A. Hamilton Thompson

“ As a matter of fact, fifteenth century builders were gifted with a power of design, and an ability to plan a parish church as a whole, unequalled in the previous history of medieval art. They lost their interest in sculptured detail, because their main concern was with the broad contrasts of light, shade, and colour, which their large windows and high walls afforded—contrasts in which there was no use for minute detail, and the deep under-cutting and delicate carving of the earlier styles became mere waste of time. ”

“ The third source of colour to the church, apart from the stonework and the stained glass, was the woodwork of roofs, screens, and other pieces of furniture. With this must be reckoned also the colour of the stone furniture of the church, the sedilia, canopied tombs, stone reredoses, pulpits, and so on. As a rule, the colouring of the stone, here as upon the walls, has faded away or has been obscured by later coats of plaster or whitewash. Here and there, as at Higham Ferrers, a tomb-canopy keeps not a little of its original brilliance. ”

“ Richness of colour and simplicity of furniture were the distinguishing features of the medieval altar. There is a curious ledge upon the back part of the upper surface of the crypt altar at Grantham: it actually lies upon the altar, and its height, as contrasted with that of the modern gradine or shelf, affords the same contrast that there is between the low foot-paces of the medieval, and the flights of steps of the modern chancel. ”

“ When vicarages were ordained, the repair of the chancel, the rector’s peculiar property, was usually left to the monastery as rector; but we often find that a special stipulation was made by which part of the repairs even of this portion of the church devolved upon the vicar, and that sometimes his stipend was so arranged as to free the monastery of this obligation altogether. A monastery naturally regarded the fruits of a church as an addition to its own income. The most that could be expected of it would be that it would employ a reasonable part of the profits in keeping the fabric in order. ”

“ Thus, by the gradual addition of chapel after chapel, the plan of these magnificent churches, some of the finest productions of English art, grew until, as at Burford or Holy Trinity, Coventry, it lost all likeness to its original state, and seems at first sight to be a collection of buildings heaped together without much method. It would be interesting to trace the growth of churches like St Mary Redcliffe or Ludlow, as we have traced that of Cirencester and Burford. ”

“ Lay benefactors acquired the habit of alienating land, not to some religious house, but to one or more priests who, as a condition of the gift, should say mass daily at one of the altars of a parish church for the good estate of the giver and other persons named by him, and for their souls after death. These endowments of services were known as chantries, and were intended to continue for ever. Many chantries were founded in cathedral and monastery churches; but, as time went on, the church of the parish in which the benefactor lived was more and more frequently chosen as their site. ”

“ There is a gorgeous coloured frame, probably much restored, for a reredos in the north chapel at Worstead in Norfolk. The panels of the reredos in the south aisle at Northleach contain certain figures of saints, in faded green, red, and blue. The fine reredoses in the side chapels of St Cuthbert’s at Wells have brilliant remains of gilding. But coloured woodwork, which has lost little of its brightness, is fairly common, and, though it has often [106] been subjected to drastic restoration, is sometimes almost untouched by time. ”

“ Our parish churches, as we have them to-day, are stripped of much that made them beautiful. The cold walls, often scraped of all their plaster and whitewash; the windows, glazed with white glass, or with modern glass of very uncertain merit, reveal merely the structural skeleton of the building. ”

“ The splendid development of many twelfth century parish churches is no argument against their local origin. Architectural enthusiasm in the middle ages was a possession of the people generally: it was not confined to a limited and privileged body. The large monastery or cathedral churches in every neighbourhood were sources of inspiration to the builders of the parish churches: details were copied, and methods of construction were learned from them, and the structural progress which took place in them had a constant influence upon the architectural improvement of the less important buildings. ”

“ Thus, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, the church of Adlingfleet in Yorkshire became the subject of a long law-suit between two separate patrons, the archbishop of York, and their presentees, which was protracted for nearly thirty years before the royal and papal courts. The candidates, all non-residents, strove to obstruct each other. In the parish itself they made attempts to defend their rights by force, and it is difficult to see how, during this period of strife, the cure of souls could have been adequately served. ”

“ No effect of colour can well surpass that which is still to be seen in some of our late medieval churches—the grisaille windows of the chancel at Norbury in Derbyshire, the late fourteenth century figure glass of the north aisle at Lowick in Northamptonshire, the fifteenth century east window of the south aisle at St Winnow in Cornwall, the fourteenth century Jesse tree, once in St Chad’s, and now in St Mary’s at Shrewsbury, or the fifteenth century Jesse tree at Llanrhaiadr-yn-Cynmerch, near Denbigh. Some of the parish churches of York are almost as rich in glass as the cathedral itself. ”

“ It can never be impressed too strongly upon the average Englishman that, quite apart from their religious associations, the parish churches of this country form, as a body, one of the most remarkable historical monuments which any European nation possesses. ”

“ In many lofts, it is true, there was an altar. The piscina of one remains in a few churches, as at Little Hereford: there was a chantry founded in 1349 at one in Grantham church, where the screen was a large one of stone. But the habitual use of the loft was as an organ gallery; and the fine screen at Newark-on-Trent still has at its east side the rectangular projection which was occupied by a ‘pair of organs.’ The rood itself, the great cross bearing the figure of our Lord with statues of St Mary and St John upon either side, stood upon a beam which crossed the chancel arch above the loft. ”

“ Where chantry colleges have existed, the fact is by no means always obvious in the plan of the church. It is sometimes disclosed by the presence of stall-work of unusual richness in the chancel, as at Higham Ferrers; and sometimes, as in the same place, the altar in the main chancel may have been reserved for the services of the college, while another altar was provided for the ordinary parochial services. But it must be borne in mind that a chantry college was not a monastery. The church appropriated to the college was a parish church. ”

