George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund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George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers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 walls of the chancel are only 2 ft. 3½ in. thick, but the great
size of the buttresses amply compensated for this, and preserved
them from suffering at all by the thrust of the groining. Before
the restoration the state of the chancel was a sad falling off from
its old state. The arcade at the base of the walls was perfect all
round. The lower part of the groining-shafts remained, as also did the
whole of a cluster of shafts on each side between the short western
bay already mentioned and the next. The groining was all destroyed,
but marks of it remained against the wall, and it was easy therefore
to obtain its exact section. The treatment of the western bay was
peculiar. It was clearly never covered, as the rest of the chancel
was, with a quadripartite vault. The mark of a vault remained against
the wall above the chancel arch, whilst the side walls showed that a
barrel-vault had sprung from them. The cluster of three shafts between
this bay and the next remained to be explained. One of them only was
the groining-shaft answering to the others; but upon a very close
examination of a fragment of the wall above them and of the marks on
the caps themselves, I was able to ascertain beyond doubt that the two
other shafts had carried an arch moulded on the east face, the soffit
of which, continued westward, formed the pointed barrel-vault over the
western bay. This has now been all restored, and with so much certainty
as to all its parts, that I trust it will not be opened to the
criticisms to which too many restorations are liable, of being rather
ingenious than true. I should mention that the new groining-ribs are
of the same section as the old. The window in the north wall has been
exactly restored after the old remains, some of which have indeed been
incorporated with the new work. It is of three uncusped lights, with
tracery composed of three cusped circles. The cusping was let into a
groove, and a sufficient number of fragments remained to give the exact
number of cusps, etc. On the exterior the jamb has two engaged shafts,
with caps and bases, and on the inside the monials are well moulded
and have each a detached marble shaft, whilst the jambs have two
marble shafts and are richly moulded. Internally the arch and tracery
mouldings are very delicate, whilst externally they consist of bold
chamfers and hollows only. The detail of the sculpture of the capitals
of the monials was managed with rare skill, as seen by a fragment
found in the north wall. This window is now treated in the same way as
that at the east end of the north aisle, being partly below the roof
of the Wilshyre chantry. An old arch existed behind the arcade under
it, and this has been replaced by one of stone, so that the chantry
is now sufficiently open to the chancel for the purpose of use by the
congregation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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