Chapter IX: Part 9

In default of a cathedral church within the borders of Derbyshire, the tendency would be to emphasize the dignity and importance of its greater churches. Among these the grand collegiate church of All Hallows was foremost, and as such it came to be regarded as, in some sort, the minster and mother church of all the southern part of the county. Thus it would, perhaps, be but natural that All Saints’, Derby, should supply the model for numbers of churches round about, and that its individual features should reproduce themselves even in some of the furthest corners of the shire. The love of generations of Derbyshire men for the fabric of this glorious church, and the jealous pride with which they defended its ancient privileges, are matters of history; and if it is not possible now to trace to a common original the distinguishing features of the churches of the county in general, which would, in all probability, have had their prototype in All Saints’, the ever-to-be-regretted reason is that the whole of the venerable building, with the exception of the tower at the west end, has disappeared—wantonly and wilfully destroyed in February, 1722–3. This irreparable loss was brought about solely through the guile and strategy of one unscrupulous tyrant, the then minister in charge, Rev. Michael Hutchinson, D.D., the memory of whose deed and name deserves to be handed down in undying opprobrium.

Neither plan nor any satisfactorily complete description of the mediæval church of All Hallows is extant; but this much is known, that it comprised nave and aisles and quire, with a chapel on the south, and that it contained, besides other altars, a chantry of Our Lady and one, also, of St. Nicholas. Both of these—the fact is established by a process of elimination, the south chapel having been appropriated to St. Katherine—were situated in the body of the church, and would almost certainly have been enclosed within screens such as survive in a number of Derbyshire churches to this day.

And here, before proceeding further, it is necessary to point out how largely the ground plan favoured in the churches of mediæval Derbyshire has affected and determined the conditions of their screening system. At the same time, I would add that what I am about to say does not pretend to universal application in every individual church throughout the county; for, in the nature of things, there are bound to be plenty of exceptions. Nevertheless, that the main trend of development proceeded along the lines indicated will not, I think, admit of dispute.

Now, in other districts, a church of the scale and grandeur of that, say, of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Melbourne, Norbury, or Spondon, could scarcely have failed to be enlarged, when extra chapels came to be called for, by the addition of chancel aisles. And yet in every one of these Derbyshire instances the chancel is aisleless—an anomaly, surely, remarkable enough! Nay (albeit the important churches of Chesterfield, Morley, and Norton, for example, testify to the contrary), it is noticeable in how many cases almost any other device was more welcome than that which would have involved interfering with and arcading the side walls of the chancel. An east aisle to the transept would occur more readily than the erection of a new aisle to the chancel in cruciform churches (as, for instance, at Ashbourne and Bakewell), or, in churches where there was no transept to widen nor to appropriate, the area of the nave itself (as at Fenny Bentley), or of the nave aisles (as at Elvaston and Sawley), would be encroached upon for the purpose; the wealthy corporate body or individual having as little hesitation about annexing and enclosing the amount of the parish church’s space which they wanted for their own uses, as they would about enclosing (provided it could be accomplished with impunity) the people’s common land. A typical Derbyshire parclose, then, is no mere grate within an arch, to connect the one side of it with the other, but rather a formidable barrier fencing in, on two sides, a specific portion of the body of the church, and even, may be, comprehending (as in the before-mentioned instances of Elvaston and Sawley) a column or more of the arcade itself.

Whatever may be thought of the propriety of this local caprice (for what else was it which, in a county abounding with excellent building stone, could have caused the bodies of parish churches to be thus cut up with internal partitions, instead of extending them from without by additional chapels and chancel aisles for the reception of fresh chantries?), the net result has been to enrich Derbyshire with even greater distinction in respect of its parcloses than of its rood-screens; notwithstanding the parcloses which still remain represent only a proportion of all those ascertained to have been formerly in existence, but such that have now gone, many of them, and left nothing beyond the bare record behind; or of that, no doubt, larger quantity whereof even the very memorial has perished.

Some of them have been shifted from their original positions and made up afresh, others have been cut short or otherwise maltreated and defaced; but, for all that, it is not too much to say that there is not a county in the kingdom can boast as magnificent a series of parclose screens as this one still possesses, in more or less perfect condition, in the respective churches of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Chesterfield, Elvaston, and Kirk Langley. The exquisite parclose which runs the whole length of the south transept at Chesterfield, with its vaulted cornice, rather resembles a rood-screen. The truly characteristic variety of parcloses, however, should be sought, not at Chesterfield, but at Ashbourne, Bakewell, Elvaston, and Sawley. A peculiarity common to all four is the pierced tracery panelling of the lower half of the screen. In each case, except in the Bakewell parclose, it takes the form of a horizontal band of ornament immediately beneath the rail or cill of the fenestration. Such is the feature which, as I submit, constitutes the speciality of parcloses as distinguished from rood-screens. And it is just because of its being present also in the screenwork now made up into a chancel-screen at St. Peter’s, Derby, that I am disinclined to believe that this particular screen was designed in the first place for a purpose other than that of a parclose.

