Derbyshire (England) -- Antiquities; Derbyshire (England) -- History
Hope was too thankful at having secured so
authentic a relic of antiquity to spend time in prosecuting any very
searching inquiry as to the precise nature of the office it might have
fulfilled in days gone by; but that, seeing his own church was bare of
a rood-screen, he very naturally adapted the screen which he had become
possessed of to supply the deficiency, although comparative study of
the design and formation of Derbyshire screens in general might have
led him, as it has led me, to conclude that this one from Crich could
not originally have been a rood-screen.
Neither, again, may the apparent exception, which the chancel-screen
in Haddon Hall chapel affords, be adduced. For, though it is true that
to-day visitors to Haddon find, beneath the fenestration cill on either
half of the screen there, a band of Gothic tracery—authentic, if of a
somewhat flamboyant type—which fits its position plausibly enough, the
view of the chapel by George Cattermole, lithographed by S. Rayner,
and published in 1839, while agreeing in every other particular with
the present unchanged aspect of the place, shows no ornament here at
all. The panels were still without tracery when, between 1880 and
1885, a photograph of the interior was taken, which is reproduced in
the third volume of _The Abbey Square Sketch Book_; and the Rev. Dr.
Cox possesses a coloured sketch, dated 1898, which does not differ in
this regard from the earlier representations. But in either event the
screen at Haddon, whether traceried or plain, is no case in point, for
the simple reason that the panelling itself is blind. In order to be
analogous to the parcloses at Ashbourne, Elvaston, and Sawley, it would
need to be perforated.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the following are the
churches which contain the most notable parclose screens:—Ashbourne,
Bakewell, Chesterfield, Darley Dale (stone), Elvaston, Fenny Bentley
(moved from its place), Kirk Langley (portions made up), and Sawley
(the lower parts only of two parcloses); while, if not now, there
existed anciently, or there are believed to have existed, parcloses
at Alkmonton hospital chapel, Ashover, Chelmorton (stone), Church
Broughton, Crich, old St. Alkmund’s, and old All Hallows’ and St.
Peter’s in Derby, Horsley, Longford, Longstone, Mugginton, Norbury,
Radburne, Tideswell, Weston-on-Trent, and Youlgreave. But all this on
the subject of parcloses is to anticipate.
[Illustration: Ilkeston Church: Stone Rood-Screen, from the Chancel.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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