A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts: Their Antiquity, Use, and Symbolic SignificationPugin, Augustus Welby Northmore
History
A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts: Their Antiquity, Use, and Symbolic Signification
Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore
Screens (Church decoration)
Our parochial churches are yet rich in screens; of wooden rood-lofts we
may particularize Sleaford, Newark, Bury St. Edmunds, Fairford, Tong,
Lanryst, Sefton, Ranworth, and Southwold as some amongst the most
remarkable. The countries most abounding in screens, are Norfolk,
Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Devonshire, but each county
presents many interesting examples, and it must be distinctly understood
that every church, small or great, was originally provided with a screen.
In Norfolk, the churches of Cawston, Sall, N. Walsham, Worsted, Walcot,
Trunch, Happisburgh, Bacton, Paston, Lynn, Ranworth, Cley, Castle Acre,
Cressingham, Snetisham, and Ackle, &c., have all fine screens. Many of
them are richly painted, and the lower panels filled with images of
saints on gold and diapered grounds. The best preserved are those at
Ranworth and Cawston. About five different painters were employed in the
decoration of these, as the various styles may be distinctly traced over
various parts of the country. Some of them exhibit far greater skill
than others, but all have a deal of quaint character, and the images
fill up the spaces in which they are placed, by the adjustment of
drapery, &c.
There is a great deal of fine screen-work in Suffolk, at Woolpitt,
Elmswell, Thurston, Lavenham, Long Melford, Brandon, Southwold,
Blythburgh, Hawsted, and many other churches.
In Lincolnshire there are splendid screens at Winthorpe, Ingoldmills,
Orby, Burgh, Croft, Boston, Hackington, Swineshead, Tattershall, Ewerby,
Newark, Grantham.
In Devonshire the screens have been generally preserved, and on many of
them the painted panels with saints and imagery are quite perfect. They
are mostly constructed on one principle, with projecting wooden
ribbed-work crossing the rood-loft; at Honiton, Feniton, Bradwinch, West
Buckland, Columpton, Dartmouth, Kenton, Pinhoe, Plymtree, Tollaton,
Tiverton, Atherington, Dawlish, &c., are screens surmounted by
rood-lofts; but at Bridford, Burlescombe, Clayhanger, Dartington,
Hempston, Plymstock, West Ogwell, &c., there are only screens without
lofts, but of exceedingly elaborate design, and for the most part richly
painted and gilt, some with saints in the lower panels, like those in
Norfolk. A very numerous list, indeed, might be made of churches in this
country, where screens of some kind are to be found; they are not always
of the same material, for the examples of stone are numerous, as at
Totness, Culmstock, Colyton, and Paignton, &c., this latter being
monumental, and containing family tombs, introduced in the screen-work.
Although the counties above mentioned are those which abound the most in
fine examples of screen-work, yet most numerous and interesting
specimens may be found in every county.
Sefton church, in Lancashire, has a splendid rood and side screens
enclosing the chancel, of a later period, but most elaborate detail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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