The Churches of Coventry: A Short History of the City & Its Medieval RemainsWoodhouse, Frederic W.
History
The Churches of Coventry: A Short History of the City & Its Medieval Remains
Woodhouse, Frederic W.
Churches -- England -- Coventry; Coventry (England) -- History
The graceful treatment of the windows of the nave and choir
clearstories is shown in the illustration. Comparing these with the
clearstory of Trinity nave (p. 71) questions of priority arise. If not
designed by the same mind the influence of one on the other is easily
seen. On the whole the greater rigidity of treatment and the anxiety
to increase the area of glass in the Trinity windows suggest that the
date is rather later and that the designs did not spring from the same
brain. The roof is very simple, the curved brackets springing from the
shafts which run down to the arches below. The wall is deeply recessed
beneath the windows. The north windows, however, are continued down in
plain panels, but this only makes more apparent the fact that they are
not placed centrally over the arches.
The north aisle has a doorway and two north windows. The windows are
of good Perpendicular design, and the mullions are continued down the
wall below, forming panels. The lowered sill and recess probably
formed a convenient retable to an altar against the wall. The west
window preserves some fragments of glass dated 1532. There is an
obliterated inscription and small etched figures--among them an
acolyte carrying a cross, one of those whose services are mentioned in
the accounts after this wise: "to the crosebeirer and torchebeirer,
for Seynt George day, hollieroode day, shire thuresday and Whit
Sunday, _12d._; to 2 childern for the same dayes _6d._"
The south aisle of the nave, including the lower part of the transept,
is doubtless the aisle erected for the Gild by William Walsheman in
1357. The two windows are not central with the nave arches, and the
third is not in the centre of the transept. Their tracery is somewhat
peculiar in design and refined in detail, and has the transitional
character one would expect from its date. There are signs on the face
of each western tower pier of the altars which once stood there,
probably those of the Trinity and St. Katharine, which are known to
have existed.
The eastern piers of the tower are later than the western, and very
unlike them in plan. A bold and ingenious treatment of the vaulting
shaft of the tower groining is used on these piers; on the western
ones the shafts stop upon the ends of the hood moulding.
The choir is now closed by a screen carrying a large rood carved in
oak. Like St. Michael's, but to a smaller extent, the axis of the
choir inclines to the north. Whether symbolic, or only a part of what
may be described as the studied irregularity of the whole building it
is hard to say. The column on each side of the choir is later than the
east respond and also later than the west tower pier, but corresponds
with the east tower pier. The deep panelling beneath the windows must
have been carried out when the clearstories were constructed in the
fifteenth century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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