The history of this screen has not been uneventful. It is well known to have belonged formerly to the church at Crich, and to have been ejected from thence at the devastating “restoration” which befel in 1861. Conveyed to a timber-merchant’s yard, for awhile it lay there awaiting a ruin that seemed imminent, until the late Rev. W. Hope, at that time vicar of St. Peter’s, fortunately saw it, acquired it, and set it up, repaired and remodelled, in its present position. To return, now, for a moment to the matter of Crich church. It is on record that there were two chantries founded here by William de Wakebridge in the fourteenth century. The one, receiving episcopal licence in 1357, was situated in the north aisle; the other, in 1368, at Our Lady’s altar, which may be presumed to have occupied a corresponding position in the south aisle. Both of these chantries would eventually, according to the prevailing Derbyshire custom, have been surrounded with parclose screenwork. Of the remains of that which stood in the north aisle, the heraldic painter, Bassano, and also J. Reynolds, took note when they visited Crich church, the first in 1710, the second in 1758. I do not gather, however, that either of them recorded the existence of a rood-screen there. This negative evidence on their part is too significant to be set aside, and so, commonly though it is stated that the screen at St. Peter’s, Derby, is identical with the ancient rood-screen of Crich church, I am not convinced. I can more readily suppose that the Rev. W. Hope was too thankful at having secured so authentic a relic of antiquity to spend time in prosecuting any very searching inquiry as to the precise nature of the office it might have fulfilled in days gone by; but that, seeing his own church was bare of a rood-screen, he very naturally adapted the screen which he had become possessed of to supply the deficiency, although comparative study of the design and formation of Derbyshire screens in general might have led him, as it has led me, to conclude that this one from Crich could not originally have been a rood-screen.

Neither, again, may the apparent exception, which the chancel-screen in Haddon Hall chapel affords, be adduced. For, though it is true that to-day visitors to Haddon find, beneath the fenestration cill on either half of the screen there, a band of Gothic tracery—authentic, if of a somewhat flamboyant type—which fits its position plausibly enough, the view of the chapel by George Cattermole, lithographed by S. Rayner, and published in 1839, while agreeing in every other particular with the present unchanged aspect of the place, shows no ornament here at all. The panels were still without tracery when, between 1880 and 1885, a photograph of the interior was taken, which is reproduced in the third volume of _The Abbey Square Sketch Book_; and the Rev. Dr. Cox possesses a coloured sketch, dated 1898, which does not differ in this regard from the earlier representations. But in either event the screen at Haddon, whether traceried or plain, is no case in point, for the simple reason that the panelling itself is blind. In order to be analogous to the parcloses at Ashbourne, Elvaston, and Sawley, it would need to be perforated.

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the following are the churches which contain the most notable parclose screens:—Ashbourne, Bakewell, Chesterfield, Darley Dale (stone), Elvaston, Fenny Bentley (moved from its place), Kirk Langley (portions made up), and Sawley (the lower parts only of two parcloses); while, if not now, there existed anciently, or there are believed to have existed, parcloses at Alkmonton hospital chapel, Ashover, Chelmorton (stone), Church Broughton, Crich, old St. Alkmund’s, and old All Hallows’ and St. Peter’s in Derby, Horsley, Longford, Longstone, Mugginton, Norbury, Radburne, Tideswell, Weston-on-Trent, and Youlgreave. But all this on the subject of parcloses is to anticipate.

The earliest surviving screenwork in Derbyshire does not date back any earlier than the beginning of the fourteenth century, and is, as might be expected, of stone. Of this material, the most imposing specimen is the rood-screen at Ilkeston, and that notwithstanding the excessive “restorations” it has had to undergo at various times, particularly in 1855—ordeals out of which it has emerged in a very different condition from that which it must originally have presented. The upper part has been scraped and renovated; the columns smoothed and repolished. And as for the lower part, one can only say that to afford any effective protection to the chancel it must have been something far more substantial than the gaunt skeleton framework it is at the present day. The screen occupies the opening from the nave into the chancel. It consists of an arcade of five arches, which, cinquefoil-cusped and having pierced quatrefoils in the spandrils, spring from cylindrical columns of grey marble, with circular moulded caps and bases. These again rise from a horizontal moulded rail, supported on similar columns; the whole standing upon a stone plinth. The mouldings and capitals of the columns (some of which only are original) have an Early English appearance, but the main part of the screen is of later style. The markedly ogival form of the doorhead betokens a fairly developed phase of Decorated. Along the top of the screen runs a simple coping ridge, which, if not the original, represents well enough the type of finish a screen of the period would have had in the days before the introduction of rood-lofts into parish churches. The doorway centres 4 ft. 2½ in., with a clear opening of 3 ft. 10 in.; the side bays having an average centring of 3 ft. 2½ in. The total height of the screen, as at present made up, is 14 ft. 6 in., a dimension greatly disproportionate to its comparatively short length of 17 ft. 4½ in. It may be explained that the photograph was taken from the chancel in order to avoid the halation of the east window, both sides of the screen being alike.

The stone rood-screen at Chelmorton, if less ancient than the foregoing by some thirty or forty years, is the more interesting, because it has been allowed to retain its original form almost untouched. The screen stands in the chancel arch (12 ft. 6 in. wide), and consists of two parts, having a clear opening of four feet between them. The northern half measures 4 ft. 3½ in. long, the southern half one inch less. The motif is that of an embattled wall, 6 ft. 6 in. high, with a pierced band of quatrefoils to the depth of twenty inches from the level of the top, and, beneath, blind panelling of trefoil-headed ogival arches. The screen wall being flat on its upper surface, might well have afforded a foundation for timber screenwork above it; for owing to the rise of the ground towards the east, the chancel floor is three steps higher than that of the nave, and consequently the screen has but a moderate elevation on its eastward side. There is, however, no sign of any mortice holes visible in it. Built into the wall of the porch is a slab of stone, sculptured with quatrefoils, which was dug up under the floor, and is conjectured to have formed part of a parclose, matching the rood-screen and screening of the south transept for a chantry chapel.

