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)
In the reign of Edward VI., the roods, with their attendant images, were
removed, and it is probable that the lofts were stript at the same time
of the candlesticks and basons of latten, wherein the lights were set
up. But the screens themselves do not appear to have suffered, and
indeed, in accordance with the decree that the chancels were to remain
as in time past, the screens were absolutely necessary. Considering the
great number of screens yet standing, it is evident that those which
have been removed, were demolished, through the ignorance or
indifference of the authorities during the repairs that the buildings
have undergone, and I am personally acquainted with several instances
which corroborate this fact. There are several examples of
post-Reformation screens, one at Gedington church, of a simple but good
character, and another at Martham church, Norfolk, which is painted and
gilt.
The choir of Wimborne Minster, Dorsetshire, was fitted up in the
beginning of the seventeenth, or end of the sixteenth century, quite
after the old traditions, as regards screen-work and arrangement, though
the details were of course debased.
The collegiate chapels of the universities present several remarkable
examples of post-Reformation screens, as Wadham, Baliol, Lincoln, the
old screen of Magdalene, before the recent alterations, at Oxford; and
Peterhouse, Caius college, Clarehall, at Cambridge; even the screen of
King's college chapel itself was not erected till after the schism, as
the initials of Anna Boleyn occur in its decorations.
I have been informed of a screen in one of the churches at Leeds,
erected in the seventeenth century; and an oak screen of a still later
date is standing in the church of St. Peter, upon Cornhill, London. Lady
Dudley, a most pious lady, in the time of Charles I. set up a screen in
the church of St. Giles-in-the-fields, which was afterwards destroyed by
the Puritan faction. The whole transaction is so illustrative of the
spirit of those times, and so applicable to the fanatics of our own
days, that I have printed it at length at p. 74.
From these instances it will be seen that the principle of screening off
chancels has been retained in the church of England since its separation
from Catholic unity, and the partial discontinuance in the eighteenth
century was purely owing to extreme ignorance of ecclesiastical
traditions, which prevailed throughout the members of this communion at
that period, remarkable only for debased taste, and a total disregard of
the wonderful productions of Catholic antiquity.
To this brief account of screens in England, I have subjoined some
interesting extracts from churchwardens' accounts and other documents,
printed in Nichol's illustrations, which will illustrate their history
and decoration.
ACCOUNTS OF ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER.
"1510.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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