benedictine Order. At Kirkstall Abbey, a Cistercian house, the plan, as it existed in the twelfth century, shows the extension of the choir into two bays of the nave, and at Roche Abbey, also Cistercian, there are traces of the rood-screen, three bays down the nave (with central door and two side altars), no other screen being found save a wooden one in the same line across the north aisle.
In several of the cathedrals on the “old foundation” there is only one screen which—as abroad—has served for rood-screens, the rood either being on or above it. Lincoln, York, Ripon, Wells, and Southwell are all furnished with screens of this kind, which have no trace of altars on their western front. I am rather doubtful whether there may not have been altars on each side of the western doorway of the screen at Southwell.
At Lincoln the solid stone screen stretches across the entrance to the choir between the eastern piers of the central crossing, being thus in length about 42 feet and in depth from east to west about 12 feet 6 inches. Its height from the floor of the nave to the top of the parapet is 17 feet. The western front of the screen consists of a central canopied archway having four recessed tabernacles with rich ogee canopied arches, grained continuously on each side, separated by detached buttressed piers. The wall behind is covered with diaper work, and subdivided by a shelf enriched with leafage below. There are still remains of colour and gilding. Three steps lead up to the doorway, from which a passage, with flat ceiling and skeleton vaulting (reminding one of similar work in the screen at Southwell) gives entrance into the choir. On the left, i.e. on the north side of this passage, opening by double doors, which have some excellent examples of original ironwork upon them, is a broad staircase leading to the loft above. Just at the entrance to the staircase is the door, on the west side, of a dark recess with an aumbry. The staircase has also a flat ceiling and skeleton rib-vaulting, and has, on emerging above, a corbel table charmingly carved with rich foliage, forming a kind of edge to the hatchway, on three sides. On the south, or right-hand side, of the central passage is a small room, with solid vaulting, lighted by a square window looking into the south choir aisle, guarded by the original iron bars.
On the south side also of the screen, there is a second stair leading to the loft, formed in the thickness of the screen wall of the first bay of the south choir aisle, lighted by a pierced quatrefoil, and approached by a small ogee-headed archway, to be reached by a short step-ladder. This, it has been stated, was for the use of the custodian of the choir, and from its smallness could never have been used by priests arrayed in canonicals. The eastern side of the screen is formed by the return stalls, and over the entrance there is a projection of half polygonal shape, and of much the same date as the choir-stalls themselves. It is noteworthy that the eastern doorway in the stone screen has a deep moulding running round the arch, with traces of colour as a finishing touch, evidently intended to be seen, before the woodwork of the stalls was placed in front of it. I may here mention that the date of the stone screen has been generally considered to be about 1320, and that of John of Welbourn’s choir-stalls about 1380. This projection is coved, and some of the ribs run down to the doorway, but it is curiously and mainly supported by horizontal beams running westward from the projection for half their length over the floor of the loft, and being bolted through that floor at their western ends. Four uprights pass downwards from the floor of the projection, two of them to the floor of the choir, which two are stopped by responds at each side of the stone archway. On reaching the loft, there is a broad seat of stone extending the whole length of the loft on the western side, above that a broad band of elegant diaper-work, surmounted by a parapet pierced with trefoils alternately erect and inverted, and finished with a battlemented cresting.
The eastern face of the screen is guarded by a coped wall of about the same height as that just mentioned, i.e. about 4 feet. In the middle, for about 8 feet, this wall is cut away down to the level of the floor of the projection over the eastern doorway, in order to give access to that floor. As already mentioned, the joists of this floor (the floor-boarding probably only dates from 1826) lead backwards, i.e. westwards, over a beam laid in the wall north and south, and in their completed state would form a half octagonal platform. On each side of the break in the parapet wall were found, in the course of the alterations in the organ and organ case (in 1897-98), three stone steps. They are broken across, and removed towards the middle of the space, but they have evidently formed part of a half octagon, as the stone floor of the loft within this mark, made by completing the figure, is of a different colour to that outside. These steps, then, have obviously led up to the complete polygon, half within the projection and half westwards of it, over the floor of the loft. These fragmentary steps were noticed to have been much worn with use. The interior of the projection, apparently, is original work, and it is interesting to find in Wild’s plate, published in 1819 before the changes in the organ, that it is boarded round and finished with a plain moulding. J. J. Smith, the late clerk of the works at the Minster, was satisfied that there was a desk running round the inside of this projection.
“Pulpitum” of Lincoln Minster, from the East.
Canon Christopher Wordsworth, in the Introduction to the second part of the Lincoln Cathedral Statutes, says that there was a rood altar (Sanctæ Crucis) under the lantern, either on the screen over the door, or before the entrance of the choir. He also adds, “there was, circa 1520-1536, a ‘Jhesus Mass,’ but whether this involved a special Jesus altar I cannot say.” And again, “Holy Rood or altar of St. Cross, which may have stood on the choir-screen.” An altar with this title appears to have existed in the time of Matthew Paris, circa 1250, as he says that Remigius was buried in front of it; “in prospectu altaris Sanctæ Crucis” are Giraldus Cambrensis’ own words. Therefore, as the Minster was partly used as the Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalene, on whose site it was built, and a presbyter was deputed by the Dean and Chapter to minister sacraments and sacramentals to the parishioners, “in certo loco ipsius ecclesiæ Cathedralis,” till Oliver Sutton erected the church on its present site in Exchequer Gate, it is probable that there was a Jesus altar for parochial purposes and a rood-screen across the western piers of the lantern, or even farther west in the nave. In this connection, the description of the rood-screen at the entrance to the choir given in the Metrical Life of St. Hugh, will be of much interest. It was almost certainly written between the years 1220 and 1235:—