George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund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George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers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
And now to describe this most interesting church in detail. The eastern
choir-screen is most remarkable. It has admirably carved capitals, and
its three western arches (which are semicircular) rest on delicate
clusters of shafts. The original doorways still remain, and in front
of them steps, arranged in semicircles radiating from the centre of
the door, which lead up into the choir. No doubt an altar once stood
under this screen, but this has been destroyed in order to convert
it into a pew! The front of the screen too is so much obscured by a
modern gallery, and by the reredos of the Lutheran altar, that it
is impossible to say how it was finished: there seemed to be traces
of a vesica with sculpture just over the centre arch. Entering the
choir by this screen, one finds all the old arrangements undisturbed.
Between the two western doors there are three stalls with canopies,
and on either side against the stone parcloses eleven stalls and ten
subsellae. In the midst stand three ancient, heavy square desks for
office books, and upon these five most magnificent books, well bound
and of astonishing size, still maintain their old place. They are all
manuscript on vellum, and two of them have very large illuminations of
subjects, and foliage of very admirable and bold character. I never
saw such magnificent books on their own proper desks,--never, I think
any of such grand size anywhere. The stalls are not particularly
good, and are of late date, with immense finials, of a kind I had met
before at Halberstadt. A rise of several steps divides the choir from
the first bay of the sanctuary, which is long and without furniture,
save some late stalls, which do not seem to have any business where
they are placed. This bay of the choir terminates the transitional
work, which is carried throughout the whole church, with the exception
of the eastern apse and the western choir. It is of the earliest
pointed, very simple and bold in all its details; the piers looking
rather like Romanesque in their section and capitals, carved in the
most admirable manner. The foliage is all disposed in circles, being
regular and geometrical and invariably kept severely and carefully to a
regular outline; it is an example of the very perfection of that kind
of conventional foliage, of which some of the early capitals at Venice
are such admirable specimens, and I think in no way inferior to them.
The groining throughout is very simple, with diagonal and transverse
ribs. The eastern apse is an addition in most admirable middle-pointed,
and (save the upper stages of the towers) the latest work in the whole
fabric. The section of the groining shafts is particularly elaborate
and good; corbels of foliage inferior to the rest of the carving
throughout the church supported figures under canopies at a height of
about eight feet from the floor, but the figures are all gone. A very
bold string runs round the apse at this point under a passage-way in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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