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)
The parish church at Lancaster contains some very magnificent screen and
canopy-work of the time of Edward I. The treatment of the crockets is
quite peculiar, as they are joined together, forming a sort of solid
enrichment on the gablets.
The priory church of Hexham is rich in carved fittings. The stalls and
screen-work of the choir are perfect, and though rude in execution are
extremely interesting; this being a conventual church, the screen-work
is quite solid. If we proceed further north, we shall find the same
system of enclosure of choirs and chancels by screens. The rood-loft at
Glasgow is still perfect, and though the Scotch churches have been
horribly mutilated, the ancient position of the enclosures is to be
traced in most of them.
The churches in Wales were mostly furnished with rood-lofts. The screen
and loft at Lanryst are most elaborate in carved enrichments; they were
probably erected in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and it is
worthy of remark that in this, as well as others, there is a striking
similarity between the screens in Wales and Brittany.
Were it not tedious, I could supply a long list of fine screens yet
remaining in every part of the country, but there are few of an older
date than the thirteenth century, as so many of these churches have been
rebuilt or refitted since that period. There can be no doubt that even
the Saxon churches were provided with some enclosure across the arch
which divided off the chancel. Indeed, so natural and right does it seem
to have this separation, that the principles of screens survived the
Reformation, as will be mentioned hereafter. But not only do we find the
cathedrals and parochial churches to have been furnished with screens,
but also chapels in private houses and hospitals for the poor. The
archbishop's chapel at Croydon is divided by a plain but very
substantial and effective screen, figured in the first volume of Pugin's
examples.
Browne's hospital at Stamford, Bishop Bubwith's almshouses at Wells, S.
John's hospital at Sherburne, the bede-houses at Northampton and
Leicester, the Vicar's chapel at Wells, have all screens in their
chapels, and some of them of most elegant design. In the private chapel
of an ancient mansion at Cothele, on the banks of the Tamar, is an open
screen of perpendicular work. In short, I do not imagine that any
building dedicated to divine worship was considered complete, unless
furnished with a suitable screen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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