Chapter X: Part 10

In Derbyshire, as elsewhere, ornamental treatment, either of rood-stair entrance or of rood-door itself, is so abnormal as to call, wherever such does occur, for notice. Ashbourne church may be said to furnish an instance in point. There, in the southern transept, the south-east pier of the central tower contains a staircase, which, though constructed doubtless contemporaneously with the building of the tower itself, and, therefore, anterior to the general introduction of rood-lofts, would certainly have served to give access to the rood-loft as soon as ever that adjunct was provided at Ashbourne church. The door, then (see illustration), may not unjustly be ranked among rare examples of ornamented rood-doors. Under a moulded label, terminating on the left in a sculptured head that cannot strictly claim to be an authentic product of the period, stands this handsome oak door of late thirteenth century workmanship. It is divided vertically into two ogival-headed panels, and is enriched with wrought-iron bands and hinges, in a very fair state of preservation, although it is to be regretted that their elegant contour is partly hidden by a clumsy modern timber lining inserted into the masonry opening.

It cannot have escaped the notice of attentive observers how often the steps of rood-stairs in parish churches have been trodden into hollows, as though they had been subjected to much wear and tear. Such must, indeed, have been very constant to have left its mark thus pronouncedly upon rood-stairs, and that, too, in the comparatively short period of their use—in many cases, of not above, perhaps, a hundred years’ duration—between the date of their erection and of the Reformation changes, which sent them back again into disuse. 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 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. Again, it should be borne in mind that very often (as churches, for example, like Ashover, Old Brampton, Edensor, Staveley, Tideswell, and Wingerworth attest) a sacring-bell hung in the eastern gable of the nave, or (as in cruciform churches like that of Ashbourne) in the central tower, in either event immediately above the rood-loft. Than the latter, then, there was no better position that the sacrist could be placed in; the rood-loft affording him an excellent vantage-ground from which to keep an eye upon the movements of a priest saying mass at any altar in the building, and to summon the people at the bidding of the bell when the right moment came for them to raise their eyes and worship the uplifted Host.

Incidentally, again, the rood-loft would have been resorted to as a convenient place from which to reach the rood for its veiling and unveiling. And it must have been hither, also, that those whose office it was to tend and light the beam-lights would have had frequent occasion of coming.

But these are points which open up the subject of the rood itself, and of the various devotions and customs that grew up around it in pre-Reformation days.

The great crucifix, with the flanking statues which usually accompanied it, would either rise from the rood-loft direct, being attached to the top of the parapet, or, in the case of churches which were lofty enough to admit of it and not to cramp the heads of the figures by the roof descending too closely upon them, would be carried above the level of the rood-loft upon a separate beam crossing the eastern extremity of the nave—always provided that the essential condition was to impart the utmost dignity to the rood itself, and to insure its becoming the most conspicuous object in the whole building. Specific mention of a rood having existed in mediæval days is forthcoming in the case of the three monastic churches of Dale, Darley, and Repton, already named; in the collegiate church of All Hallows, Derby; as also in the parochial churches of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Breadsall, Chesterfield, Morley, and Repton.

The figures, to wit, the Christ upon the Cross and the Mary and John beside it, were usually sculptured and coloured, or, less commonly, gilded; and sometimes even clothed also. The existence of the last-named practice is attested in respect of images in general by a long list of jewels and garments belonging to the statue of the Madonna and Child in the Bridge Chapel at Derby, and by an item of “2 cootes of ymagys of lynen cloth and 1 of sylke” at Kirk Ireton; and in respect of roods in particular, by another item which occurs in the inventory of the church goods at Ashbourne, drawn up by order in the first year of Edward VI. The entry in point runs thus: “1 holde cote,” _i.e._, one old coat, “for the roode.” This garment, being described as “old,” would imply, not so much that the custom of employing such things had declined, as that the particular coat in question had become worn through long using. It is more than likely, indeed, that the rood’s wardrobe had been replenished through the generosity of some devout donor with fresh and costlier clothing when required, to take the place of that which had become worn out—for it was very far from being in accord with the spirit of our mediæval ancestors to offer to the Lord and His service that which cost them nothing—but that it had been forfeit already ere this time. It must be borne in mind that the best of everything worth looting had been seized by Edward’s predecessor, and that the catalogues of ecclesiastical ornaments and utensils, drawn up officially in the boy-King’s reign, represent but the pitiful remnants, of little value, left over because they had failed to tempt the rapacity of Henry VIII. And yet, poor and insignificant as they might be, they were not to be allowed to escape further diminution at the hands of Edward VI.’s counsellors and ministers, men whose conduct exhibits a peculiarly revolting blend of avarice and puritanism. That these foregoing remarks are well-founded is illustrated by the language of the inventories themselves, wherein frequently occur such qualifying descriptions as “old,” “outworn,” “torn,” or “broken,” whereas those items are rare to which the adjective “whole” is appended for differentiating the good and complete state of such few articles as happen to be above the average mediocrity of the greater number.

