Francis Bond

“ Abroad, the great mass of stallwork has perished; sometimes at the hands of pious vandals, often through neglect, more often still through indifference to or active dislike of mediæval art. In the stallwork of Belgium not a single tabernacled canopy remains; in France and Italy the great majority of the Gothic stalls have been replaced by woodwork of the Classical design that was dear to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; only in Spain can the wealth and splendour of English stallwork be rivalled. In England a great amount of magnificent stallwork still remains ”

“ In the latter years of the fourteenth century we come to a new form of stall design; one in which the English carvers won their greatest triumphs, and which became the standard and typical design for English stalls. It is seen in the magnificent tabernacled stalls of Lincoln, Chester, Nantwich, Carlisle, Windsor, St Asaph, Ripon, Manchester, Westminster, Beverley and Durham. To distinguish this group, we may term it "stallwork with tabernacled canopies," or, more shortly, "tabernacled stalls." Though new, it is, like all design, based on earlier models. ”

“ Just as the Chester stalls were a criticism of those of Lincoln, and the Lincoln stalls of those of Ely, so the stalls of Ripon are a criticism of those of Nantwich and Carlisle. In the latter the upper story had been emphasised; at Ripon the bottom story is given the dominance; compared with the simplicity of the Carlisle design, the lower stage at Ripon, as at Nantwich, is surpassingly rich; gables and pinnacles and window tracery are loaded with beautiful detail, cusped arches are added below; finally figure sculpture is called in, and capitals and corbels are beset with tiny angels. ”

“ Put these items together—the wages of choirmen and boys, and now and then of extra help, the making, mending and washing of surplices, the cost of music, the salaries of the organist and parish clerk and the cost of the choir school, and it will be seen that the services of a large town church must have been, musically, on quite a grand scale; it is equally plain that the love of church music and the willingness to pay for it were equally great in the villages. ”

“ Of the Lincoln work Mr A. W. Pugin said that "the stalls are executed in the most perfect manner, not only as regards variety and beauty of ornamental design, but in accuracy of workmanship, which is frequently deficient in ancient examples of woodwork.... They are certainly superior to any other choir fittings of that period remaining in England. The misericords also are all varied in design, and consist of foliage, animals, figures and even historical subjects, beautifully designed, and executed with surpassing skill and freedom." ”

“ Thus far the stallwork has been wholly of Gothic design, or nearly so. We now come to the great change of style, the reversion to the Classic art of ancient Rome, which goes by the name of the Renaissance. Of this the chief representatives left to us are the stalls of Christchurch, Hants; King's College, Cambridge; and Cartmel, Lancashire. The stalls and misericords of Christchurch, as we see them now, are a patchwork of portions of work of several periods framed together at some more or less recent epoch; there are at least two styles of Renaissance work, and three or more of Gothic. ”

“ In the design of the Gothic throne there is no reminiscence whatever of the marble chairs of the Early Christian basilicas and the Pagan Thermæ. The Gothic thrones are but glorified versions of such stalls and spirelet-tabernacles as those of Lincoln; they are spacious stalls, sometimes, as at St David's, big enough to hold a bishop and two chaplains, and crowned with a spire of open woodwork. The earliest and grandest is that of Exeter cathedral; the Fabric Rolls shew that in 1312 during the episcopate of Bishop Stapledon there was paid "for timber for the bishop's seat £6. ”

“ In laying down regulations for the services in Ripon Minster Archbishop Greenfield says, "We permit no women at all, religious or secular, unless great ladies or ladies of high rank or others of approved honour and piety, to sit or stand in a stall or elsewhere in the choir while the divine offices are being celebrated." ”

“ The desks also usually have traceried panelling in front and at their ends, which is often of much importance in helping to fix the date of the stalls; e.g., at Chester (24) , Manchester (6) , Trunch (85) and Stowlangtoft (91) . At Lincoln the panels of the lowest rows of desks contain alternately the figures of a king and of an angel with a musical instrument (5) . On the stall ends was lavished the best artistic talent of the day; there are magnificent examples at Chester (9) , Ripon (8) and Beverley Minster (7) ; very fine also are those in Bishop Tunstall's chapel in Durham castle. ”

“ Civil War follows; at length at the Restoration of 1660 the Church comes to her own again, and John Cosin ascends the episcopal throne of Durham. True to the Church of England and loyal to Gothic Architecture, he reverts to the consecrated form, and tabernacled stalls are reared once more—one of his many contributions to the cathedral and diocese of Durham (22) . Nor is the design an unworthy one; nay, rather it is a distinct improvement on that of Carlisle, Ripon, Manchester and Beverley; for by abolishing the string-course, he reduces the design to the unity with which it started at Lincoln. ”

“ When the procession enters the choir from the nave through the screen doorway, the right of the return stalls is the place of honour. Here in a cathedral of the old foundation, i.e., one which has always been served by secular canons, such as Lincoln, Wells, Hereford, the dean sits on the right, and the subdean or the precentor on the left of the gangway. In a monastic church the abbot sat on the south, the prior on the north side. But sometimes a monastic church, e.g., Ely, Winchester, Norwich, was also the cathedral of a bishop, who was ipso facto abbot. ”

