In England Bede mentions a parallel instance. Finian the successor of St. Aidan in the See of Lindisfarne built a church after the manner of the Scots of hewn oak with a thatched roof; afterwards “Eadbert also bishop of that place (638) took off the thatch and covered it both roof and walls with lead.”
The exaggerated lead roofs of the early mediæval churches in England were in nowise dictated by utilitarian considerations. The creeping of the lead on steep surfaces, the many burnings, and the great expense in large churches which would take literally acres of lead, made maintenance a burden, but they liked this metal casing, and that was enough.
This is still more evident in the mediæval delight in the tall leaded spires, not in their aspect as mere roof coverings, but intrinsically as metal shrines, looking on them with their decorations as vast pieces of goldsmith’s tabernacle work. The steep pitch of the roof of the main building when applied to a square tower quite naturally produced leaded spires. These already appear in the drawing made of Canterbury Cathedral about the year 1160. That these metal-sheeted spires were the best loved form, and that stone was adopted at last but as a truce with fire is proved by the spires of lead which appear in the wall paintings (those that were at St. Stephen’s for instance), in the MSS., and by the splendid leaded spire of St. Paul’s which we shall speak of below. The spire so treated is not a mere roof, or a cheap substitute for stone, but takes its place in metal-cased architecture, as do also the leaded Byzantine domes of St. Sophia and St. Mark’s.
In that most splendid work of the English renaissance, the palace of Nonsuch, which was begun by Henry VIII. in 1538, the structure was what we call half-timber, the panels were filled with coloured and gilt reliefs by Italian modellers, and the timber framing is described by Pepys, who visited it in 1665, as sheeted with lead. This casing we may be sure was covered with delicate Italian arabesques. His words are, “One great thing is that most of the house is covered, I mean the posts and quarters in the walls, with lead and gilded.”
§ IV. OF LEADED SPIRES AND TURRETS.
Our own old St. Paul’s, the once highest steeple in the world, which rose 500 feet and more into the clouds, from whence it at last drew the lightning to its destruction, was the proudest example of these lead spires which for beauty at least equalled the finest examples in stone. When the second church, begun at the end of the eleventh century, was but just completed; “the quire was not thought beautiful enough, though in uniformity of building it suited with the church: so that resolving to make it better they began with the steeple, which was finished in A.D. 1221.” This was the lead-covered steeple, the only spire of the church which stood centrally over the crossing. It was 1312 before the modification of the old church was done, and thenceforth that part was known as the “new work.” Within three years afterwards a great part of the spire of timber covered with lead being weak and in danger of falling was taken down and a new cross, with pommel large enough to contain ten bushels of corn, well gilt was set on the top thereof by Gilbert de Segrave the Bishop of London with great and solemn procession, and relics of saints were placed in it.[4] The relics of saints were thus put at the apex as a safeguard from lightning.
This lead spire, repaired in 1315, must have been the work spoken of as finished in 1221, and it was thus the earliest lead spire of considerable dimensions of which we have any knowledge: it was an extraordinary development from the square lead pyramids that covered the Norman towers at Canterbury and other places.
Stow says the height was 520 feet “whereof the stone-work is 260 feet, and the spire was likewise 260 feet. The cross was 15 feet high by 6 feet over the arms, the inner body was of oak, the next cover was of lead, and the uttermost was of copper red varnished. The bowl and the eagle or cock were of copper and gilt also.” The ball at the apex was three feet across and the weathercock four feet from bill to tail and three feet six inches across the wings. “Certes,” says Harrison, “the toppe of this spire where the weathercocke stode was 520 foote from the ground of which the spire was one half.” The measurements of Wren confirm the height of the stone tower (which alone was standing in his day) as being 260 feet, the spire, he says, had been 40 feet diameter at the base and rose 200 feet or more. It must have been altogether worthy of this vast church of twenty-five compartments in the interior vista of arch and vault, 600 feet in greatest length and 100 feet high. In 1444 the spire narrowly escaped destruction by lightning, but the fire was put out. “In the year 1561, the 4th of June, between the hours of three and four of the clock in the afternoon, the great spire of the steeple of St. Paul’s Church was fired by lightning, which brake forth as it seemed two or three yards beneath the foot of the cross: and from thence it went downwards the spire to the battlements, stonework, and bells, so furiously that within the space of four hours the same steeple with all the roofs of the church were consumed to the great sorrow and perpetual remembrance of the beholders.”[5] It was thus destroyed a hundred years before the great fire when the cathedral perished.
London was a city of lead spires. Stow tells us that at St. Paul’s School close by the Cathedral was “of old time a great and high clochiard or bell-house, four square built of stone and in the same a most strong frame of timber with four bells the greatest that I have ever heard. The same has a great spire covered with lead with the image of St. Paul on the top.” It was said that Sir Thomas Partridge won it by a throw of dice from Henry VIII., and pulled it down. Stow, who would have thought the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, to which we owe so much good work, much too cautious in its methods, reports with much pleasure, “This man was afterwards hanged on Tower Hill.” At St. Bartholomew’s Priory, Smithfield, was another of these timber spires.