The great rood, as well as all images and pictures in churches, was veiled throughout Passiontide until the latter end of Holy Week, as is exemplified by the mention, in 1466, in a list of the ornaments then belonging to All Hallows’, Derby, of a “grete clothe that coverethe the Rode.” But an item in the inventory taken of the goods of Morley church at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign, viz., “a shete y^t hanged afor y^e Rode,” would appear to have been rather a hanging for the front of the rood-loft, in the presence of or at the foot of the rood itself. Rood-lofts, as is known from other sources, were often covered with “stayned” or painted hangings to enhance their ornamental qualities; or, on the other hand, veiled in white shrouds, like the rood, in Lent, in churches where the imagery and decoration upon the woodwork of the loft itself was too gay and garnished in appearance to be consistent with the solemnity of the penitential season. The past tense in the case of the hanging at Morley church is evidence that the ancient use, whichsoever alternative is referred to, had, by the date of the taking of the inventory, been already discontinued.

In the parish church at Bakewell was an altar of the Holy Cross, “built by the said cross,” situated, that is, near to the great rood, at the eastern end of the south aisle of the building. And in connection with this altar, in the reign of Edward III., a chantry was founded and endowed by Sir Godfrey Foljambe, ratification of the same being granted by royal letters patent in 1345. Further, the deed of confirmation by the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield is extant, wherein are set forth in detail the duties of the office of chaplain of the Holy Cross. From this document it appears that the chantry priest, though celebrating at the same altar, was to say a different votive mass on every day of the week in specified rotation, the mass on Friday being always that of the Holy Cross. Moreover, at every mass, after the _Confiteor_, he was to turn to the people and say, in his mother tongue: “Pray ye for the soul of Sir Godfrey Foljambe, and Anne, his wife, and his children, and brothers of the guild of the Holy Cross, and all the faithful deceased.” Again, a grant of the date 1405 exists, by which one Dom John Chepe, chaplain of the chantry of the Holy Cross in Bakewell, makes over in reversion certain landed property to the service of the said chantry for ever. Another document, of the year 1535, incidentally makes mention of “the burgage of the Holy Cross,” by which is to be understood a piece of land, probably with house property upon it, lying within the bounds of the town, and forming part of the endowments either of the chantry or the guild of that title. The last incumbent of this chantry was William Oldeffeld. On its dissolution, as the pension roll of 30th October, 1552, shows, he was allowed an annuity of £6 in lieu of his former stipend; while William Hole, chantry priest of the holy rood at Wirksworth, is known, from Cardinal Pole’s pension roll, to have been granted £5 per annum. The “rode chauntrye” at Wirksworth was founded, in his lifetime, by Sir Henry Vernon, the same whose will, as already recorded, contained a bequest for the rood-loft at Bakewell.

In Ashbourne church, until the middle of the sixteenth century (as scheduled in the chantry roll drawn up for the purposes of confiscation shortly after the accession of Edward VI.), there stood near the nave, at the foot of the rood-screen, or as near unto as might be, in the south aisle, an altar dedicated to the Holy Cross; to which was attached a chantry, founded in 1392 by the feofees of Nicholas Kniveton, for the daily celebration of the Holy Sacrifice in perpetuity. The deed of confirmation of the same by the Bishop, Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, dated 1404, is extant; as well as an indenture, dated 15th January in the seventh year of Henry VIII. on the occasion of the appointment of a new chaplain. By this document the incoming “rood-priest” covenants to take due care of, and not to waste nor alienate, the chantry goods committed to his custody; the list of which, set forth at length, comprises all the requisite ornaments for the performance of divine service (including “two chests in ye Roodequere” for the safekeeping of the aforesaid ornaments), and the domestic furniture and utensils of the chaplain’s residence as well. At the Reformation, the property and endowments were forfeited to the Crown; but it is of interest to recall how long and in what wise the memory of the institution has been kept alive by the people, for in the ancient garden of the chaplain’s house is a well, which, down to within the eighteenth century, used, by time-honoured custom, to be “dressed” or garlanded with flowers every Ascension Day after a special service in the church, and which, as lately as the last decade of the nineteenth century, was known among the oldest inhabitants of the place by the traditional name of “the rood-well.” For similar reasons a certain parcel of meadow-land in Ashbourne, being another piece of chantry property secularised, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was named “Lampholme”; while certain tenements, as appears from the negotiations which preceded the endowing of the grammar school in 1585, were termed “candle-rents.” Again, a curious illustration of analogous tradition in another part of Derbyshire is furnished by a manuscript commonplace-book which belonged to one Roger Columbell, of Darley Hall. As he died in 1565, it cannot have been written later than in the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The entry is to the effect that in former days the custom prevailed of paying, at Easter, on every house in a parish a duty of “1 fartheynge called a wax farthinge ... for lyght of the alter.”

I have met with no earlier recorded example of a rood-light endowment in Derbyshire than of that at Breadsall. Its charter is dated 1330, on the Sunday after the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By this instrument one Geoffrey, “the Reve” (or steward), son of Ranulph de Breydishale, gives and concedes half an acre of land in Breadsall to the light of the Holy Cross in the church there, “in pure and perpetual alms for ever, freely, quietly, well and in peace.” The charter concludes with, “Warranty to the said light against all people,” above the signatures of the witnesses.

