Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and CoastsNorthcote, Rosalind
History
Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts
Northcote, Rosalind
Devon (England)
The chapel is late Perpendicular, and it is most elaborately carved and
decorated. The roof is covered with different kinds of ornamentation,
and the cornice bears the arms of Greenway, of the Drapers' Company, and
other devices. Along the corbel line are carved scenes from the Bible,
beneath is a sea of gentle ripples, with several large ships in full
sail upon it, and above and beside the windows is a multitude of
different designs--merchants' marks, animals, roses, anchors, horses and
men; and a very delightful ape sits on a projecting pedestal, close to
the porch. The porch is extremely elaborate, both within and without. On
the frieze are six panels, each carved with a different Scriptural
subject, separated from one another by single figures. Over the porch
are the arms of the Courtenays, and above them an emblem and more
carving, besides two large niches, now empty, at each side of the door.
Inside the porch, over the door leading into the church, is a carving of
the Assumption, and the roof is richly carved with merchants' marks and
other ciphers and designs on little shields. The roof inside the chapel
is also carved; and in the floor is a brass engraved with the figures of
the merchant and his wife--he in a long fur-edged robe, and she wearing
embroidered draperies and jewels, and a pomander ball hanging on one of
the long ends of her girdle.
It is interesting to hear that in this church Mendelssohn's Wedding
March was first played at a wedding. The 'Midsummer Night's Dream' music
had just been published as a pianoforte duet, when Mr Samuel Reay, of
Tiverton, made an arrangement of it for the organ, and the first
marriage at which the march was played was that of Mr Tom Daniel and
Miss Dorothea Carew, in June, 1847.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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