“ St Mary Redcliffe was merely a chapel of Bedminster, appropriated, like Grantham, to a stall in Salisbury cathedral. At Cirencester and Coventry the churches were close to the religious houses to which they belonged. But the growth of the churches was the result of lay devotion: the founders of chantries of whom we hear, like the famous William Canynge at St Mary Redcliffe, were men who had made money in business. The part of the monasteries in church-building was never, so far as parish churches were concerned, very active. ”

“ There is no more familiar feature of medieval architecture than the gradual increase in the size of windows, due to that constant progress in the science of architectural construction, in which the timber-roofed parish church followed the vaulted cathedral. The low round-headed windows of the twelfth century were followed by the long lancets of the early thirteenth century. Lancets gradually drew closer and closer together, and were united with spherical openings above, until the mullioned window with its geometrical tracery was formed. ”

“ Dennington in Suffolk, a chancel of unequalled beauty, comes within the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Somewhat later is Stebbing in Essex, and a little later still is Great Bardfield. In both of these churches, close to one another, nave and chancel alike were rebuilt, and the arch between them filled with a screen of open tracery in stone. The chancel of Lawford, near Colchester, followed about the middle of the fourteenth century: its chief feature is the licence given to the curvilinear tracery of its windows. ”

“ As the history of art advanced, and the demand for special kinds of work increased, the lesser arts, hitherto treated as mere servants of masoncraft, began to strike out paths for themselves. The painters at Pickering in Yorkshire or at Raunds in Northamptonshire, treated the walls on which they worked as the backgrounds of strong and brightly coloured designs bearing no relation to the architectural divisions of the building. ”

“ In the first place, the chantry chapel is not confined to any definite part of the plan. In our cathedrals it is frequently an excrescence from an outer wall of the church, like the bishops’ tomb chapels at Lincoln or Hereford, or it is a rectangular structure of stone, with elaborately traceried windows, cresting, and canopy work, like prince Arthur’s chapel at Worcester, or the episcopal tombs at Winchester, set up within an arch of the nave or quire. Of these types we have examples in our parish churches: the first is illustrated, on a large scale, by Hall’s chapel at Grantham ”

“ No better instance of the complicating influence of chantry chapels on the plan of a parish church could be given than the church of St John Baptist at Cirencester. The oldest part of the present building is the chancel with its south chapel, which contain twelfth and early thirteenth century work, but are in the main the fruit of a later thirteenth century reconstruction. The north chapel, known as St Katharine’s chapel, is a rather narrow aisle, communicating with the chancel by fourteenth century arches. ”

“ There is a curious late thirteenth century piece of work, projecting inwards from the north wall of the chancel at Twywell, near Kettering. A tomb-recess forms the lowest stage; above this is a double almery, which may have been an Easter sepulchre, and above this, again, is a sloping stone desk with a book-rest for the reader of the gospel. ”

“ With the rise of the commercial class, the churches of East Anglia were rebuilt and transformed. Wealthy trade guilds at York, Boston, Shrewsbury, or Coventry, maintained their own chaplains in the various parish churches. Religious guilds or fraternities, composed both of men and women, obtained royal licence for incorporation, and established their chantries. Such was the Palmers’ guild at Ludlow, which received its first royal charter in 1284, and maintained a large body of chantry priests, incorporated as a college, in the parish church. ”

“ Near the entrance, or, at any rate, near the west end of the church, stood the font, beneath its canopy. No piece of church furniture was subject to so much variety of design as the font; and the types vary from perfectly unadorned examples to structures of the utmost richness. The canopy was sometimes a simple [107]
[108] cover, which could be moved by hand: often it was a towering structure, suspended by pulleys from the ceiling: sometimes it formed a roofed enclosure on carved uprights, within which the font stood, of stone at Luton in Bedfordshire, of wood at Trunch in Norfolk. ”

“ The excellence of the medieval mason’s work consists largely in his avoidance of self-consciousness, in its perfectly natural and spontaneous feeling: if we attempt to impose our individuality upon his work, we are in danger of supplying to future and, it may be hoped, wiser generations a contrast from which they will not fail to draw a melancholy profit. ”

“ But, as Christianity grew in the Saxon kingdoms, churches were naturally multiplied. Wilfrid himself was a large land-owner in Mercia, and may be credited with the building of churches upon his lands: the foundation of the monastery of Brixworth and the church of Barnack may be attributed to his influence. His example would be followed by others; and we shall not be far wrong if we look upon the private estate of Saxon times as identical with the early parish. Owners of large estates built churches upon their property ”

“ Hooton Pagnell, near Doncaster, has a large western tower which follows the Saxon tradition of the simple rubble tower with small stone quoins and without buttresses; but the character of the arch leading into the nave is distinctly Norman, and the tower is not merely of unusually large area, but is the full breadth of the spacious nave beyond it. While the western tower increases in area, it does not at first acquire buttresses at the angles: these, in their flat pilaster-like form, begin to appear in the course of the twelfth century. ”

“ In the twelfth century, however, when the side doorway was superseding the tower porch, the western tower was by no means so handsome or invariable a feature as it became in later days. Many smaller churches were content with a bell-cot over the western gable. There are several excellent examples of stone bell-cots in Rutland. In Essex and other districts where good building timber was easily procured, it is not uncommon to find square towers of timber, with conical caps or even spires, above the western gable, often supported on an elaborate framework within the west end of the church. ”

“ The greater part of a twelfth century crypt, with ribbed vaulting, remains beneath the chancel at Newark. Where the church is built on ground with a steep slope eastward, it is more economical to build the chancel on an open crypt, which also may have its uses as a bone-house when the churchyard is cleared, than to build it on a solid lower stage. ”