George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund
History
George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic; Church architecture -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
The church of Notre Dame consists of a nave and aisle of seven bays
in length, transepts, and a very short apsidal choir (an apse of
seven sides), with an aisle and chapels planned like those of S.
Remi, beyond it. There are four towers, two at the west ends of the
aisles, and two in the angles between the transepts and the choir.
The triforium throughout is large, lofty, and groined. As at S. Remi,
the external effect of this church is much inferior to the internal
effect. It is rather too heavy and ungainly, and savours much of the
character of German Romanesque work. The four towers have the defect
of being almost exactly alike, of four stages, richly adorned with
round-arched arcades, and rising hardly at all above the level of
the ridges of the roof. The south-west tower retains its fine leaded
spire, with four tall pinnacles at its base, and a cluster of eight
spire-lights about midway: it is an exquisite example of lead-work, and
still more precious to us as affording evidence of the extraordinary
extent to which decoration was sometimes carried in the Middle Ages.
The pinnacles at the base still retain distinct traces of decoration
on the lead, each side having a large crocketed canopy, below which is
a gigantic figure, in one case of an archer with a bow. The whole is
done in white and black only, the ground being the dark lead on which
the white lines seem to have been marked by a process of tinning or
soldering. It is a kind of decoration which we may well attempt to
revive. A spire very similar to the other has recently been erected
on the north-west tower, and the western front is now therefore quite
in its old state, and singularly well does it look. I almost doubt
whether the addition of similar spires to the two eastern towers, for
which the Curé is now collecting funds, will really improve the look
of the church. With four steeples, it is well that two at least should
be pre-eminent, which is the present state of the case; whilst the
completion of the others would reduce all to the character of mere
turrets--a result not to be desired. The variety of string-courses
and cornices throughout the exterior of this church, all filled with
sculpture of foliage, gives a very ornate character to the external
detail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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