part 2, p. 15.
On the 6th of June, 1557, he died, and was buried in Etwall church. Built against the south wall in the chancel is “a comely and handsome tomb of pure marble,” under which lie the bodies of Sir John and his two wives. “Set and fixed, graven in brass,” are portrait figures of Sir John, his wives, and children.
By will, dated the 9th of March, 1556, Sir John gave and devised to his executors, Sir Thomas Giffard, knight; Richard Harpur, Esquire; Thomas Brewster, Vicar of Etwall, and others, certain estates in the counties of Derby and Lancaster for the foundation and maintenance of an almshouse at Etwall, and a grammar school at Etwall or Repton.
As we read in the report made to the Charity Commissioners in 1867—
“Sir John had no property at Repton. His executors were probably induced to establish the school there, rather than at Etwall, by finding the refectory of the building of the dissolved priory well adapted to the purpose. By indenture, dated 12th June, I Eliz. 1558, Gilbert Thacker, the grantee of the site of the priory, in consideration of £37 10. ‘bargained and sold to Richard Harpur, serjeant-at-law, John Harker, and Simon Starkey, three of the executors of Sir John Port ... one large great and high house near the kitchen of the same Gilbert Thacker, in Repton, commonly called the Feringre (Fermery or Infirmary of the priory) ... upon which the schoolmaster’s lodgings were then newly erected, together with all the rooms, both above and beneath, of the same long house, ... also one large void room or parcel of ground upon the east part ... lately called the Cloyster, and one other room thereto adjoining, lately called the Tratrye (Fratry), as the same was then inclosed with a new wall, to the intent that the same should be a schoolhouse, and so used from time to time thereafter.’”—(See page 43 of the Report.)
The erection of “schoolmaster’s lodgings, with rooms above and below,” on the ruins of the Priory, referred to above, makes it very difficult to identify the present Priory with the original building. As Mr. St. John Hope writes in the 1884 volume of the _Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological Society_:
“The western side of the claustral buildings consisted of the block under the charge of the cellarer, called the _cellarium_. It is here complete to the roof as far as the structure is concerned, but the original round-headed windows (with the exception of one) have been superseded by larger ones, and sundry partitions and insertions have quite destroyed its ancient arrangements. The _cellarium_ appears to be the only remaining part of the original Norman monastery, built when the canons migrated from Calke, in the middle of the twelfth century.”
The ground floor consisted of a large room, divided by a row of six massive Norman circular columns, with scalloped or plain capitals; four of these remain. At the southern end of the west side is a slype or entrance to the cloister; at the northern end are three rooms, probably the kitchen larder; and from the appearance of the third—with its groined roof, the ribs of which were intended to be ornamented with the dog-tooth moulding, which was begun and never finished—it was used by the cellarer as a “plate house,” etc.
The “causey” at the south end was erected to form an entrance to the school.
By Royal Letters Patent, dated June 20th, 19 Jac. I. (1622), a Charter of Incorporation was granted, by the style and title of “The Master of Etwall Hospital, the School Master of Repton, Ushers, Poor Men, and Poor Scholars.” The charter is quoted at length in the Report, and consists of twenty-four ordinances, which refer to the appointment, duties, salaries, and stipends of the said masters, ushers, poor men, and poor scholars.
The Thackers and the school seem to have lived amicably together for many years; but as the school increased in numbers, that state of affairs was not likely to last. When Gilbert Thacker sold the remains of the Priory to the executors of Sir John Porte, he little thought what a rookery he was making for his descendants! The boys in their “recreation” extended the bounds, and ventured too near the inner courtyard in front of Thacker’s house, much to the annoyance and inconvenience of the dwellers there, as we can easily imagine. At last, in the year 1652, a case known as “The Master, &c., _v._ Gilbert Thacker and others,” was commenced. It was settled out of court by the appointment of two arbitrators, Sir Francis Burdett, Bart., and Sir Samuel Sleigh, Knight, with Gervase Bennett as referee. They pronounced “theire award by word of mouth about the year 1653.” Thacker was to build a wall across the courtyard, beyond which the boys were not allowed to pass. This he refused to do, so the alleged trespass and annoyances went on for another twelve years, when, owing to the conduct of Thacker, the school brought an action against him. The High Court of Chancery appointed four gentlemen as commissioners to try the case: William Bullock, Daniel Watson, Esquires; Thomas Charnells, and Robert Bennett, gentlemen. They met “at the house of Alderman Hugh Newton, at Derby, there being at the signe of the George.”