At Monks’ Dale, in Tideswell parish, was formerly a grange, with a chapel attached, supposed to have belonged to Lenton Priory. The walls of the chapel are overthrown down to the foundations. “All that remains of it above ground are the beautifully carved stones of the low ... stone screen that divided the chancel from the nave. They are of fourteenth century work”—of the date 1360, _circa_, according to the late Rev. Prebendary Andrew—“and exactly correspond to those ... in the chancel of Chelmorton.” This account appeared in 1877. By 1882 the aforesaid stonework had been removed to the vicarage garden at Tideswell.

Embedded in a wall in Allestree parish, near the site of the old manor house, on the road to Mackworth, is, or recently was, to be seen another fragment of worked stone, with sculptured quatrefoils, and altogether so closely resembling the before-named examples as to lead to the conclusion that it must have formed part of an ancient screen in Allestree or some neighbouring church.

Southern Half of Stone Rood-Screen.]

Detail of Stone Parclose.]

A rood-screen of similar design is believed to have occupied the chancel opening (13 ft. 6 in. wide) at Darley Dale church, to judge from a fragment of stone carving lying (as recorded in 1877) in the parish clerk’s garden there. In the south aisle of this church, close to the south door, stands a family pew, built out of the remains of a stone parclose and the stone frames of a couple of two-light Perpendicular windows—one having had its mullion knocked out to make the doorway, and both betraying their extraneous origin by being grooved in the usual manner for leaded glazing. That part of the enclosure which is genuine screenwork comprises two distinct, though not very incongruous, designs of the first half of the fifteenth century. Exclusive of the alien window-work, that portion of the screen running east and west measures 11 ft. 6 in. long; that portion running north and south, 3 ft. 7 in. The shorter length consists of a plain wall below a tier of cinquefoil-headed lights; the longer, of ogival panelling in eleven cusped compartments, corresponding to the same number of cinquefoil-headed lights in the upper part. A detail of it is here illustrated. The blind panelling measures 4 ft. high to the cill of the fenestration, the inclusive height of the screen being 7 ft. 6 in. It has not been ascertained whether the space enclosed by this screen represents the original position of the chantry, but more probably it was situated in some less westerly part of the building. “It was unfortunately set back,” writes the Rev. Dr. Cox, “a foot or two to give more room to the aisle in 1854, but otherwise remains as it was before the ‘restoration.’ Stone parcloses, though of fairly frequent occurrence round chantry tombs in cathedrals, are very rarely met with in parish churches.”

The stone screens, then, existing, or accountable for as known to have existed, in Derbyshire comprise those at Allestree, Chelmorton, Darley Dale, Ilkeston, and Monks’ Dale. Another one also must be included in the list, viz., the former rood-screen at Bakewell. From a description of it in 1823, while it might still be seen _in situ_ separating the chancel from the rest of the church, it appears to have been of Decorated workmanship. Either half of it measured six feet long, exclusive of the space for the central entrance. The recorded height, 4 ft. 9 in., implies that it was the base or plinth merely, not the complete screen. At some subsequent time during the “repairs” which went on from 1841 to 1851—a sad decade of disaster for Bakewell church!—its stone screen was carried off by that notorious archæological raider, Mr. Thomas Bateman, to swell his predatory collection at Lomberdale House. The virtuoso himself being long since dead, and the contents of his museum dispersed, there is now practically no likelihood of the missing screenwork ever being traced and recovered. If it be still in existence anywhere, it should probably be sought for in the Weston Museum at Sheffield, whither most of the Derbyshire spoils from Lomberdale House are said to have found their way. If that be so, the screen ought certainly to be restored to its rightful place again at Bakewell. The loss of so venerable a monument cannot be too deeply deplored, and reflects the utmost discredit on all persons concerned in the removal of this ancient screenwork from the church to which it belonged.

The oldest actual example of timber screenwork in Derbyshire partakes of so little in common with the generality of woodwork, either in design or mode of treatment, that it is perhaps appropriate to deal with it here, in association with stone screenwork, as occupying an intermediate stage between the two several classes. I refer to the remains of the rood-screens at Kirk Langley, which, unworthily made up as they are into a box-door, placed at the west entrance, in the ill-lighted lowest storey of the tower, seem to me scarcely to have received the attention they might have claimed. Indeed, the deceptive environment of modern accretions combines with the twilight to make it extremely difficult for anyone to form a just estimate of the work or of its proper dimensions. As far as the existing remains, in their mutilated and altered condition, admit of a reconstruction of the original plan of the screen, it would appear to have consisted of two lengths of 4 ft. 6 in. each, and two doors of the same height and pattern as the other part; so that, when the whole stood intact, the fenestration must have formed a continuous arcade of trefoiled lights, their average centring 8¾ inches, each of them with an ogival crown, indenting a complete trefoil, balanced upon its apex. As the illustration shows, the treatment of this tracery work is peculiar. The component members of it—in plan square, with sides slightly concave—are set angle-wise to the front, and present a series of prominent edges without the usual fillet. Thus they have an effect of crisp and almost metallic acuteness, unfamiliar in woodwork as also it is in stone. The face of the cill below the fenestration is carved with a band of quatrefoils, having each a four-petalled flower—not a rose—in the centre. The design is of the fourteenth century, and it might possibly have been executed towards the close of Edward III.’s reign, or not later than the deposition of Richard II.