Again, in a list of “serges” (wax candles; in French, _cierges_) “holden up” (maintained) by the bounty of individuals or by the several craft guilds connected with the church and parish of All Hallows, Derby, it is recorded that, in 1484, five such lights had been provided to burn before the rood. For it was not unusual for lay folk to band themselves into a confraternity under the style of the Holy Cross, among the chief duties undertaken by them being that of keeping up the requisite light or lights to burn before the rood in their parish church. Among their privileges, as in the above case of the chantry in Bakewell church, would be that of being specially remembered whenever the chaplain offered the Holy Sacrifice. Chesterfield had its guild of the Holy Cross, for whose sodality meetings and offices was set apart, with the same dedication, the east chapel of the north transept—the very chapel now enclosed by the ancient rood-screen. There was a guild of the rood at Repton also, towards whose funds, in the year 1520, one William Bothe, of Barrow, bequeathed 10s. in his will.

The mediæval custom of burning lights before the rood, and other images, too, was—if one may so express it—a definite and perfectly natural reflex of the life and conditions of the time. Previously to the closing decade of the fifteenth century, the vast continent of America still remained the dreamland Atlantis it had been to Brendan and Meldune; the Queens Consort of Spain decked themselves in the gorgeous bravery of their jewels, and the questing dove fretted unavailingly against restraining bars, until at length one devoted woman, King Ferdinand’s wife, Isabella (the same were parents of our Catherine of Aragon, and grandparents of our own Mary Tudor), offering up her jewels in pawn, found the wherewithal to equip and send forth the great navigator on his momentous voyage. Nor even then could it be otherwise than that several generations must pass away before any practical result of Columbus’s discovery could affect the great mass of the European population, and before cane-sugar could supersede the old-fashioned use of honey for sweetening purposes. Meanwhile, in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, the ancient traditions lingered long; and year by year, when the warm weather came on, the bee-keeper of the Peak would carry his skeps, or wheel them in a hand-barrow (choosing, if he were a prudent man, the night hours for the transit), out on to the moors. And there, amid the wild thyme and heather, he would set the bees down, and leave them all the summer through to gather in their store as long as the flowers were in bloom, bringing them back again into shelter at the first approach of winter. The honey, then an indispensable commodity in every household, would be carefully strained and separated from the comb; helping to pay landlord’s rent in kind, while the wax would go in tithes and free-will offerings to the service of the church. Such, then, since the devotional practices of our pre-Reformation forefathers were not aloof from their social and domestic life, but intimately interwoven and bound up with it, not out of joint nor harmony, but dovetailing and accordant the one with the other; such is the economic connection between votive candle-burning and the industry of bee-culture.

The large share of importance attached to bees, and the widespread extent of the habit of bee-keeping in former times, has left its mark upon the face of the country in many a popular place-name and field-name, whose significance is not perhaps generally appreciated by others than students of folklore and archæology. Mr. Sydney Oldall Addy, in his learned work on Hallamshire, entitled _The Hall of Waltheof_ (1893), enumerates the following instances in Derbyshire:—_Honey_ Spots, a field of two acres between Hope and _Pin_dale; _Bean_ Yard, at Ashover; _Poin_ton Cross, at Hucklow; _Poyn_ton Wood, just outside Dore; and several fields bearing the name of _Pitcher_ Croft in the immediate neighbourhood; and he shows how every one of the words, or roots of words, italicised, in some way or another preserves a directly etymological allusion to the bees or beehives having been kept from of old in the locality so named. If Beeley, Beelow, and Beeholme are doubtful instances in point, as being capable of another interpretation, it is perhaps not wholly unfeasible that the received derivation of Bentley from Benets’ _lag_, or meadow, may have to be amended to bee-field.

But be that as it may, the olden system, in the tangible form of payments reckoned in honey and wax (itself a computation dating from at least as far back as the _Domesday Book_, in which two Derbyshire manors, those of Darley and Parwich, to wit, are valued at so much current coin of the realm and so many sextaries of honey apiece), endured without a break all through the catastrophe of the Reformation, and afterwards almost down to our own times. Thus, in the parish of Hope, part of the small tithes pertaining to the vicar were paid in honey and wax. As far back as 1254, tithes of honey formed part of the emolument of the Vicar of Tideswell. In fact, in the Peak district generally, it was customary for every tenth swarm of bees to be claimed by the parson of the parish, a right which continued to be acknowledged until nearly as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. Thus in 1743, the then Vicar of Castleton records in his journal the receipt of a swarm of bees by way of tithe. Elsewhere, though actual payment in kind had become obsolete, a small fixed duty, payable to the parson in money, long survived. In some parishes, in addition to the ordinary tithes, Easter dues upon various kinds of stock and produce were chargeable, under which head the assessment of bee-keepers was fixed at 2d. per head. In the parish of Twyford, as the _Terrier_ shows, the like sum was claimed “for every hive of bees in lieu of tithe-honey and wax”—a claim which did not cease to be recognised until the nineteenth century, when, in a general re-adjustment and commutation, it was abolished. So the last lingering tradition of the old order was changed, and finally perished.