In the year 1896 I found an account of this case in the school muniment chest. It consists of two rolled-up folios, lawyers’ briefs, with interrogations, depositions, etc., which were taken on April 15th, 1663, and fill sixty pages of folio. The interrogations for the school administered to the witnesses—of whom there were fifty, twenty-five on each side—referred to their knowledge of the school buildings, schoolmasters and boys, Thacker’s ancestors, rights of way, the award of Sir Francis Burdett and Sir Samuel Sleigh, the Thackers’ conduct, the value of the land, former suits at law, and the use of the yard for recreation by the boys, etc. For Thacker the questions referred to the knowledge of prohibitions by his ancestors and himself, and complaints made to the schoolmasters, etc. The depositions are most interesting, as the knowledge of some of the witnesses extended back to within forty years of the founding of the school. I wish I could quote them at length. Again “the differences between the parties” were settled out of court; “they were referred to the Right Honorable Philipp, Earl of Chesterfield, to be finally determined if he could,” which proved a difficult task, for Thacker would not come to terms; so another writ was issued on January 11th, in the eighteenth year of the reign of Charles the Second, calling upon Thacker, “his Counsel, Attorneys, &c., &c., to fulfil each and every thing contained and specified in the aforesaid order, and in no wise neglect this at your imminent peril.” Thacker pleaded ignorance of the order, “as it was written in short Lattin, some of the words written very short, he did not well understand it, nor could say if it was a true coppy.” His plea was allowed, and a settlement was arrived at; a wall was built, part of it still _in situ_, “by both parties, from the Chancel N.E. corner to the north side of the door of the Nether School House,” below which the boys were not allowed to pass. A receipt for £14 19s. for half the cost of the building of the wall, signed by Wm. Jordan, proves that it was built before or during the year 1670.
For over two hundred years the school consisted of the Priory, and a room called the “writing school,” now destroyed, which stood on the east side of the “causey,” a paved passage between the walls, with steps leading into the old “big school,” now the school library. The “schoolmaster’s lodgings” were at the north end; the usher’s at its south. The other “ushers” had their “lodgings” in a building, also destroyed, in what is now known as the “Trent gardens.”
During the headmastership of Dr. Prior (1767–79) the number of boys attending the school had greatly increased; those who came from a distance used “to table,” that is, lodge, in the village. “For the better acomodation of boarders,” the governors of the school rented the Hall from Sir Robert Burdett, Bart., of Foremark, who had succeeded to it on the death of Mary Thacker, who died on January 8th, 1728. An order was issued by the governors, the Earls of Huntingdon and Chesterfield and W. Cotton, on the 31st day of August, 1768, that the Hall “should be considered in all points as the master’s house, the rent and all other expenses attending it being defrayed by the Corporation”; from that date the Hall has been the residence of the headmasters of Repton School. Originally it consisted of an isolated brick tower, two storeys high, with hexagonal turrets in the upper storey, and was built by Prior Overton in the reign of Henry VI. (1422–61). When the Thackers obtained possession of it, they added to it at various dates. The lower storey of the tower, now used as the kitchen, has a fine oak ceiling, divided into nine square compartments by oak beams; at the intersections there are four carved bosses, bearing (1) a name device or rebus of Prior Overton, a tun or cask encircled by the letter O, formed by a vine branch with leaves and grapes; (2) a capital T ornamented with leaves; (3) an S similarly ornamented; (4) a sheep encircled like No. 1. The oaken staircase is lit by a stained-glass window, with the armorial bearings of the founder and three hereditary governors, the Earls of Huntingdon and Chesterfield, and Sir John Gerard.
With varied fortune the school continued till Dr. Pears was appointed headmaster in the year 1854, when there were only forty-eight boys in the school! The numbers rose rapidly, and other houses had to be built. The tercentenary of the school, held in 1857, proved to be a fresh starting point in its history. On August 11th of that year, the late Honourable George Denman presided over a meeting of Old Reptonians and others. Speeches were delivered, and a sermon was preached by the late Dr. Vaughan, headmaster of Harrow School. As a lasting memorial of the day, it was proposed that a school chapel should be erected; hitherto the school had worshipped in the parish church. A liberal response was made to the appeal, and in the year 1858 Earl Howe laid the foundation stone. Since that time it has been enlarged no less than four times to accommodate the number of boys, which now exceeds three hundred. From 1860 to 1885 seven school houses have been built, additional form rooms and playing fields have been added, and crowning them all is the Pears Hall, which bears the following inscription:—
IN HONOREM PRÆCEPTORIS OPTIMI
STEUART ADOLPHI PEARS S.T.P.
SCHOLÆ REPANDUNENSI PROPE VIGINTI ANNOS PRÆPOSITI
UT INSIGNIA EJUS ERGA SCHOLAM ILLAM ANTIQUAM BENEFICIA
MONUMENTO PERPETUO IN MEMORIAM REVOCARENTUR HOC ÆDIFICIUM
AMICI ET DISCIPULI EJUS EXSTRUENDUM CURAVERUNT A.S. MDCCCLXXXVI.
THE OLD HOMES OF THE COUNTY
By J. A. Gotch, F.S.A.
The old houses of Derbyshire are remarkable both for their number and for the variety of architectural periods which they illustrate. In them may be traced the development of domestic architecture, century by century, from the time of William Rufus down to the Georges. Not only are they interesting as a guide to the evolution of style, but also in their variety of size and importance. There is the small and ancient Peak Castle; the comparatively modern palace of Chatsworth; the great house of Haddon, with work of every century from the thirteenth to the seventeenth; the extensive ruins of Wingfield; the splendid remains of Bolsover; while among the dales and on the hill sides of the northern parts of the county are many diminutive manor houses, like Offerton and Highlow, or Snitterton and North Lees. Not only are there houses innumerable, but also many remains of the charming settings in which they were placed; ancient gardens like those at Melbourne; simple lay-outs, with terrace, steps, and paved walks like that at Eyam; quaint archways, like those at Tissington and Bradshaw. In the south of the county, near Sudbury, are several highly interesting half-timbered houses, of which the hall of Somersal Herbert, of three distinct dates, is the most striking instance. There is, indeed, hardly any point of interest connected with the amenities of by-gone house architecture which is not illustrated in this charming county.
