Rood loft

“ The ribs of the groining were richly painted at the intersections, with images in relief on every boss. The pavement was irregularly studded with incised slabs of benefactors, who were permitted to repose beneath the floor of that edifice to whose support and glory they had contributed while living. But the most striking object that presented itself to the sight, was a most elaborate jubé or rood loft, extending completely across the entrance to the choir. ”

“ The rood screen is especially fine, in fact, the finest in the country, having still its ancient canopy projecting about six feet, with very graceful carving on the heads of the panels below it. Two staircases in the chancel piers still remain, opening on to the rood loft on either side.
The west end of the church overlooks the market, where there is always a gay scene on Mondays—stalls and cheap-jacks and [78] crowds of market folk making it almost Oriental in life and colour. ”

“ The cathedral, though it has suffered most severely from extensive alterations in the seventeenth century, has still preserved a most curious stone rood loft, debased in style, but still carrying out the principles of the old traditions. It was approached by two flights of steps, the choir being elevated over a crypt, which gives it a most imposing appearance. On the top of the first platform is an altar, and immediately over it a stone pulpit, with a brass lectern, on the left side, in the form of an eagle, doubtless for the deacon to sing the holy Gospel to the people. ”

“ Some other explanation, then, more convincing and more in accord with the evidence of fact than the suggestion of a mere ceremonial function in the rood-loft on special occasions, must be adduced to account for the regular employment of the rood-stair. That the lay folk, being many, rather [235] than the officiant minister and his clerks, being few, were they who trod the stairs leading into the parochial rood-loft, is evident. The main function of the rood-loft in parish churches was to accommodate singers, musicians, and their instruments. ”

“ If this is to be made a cathedral church, the choir should be enclosed; but if it is to serve a parochial purpose, instead of the lofty canopies, and solid back, the choir should have been enclosed with open metal screens, like those at Lubeck, and an open rood loft across the choir; at present it is neither one thing nor the other. The whole entrance of the choir is open to the public, who crowd up to the high altar, and the stalls are filled with the first comers; the whole arrangement is disgraceful, unecclesiastical, and irregular, and loudly calls for reform. ”

“ The rood was a carved or sculptured groupe consisting of a crucifix, or image of Christ on the cross, with, commonly, the virgin Mary on one side, and John on the other; though for these were sometimes substituted the four evangelists, and frequently rows of saints were added on each side. [317]
The rood was always placed in a gallery across the nave, at the entrance of the chancel or choir of the church, and this gallery was called the rood-loft, signifying the rood-gallery; the old meaning of the word loft being a high, or the highest, floor, or a room higher than another room. ”

“ Frequented as this church is by such masses of people, the screen should certainly be an open one, and {42} the back, above the stalls, should correspond. There are two enormous canopies, over nothing, that stand against the pillars; at first I imagined they indicated the seat of some dean or dignitary, but I soon found they projected only over a vacant space, by which the stalls were ascended, and were simply placed there as a vehicle for exhibiting a great assemblage of pinnacles and buttresses, and expending a sum of money unhappily, that would have half built the rood loft. ”

“ Against this gloomy background the rood and its attendant images stood out in red reflected light, but the Jews themselves that scoffed on Calvary's mount were not more bitter in their scorn than the New Gospellers, who uttered loud shouts and cries as they beheld the object of their sacrilegious vengeance. The sound of hollow blows echoes through the church, the lower door is forced: ascending footsteps are heard on the staircase; then the rebounding tread of heavy feet on the loft itself, torches appear—axes gleam—heavy blows fall thick ”

“ The eastern elevation of this screen, towards the choir, is most beautiful; there are three richly-canopied stalls at the back of the altar, and the loft, which is very spacious, is ascended by two openwork spiral staircases, of most elaborate design. The present rood is modern, and by no means commensurate in beauty with the screen; but there are evident marks of the former existence of a very large rood, partly supported by iron ties from the vaulting.
The lateral screens of the choir are solid, as is universally the case in cathedral churches ”

“ The old Dominican church has a remarkable screen of the seventeenth century; it is overloaded with sculpture and ornament of a very bad period; but it has a rood and loft, and it separates the choir from the nave of the church, which, like the usual Dominican churches, consists of a long parallelogram, with side chapels, gained out of the projection of the buttresses. The building itself is of the fine, severe Pointed style that prevailed in the fourteenth century; but all the fittings, erected probably at the same time as the screen, are of very debased character. ”

“ The loft was a vast apartment, some fifty or sixty feet in length, with its naked rafters raised little more than a man's height over the floor; but in the starlit nights, when the openings in the wall assumed the character of square patches of darkness-visible stamped upon utter darkness, it looked quite as well as any other unlighted place that could not be seen; and in nights brightened by the moon, the pale beams, which found access at openings and crevices, rendered its wide area quite picturesque enough for ghosts to walk in. ”

“ It now remained in the loft for twenty mortal years, and it might have remained longer, had not the house been going to be rebuilt. The roof was taken off, the bottle discovered and talked about; but it did not understand what was said. One does not learn languages, living up alone in a loft, even in twenty years. ”

“ Carpets, blankets, shawls, pictures, mirrors, rocking-chairs, and blue overalls hang from the ceiling, and devious pathways wind amidst piles of ready-made clothing, show-cases filled with every sort of knick-knack and half hidden under heaps of hats and boots and shoes, bookcases, secretaries, chests of drawers, mattresses, lounges, and bedsteads, to the stairway of a loft similarly appointed, and to a back room overflowing with glassware and crockery. ”

“ Picture a bare, plank-ceiled loft, some forty feet long by twenty feet broad, divided in the exact center [70] by a partition of half-inch matched boards and lighted by five windows. Imagine the walls and ceiling painted a pea-green, mentally hang two big oil-lamps—one in the middle of each room—from the latter, and spread half a dozen skins—bear, coyote, antelope, and cougar—over the discolored floor, and you have Pete’s apartments. ”