And here is the place to speak of the fate of the rood and of its accessory loft. Now, although the destruction of rood-lofts, screens and roods, in so far as they were involved in the destruction of the monasteries themselves, may be said to have begun under Henry VIII. in 1536, being followed, two years after, _i.e._, in 1538, by the order for the demolition of all roods and images alleged to be abused by superstitious devotions and offerings—the diversion of the latter into the hands of the King and his myrmidons being, of course, the real motive of the attack—the general and systematic destruction of roods did not take place until Edward VI. came to the throne, nor that of rood-lofts until nearly the end of the third year of Queen Elizabeth. The precise date of the order is 10th October, 1561. It decreed that rood-lofts should be taken down in every church and chapel in the land. It is essential, however, to note that at the same time that rood-lofts were abolished, the partition of the chancel—such was the term then used for the rood-screen—was expressly and emphatically ordered to be maintained. It is a noteworthy fact, also, that in the set of articles put forth for Archbishop Parker’s first metropolitical visitation (that of 1560–1), which included the county of Derbyshire as part of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, no reference whatever is made either to roods or rood-lofts. Meanwhile, however, the order of 1561 was promulgated, and Parker then entered upon the campaign in earnest. His visitation articles of 1563 contain the inquiry: “Whether your rood-lofts be pulled down according to order prescribed, and if the partition between the chancel and church [_i.e._, nave] be kept?” The same question would naturally go the round of the southern province, within which, as is well known, Derbyshire lies. In 1565, then, when Bentham made a visitation of the county, among the instructions issued for the occasion is found the following:—“That you do take down your rood-lofts unto the lower beams, and do set a comely crest or vault upon it, according to the Queen’s Majesty’s Injunctions set forth for the same.” This shows that Derbyshire enjoyed no exemption from the general order already mentioned. Two years later, _i.e._, in 1567, Parker, in his metropolitical visitation, reiterated his previous order of 1563; evidence as to the standard that was required throughout the country. Nor did his successor, Edmund Grindall, fail to follow his example. In the new archbishop’s articles to be inquired of within the province of Canterbury in the metropolitical visitation of 1576, the question is asked: “Whether your rood-lofts be taken down and altered, so that the upper parts thereof with the soller or loft be quite taken down unto the cross beam” (this, of course, means not the rood-beam but the transverse beam or breast-summer), “and that the said beam have some convenient crest put upon the same?” Later on, when, in 1584, Overton visited the Lichfield diocese, he inquired, among other points: “Whether your rood-lofts be clean defaced and taken away?” It is unnecessary to pursue this phase of the subject any further; but it is scarcely to be wondered at if, from such persistent and accumulated hostility on the part of the authorities, as I have retailed, no Derbyshire rood-loft has survived to this day in its complete and original state.

According to an inventory of the year 1527, there were in All Hallows church, Derby, a “pair” of great organs, and another small “pair” beside. Further entries, occurring both under the dates 1569–70 and 1582–3, mention the existence of the leaden weights “which lay upon the organs” to compress the bellows. Whence it has been inferred that because the almost invariable place for the organ in pre-Reformation times was the rood-loft, therefore the latter structure was still standing in the church down to 1583. But surely the evidence on the point is negative, and far too slight to warrant any such conclusion! For the documents which speak of the organs are altogether silent as to their whereabouts in the building; and even though they may have been situated originally on the top of the rood-loft in All Saints, in the face of the notorious fact that rood-lofts throughout the country had been condemned twelve years previously, the bare mention of an organ outliving the general wrecking of the rood-loft (which, indeed, it was fully entitled to do, from the legal point of view) cannot be taken for proof of the law in force against rood-lofts having been disregarded in this or in any individual instance, unless there be produced some more direct and explicit testimony to the contrary.

If Dr. Pegge is to be credited, the rood-loft was still standing in Chesterfield church in 1783. At Staveley, it is recorded to have stood until 1790. At Hayfield, until about 1815, it remained entire, according to the Lysons; and according to the same authority’s manuscript notes at the British Museum, though the fact is not recorded in their published history of the county, the rood-loft still survived at Taddington in or about the year 1812. Possibly, also, at Tideswell the rood-loft, although transferred to the west end of the church, remained until as lately as about 1820. Beside these, there are no authenticated instances of the survival of the ancient rood-loft in Derbyshire after the date of the general destruction.

This measure was as arbitrary as also it proved, within no great space of time after, to have been shortsighted. It was arbitrary because, considering the circumstances at the date of the decree being issued, it was uncalled for and unwarrantable, once roods themselves had ceased to be. For the ruin of roods accomplished under King Edward had been so immense, that their restoration in the short space of Mary’s reign could not but be partial; and already Elizabeth’s puritan friends, acting upon her injunctions of 1559 against “monuments of superstition,” had hastened to destroy as many images as were found standing at the date of her accession—and that, one may be sure, with the greater energy and thoroughness, since the Queen herself was really suspected at first of being unsound in this very matter of the crucifix. The order of 1561 was unreasonable, therefore, because every one of those customs, such as the burning of lights before the rood, or hanging up festal branches and garlands about it, clothing it with holiday robes or Lenten wrappings, the ceremonial stations at its feet, accompanied by sprinkling with holy water or by censings—these and, in fine, whatsoever other observances in olden days had had the rood for centre and object, were necessarily quashed and rendered no longer practicable thenceforward, the rood itself having been abolished. That the order was shortsighted, too, is patent from the fact that in consequence of it there sprang up a fresh crop of difficulties, which have never been satisfactorily settled nor disposed of to this day. I refer, of course, to the question of organs and choristers, and of the most convenient and suitable positions for them relatively to occupy in a church. The rood itself had indeed vanished, but with it not all the functions and uses of the rood-loft. That the latter had, from a practical point of view, enormous advantages, is a fact which, lost sight of at the time amid the frenzy of bigotry, which insisted on its being condemned to destruction, very quickly began to be appreciated after that the ancient rood-loft was no more.