The Peak Castle is an interesting example of the early manner of house building. It is a kind of midland pele-tower, resembling those small fortified dwellings, or watch-towers, or outlying forts, which abound in Northumberland along the Scottish border. Indeed, it is a specimen on a small scale of what all its contemporaries were like. It consisted of a keep and a courtyard, defended from attack by a strong wall on one side and natural precipices on the others. Most of the castles of that time consisted of little more. The keep was the dwelling-house, the courtyard was the fortified enclosure, giving breathing space and serving as a place of refuge in troublous times for the cattle and dependants of the lord. Great keeps like those at Rochester, in Kent, or Hedingham, in Essex, or Kenilworth, in Warwickshire, or (to judge from its foundations) Duffield, the Derbyshire house of the Ferrers, were tolerably well found, and provided what might then be considered luxurious abodes. This Castle of the Peak, in its original state, contained the minimum of what was tolerable. It consisted of only three storeys, one of which was partly underground, and it had no fireplace; but in those days, more often than not, the fire was placed in the middle of the floor, and the smoke found its way out through the windows, supplemented, where possible, by a kind of ventilating turret in the roof. It could not have been the residence of a large family, and may have been little more than a watch-tower. But the probability is that it was the home of its owner, and the amount of comfort which the stay-at-home women of the family must have experienced may be conceived by anyone who will seat himself in one of the window recesses on a chilly day in summer, and gaze through the rain across the valley on to the blurred mass of Lose hill.
Very different in size and in variety of interest is Haddon Hall; yet Haddon Hall, like the Peak Castle, is no longer, according to modern notions of comfort, a tolerable dwelling, although we cannot agree with Horace Walpole that it never could have been considered such. For a long period it was the home of a powerful family, and was altered again and again to meet the need which successive centuries demanded. Parts of the chapel take us back to a date but little subsequent to that of the Peak Castle; and although few, if any, remains of the rest of the contemporary house are to be seen, yet the existence of the chapel indicates that it pertained to a large house. It is easy to understand that the discomforts of a primitive house would call for remedy long before the chapel grew out of date, and we need not wonder that the chapel should be the only surviving portion of the original dwelling. The kind of accommodation to be found in a keep, however large, grew to be insufficient and inconvenient, and it became the fashion no longer to pile one room over another, but to spread them out horizontally, and thereby, among other advantages, to assign to the various rooms different sizes suitable to their different purposes. The hall, always the chief apartment, was made the central feature; the kitchens were attached to one end, the family rooms to the other; the courtyard was enclosed by ranges of buildings looking into it, and presenting little but blank walls to the outside world; through one of these ranges was pierced the entrance gateway, defended by strong doors, and sometimes a portcullis, such as rased Marmion’s plume as he dashed in hot haste from under its falling mass. Haddon is a good illustration of this kind of house, only it has two courts, with the hall placed between them, as well for greater security as to obtain large windows on each of its main sides. There are very few windows of the older rooms looking out into the country, and the kitchen in particular suffers in this respect, for a darker apartment can scarcely ever have been devoted to such important uses. The windows of the long gallery, now called the ballroom, are large and airy; but they date from Elizabeth’s time, when defensive precautions were no longer necessary. Haddon appeals to all sorts and conditions of men. Its romantic situation and venerable appearance delight the ordinary sightseer; its veritable and unrestored antiquity appeals to the more earnest student of by-gone ways; while to those interested in the minute details of the past, it is a storehouse of all kinds of work wrought in all kinds of styles. Surely, it has enough of true and genuine interest to be able to dispense with the fictitious, sixpenny-magazine romance of Dorothy Vernon. Let those who cling to her invented story, and picture her as a fascinating, winsome heroine, go and look at her portraiture on her monument in Bakewell Church—a more staid, prosaic person could hardly be imagined.
Another romantically placed house is Bolsover Castle, which is mentioned in ancient records as a sister stronghold of the Peak Castle. Of the early building nothing is now left; but the sites of the keep and of the enclosing wall are curiously preserved, and occupied by highly interesting buildings of the early seventeenth century. The keep is replaced by a square house, planned with considerable ingenuity so as to obtain within a limited and strictly defined space the customary arrangements of a Jacobean residence. It rises abruptly from the brow of a steep hill, and looks far and wide over the valley now studded with colliery chimneys. Within the thickness of the wall which marks the _enceinte_ of ancient times are contrived quaint chambers, carefully vaulted and furnished in some cases with curious chimney-pieces. Indeed, this early seventeenth century work, particularly in the successor of the keep, is quite remarkable in respect of its vaulting and its fireplaces. Vaulting was very seldom used in Jacobean work, yet here we have examples of that method of construction which need not fear comparison with those of earlier days, when masons were much more accustomed to its use. The chimney-pieces at Bolsover are a noteworthy series, exhibiting a great variety of treatment, yet preserving a family likeness, and adorned, most of them, with unusual delicacy. This part of the castle was executed for Sir Charles Cavendish, a son of the renowned Bess of Hardwick, about the year 1613. The actual owner of Bolsover was Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury; but he had granted a lease of 1,000 years to Sir Charles, who was at once his step-brother and his brother-in-law.