The remarks which follow should be understood to apply to screens which are true timberwork, alike in _motif_ as in material. In structure and proportions, Derbyshire screens for the most part assimilate to the midland type, as exemplified at Newark and Strelley, in Nottinghamshire, or Wormleighton, in Warwickshire, and as distinguished from that of the south and west of England and Wales. That is to say, not a few of them rise to a stately height, with remarkably lofty fenestration; the latter being, in some instances, narrow even to attenuation. Thus the rood-screen at Breadsall, as far as can be judged by what remains of it, notably illustrates this peculiarity; in which regard it affords a striking parallel to the screenwork at Newark church before-mentioned.

But it is rather in parclose screens that this feature of excessive elongation is more especially in evidence. To counteract its ungainly appearance, without at the same time diminishing the extent of the aperture, resort is had in the principal screens at Chesterfield to the device of a transom to divide the fenestration about midway. This horizontal member, being feathered underneath, not only enhances the decorative character of the screenwork by the added effect of a lower tier of tracery-headed lights, but also makes for structural strength by providing a latitudinal junction from muntin to muntin.

Another point of similarity between Derbyshire rood-screens and the typical midland screens at (_e.g._, at Somerton, in Oxfordshire; Blore, in Staffordshire; Wormleighton, in Warwickshire; and Strelley, in Nottinghamshire), and of divergence between the former and southern examples, is that, where the design comprises vaulting, the springing of the ribs is not necessarily in line with the cord or base of the pierced tracery of the bay-heads (as is practically the rule for it to be in Kent, Devonshire, and Somerset), but at a higher level, sometimes with a discrepancy of nearly two feet between the two levels. The result of this arrangement is not altogether happy. For traceried ornament that extends below the limits of a tympanum, failing to define the springing-point, tends to make the vaulting itself look dwarfed and curtailed. For the latter to show to best advantage, the ribs should have an obvious correspondence with the sweep of the fenestration arch from spring to crown. Wherever it is otherwise, a sense of lack of homogeneity between the parts cannot but be felt.

Another feature which Derbyshire screens share in common with other midland screenwork, is the very usual inequality which the traceried fenestration-heads present on the obverse and reverse. In the south and east of England both surfaces are almost invariably carved and moulded with identical design and equal completeness; so that if I met with a detached portion of church screen tracery anywhere in Kent, for instance, I should at once know by its treatment to what part of a screen it belonged. For the back would only be smooth and unmoulded if it had been intended to fit flat against blind panelling in the lower half of a screen, and _vice versâ_. But Derbyshire tracery, as a rule, does not furnish such indications; and so, unless the design bore the outline of an arch, and were therefore unmistakably intended, like the Breadsall example illustrated, for the upper part of a vaulted screen, it would be next to impossible to determine its place in the composition. For even _à jour_ tracery, meant to be looked at from either side, is usually plain and flat on one surface, as in the case of the parclose at Elvaston (see left-hand distance in the illustration), and that also at Fenny Bentley. The rood-screens at the latter church and at Ashover are both of them instances in which the upper traceries are enriched with the addition of crocketed ornament on the westward side, while they are plain and smooth on the chancel side.

In some screens, again, though the upper tracery is not indeed quite flat at the back, there is yet a marked difference between the degree of elaboration on the two surfaces. Thus in the tracery of the rood-screen at Elvaston, the western face, besides being moulded, is further embellished with crockets and finials, carved in bold relief, in some compartments handsomely fretted and deeply undercut, and altogether remarkably rich and varied in character (see illustration of detail); while the side towards the east is uniformly treated with simple moulding only. At Chaddesden the contrast between the east and west faces respectively of the upper part of the rood-screen is still greater. In this particular case a difference of treatment is necessarily entailed by the somewhat unusual plan on which the screen itself is constructed; the overhanging rood-loft (now, of course, no longer in existence) having been carried upon the naveward side by groined vaulting, and by a cove, instead of vaulting to correspond, towards the chancel. The spandrils, therefore, covered by the vaulting on the west side are exposed on the other, and present a series of solid triangles, which would have been bare and unsightly without applied ornament. All of these, then, together with the reverse of the transom in the two central bays and of the muntin between them, cut short by the entrance arch, are decorated with low relief carving entirely unlike the front. Moreover, although the muntins on either side are buttressed, the buttresses on the west terminate, as is usual in the case of vaulted screens, with boutels and caps for the springing of the groins; upon the east side, on the contrary, the buttresses continue nearly to the top, tapering off as they approach the lintel into graceful crocketed pinnacles.

The only recorded instances known to me of the occurrence of painting or gilding on Derbyshire screenwork (with the exception of the Parwich beam referred to hereafter), are those of the rood-screens at Ashover and Norbury, and of a parclose which divided the chancel from the north chapel at Mugginton, and which had fifteen coats of arms blazoned in colours upon it. The screen itself has long since vanished, but the account of it is preserved among the Harleian manuscripts in the report of Richard St. George’s Heraldic Visitation taken in the year 1611. As a rule, the sort of ornament to be found upon screenwork (except in the case of panels decorated with figures, of which Derbyshire, unless I have been mistaken, furnishes no examples) is of so essentially abstract, and, so to speak, non-committal a character, that the enemies of screens are seldom able, with any pretence of reason, to avail themselves of the pleas put forward by iconoclasts as a matter of principle.