“ In Winchester cathedral is stallwork of rare beauty in the Lady Chapel, which was built in the time of Bishop Courtenay, 1486-1492. In some of its details it resembles the Windsor stalls, which were completed in 1483; it is therefore feasible that some of the Windsor carvers went on to Winchester (73) . South of the Lady Chapel is the chantry chapel of Bishop Langton, 1493-1500, where also the screen and coved panelling are of great excellence (72) ; there are no stalls. ”

“ In the walling of the semicircle of the cathedral apse at Norwich there still remains the bishop's throne and portions of the seats of his clergy. And since Norwich cathedral is not orientated to the west, but to the east, it follows that the people faced east and the bishop and clergy west; it is hardly conceivable, however, that the celebrant can have faced west. Such a disposition can never have been but rare. ”

“ The only exception among cathedrals with crypts is Gloucester, where the crypt is low and the eastern limb is short and where the stalls remain to this day beneath the central tower. The example set by cathedrals with crypts was soon followed by churches of every degree which had none; whether Benedictine, such as at Chester, Augustinian, as at Carlisle, or served by Secular Canons, as at Exeter. ”

“ The construction of the tabernacled canopies is well seen in the set of illustrations from Chester cathedral. In Lincoln Minster, where they are of somewhat simpler type, they may be described as follows. The canopies are hexagonal, supported on shafts, which have clustered niches above their proper capitals; the stalls of the Chancellor and Treasurer, which are at the extreme east on either side of the choir, have winged seraphs in their capitals. The niches have ogee canopies bowing forward in front of their true gables, with various small heads and faces on the hip-knobs. ”

“ At All Saints', Hereford, is a range of stalls of remarkable beauty. They have the bowing ogees, the compound cusping, the intersecting wavy tracery of the first half of the fourteenth century; yet the cusping and tracery are not in the early manner. In the cathedral the bowing ogees meet at an angle of nearly 45°; at All Saints', they project but slightly, meeting with a very obtuse point. All Saints' has ogee canopies under a coved horizontal tester with supporting shafts, as in the cathedral. In the latter the cornice of the tester on the south side has a perforated battlemented parapet ”

“ More important still are the fixed thrones of Early Christian days. These were not of wood or ivory, but of masonry, usually marble. In shape they were just high-backed chairs of marble. Now countless numbers of such marble chairs or stalls were in use in the theatres, thermæ and amphitheatres of Pagan Rome; the thermæ of Caracalla alone possessed 600 such marble stalls. Doubtless many a bishop's throne, like those at St John Lateran, St Clement and Cosmedin, Rome, was actually taken from one of the Roman thermæ. ”

“ In all the choirs there seem to have been "singing boys" as well as men. We hear in 1477 of four choristers being brought over to St Mary at Hill for a special service, for which they received the modest sum of 1d. each. At this church it was finally arranged to have a permanent choir, and what we should call a choir school was established, with John Norfolk, the organist, at the head of it to train the boys: for there "was paid for making clean of a chamber in the Abbot's Inn to be a school for Norfolk's children." ”

“ The design of the stalls is curious and interesting. In the canopy the leading motif is the "bowing ogee," repeated twice; it is well seen in the contemporary work of the Percy monument at Beverley and the arcading of Ely Lady Chapel. The upper and acutely pointed ogee is finialled, and is flanked by battlemented and crocketed pinnacles; behind is a battlemented, crocketed and finialled spirelet. Behind the spirelets is arcading composed of window tracery; and above the arcading is a crested horizontal cornice. At first sight the design looks no more advanced than that of Ely ”

“ A second story of the canopy contains a niche, square in plan, but set lozenge wise, covered with a lofty pinnacle, and flanked by open screenwork with high flying buttresses, nearly all of which have lost their crockets. ”

“ The chancel became practically a secluded, closed chapel; the offices and services which had been performed in the midst of the laity became more and more the prerogative of a privileged ecclesiastical order; in the end, in the greater churches, special altars were put up for the laity in the nave; except in the parish churches, laymen lost the right to participate in services at the High Altar. {21}
Carlisle
In our great monastic and collegiate churches it was long before the ninth century innovation—viz., the insertion of the choir in the eastern limb of the church—was generally adopted ”

“ Henry the Seventh's chapel at Westminster was built partly as a Lady Chapel, partly to be the mausoleum of Henry VII. and his Queen, and of Henry VI. [35] Here the canopies with tower-like form and single story and with the absence of pinnacle are plainly reminiscent of those of Windsor, and as plainly distinct from current English design, as seen at Manchester in 1508 and Beverley Minster in 1520; the Westminster and Manchester canopies were being made together; but those of Westminster have no connection with the grand Northern series of consecutive designs (131) . ”

“ Above rises a lofty spirelet, encircled at its base by "Lincoln ogee" gables. Between the spirelets, as at Ely and Lincoln, are tall pinnacles. The leafage of the lower canopies should be compared with that of Lancaster. In the five examples illustrated (53, 55, 56) it will be seen how consummate and versatile in design were these mediæval craftsmen; they were bubbling over with design, and could not repeat themselves if they wished. ”