Outside the ancient precincts of this part of the castle stand the ruins of a later building, lying parallel with the brow of the hill, and leaving a broad terrace between the building and the sloping ground. It is designed on a much larger and coarser scale than its neighbour, and was built by Sir William Cavendish, son of Sir Charles, about the year 1629.
It was this Sir William, subsequently created, after a distinguished career, Duke of Newcastle, who wrote a celebrated treatise on horsemanship, some plates of which he adorned with a view of his Bolsover building. This he calls “La Gallerie,” and it was probably intended as a supplement to the somewhat restricted accommodation of the earlier house. The Duke was also responsible for another charming portion of this interesting group of buildings at Bolsover, in the shape of the Riding School, a structure which has a considerable Dutch flavour about it.
Bolsover has been mentioned out of its strict chronological order because of its early foundation and the peculiar manner in which it preserves the outline of the original castle. It has a notable predecessor in date at South Wingfield, where, about the middle of the fifteenth century, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, treasurer to King Henry VI., built a lordly house, which vied with Haddon in importance. Much of it has gone to hopeless ruin, but there still remain long stretches of wall and decayed buildings forming two large courts. The outer gatehouse is left, flanked by an ancient barn. Through the middle of the range which divides the courtyard is pierced a second gateway, over which are carved the purses of the Lord Treasurer. On the opposite side of the second court is the porch of the house itself, leading on one side to the great hall, with its vaulted undercroft, and on the other to the kitchen department. Midway along one of the far-stretching fronts rises a lofty tower, from the summit of which may be studied the domestic economy of a colony of rooks as they sway below in their nests among the topmost branches of the trees.
On the death of its builder, Wingfield passed by purchase to the Earls of Shrewsbury, and in the fulness of time it passed to Gilbert, seventh earl. On his death it went to his eldest daughter, who had married the Earl of Pembroke. Then came the troublous times of Charles I., and Wingfield, being held by the then Earl for the Parliament, who should be sent to attack it but his kinsman, William Cavendish, of Bolsover, Duke of Newcastle, and author of the treatise on horsemanship. The attack was successful, but fickle fortune soon restored it to the Parliament, and by order of that assembly the place was “slighted.” From that drastic operation it has never recovered, although part of it was for a time patched up and made into a residence.
Of work dating from the time of Henry VIII. the county can show hardly any examples. Some panelling at Haddon is the most noteworthy, but this lacks that peculiar mixture of Gothic and French renaissance which makes the work of that time particularly interesting. Yet, even in this panelling, put up by Sir George Vernon, the “King of the Peak,” as he was called, although it is free from the actual renaissance touch, there seem to be indications which point that way, and it forms one of the links which connect the old style with the new, and goes to show that in the development of architectural style no change came quite abruptly.
During the next of the periods into which styles group themselves, namely, that of Elizabeth and James I., there were notable additions made to Derbyshire houses. There is all the beautiful work of the Earl of Rutland at Haddon—of him who came into possession in right of his wife, Dorothy Vernon. Chief among it is the long gallery, which he formed among the ancient walls, pulling down here and adding there, adorning it with handsome panelling and a fretted ceiling, all ornamented with his own arms and those of his wife. There are Hardwick Hall, and Barlborough; the remains of Swarkeston in the extreme south, and Sudbury in the south-west, not to mention numerous manor houses scattered all over the county.
Hardwick Hall is, in some respects, one of the most interesting of Derbyshire houses. It is an excellent example of the stately and symmetrical planning which was much in vogue in the days of Elizabeth, and it has survived without any serious alterations, except such as were necessary for the comfort of modern life. Haddon has not been obliged to submit to this test, and therefore retains even more of its original flavour; but Hardwick illustrates vividly the large ideas and the desire for magnificence which dominate much of the design of that period. Moreover, it retains what very few of its contemporaries can boast of—its entrance gatehouse and garden walls. The builder was the renowned Bess of Hardwick, one of the great Elizabethan builders, a worthy rival of the Cecils and Hattons. She claims on her monument in All Hallows’ Church, Derby, to have built Hardwick, Chatsworth, and Oldcotes; but the last-named has disappeared, and Chatsworth has been rebuilt, leaving this house as her sole monument. The legend runs that so long as she kept building she would not die, but that a long frost occurring while she was engaged upon Bolsover, the men were obliged to desist from their work, and thereby struck the knell of their mistress. But we have already seen that Bolsover was the work of her son, and that it was not begun until six or seven years after her death.
The work at Hardwick presents the most complete contrast to that at Bolsover. There everything had to be restricted to the narrow limits of the old site; all the work is carefully designed, and much of it delicately executed. Here the arrangements are far from compact, and the detail is coarse. No particular ingenuity has been exercised. The staircases are merely flights of steps, without any of the charming balustrades and newel-posts which adorn most Elizabethan staircases. The windows are so overdone in order to produce a striking external effect, that many of them are mere shams, and never were anything else, while others have a floor going across them, and light one storey with their lower lights and another with their upper. But it is just these points which lend interest to the place, and show how everything had to give way to the prevailing passion for symmetry.
There are some fine rooms on the top storey: the presence chamber, with a deep frieze of modelled plaster exhibiting a variety of hunting scenes; the library, with a charming relief over the fireplace of Apollo and the Muses; the long gallery, a characteristic apartment of the age; and a room called after “Mary Queen of Scots,” but bearing the date 1599, which was twelve years subsequent to her death. It is true, however, that Mary was placed for some years under the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was husband of Bess of Hardwick (her fourth venture), and it is also not improbable that the wife was inclined to be jealous of the influence which the royal captive obtained over her husband.