A small and feathered angel is introduced in the carved work above the doorway of the rood-screen at Elvaston; and there are some exceptionally fine half-length figures of angels along the top of one of the screens at Chesterfield. The particular screen that this carving rests upon (now turned, though it is, into a parclose between the north transept and its eastern chapel) is known to have been the ancient rood-screen in Chesterfield church, and to have stood in its place until about 1843, not long subsequently to which time it was re-erected in the position it now occupies.

That this screen dates from the first half of the fifteenth century, maybe, perhaps, as early as about 1430, I infer from the character of its fenestration. The latter, consisting of a single panel of pierced tracery in each bay, is an exact counterpart of the stone window-tracery of the period. It differs from the method of timber screen construction evolved subsequently, in which the muntins run from top to bottom of the openings, and in which the effect of tracery in each several bay-head is obtained by a combined series of separate units of pierced work let into grooves sunk in the upper part of the muntins. In the Chesterfield rood-screen, on the contrary (as also in the fourteenth century rood-screen at Kirk Langley, already described), the upright shafts in each bay merely support from below the tracery above in the head, instead of holding it in position as between two sides of a frame. Neither, again, in the Chesterfield example does the spacing of the batement lights correspond with that of the three lights at the bottom. The uneven number of the latter is abnormal. It became far more usual, as timber screen-work developed, for the fenestration to be divided by a central muntin into two lights (as at Breadsall and Fenny Bentley), or (as in other parts of England) for the central muntin, remaining a constant factor, to be supplemented by one pair or more pairs of muntins, as the case might be, so that the number of lights comprised in a single bay would, in all events, work out to an even number.

And now to describe the sculptured figure work at Chesterfield in detail, beginning at the north end of it, and proceeding from left to right. First, then, is an eagle; and next, a composite beast, having the head and horns of an antelope, the snout of a boar, and a chain round the neck, clawed feet, and the body and tail of an ox. Although, therefore, the one represents St. John, it is out of the question that the other can ever have been intended for an evangelistic symbol, notwithstanding they are both accompanied by scrolls. Then succeed six demi-angels, clothed in albs, and issuant from conventional cloud-wreaths; their wings pointing downwards in an oblique direction, with the ends of the feathers crossed in saltire, every one’s over his neighbour’s. Each angel bears one or more emblems or instruments of the Passion: the first, the crown of thorns; the second, the cross; the third, the seamless coat, together with the dice; the fourth, a shield displaying the five sacred wounds; the fifth, the lance and three nails; the sixth, the scourge and hammer. That this series was originally longer is evident from the abruptly mutilated feather-tips of another angel’s wing upon the southern or right hand extremity. He would, doubtless, have held the ladder and pincers; but even thus, the usual tale of emblems would scarcely be complete without the reed and sponge, the thirty pieces of silver, or the cock that crew thrice. How many, then, altogether of the angel figures are missing it is impossible to tell. Moreover, it seems probable enough that there would also have been animals with scrolls to balance those at the opposite end. A detail of the rood-screen and of the sculpture above it, is shown in the accompanying illustration.

The date of the angel ornament appears to be somewhere between 1465 and 1480. What remains of it now measures in length 14 ft. 6 in. by one foot in height; the figures being carved out of the solid, and occupying, in ordered row, the concave space of a band sunk between two beads. That this is no rood-beam, but a superficial ornament for the breast-summer, I can vouch, for two reasons; firstly, because the timber itself is a mere board, not exceeding four inches in thickness at the top, the thickest part of it; and secondly, because at the back are unmistakable traces of mortice holes for the joists that were fixed at right angles to it to carry the rood-loft floor. I know nothing that so much resembles this admirably appropriate ornament as that in a corresponding position in the stone pulpitum at Canterbury Cathedral; and in a wooden parclose at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. And yet I have no hesitation in pronouncing that the Chesterfield example surpasses the others in beauty and variety of design. It is, in a word, a very model of its kind.

Now that screens in churches cannot have been, by quite unanimous consent, regarded as contravening “the principles of the Protestant Reformation,” whatever is to be understood by that portentous phrase, is clear from the practice of erecting such fixtures having from time to time continued long after the demise of Derby’s benefactress, Queen Mary Tudor. Thus the chapel at Risley, erected in 1593, was furnished with a chancel-screen of curious design, comprising cherub-heads and other Renaissance details. Later on, the south aisle at the old parish church of Wilne having been prolonged eastward to form a memorial chapel to Sir John Willoughby, who died in 1602, there was set up across the archway a heavy timber screen, with gates, which bear the arms of Willoughby and Hawe. The composition as a whole affords a striking sample of the depraved taste and secular spirit of the age. Among the elaborate carved ornaments may be identified representations of Hercules with his club; a Roman lictor with fasces and axe; satyrs and centaurs; all intermingled with pompous, warlike trophies of cannons, muskets, and drums! On the back of the screen is the date of its production, 1624. Later on, a church was built at Foremark in a spurious Gothic style, and Bishop Hacket consecrated it in 1662. It contains a characteristic oak chancel-screen of massive build and lofty elevation, with four glazed openings. To the above, all of them noteworthy instances of post-Reformation screenwork in Derbyshire, must be added the screen which separates the chancel from the nave or ante-chapel in the chapel at Haddon Hall. For, though parts of its woodwork, particularly the buttressed muntins, must be assigned to an earlier date, the main portion of it unquestionably was remodelled at the close of the sixteenth or during the first half of the seventeenth century. The turned balusters, which in this case supply the place of fenestration in a Gothic screen, are, like the wainscoting which lines the chancel walls, obvious products of a later epoch.