It is a highly instructive object-lesson, and one not unprofitable eke for our own times, to note what ensued; nor can I, with the facts of the case before me, impugn the logic of the extreme reformers, who were so ill-content with the disappearance of the rood-loft that they never ceased to agitate for the prohibition of church organs as well. This, then, happened. The opponents of instrumental music in divine service were not allowed to have their will; and yet the retention of an organ after the organ-platform, the rood-loft, to wit, had been done away with, was very quickly found to be unworkable, unless some other provision were made for it and for the singers, whose voices the organ was meant to accompany. The removal of the rood-loft at the east end of the nave, therefore, was inevitably followed, sooner or later, by the erection of a gallery at the opposite end of the nave. In some instances, indeed, portions of the old rood-loft were actually re-erected, being incorporated in a new organ-gallery at the west end of the church. Thus, at Parwich, when, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the old west gallery came to be taken down, the main beam of it was found to have a carefully chamfered edge and to have been enriched with painting and gilding, thus proving beyond all question that it must have formed one of the timbers of the ancient rood-loft, if not the original rood-beam itself.

Scarcely more than fifty years had elapsed since the demolition of rood-lofts had been ordained before a gallery was erected at the west end of All Hallows, Derby, and, what is more remarkable, in 1636 another, upon which the term, not void of significance, “loft” actually occurred in the inscription to commemorate the donor’s name and benefaction. Nor was this the only example on record. Another inscribed “loft” was erected at the west end of Heanor church in 1633, and another at Osmaston in 1747, while several more, though not explicitly so inscribed, were, as contemporary evidence proves, referred to at the time as “lofts.” Of these, the gallery at Ashover (1722), at Bakewell (1751), and at Stanley (1765) are examples. At Marston-on-Dove, in 1712, the parish agreed to erect a “loft,” as the recorded proposal for the scheme shows, “for ye schoolmaster of Hilton and his scholars and ye singers to sitt in.” At Hayfield, as shown in a plan of the seating accommodation and scale of charges for the same, under the date 1741, “every singer upon ye organ loft” paid the modest sum of 4d. a year by way of pew-rent. Again, at Hayfield a new “loft” was set up at the west end of the building in 1746.

If the Osmaston example carries the tradition of the “loft” forward as far as 1747, on the other hand the Heanor example affords a most valuable link with the remoter past by carrying back the tradition to the period of the pre-Reformation rood-loft. Standing until within living memory, it bore the inscription: “This loft was built at ye sole cost of John Clarke, of Codnor, gent., in the year 1633, who dyed An^o. Dn^i. 1641, et Anno Ætatis 88”; on the face of it a dry and prosaic statement of fact, but yet to all who can read between the lines, how eloquent a tale of the times does it unfold, for this man, who at eighty set up a singers’ gallery or loft in his parish church, would be a child of about eight years of age at the date when the royal decree went forth for the general destruction of rood-lofts.

If the coincidence is the more striking in the case of galleries erected at the east end of the nave, exactly on the site of the ancient rood-loft, as at Chesterfield and the neighbouring village of Old Brampton, at Eyam, Mellor, and Tideswell, it must be admitted that the west end of the nave was the more usually selected position. Western galleries are known to have been in use in the nineteenth century in the following churches, amongst others: Allestree, Ashbourne, Beighton, Brailsford, All Saints’ new church in Derby, Duffield, Eckington, Etwall, Killamarsh, Kirk Ireton, Long Eaton, Mackworth, Marston Montgomery, Matlock, Morley, Mugginton, North Wingfield, Parwich (old church), Smalley, Spondon, Stanley, Taddington, Tickenhall (old church), Wilne, and Wingerworth. Although at the last-named the base of the rood-loft remains, the destruction of the parapet had made it unsafe for use, and necessitated the erection of the newer gallery. The above list might be very much extended, but there is no need to multiply instances.

The renewal of the west gallery at Tideswell church in 1824, and the erection of that at Sawley in 1838, or that at Beeston as late as 1840 (only, however, to be restored away again in 1871), brings the tradition of building organ-galleries down almost to the middle of the nineteenth century. Some, indeed, among those named in the above list continued in position as late as the seventies of the nineteenth century, that at Ashbourne even until 1882.