The documentary evidences of Mary’s long period of custody are copious; they afford no suggestion of her visiting Hardwick, but she was on several occasions at Bess’s other great house at Chatsworth. Moreover, the true dates of the second hall at Hardwick make the Queen’s sojourn here an impossibility. The date usually assigned to Hardwick Hall is 1576, but the dates actually appearing in the house are 1588, 1597, and 1599, all subsequent to Mary’s death. The parapet is ornamented with Bess’s initials, E.S., and a coronet.
In front of the house which Bess built lie the ruins of that in which she was born. This, also, must have been a good house, but one of the older manor-house type, and not conforming to the new and fashionable order of things. Nevertheless, it was adorned from time to time to suit the prevailing fancy, and both it and its more splendid offspring flourished side by side for many years. It offers another example of the fact that so strong was the desire among those who could afford it to build afresh in the new style, that in many instances houses built in Henry VIII.’s time were either rebuilt in Elizabeth’s or, as here at Hardwick, were suffered to remain and to add point by their modest dimensions to the extent and splendour of the newer dwelling.
At Hardwick, the old custom of building round a court, which we have met with at Haddon and Wingfield, was abandoned; the idea of adopting defensive precautions had no part in its arrangement—it was frankly intended for display and cheerfulness. But the courtyard still survived up and down the country, although rather for convenience than for defence. In some cases it became so contracted as to be little more than a well, admitting a modicum of light and air. Such contracted courts are both cheerless and insanitary, especially when they were made the meeting place of the household drains; and in many instances they have been roofed over in modern times and incorporated into the house itself.
Barlborough, in the north-east corner of the county, is a case in point. It is a house with an interesting plan, being almost square in shape, yet contriving to obtain the kind of rooms and the general disposition which were usual at the time. The effect is quaint, especially as the octagonal bays are carried up above the roof to form turrets. The small central court has been converted into a staircase. The builder was Francis Rodes, a judge, like many of the builders of Elizabethan houses. It is almost contemporary with Hardwick, as it was built in 1583–84. It bears its date on the pedestal of the pillars flanking the front door, and students of by-gone architecture cannot be too thankful to the old masons for having dated their work so frequently as they did. Nor is our gratitude less for the fashion which made heraldry one of the chief sources of ornamentation. No doubt the display of arms and badges was a weakness of the worthy people of that age. It is even conceivable that men who achieved their own fortunes, as many did under Elizabeth, unduly emphasized their ancient descent, and occasionally recorded as facts what really were surmises. But anyone who has spent time in ferreting out the history of an old house is very willing to condone this foible in return for the clues with which it furnishes him.
Far be it from us, however, to throw any doubt on Francis Rodes’s heraldry; it serves to fix beyond a doubt who was the builder of Barlborough. In the drawing-room is a handsome, lofty chimney-piece, which is quite characteristic of the times. It displays the arms and the effigies of Francis Rodes and his two wives, and is dated 1584. There seems to have been no hesitation in those days about second marriages. Whatever poets may have said about the marriage of true minds, and the lasting passion of one man for one woman, neither man nor woman forbore from marrying again and again, nor did they conceal from the later spouses the charms and the arms of the earlier. Here, for instance, on this chimney-piece are the arms, the name, and the office of Francis Rodes set forth at large, and below are two other shields with his arms impaling severally those of his two wives, each shield being supported by a representation of himself and the wife whose arms are impaled. To remedy any defect in the sculptor’s portraiture, or for the benefit of future generations who knew not the ladies in the flesh, their names are legibly printed at their sides—“Elizabeth Sandford,” “Maria Charleton.”
So far, all the houses mentioned have been of considerable size or well-established fame; but scattered about the county, in small villages or among the dales or on the hill-sides, are numerous manor houses, the homes of the small gentry or of the well-to-do yeomen. There are some of these near Hathersage, several of which belonged to various branches of the family of Eyre. North Lees is one, in a retired situation and falling to decay, at least so far as its decoration is concerned; one deserted room still retains some of its panelling and a fretted ceiling. Its stone walls, mullioned windows, and bold chimneys lend an air of romance to the house half-hidden among the trees. Highlow Hall is another of the group, chiefly notable for the quaint gateway which leads to the entrance court. Not far away is Offerton Hall, now a farmhouse, but an excellent example of the planning and simple architectural treatment of a small house of the early seventeenth century. Near Matlock is Snitterton Hall, the remains of a rather more considerable house, with remnants of a lay-out, and with many of its contemporary farm buildings. These are but a few of those which might be named, and the wanderer in out-of-the-way places will often be rewarded by the discovery of these links with the past.
