The Ground Plan of the English Parish ChurchThompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
History
The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church
Thompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
Church architecture -- England
Sec. 70. Where chantry chapels are attached to one side or other of a
chancel, their variations in size and plan are almost infinite. In the
smallest examples, they are mere projections from the wall of the
chancel, and little more than tomb recesses, such as the Cresacre chapel
at Barnburgh, near Rotherham, or the Booth chapel on the south side of
the chancel at Sawley in Derbyshire. The little north chapel of the
chancel at Clapton-in-Gordano in Somerset may have served as a vestry.
At Brancepeth, near Durham, where there is a long chancel and an aisled
nave with transeptal chapels, a south chantry chapel adjoins the east
side of the south transeptal chapel, while a north chantry chapel forms
an independent excrescence from the north wall, and is shut off from the
chancel by a doorway. Brigstock in Northamptonshire has a very large
north chancel chapel, which is virtually the eastern portion of a
widened aisle: the south chapel, on the other hand, is of much later
date, and is so small that there must have been room in it for an altar
and little more. These smaller chantry chapels, like the beautiful south
chapel at Aldwinkle All Saints, Northants, have often great
architectural beauty of their own, and give great variety to the plan of
the church. But chancel chapels are often larger and more important,
like the fourteenth century south chapel at Leverton, near Boston, which
is practically a separate building, separated from the chancel by a wall
without an arcade, or like the very spacious north chapel of the priory
church at Brecon. The south chapel of the chancel at Berkeley in
Gloucestershire, and the Clopton chapel at Long Melford in Suffolk, are
shut off from the adjacent parts of the church, and belong to that class
of chantry chapel of which our cathedrals furnish many examples. In this
case, the chapel is a small separate building, attached to the fabric of
the church, but hardly forming an integral part of it.
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