“ From the top loft, still bare and echoing, where the highly respectable summer tenants were to put up the cots of their children, to the outside den which served for a kitchen, whence a wooden ladder led to a recess among the rafters, occupied by Madame Pyat as a bedroom; from the masses of Virginia creeper on the thatched roof to the thicket of acacias and roses on the front grass-plat, and the high flowery wall which shut them off from the curious eyes of the street, it was all, in the lovers' feeling, the predestined setting for such an idyll as theirs. ”

“ Rather early I bid them all good-night and climb the attic stairs to my loft. There the three beds arrayed in soggy striped comforters greet me. Old boots and downtrodden shoes are thrown into the corners and the lines of clothing already describe fantastic shapes in the dark, suggesting pendant sinister figures. Windows are large, thank Heaven! In the mill district the air is heavy, singularly lifeless; the night is warm and stifling. ”

“ Though it is still day, a brass lamp, with four burners, illumines the cracked walls of a large loft, whose solitary window is closed against outer light. A ladder, with its top rungs coming up through an open trap leads to it. ”

“ The shop was a separate building, of rough planks, a story and a half high, the loft of which was one great dormitory well provided with beds on the floor, but with no other article of bedroom furniture. They who slept in this loft had no fastidious standards of personal luxury. These two buildings, with some half-dozen out-houses of one sort and another, stood in an enclosure surrounded by a low white picket fence, which gave to the place a certain home-like look, spite of the neglected condition of the ground, which was bare sand, or sparsely tufted with weeds and wild grass. ”

“ I could distinguish the furniture in the loft now. I saw a wash-bowl on a little stand, and put it under the loose-paned glass in the roof beneath which a pool was spreading. There was a low bureau in the room and a short turned bed, painted green, with a quilt thrown over one end, two little hand-made chairs, and one of those solid wooden rocking-horses, awesomely brave in the dusk. An open sea-chest held picture-books and paints and bent lead soldiers, and strewn upon the floor were quahaug-shells and a string of buoys. ”

“ She utters an ejaculation of wonder mingled with terror. For it is a magnificent, and yet a gloomy place that Golden Room. A large square apartment, the walls concealed by black hangings,—hangings of velvet fringed with gold. The floor is covered with a dark carpet, the ceiling represents a sun radiating among sullen clouds. The chairs, the sofa, are covered with black velvet, and framed in gold. Only a single mirror is there,—opposite the sofa, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, framed in ebony, which in its turn is framed in a border of gold. ”

“ Always the same rows of red-brick or brownstone houses, all alike, the monotony broken only by infrequent warehouses or loft-buildings; always the same doubtful mounting of stone steps, the same searching for a bell, the same waiting, the same slatternly, suspicious landlady, the same evil hallway with a brown hat-rack, a steel-engraving with one corner stained with yellow, a carpet worn through to the flooring in a large oval hole just in front of the stairs, a smell of cabbage, a lack of ventilation. ”

“ Besides three large oat-bins, it contained a bin for barley, one for buckwheat, and one for bran. The loft was also used as a general storehouse for all sorts of stuff that would not keep well in a damp cellar; and it was a very paradise for rats. From the wood-shed below admittance to the loft was gained by a flight of open board stairs and a spacious trap-door.
Mounting these stairs and lifting the trap-door, the boy carefully undid the wire noose from Hushwing’s feathered legs, avoiding the keen talons which promptly clutched at his fingers. ”

“ I like it better, with its bay windows, so built that no article of furniture will fit it, with its awful ingle nooks, its sham gables and its sham dormer windows, than the awful old Georgian houses near Lamb’s Conduit Street, where, crowded together under a ceiling still flecked with gold, on which naked cherubs sprawl, a dozen Russian furriers sit and scratch. For the hideous modern house can at least be clean; it is small; it is washable; a through draught can be arranged; a very little it opens the window on life. ”

“ The current of air admitted by the open jalousies, passing constantly through this apartment, renders it at all times delightfully cool; while the lattice-work serves to mellow the glare of light, which, under the sky of the tropics, is almost as disagreeable as the heat. An uncarpeted floor, composed of the hardest sorts of native wood, and subjected to a diurnal polish, contributes to increase the coolness.
This great hall is the principal apartment of the dwelling. ”

“ Opening from this room is the living-room, where the same kind of rugs are laid on the hardwood floor. In this room, after the house was purchased, a fireplace was discovered hidden away behind the partition. It was opened up and restored to its original size. At one side a closet was glassed in, while in either corner cosy, built-in settles give an inglenook effect that is very interesting. The furnishings are wholly Colonial and in keeping with the general character of the apartment. Here the low stud, the beamed [Pg 206] ceiling, the depth and lightness of the room, are most attractive. ”

“ I repeat, let no man think I have disclosed the weaknesses of the neighborhood, nor rashly open that closet which contains the secret skeleton of his dwelling. My carpets have been altered to fit all sized odd-shaped apartments from parallelopiped to hexagons. Much of my furniture has been distributed among my former dwellings. These limbs have stretched upon uncarpeted floors, or have been let down suddenly from imperfectly established bedsteads. I have dined in the parlor and slept in the back kitchen. ”

“ Abroad, such necessities are met by three or four downright penthouse roofs, reaching each from within the window to the outside shafts of its mouldings; instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, the space is thus divided into four or five grand masses of shadow with grey slopes of roof above, bent or yielding into all kinds of delicious swells and curves, and covered with warm tones of moss and lichen. Very often the thing is more delightful than the stone-work itself, and all because it is broad, dark, and simple. ”