There is no notable example within the county of the work of the later seventeenth century, of the time rendered famous by Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren. But of the period which succeeded them, when the rules of classic architecture were firmly established, and spontaneity in design had given way to propriety, there are one or two specimens. Of these the most characteristic is Kedleston. This great house was designed in the grandest manner of the time. It was to have had a large central block, with four outlying pavilions attached to it by curved colonnades, but two of the pavilions were never built. This place well illustrates the prevalent method of designing mansions. The principal floor was devoted to functions of state, and is occupied by large and lofty apartments, far too huge for comfort. They resemble apartments in some large public building. The family rooms are tucked away in a basement beneath the state apartments. It was the fashion of the age. Architecture was chiefly a means for display; the noble conceptions of the architect left his clients with scarce a comfortable corner for themselves. The surroundings of the house are also characteristic. It is itself placed in a somewhat haphazard position, backed by a range of trees; the stables are concealed by trees, and approached by a covered way; in the park is a bridge, so placed as to group in a casual way with the house: the whole idea being to obtain a pictorial effect, without any consideration for convenience of approach or convenient arrangement when the house is reached.
Such were the _tours de force_ of the times, when wealth helped, and there were no restraining conditions; when the architect had a free hand to design, and the client another to pay. But in cases where the opportunities were more limited, the results were more reasonable, and such houses as Foremark are quite satisfactory. They have not the sparkle of their predecessors, it is true, but they combine dignity with comfort. Calke Abbey, lying hidden amid its ancient woodlands, is another fine example of the time.
There are not a few good specimens of formal gardens in the county. Haddon has terraced gardens which hardly receive the attention they deserve, so much is the interest of the visitor absorbed by the house. Eyam Hall, in the village rendered famous by the heroism and energy of its rector during a visitation of the plague, has a simple lay-out of walls and steps and formal paths. Locko rejoices in terraced gardens judiciously laid out, and resulting in admirable though simple effects. But the finest gardens are at Melbourne, in the south of the county, where stately vistas cross each other and give distant glimpses of urns or statues, which themselves are worth careful inspection when at length they are reached. The effect is increased by placing some notable feature, such as a fine vase, at the meeting of several avenues; seen thus again and again from unexpected points, it adds to the apparent extent and intricacy of the lay-out. There is a long walk completely tunnelled over with dense yew hedges, and down in the bottom is a placid pool where sportive cupids play.
Such is a brief glance at some of the more noteworthy houses of the county; others there are waiting for the explorer to discover, as he will do in almost any expedition he can make, whether it be among the pasture land of the south, or the more bleak and invigorating hills which culminate in the wild plateau of Kinder Scout.
WINGFIELD MANOR HOUSE
IN PEACE AND IN WAR
By G. le Blanc-Smith
Derbyshire, if unable to boast of that share of stirring episode with which war and the hate of man have impregnated other counties, if unable to show the numerous stately castles and religious houses of its neighbouring shires, can at least proudly name a house which, while being a gem of architecture, yet was so cunningly situated by its owner as to prove a menace to the surrounding country, and a fortress which required no mean ability to compass its surrender, at the same time being of a nature so secure that it was used as the prison-house of the greatest political prisoner in our island’s history.
Such is Wingfield Manor House; beautiful, stately, isolated, and—in ruins; mansion, fortress, and prison. In no way does this manor house resemble its more ambitious neighbour, Haddon Hall. Haddon is just as weak, strategically, as Wingfield is strong, for the latter is perched on a hill top, whose sides may be well described as precipitous, at least on two sides. Another side of the hill, while less steep, is useless for purposes of cavalry attack, whilst the fourth is more level in character.
With the early history of the manor we have no concern, save in so far as it affects that of the manor house. In the year 1440, the manorial rights were vested in Ralph, Lord Cromwell, but his undoubted rights to its possession were not absolutely proved till this date owing to a prolonged law suit with Sir Henry Pierpoint over the finding of an inquisition taken at Derby as long before as 1429. It was then found that Ralph, Lord Cromwell—a man of immense wealth—was heir, _inter alia_, to the estates, owing to his relationship with Margaret de Swillington, heiress of John and Robert, her brothers. Briefly, Lord Cromwell traced his descent from the family of De Heriz, who, in the person of one Mathilda de Heriz, was connected by marriage ties to a certain Thomas Beler, or Bellers. This man’s sister married Sir Ralph Cromwell, and owing to these marriage ties Lord Cromwell laid claim to the property, as being a descendant of a de Heriz, whilst Sir Henry Pierpoint, on his side, claimed an equal right to possession as being a descendant of Sarah de Heriz and Robert Pierpoint; Sarah being aunt to the member of the same family from whom Lord Cromwell proved his descent, _i.e._, Mathilda, who married Thomas Beler. Why the family of de Swillington was introduced it is hard to understand; but perhaps it was in the nature of a red herring, used to draw the scent from a good point in the adversary’s case, or to cover a weak spot in the claim of the opposite side.
However, it is with the fortunes of Lord Cromwell that we are concerned, and we find that, three years after his possession was assured to him, he was taken under the wing of King Henry VI., and was enriched by appointment to the lucrative posts of Treasurer of the Exchequer,[39] Constable of Nottingham Castle, and Steward and Keeper of Sherwood Forest. Within the next two or three years he was further advanced in royal favour and finances by being appointed Master of the Royal Hounds and Falcons. From these appointments it may be fairly deduced that he was a good financier and even better sportsman.
[39] The emblem of this office, double money bags, is carved over the entrance gate to the inner courtyard.
