Derbyshire (England) -- Antiquities; Derbyshire (England) -- History
A rood-screen of similar design is believed to have occupied the
chancel opening (13 ft. 6 in. wide) at Darley Dale church, to judge
from a fragment of stone carving lying (as recorded in 1877) in the
parish clerk’s garden there. In the south aisle of this church, close
to the south door, stands a family pew, built out of the remains
of a stone parclose and the stone frames of a couple of two-light
Perpendicular windows—one having had its mullion knocked out to make
the doorway, and both betraying their extraneous origin by being
grooved in the usual manner for leaded glazing. That part of the
enclosure which is genuine screenwork comprises two distinct, though
not very incongruous, designs of the first half of the fifteenth
century. Exclusive of the alien window-work, that portion of the screen
running east and west measures 11 ft. 6 in. long; that portion running
north and south, 3 ft. 7 in. The shorter length consists of a plain
wall below a tier of cinquefoil-headed lights; the longer, of ogival
panelling in eleven cusped compartments, corresponding to the same
number of cinquefoil-headed lights in the upper part. A detail of it
is here illustrated. The blind panelling measures 4 ft. high to the
cill of the fenestration, the inclusive height of the screen being 7
ft. 6 in. It has not been ascertained whether the space enclosed by
this screen represents the original position of the chantry, but more
probably it was situated in some less westerly part of the building.
“It was unfortunately set back,” writes the Rev. Dr. Cox, “a foot or
two to give more room to the aisle in 1854, but otherwise remains as
it was before the ‘restoration.’ Stone parcloses, though of fairly
frequent occurrence round chantry tombs in cathedrals, are very rarely
met with in parish churches.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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