Derbyshire (England) -- Antiquities; Derbyshire (England) -- History
Another feature which Derbyshire screens share in common with other
midland screenwork, is the very usual inequality which the traceried
fenestration-heads present on the obverse and reverse. In the south
and east of England both surfaces are almost invariably carved and
moulded with identical design and equal completeness; so that if I met
with a detached portion of church screen tracery anywhere in Kent,
for instance, I should at once know by its treatment to what part of
a screen it belonged. For the back would only be smooth and unmoulded
if it had been intended to fit flat against blind panelling in the
lower half of a screen, and _vice versâ_. But Derbyshire tracery,
as a rule, does not furnish such indications; and so, unless the
design bore the outline of an arch, and were therefore unmistakably
intended, like the Breadsall example illustrated, for the upper part
of a vaulted screen, it would be next to impossible to determine its
place in the composition. For even _à jour_ tracery, meant to be looked
at from either side, is usually plain and flat on one surface, as in
the case of the parclose at Elvaston (see left-hand distance in the
illustration), and that also at Fenny Bentley. The rood-screens at the
latter church and at Ashover are both of them instances in which the
upper traceries are enriched with the addition of crocketed ornament on
the westward side, while they are plain and smooth on the chancel side.
In some screens, again, though the upper tracery is not indeed quite
flat at the back, there is yet a marked difference between the degree
of elaboration on the two surfaces. Thus in the tracery of the
rood-screen at Elvaston, the western face, besides being moulded, is
further embellished with crockets and finials, carved in bold relief,
in some compartments handsomely fretted and deeply undercut, and
altogether remarkably rich and varied in character (see illustration
of detail); while the side towards the east is uniformly treated with
simple moulding only. At Chaddesden the contrast between the east
and west faces respectively of the upper part of the rood-screen is
still greater. In this particular case a difference of treatment is
necessarily entailed by the somewhat unusual plan on which the screen
itself is constructed; the overhanging rood-loft (now, of course, no
longer in existence) having been carried upon the naveward side by
groined vaulting, and by a cove, instead of vaulting to correspond,
towards the chancel. The spandrils, therefore, covered by the vaulting
on the west side are exposed on the other, and present a series of
solid triangles, which would have been bare and unsightly without
applied ornament. All of these, then, together with the reverse of
the transom in the two central bays and of the muntin between them,
cut short by the entrance arch, are decorated with low relief carving
entirely unlike the front. Moreover, although the muntins on either
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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