Shortly after his lawsuit was satisfactorily settled, he proceeded to erect the beautiful manor house. He did not, however, live to enjoy his new possession for very long, as he died January 4th, 1455, being buried in a church which his enormous wealth had enriched, _i.e._, Tatteshall, Lincolnshire. Ralph, Lord Cromwell, sold the reversion of this manor during his lifetime to John Talbot, second Earl of Shrewsbury, who was to occupy it after his (Cromwell’s) death. The new owner had much to do in the way of roofing and plastering his new possession, so we may safely conclude that it was far from finished by Lord Cromwell. Owing to the condition of the fabric, its new owner was unable to inhabit it for some time; but after spending large sums of money in roofing, etc., he finally occupied it in 1458, coming into residence with a numerous retinue. After his death at Northampton, in 1460, the manor and manor house descended in his family for many years, being apparently a much favoured country seat. The death of his grandson, the fourth earl, here was apparently quite unexpected, for, on July 6th—only twenty days before his death—he humbly prayed, through the Earl of Southampton, that King Henry VIII. would deign to visit his “pore house at Wynfeld and hunt in Duffelde Frithe” on his approaching visit to Nottingham.
The following account of his funeral is quoted from Holmes’ MSS. (Harl. Lib.):—
“The xxvi of July Anno Regis Hen. viii tricesimo, departed out of this world the right noble & puissant George, Earl of Shrewsbury & Lord Talbot, Furnival, Verdon & Strange of Blackmoor, & High Steward of the King’s most honble. household etc. on the 27^{th} of March (?) this noble earl was removed from Wynefield to Sheffield with women and tall yeomen, & the same night his dirige done & his body honourably buried.
“The morrow after his masses solempnely sung—,first one of the Trenitie, another of Or. Lady, and the third of Requiem.”
The fifth earl, Francis, was born in 1500. At the age of forty-four he was made Lieut.-General of the North; a year later he was installed Knight of the Garter, and was later made Justice in Eyre of the forests north of the Trent. He was a commissioner in the trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a leading light in Wyatt’s insurrection, who was tried and found “not guilty” by the jury; but the judges, in their wrath at this finding, compelled the jury to enter into recognizances of £500 each for their appearance in the famous Star Chamber when called upon. On their appearance, as desired, the unfortunate men were thrown into prison for daring to give judgment according to their consciences.
The fifth earl died on September 21st, 1560, and was followed by his son George in the possession of Wingfield.
It is to this sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, and to his times, that we owe much of the glamour and interest of Wingfield’s history, owing to the fact that for well nigh sixteen years he was the custodian of that unhappy lady, Mary Queen of Scots. For various lengthy periods the poor harassed Queen was a close prisoner within the all-too-hospitable walls of this manor house. The Earl’s charge of Queen Mary was no sinecure it seems, as according to Blore:—
“In this service he preserved his fidelity to Elizabeth unshaken; but he was so perpetually teized (_sic_) by her suspicions and those of her ministers, that his office, which might otherwise have been desirable to so great a nobleman, as a distinguished mark of honour and confidence, appears to have inflicted upon him a severity of punishment little inferior to that of his unfortunate captive. The fear of Elizabeth’s displeasure induced him, at times, to a moroseness in his behaviour to Mary, which implanted in her bosom sentiments of distaste and resentment, that her high spirit could not be subdued, by her sufferings, to dissemble; whilst at other times by real or colourable marks of kindness and attention to Mary, he drew upon himself the malevolence of a wife, ever alive to jealousy and prepared to empoison his comforts, and the suspicions and rebukes of his Queen, who had no trifling satisfaction in mortifying and humiliating the greatest of her subjects.”
He was, in other words, “between the devil and the deep sea.” The custody of the prisoner Queen was first placed in Lord Shrewsbury’s hands during January, 1569, while he was in residence at Tutbury Castle; her removal to Wingfield took place on April 20th of the same year.
Three weeks later she was suddenly and mysteriously seized with a violent attack of some malady, which caused grave anxiety to her custodian. Two physicians were promptly dispatched by the Privy Council to undertake her cure, and these worthies gave but a bad account of the sanitary conditions of her prison quarters. Their report seems to have considerably nettled the Earl of Shrewsbury, who retorted that “the very unpleasant and fulsome savour, in the next chamber, hurtful to her health” was directly owing to the “continual festering and uncleanly order of her own folke.” Since the cause was known to him, it seems strange that he did not try to do something to better it. The unfortunate Queen was removed with all speed to Chatsworth—where her moated bower still remains—for this princely residence was brought to the Earl by his second matrimonial venture, Elizabeth, better known as “Bess of Hardwick.”
June 1st once more saw her installed in her old apartments at Wingfield, they having been cleaned and sweetened. In the following August she once more fell ill of the same malady, and requested the Earl to find her another prison-house. She was therefore removed to Tutbury, between which place and Sheffield she alternated for the next fifteen years. Once more her custodian had to complain that his mansion and her rooms, “in consequence of the long abode here and the number of people, waxes unsavoury.” This is hardly to be wondered at when it is remembered that at her second period of captivity at Wingfield, after fifteen years’ absence, the poor Queen’s personal attendants numbered 47 persons in all: 5 gentlemen, 14 servitors, 3 cooks, 4 boys, 3 gentlemen’s men, 6 gentlewomen, 2 wives, and 10 wenches and children.