Between the earliest recorded instance of a gallery being built, in 1614, to the latest, in 1840, represents a lively stream of tradition, uninterrupted for just 220 years, until the influence of the Tractarian movement set the tide flowing in the contrary direction, and eventually succeeded in compassing the doom of the old-fashioned organ-gallery altogether. The responsibility rests not with Puritans, but with the opposite party in the Church of England; and it is a sad, if edifying, commentary on the fallibility of human judgment that, at the very time when Holman Hunt was painting his mystical pre-Raphaelite picture of “Christ wounded in the House of His Friends,” the Tractarians—they, of all people!—were busy, from one end of England to the other, obliterating the last historic vestiges of the ancient rood-loft in our churches. If only these well-meaning men (and many others like them, down to the present time) had been content to restore literally rather than ostensibly; if, instead of introducing surpliced choirs into parochial churches where such a thing had never been known before in the whole course of their history; if, instead of dragging down the organ from its antique gallery where they found it into the main body of the building, and thereby displacing table-tombs and other memorials of the faithful departed; shutting out the glorious light of windows (as at Ashover), hiding their exquisite tracery, or, worse, positively thrusting out windows and overthrowing walls, and erecting externally (as at Ashover, Bolsover, Langwith, Littleover, Mackworth, South Normanton, and Spondon) counterfeit Gothic organ-chambers to accommodate this huge and vehement obstruction; if, instead of perpetrating all these innovations and disfigurements, they had simply been content to follow loyally the precedent of their forefathers, and had relegated organs and singers together to a gallery situated in the ancient place for them, viz., over the entrance to the chancel, how much heart-burning and division might have been avoided; how many a venerable church fabric, now irretrievably ruined in contour and proportions, might have been saved from injury, and have retained both in the original form in which they had come down to modern days, intact!

That which follows consists of additional particulars concerning the present subject, arranged, in alphabetical order, under the names of the various localities.

Alkmonton.—At this place, a township of Longford, was a hospital dedicated under the invocation of St. Leonard. Lord Mountjoy endowed it by will in 1474, at the same time directing that a quire and parclose screen should be erected in the chapel attached to the hospital. The institution was suppressed at the Reformation, and no remains whatever of the chapel and its screenwork survive.

Allestree.—The church was entirely rebuilt in 1866–7. The length of the ancient rood-loft, assuming that it did not exceed the width of the nave, would have been 19 ft. 3 in., the dimensions of the old church. For stone screenwork, supposed to have belonged to Allestree church, see _supra_.

Ashbourne.—The eastern aisle of the north transept is screened off from the rest of the transept and from the chancel, to form the Cockayne chapel. The screen, which runs from north to south, is divided by a column into two sections. The northern section is 14 ft. 3 in. long, and comprises eight compartments, including the entrance; the southern section is 14 ft. 8½ in. long, and comprises nine compartments. The section of the parclose which runs from west to east is 19 ft. long, and comprises eleven and a half compartments, including the gates, which open into the chancel. The total height of the screen is 8 ft. 10 in., the compartments varying in centring from 1 ft. 6 in. to 1 ft. 10½ in. The tracery in the heads (rectagonal in formation) measures 13½ in. deep at the deepest. The openings in the north to south section are 65 in. high, the lower part 3 ft. high; the openings in the west to east section 68 in. high, the lower part 33 in. high. Immediately below the rail, which is embattled, runs a horizontal panel of pierced quatrefoil tracery to the depth of 8½ inches. The screen is surmounted by a moulded cornice, with a cavetto, occupied at intervals by square pateras. The muntins are buttressed. The whole is of Perpendicular design of about the middle of the fifteenth century. Each compartment of the openings is protected by an iron stanchion and saddlebar; the stanchions being obviously modern, with cast-iron fleur-de-lys finials. The door which opens into the stair in the south-east pier of the central tower is 1 ft. 7 in. wide by 5 ft 9 in. high to the crown of its two centred arch. There is no sign of the door which opened into the rood-loft, but the stair leads to a passage which runs round all four sides of the tower at the crossing.

Ashover.—The rood-screen stands in the hollow order of the chancel arch, so that its westward face does not project beyond the level of the east wall of the nave. The screen stands 10 ft. 3 in. high by 13 ft. 7 in. long. It consists of six bays, of which the two midmost comprise the doorway, with an opening of 3 ft. 8 in. and a height of 6 ft. 11 in. to the crown of the depressed arch. The bays have an average centring of 27½ inches, the fenestration being 5 ft. 5 in. high from the cill to the crown of the arch, with tracery in the head to the depth of 20½ inches, that is, 11 inches lower than the level of the spring of the former vaulting. The cill is ornamented with flamboyant geometrical tracery. The solid part from the top of the cill to the ground is 3 ft. 6 in. high, with blind tracery to the depth of 8¾ inches in the head. The screen is without gates, and is surmounted by an embattled cresting, beneath which is a band of pierced quatrefoil ornament. Neither of these can be in its original position, the screen having formerly been vaulted, although the whole of the groining ribs, as well as the springing-caps and the bases, are now wanting. The carved lintel over the doorway is crested along the top, the spandrils being filled with Tudor roses. These, together with the four-centred arches of the bays, point to a late phase of Perpendicular. The coat of arms of Babington, impaling Fitzherbert, in the middle, being only fastened on where the vaulting ought to be, affords in itself no criterion as to the date; although the general style of the screen is entirely consistent with the tradition that it was the gift of Thomas Babington, who died in 1518. This screen originally was enriched with painting and gilding, the last traces of which were egregiously removed in 1843. This was the date, also, of the destruction of the remains of the handsomely carved parclose-screenwork which surrounded the Babington chantry in the easternmost bay of the south aisle. The parclose had a door opening into the nave and another into the aisle; and the coats of arms now attached to the rood-screen used to be respectively over these two doorways. The Babington chantry was founded in 1511, in which year the rood-screen and rood-loft are believed to have been erected. The rood-stair was blocked up at the “restoration” of 1843, but has since been reopened. What remains of it consists of six stone steps, starting in the south-east corner of the north aisle, and emerging through the easternmost spandril of the north arcade into the nave at a height of 10 ft. 10 in. from the floor. The rood-door opened naveward, two iron hangers still remaining in the south jamb of the doorway, which is 18½ in. wide by 5 ft. 8½ in. high. The door-head consists of a horizontal lintel. The rood-loft itself cannot have extended beyond the width of the nave, a length of 20 feet. The rope of the sacring-bell in the gable immediately above the loft is shown in the photograph.

