George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund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George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers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
I have drawn out the plan of this church, and, with the help of my
sketches, this may, I trust, explain its extraordinary arrangement.
This consists in the elevation of the choir, with a kind of crypt
below it, above the floor of the rest of the church; the floor of the
crypt being level with that of the nave, and divided into three widths
with slender shafts, the whole groined, and when seen from the nave,
presenting certainly one of the most striking and curious interiors
I have ever met with. The west end of the under church opens to the
nave with three arches, looking just like the ordinary arrangement of
rood-screens in Lübeck; and this is just what it is: the whole choir
is simply a prolongation eastwards of the rood-loft, and at the west
end there is a raised screen surmounting the three arches, out of which
rises a most magnificent and perfect rood, with SS. Mary and John on
either side. The entire absence of seats in the nave, the great height
of the church, the darkness of the long vista of arch and column under
the choir, and the magnificence of the rood, make this interior one
of the most satisfactory and least altered things I know; and if its
arrangement is not absolutely unique, it is certainly not far from
being so. In England I know nothing at all like it, unless such an
example as the little church at Compton, near Guildford, be taken, in
which there are indeed some points of similarity--the low sanctuary,
with its groined roof, and the chapel above opening to the church, and
fenced in with its low Romanesque screen-work; all this, though on
a far smaller scale, certainly tallies curiously with this Minorite
church at Lübeck.[77]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account