In fact, so persistent altogether was the tradition, and so hard to kill, that even in Dr. Hutchinson’s debased structure, which took the place of the demolished All Hallows’, the new chancel was not left unwarded, but was screened by iron grates. These, though exhibiting in their design the style of the period, yet reproduced, strange to say, quite a mediæval scheme of arrangement. A grate divided the chancel from the nave, and was continued northward and southward right across the building from wall to wall. And other grates again separated the chancel from the chancel aisles. These grates, though not altogether undisturbed, for the most part remained in position until 1873, when the interior of the building, then barely a century and a half old, was “restored,” and in the process the chancel grille itself, together with other fittings hitherto spared, was taken down. Numerous details of it are figured in the _Chronicles of All Saints’_, issued under the joint authorship of the Rev. Dr. Cox and Mr. W. H. St. John Hope in 1881, to which volume all who may be interested in a genuinely historic specimen of eighteenth century wrought ironwork are hereby referred.

There is one peculiar variety of mediæval screen arrangement which may be said to belong to a class by itself. It is sufficiently uncommon, being confined almost exclusively to domestic chapels, of which the former infirmary chapel of Dale Abbey, and such that now serves the purpose of parish church of Dale, furnishes an interesting example. A sketch of the interior, in 1870 or thereabouts, is given on plate xvii. of the late Rev. Samuel Fox’s _History of St. Matthew’s, Morley_ (1872).

The chapel consists of chancel, nave, and south aisle, the latter separated from the nave by a wooden partition, formerly solid; long since, however, by its panels being sawn out, converted into open screenwork. But the main point of interest is the screen which divides the nave from the chancel. Screen and partition alike are of oak, and rest on a stone plinth. The chancel screen is very quaint in its severe simplicity. It has no tracery, but the mouldings are of the fifteenth century, the approximate date assigned to it being 1480. It consists of seven rectagonal compartments, _i.e._, a central doorway with three openings on either side; the muntins supporting a flat ceiling of timber, which, extending back as far as the wall, divides all that portion of the chapel westward of the screen itself into two floors. The upper one of these opens, gallery wise, into the chancel. Traces of a somewhat similar arrangement exist in a ruined oratory at Godstow Nunnery, on the banks of the upper river, near Oxford; and another instance has been noted in one of the chapels at Tewkesbury Abbey church. It is paralleled also in a sort at the private chapel of Brede Place, Sussex, but the plan of an upper storey, supported by a partition screen, does not express itself there in nearly so striking and complete a manner as at Dale. Other instances known are the chapels at Berkeley Castle and Compton Wynyates respectively. It may be mentioned that at Dale, since there is no internal communication between the gallery and the ground floor, the former has to be approached by an external staircase through a door on the upper level.

And, next, to consider the subject of the rood-loft. It would, of course, be situated at a greater height than the screen; as a rule, immediately above the latter, and connected organically with it, the structural braces being boxed within a casing of coved panel-work or of vaulting, with groins and bosses in imitation of stone masonry. As originally erected, the ancient rood-screens at Ashover, Breadsall, Chaddesden, and Norbury furnished instances of groined vaulting, now perished. The only screens, to the best of my knowledge, in Derbyshire which have not lost their vaulting are the rood-screens at Fenny Bentley and the parclose of the south transept in Chesterfield church. The first-named has been a good deal restored, and the latter has not altogether escaped. Both are examples of screens in which the irregularly shaped panels between the ribs are enriched with tracery ornament, a device that enhances the overhanging vaults with a delightful suggestion of mystery lurking within their shadowy recesses. I do not think that the Chesterfield parclose was ever surmounted, in rood-loft fashion, with a parapet, although the upper part of it expands eastwards and westwards quite far enough to have provided the accommodation of an average rood-loft had it been required.

The nearest approach (except the Fenny Bentley example before quoted) to a rood-loft survives at Wingerworth, a structure in some respects unique, in Derbyshire at any rate. Of its peculiar character the photograph conveys a better idea than any verbal description. I do not think it can have been erected earlier than 1480, nor later than 1520. Perhaps midway between the two, _i.e._, 1500, _circa_, is the most correct date to assign to it.

On the left-hand side may be observed the doorway, twenty inches wide, through which, pierced in the easternmost spandril of the north arcade, a rood-stair, now consisting of seven steps, emerges on to the platform itself. The head of this aperture consists of a stone lintel, which, being cut on its under side into the form of an obtuse angle, produces, roughly, the appearance of a four-centred arch. In the south or left-hand jamb are still fastened two iron hangers for the door, now no more, which opened navewards upon the loft.