Bakewell.—A spiral staircase in the wall adjoining the north-east pier of the central tower stood practically undisturbed until the rebuilding of the piers in 1841. It was entered from the south-east corner of the north transept, and would in all probability have served for the rood-stair when the rood-loft came to be introduced. The oak parclose which shuts off the east aisle of the south transept to form the Vernon chapel, is divided by the columns of the arcade into three sections. Each of these is 11 ft. 7 in. long by 8 ft. 5½ in. high (exclusive of the modern cornice), and consists of eight rectagonal compartments centring from 1 ft. 4¾ in. to 1 ft. 5½ in. The openings are 4 ft. 3½ in. high, with Early Perpendicular tracery in the heads to the depth of 1 ft. 0½ in. The cill of each compartment shows traces of having been guarded by two stanchions, no longer existing. The lower part of the screen is 4 feet high. The rail is carved with a wave pattern, with a trefoiled circle in each trough and swell, and a band of quatrefoils runs along the base. The upper half of the panels below the rail is perforated with a pattern like a square-headed traceried window of the period. The greater muntins have shafts, with polygonal bases. The screen is left, in midland fashion, unfinished at the back. The two midmost compartments of the southernmost section form the doors.

Belper.—In 1821 the chancel of St. John Baptist chapel was separated from the nave “by a plain screen composed of small arches and round columns of wood.” The screen itself eventually disappeared, but long afterwards the marks remained in the walls showing where it had been fixed.

Bolsover.—A new organ-chamber, built in 1878, was eloquently described as having “dwarfed the old chancel and spoilt the north aspect of the church.” The ruin which the “restoration” of the above year began, an accidental fire in 1897 completed.

Brackenfield.—The rood-screen from the old, ruined chapel, built in 1520–30, now stands in the modern church. It has suffered much, not only from exposure to the weather in the interval between the dismantling of the chapel and the transfer of the screen itself to its present position at the west end of the new building, but also from excessive repair (see illustration). The screen measures 16 ft. 9 in. long by 7 ft. 7 in. high. It is rectagonal in construction, and consists of a central bay divided into two lights above the lintel of the doorway; on either hand of the latter being two bays of three lights each. The head of all the lights is occupied to the depth of 10½ in. by tracery of Decorated design, coarsely executed, with heavy cusps and crockets. The openings of the bays are 4 ft. 5½ in. high; the bays centring from 3 ft. to 3 ft. 2½ in. The lesser muntins are arrested by the cill, the panels beneath which are wanting. The cornice and principal muntins are rudely moulded. The door has a clear opening of 3 ft. 1 in., and is 5 ft. 8 in. high to the crown of the four-centred arch of the lintel. One of the spandrils of the latter is carved with the arms of Willoughby and Beck impaled. From a drawing which is hung up, _ad captandum vulgus_, inside the building, it appears that a project is on foot to adapt this ancient screen to the chancel entrance of the modern church. And, as though the unfortunate screen had not suffered cruelly enough already, the scheme involves its further dismemberment by cutting out the doorway in the centre, and mounting it on the top of a fresh doorway as a scaffold for a novel and Christless cross. It is earnestly to be hoped that those in power will not have the money nor the unwisdom to inflict this last unwarrantable indignity on the venerable screen of Brackenfield chapel.

