Derbyshire (England) -- Antiquities; Derbyshire (England) -- History
The oldest actual example of timber screenwork in Derbyshire partakes
of so little in common with the generality of woodwork, either in
design or mode of treatment, that it is perhaps appropriate to deal
with it here, in association with stone screenwork, as occupying an
intermediate stage between the two several classes. I refer to the
remains of the rood-screens at Kirk Langley, which, unworthily made
up as they are into a box-door, placed at the west entrance, in the
ill-lighted lowest storey of the tower, seem to me scarcely to have
received the attention they might have claimed. Indeed, the deceptive
environment of modern accretions combines with the twilight to make
it extremely difficult for anyone to form a just estimate of the
work or of its proper dimensions. As far as the existing remains, in
their mutilated and altered condition, admit of a reconstruction of
the original plan of the screen, it would appear to have consisted
of two lengths of 4 ft. 6 in. each, and two doors of the same height
and pattern as the other part; so that, when the whole stood intact,
the fenestration must have formed a continuous arcade of trefoiled
lights, their average centring 8¾ inches, each of them with an ogival
crown, indenting a complete trefoil, balanced upon its apex. As the
illustration shows, the treatment of this tracery work is peculiar. The
component members of it—in plan square, with sides slightly concave—are
set angle-wise to the front, and present a series of prominent edges
without the usual fillet. Thus they have an effect of crisp and almost
metallic acuteness, unfamiliar in woodwork as also it is in stone.
The face of the cill below the fenestration is carved with a band of
quatrefoils, having each a four-petalled flower—not a rose—in the
centre. The design is of the fourteenth century, and it might possibly
have been executed towards the close of Edward III.’s reign, or not
later than the deposition of Richard II.
[Illustration: Kirk Langley Church: Detail of Former Rood-Screen in
Oak, XIV. Century Work.]
The remarks which follow should be understood to apply to screens
which are true timberwork, alike in _motif_ as in material. In
structure and proportions, Derbyshire screens for the most part
assimilate to the midland type, as exemplified at Newark and Strelley,
in Nottinghamshire, or Wormleighton, in Warwickshire, and as
distinguished from that of the south and west of England and Wales.
That is to say, not a few of them rise to a stately height, with
remarkably lofty fenestration; the latter being, in some instances,
narrow even to attenuation. Thus the rood-screen at Breadsall, as
far as can be judged by what remains of it, notably illustrates this
peculiarity; in which regard it affords a striking parallel to the
screenwork at Newark church before-mentioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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