In the early sixties of the nineteenth century, there remained on the plaster of the east wall of the nave, above the ancient loft, considerable traces of colour. In vivid contrast to this painted background showed up the bare silhouettes of a large cross, and of an upright figure on either side of it; thus marking clearly the place where the great rood, with the Mary and John, had stood in former days. At the present time nothing of these interesting relics is to be seen; the interior of Wingerworth church having been freshly distempered over with a smart coat of colour wash, while two immense hatchments, with pompous black cloth surrounds, occupy the place sacred from of yore to the memorial of mankind’s Redemption. What could be more unseemly than selecting this one, of all sites in a church, for the parading of the worldly distinctions of one’s family? Whether it is too late to save the remains of the rood-painting by scraping off the distemper which hides it, I cannot say; but there can be no question whatever but that the profane hatchments ought to be taken down as quickly as possible, and placed somewhere—anywhere—else than where I saw them in March, 1907.

The painting at Wingerworth is not the only instance of its kind known to have survived in Derbyshire down to the nineteenth century. Thus at Hayfield, according to a memorandum made on the spot by one of the brothers Lysons, who visited the old church shortly before its demolition in 1815, there was to be seen “at the back of the gallery, facing the nave ... a painting of the Crucifixion, with St. John and St. Peter ... said to have been painted (in) 1775, but probably from an ancient one which had remained undisturbed at the time of the Reformation.” That this work, for the figure of St. Peter to have been substituted for that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, must have been retouched by some post-Reformation hand, may readily be believed; but, in the same connection, the question presents itself as to whether the gallery noted by the famous topographer could by any manner of means have been the ancient rood-loft at Hayfield church.

But to return from speculation to facts and figures. The timber extant of the rood-loft at Wingerworth reaches from side to side of the nave, a length of 15 ft. 1 in. The distance from the floor of the nave to the base of this structure (itself barely an inch above the crown of the chancel arch) is 8 ft. 8½ in.; from the nave-floor to the platform at the top of it, 11 ft. 8½ in.; giving it an elevation of exactly three feet. The width of the platform from back to front is 38 inches. In the upper surface of the breast-summer, or main beam of the westward projection, are the remains of fourteen mortice holes (averaging 4 inches in length each, with a centring of 13½ inches), sunk to receive the tenons of the upright stiles that framed the front of the loft parapet, the height of which there is no present means of gauging. The uppermost front edge is embattled. Below, in a cavetto, at intervals, are nine square pateras of Gothic leaf ornament. The receding cove beneath the breast-summer is divided by moulded ribs into eight panels, the longitudinal ribs centred at 44 inches, and being crossed by a single latitudinal rib, with carved square bosses and Gothic leaves in the angles of intersection. This panelling occupies a superficial breadth of 32 inches between the breast-summer above and the moulded timber at the base.

The back of this structure fits close against the wall, and there is not the slightest trace of any supporting screenwork ever having touched, still less been attached to, its lower edge. I am disposed to think that the arrangements at Wingerworth must have been analogous to those of Sawley church, and that the solution of the problems they both present is to be arrived at by a comparison of the existing remains of rood-loft and screenwork in these several churches, the one supplementing the details which lack in the other, for the reconstruction of the original scheme. In both cases is a round-headed arch—that at Wingerworth is not later than the beginning of the twelfth century, while that at Sawley has been pronounced, on expert authority, to have been erected still earlier, bearing as it does the evidences of pre-Norman workmanship—an arch which, were it not for the impost at the spring on either side, resembles more than anything else (with its broad, flat soffit, no splays, no orders, no mouldings) a simple aperture cut in the solid wall. The arch at Wingerworth has an opening of 6 ft. 7 in. wide, or 7 ft. at the spring, by 8 ft. 8 in. (short measure) from floor to crown; that at Sawley, 14 ft. 1 in. wide, its height in proportion.

Now although at Wingerworth there is nothing of the sort remaining, at Sawley, on the contrary, the original fittings of the chancel have, fortunately, been preserved. These, comprising return stalls, with the rood-screen behind them, stand complete _within_ the chancel. Nor could the screen, so placed (because of the thickness of the wall, interposing a bulk of 3 ft. 2 in. between chancel and nave), possibly have formed one organic structure, with the rood-loft on the other side, in the nave. I take it that in both cases the chancel was fully and finally furnished with its stalls and screen at a time when rood-lofts had not yet become a necessity—the fittings actually are of a heavy and somewhat primitive type of Perpendicular—and that when, later on, a rood-loft did require to be provided, circumstances left no choice open but to treat it as something entirely independent of the already erected screen. For to have set it up on the top of the latter, on the chancel side of the arch, would have defeated the primary object for which the rood-loft, as an adjunct to the performance of public worship, existed. Without doubt the only place where it could adequately fulfil the requirements of a rood-loft was against the east wall of the nave, above the chancel arch. The length, then, of the rood-loft at Sawley would be the same as the width of the nave, viz., 26 ft. 3 in.

All this is no idle theory. It is confirmed by the existence, in Sawley church, of a pair of stone corbels projecting from the masonry at the east end of the nave above the chancel arch. The level of the corbel in the north-east corner is 17 ft. 1 in. above the floor; that of the opposite one in the south-east corner, 17 ft. 3 in. These would have supported the ancient rood-beam, there being ample wall-surface at the east end of the nave for the rood, as well as for the rood-loft (containing, possibly, the “payre of orgyns” named in the inventory of the sixth year of Edward VI.), to have been situated beneath, either crossing the opening of, or (as at Wingerworth) crowning the summit of, the chancel arch.