Breadsall.—In 1826 the rood-screen is known to have been standing in its original place, defining the boundary of nave and chancel. It was then much dilapidated, “the centre portions of the ornamental work thereof being entirely gone.” It is not quite clear whether by the parts referred to as missing, the entrance gates or the traceried fenestration-heads are meant. At any rate, a drawing made thirty years later, and published in the Anastatic Drawing Society’s volume for 1856, howsoever inaccurate in detail, shows what had then become of the remains of the rood-screen. Though much of the delicate feathering is omitted from the pierced tracery ornament, the main outline unmistakably identifies it as having been made up into communion rails. And it is doubtless to this circumstance that the beautiful details of the rood-screen, when once taken down from its proper position, owe their preservation. Such as they were represented in 1856, they remained at least as late as 1877, when the church itself was “restored.” The removal, about the year 1360, of the chancel arch, the structural demarcation between nave and chancel, had rendered a rood-screen æsthetically indispensable. And so, when this prominent ornament was broken up—some time between 1830 and 1840, more probably at the former date—it left a blank so unsightly that at the “restoration” of 1877 a misdirected attempt to remedy the defect was made by the insertion of a paltry, sham-Gothic arch. At the same time the ancient levels of the building were falsified by the improper raising of the chancel floor. In 1877, “many parts of the base” of the ancient screen could “be detected in the pews of the body of the church.” Subsequently, all these fragments were collected, and, together with those portions of the screen that had been turned into communion rails, carefully stored up with a view to ultimate reconstruction. Meanwhile, however, a few strips of screen-tracery were ill-advisedly worked up into a cornice round the brim of the present pulpit, a situation for which, as anybody can see, they are in no wise suited. The restoration of the screen itself was contemplated as far back as 1877, but thirty years were destined to elapse before it could be realised. The project had long been dear to the heart of Mr. F. Walker Cox, though he did not live to see it fulfilled; and so, when he died in 1905, it was decided to restore the rood-screen as a suitable memorial to him. The work was completed by the end of July, 1907. In this case there were certain well-determined data to serve as guides for the proposed reconstruction. The width of the nave, 23 feet, had only to be divided by the unit of the bays (the remaining tracery of which demonstrated that the average centring was rather less than 2 ft. 6 in.) to show that there should be ten bays in all; while the tread of the topmost step of the rood-stair, which pierces the arcade wall and opens southwards into the nave at a height of 13 ft. 0½ in. above the floor level, indicates the proper height of the ancient rood-loft floor. Each bay is divided into two lights by a central muntin. The tracery resembles Decorated design more than Perpendicular, but certain very late details in the spandril of the ancient gates, the design of which otherwise corresponds, preclude the work from being dated earlier than the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Of the twenty pieces of tracery in the fenestration-heads, ten are original and untouched, five are old ones repaired, while five had to be supplied altogether new; the necessary carved work being ably done by Mr. H. W. Whitaker, son of the rector. There are two variations in the tracery pattern which runs along the west side of the rail. The heads of the rectagonal panels are filled with tracery to the depth of 6¾ inches.

Chaddesden.—The church was “restored” in 1859, when, I presume, it was that the rood-screen came to be surmounted by an embattled cornice. At the recent “restoration,” by Mr. Bodley, the battlements were removed, and the upper part of the screen finished more in accordance with the original design, with vaulting, on the western front The authentic portion of the screen is 9 ft. 11 in. high by 15 ft. 9 in. long. It consists of eight bays, of which the two central ones go to form the entrance, having an opening of 3 ft. 3½ in., the bays centring at 1 ft. 11½ in. The openings are 5 ft. 7½ in. high, with tracery in the heads to a depth of 3 feet, _i.e._, 21 inches lower than the level of the springing. The entrance has a semi-circular arch, cusped on the under side. The bottom part of the screen is 4 ft. 3½ in. high, with blind tracery in the panel heads to the depth of 12½ inches. On the west side the principal muntins are buttressed, the buttresses square in plan, with moulded bases; out of the top of the buttresses rise boutel shafts, with polygonal and embattled caps, from which the groined vaulting springs. The rood-screen stands at the entrance of the chancel, and the rood-loft must have extended only from side to side of the nave. The rood-stair entrance, now stopped and bricked up, is in the north-east corner of the south aisle. The doorway is 18 in. wide by 6 ft. 7 in. high from the floor to the crown of the arch, or obtuse angle, which is cut in the underside of the lintel. The exit from the stair on to the loft, though blocked, is traceable in the wall in the easternmost spandril of the south arcade of the nave.

Chesterfield.—The rood-loft is recorded to have been extant as late as the year 1783. There is not the slightest trace of a rood-stair entrance visible. In 1841, Sir Stephen Glynne found the nave galleried completely round, including the eastern part of it. “The gallery,” he says, “at the eastern extremity contains the organ.... In the gallery beneath the organ is incorporated a portion of wood screenwork of rather elegant character,” all which goes to show that the rood-screen stood at the western crossing, the arch there having a clear opening of 14 ft. 2½ in. In 1843, the “restoration” of the church was begun; and the building having first been thoroughly swept of its fittings, Mr. Gilbert Scott (afterwards knighted) was then called in to do the garnishing. “I found,” he writes in his _Recollections_, “the rood-screen to have been pulled down and sold; but we protested, and it was recovered.” In a footnote he adds, “There is no such screen now in Chesterfield church.” In this, as happily the event proved, the architect was mistaken, but his remark would seem to imply that Sir Gilbert Scott himself is not to be held responsible for the rood-screen being improperly re-erected in its present position between the north transept and its eastern chapel. The screen is 14 ft. 6 in. long, and consists of five bays, centring 2 ft. 10½ in., of which the middle bay, having a clear opening of 2 ft. 5¼ in., comprises the doorway. It is fitted with doors, but they are not original. Indeed, the screen as a whole has been much renovated. The total height of it as it stands is 13 ft. 3½ in. down to the floor. The fenestration openings are 7 ft. 3 in. high, and the pierced tracery in the head extends to a depth of 21½ inches, and contains an embattled transom, which makes a horizontal line right across the screen from side to side. At a distance of 1 ft. 11 in. below the base of the tracery a second transom intersects the screen, not, however, continuously, on account of the doorway in the middle. The bays, though fashioned in rectagonal compartments, exhibit a pronouncedly arched formation, which suggests that they should be vaulted. At the same time the spandrils are traceried and cusped, a feature inconsistent with vaulting, and such, therefore, that I am inclined to attribute to the meddling hand of the “restorer.” It only remains to add that the principal muntins are buttressed on the westward front, and that the tracery has the usual midland characteristic of a flat surface at the back.