Neither are the above-named cases themselves without parallel. It is recorded that there was in the nave (19 ft. 10 in. wide) of the old church at Parwich (pulled down in 1872) a sort of rood-loft projection similar in construction to that at Wingerworth, and that in the course of demolition the ends of four stout, squared timbers were taken out of the masonry about two feet above the crown of the Norman chancel-arch, a low-pitched one like (although, being more richly ornamented, of later date than) the Wingerworth example itself.

Owing to the scarcity of wills, churchwardens’ accounts, and such other documents as might have thrown light on the subject, the exact date of the introduction of the rood-loft cannot, in the case of the great majority of churches in Derbyshire, be ascertained. At Elvaston church, in 1474, the first Lord Mountjoy left instructions for the carrying out of certain works, which would most likely have included the erection of a rood-loft there, though the latter is not named in the bequest. In fact, the earliest and only instance I know of in which the rood-loft was explicitly provided for, is the will of Sir Henry Vernon, of Haddon. The date of this document is 18th January, 1514, and the item in point runs: “I bequethe to the churche of Bakewell and to makying of the Rode lofte £6.” The will was proved on 5th May of the next year, 1515, not later than which date the testator’s wishes, so I assume, would be carried into execution.

I have already indicated how the general absence of aisles from the chancels of its churches drove chantry-founders in Derbyshire to occupy the space of the nave or nave aisles. But, more than that, it effectually checked the expansion of the rood-loft and screen, and confined them within the nave’s width. For wherever the eastern wall of an aisle, conterminous with the nave, is pierced by a window (instead of by an arch leading into a chapel beyond), it does not admit of either screen or loft being carried across it in continuation of the screen and loft in the nave. The only sure sign of the alternative plan having been adopted, _i.e._, of rood-loft having extended to the outer wall of the aisle, would be a rood-entrance in that outer wall. But such a sign I have not met with anywhere in Derbyshire. I searched for it in Chesterfield church, the plan of which, so it seemed to me, might have admitted the rood-loft being carried right across the building, including the aisles; but in vain. I cannot point to a single instance in a Derbyshire church of which it could be positively asserted that the rood-loft extended beyond the limit of the width of the nave.

The usual place for the rood-loft door and staircase in this county would appear to be either in the nave or in the inner corner of an aisle immediately adjacent to the nave. Such approaches, or traces of them, exist or are known to have existed at, among other churches, those of Ashbourne, Ashover, Aston, Bakewell, Barrow-upon-Trent, Breadsall, Chaddesden, Derby (old St. Michael’s), Kirk Langley, Monyash, Repton, Spondon, Tideswell, Wilne, North Wingfield, and Wingerworth. Nevertheless, as compared with other districts of England, Derbyshire cannot be reckoned among those counties in which rood-entrances and rood-stairs are of very common occurrence. However, where either they do survive or traces of them occur, they afford no exception to the normal dimensions of such structures. Indeed, in Derbyshire there are to be found rood-entrances as narrow as, if not even narrower than, anywhere else in the kingdom. Thus those at Chaddesden and Wingerworth measure each only eighteen inches wide.

In some cases the ascent starts abruptly at a very awkward height from the ground. For instance, at Ashover the lowest step of the rood-stair is 6 feet above the floor level; 6 ft. 3 in. at Wingerworth. Nor in either case is there any perceptible trace of the steps having descended lower towards the ground. For them to be reached, then, where they are, is a feat that could not be accomplished without the help of a ladder. In the case of Wingerworth, however, it is true that, as to whether the rood-stair originally terminated at its present distance from the floor, there is, for the following reasons, much uncertainty. The mother of one Arthur Mower, of Barlow, dying in 1574, and being buried in Wingerworth church, her son wrote down minute particulars of the site of her interment; and the old memorandum book, still extant, records how she “lyeth in the church in the north alley at the head of the alley on the north side, and her feet lieth as nigh of the north side of the grysse” (_i.e._, stair, from the Latin _gressus_) “that goeth up into the Rood-loft as may be.” Now nobody at the present day who wanted to be accurate—and the sole _raison d’être_ of a memorandum like this is to preserve and hand down as trustworthy a record as possible—would dream of describing the feet of a body lying in the north-east corner of the north aisle as being close to the ascent of the rood-stair! To obviate the discrepancy, then, is one not forced to the conclusion that the rood-stair must have been somehow or other prolonged downwards in a northerly direction until it reached the ground at the spot indicated?

Rood-stairs, being no longer required once the lofts had been overthrown, have met with shameful neglect, often with violent maltreatment. In some cases they have been allowed to survive only through having been turned into cupboards for brooms and ladders, gas meters, or water cisterns; but, nevertheless, after full allowance is made for rood-stairs that formerly were and now have perished, there is still left a large percentage of Derbyshire churches in which no permanent stone stairs can be supposed to have existed. In such cases, unless there was a fixed wooden staircase, access must have been obtained by no better means than a ladder the whole way from floor to loft. The practical inconvenience of this proceeding, together with the narrow dimensions of rood-doors and stairs—while their builders were constructing them, it would in most cases have been just as easy to make them half a dozen or so inches wider had there been any occasion—affords corroborative evidence of the impossibility of parochial rood-lofts having been used, or designed to be used, for ceremonial purposes by the officiants at divine service.