The year 1584 again saw the captive Queen at Wingfield, and the Privy Council proposed that she should be incarcerated in the castle of Melbourne, also in Derbyshire; but, owing to the fact that there were structural alterations of an extensive nature required there, it was decided to saddle the poor Earl of Shrewsbury with his weighty responsibility once more. Orders to this effect were dispatched to him on March 20th, 1584, till such time as Melbourne Castle was prepared—which never came to pass. These orders to the Earl commanded the removal of the Queen from Sheffield to Wingfield, and “that for the more safety in conveying the said Queene, in case you shall find it necessary, for your assistance you may use the ayde of the sheriffs of our countys of Derby and Leicester.” Whilst the Earl’s duties to his sovereign kept him at Court, the Queen’s custody was in the hands of Sir Ralph Sadleir, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and a distinguished soldier. Sir Ralph wrote, on August 25th, 1584, to Sir Francis Walsyngham, and informed him that he had begged the Earl of Shrewsbury not to transport the Queen to Wingfield till further instructions from the Sovereign were received. He continues by saying that he would rather “keep her here (Sheffield Castle) with 60 men than at Wingfield with 300.” In a paper read before the members of the Royal Archæological Institute, then visiting the manor house, by the Rev. J. Charles Cox, the author stated that:
“having carefully gone through the whole of the documents in the Public Record Office pertaining to Mary Queen of Scots, as well as the little known Talbot papers at the College of Arms, and the Shrewsbury papers at the Lambeth Palace Library, I have come to the conclusion, for reasons that would be far too long to now explain, that the Earl of Shrewsbury, worn out by the jealousy, meanness, and cruelty of his wife, as well as by the suspicions and displeasure of Queen Elizabeth and her Council, and filled with a growing sympathy for his prisoner, did his best to bring about this second sojourn at Wingfield in the hopes of her escape.”
An excellent guard was placed over the Queen, for Sir Ralph Sadleir set a watch of eight soldiers at night time, taking turns in watches of four, to patrol the immediate vicinity of the Queen’s apartments in the inner courtyard. Two other soldiers kept a day and night watch in the house itself, at the entrance to her rooms.
The captive Queen arrived in September, 1584, for this second enforced visit, with a huge retinue, which must have seriously taxed the accommodation of the manor house. The Earl of Shrewsbury had 120 gentlemen, yeomen, and servants; Sir Ralph Sadleir followed suit with 50, whilst there were 40 trained men at arms. Including the prisoner’s personal retinue, there were 257 persons herded together within these walls, the Queen and her suite occupying fifteen rooms; yet, despite guards and precautions, one man alone was able to plot with the Queen herself for her release.
The daring plot was the child of the fertile brain of one Anthony Babington, whose family seat was at Dethick, about five miles to the west. Babington was in a way a fanatic, and the pity for, and desire to liberate, his beloved Queen was the mania which brought him to the scaffold. Stained with walnut juice, and disguised in gipsy garb, he is said to have constantly visited the captive, and a curious tale is told of his visits. Just outside the Queen’s rooms grows a huge walnut tree, and tradition hath it that this tree is sprung from a walnut dropped by Babington himself when on one of his surreptitious visits.
This plot was not the first having the same end in view, for in 1569 a certain Leonard Dacre was implicated. Now if this was a relation of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s, through his mother, Mary Dacre, the Earl may well have been the instigator of the plot, for we have seen how little he cared what became of his charge. What is more likely than that he should choose Dacre, a relative, to assist the enterprise—and bear the blame—as a blood tie would be less an object of suspicion, and at the same time more loyal to his employer? Dacre’s plot at once aroused the slumbering suspicions of Elizabeth, and she, giving as a reason that Lord Shrewsbury’s health was not of the best, directed the Earl of Huntingdon to watch the Queen. The immediate outcome was a reduction in her retinue to thirty persons, with the object of avoiding the influx or substitution of suspicious persons. Other futile attempts, devoid of interest, were made at various times and by various persons to effect the release of this interesting prisoner.
It is easy to understand how in a house like this, teeming with menials and servants, the substitution of a servant for a spy or messenger for Mary Stuart would be an easy matter. The kitchen staff must have been enormous, as, according to Sir Ralph Sadleir’s report, the daily meals of the Queen “on Fishe days and Flesh days” consisted of “about 16 dishes dressed after their owne manner, sometimes more or less, as the provision serveth.” The price of necessary foodstuffs at Wingfield at the time was not high according to present day reckoning, for “a good ox cost £4, sheep £7 a score, veal and other meats reasonable good charge, about 8s.” Wheat was priced at £1 a quarter; malt at 16s. a quarter; hay 13s. 4d. a load; oats 8s. a quarter; and peas 12s. for the same quantity. The drink bill—no small item in those days—run up by Queen Mary was for ten tuns of wine annually.
The captive’s linen was provided by the Earl of Shrewsbury, for that supplied by Queen Elizabeth was declared to be “nothing of it serviceable, but worn and spent.”
The before-mentioned report of Sir Ralph Sadleir states that the Queen’s stable held four good coach horses of her own; her gentlemen had six, and the total number kept was about forty.
It would thus seem easy for a stranger to obtain a post among such numbers without a fresh face being observed, and in the crowded kitchens the entrance of a disguised stranger through the little door opening towards Dethick and the west would possibly be unobserved. Then, among the number of servants some might be won over by a bribe, a note concealed in food might reach the Queen; or among the stable helps one might be found who could give news to the captive for some trifling reward. Chances seem to have existed on every hand. But to return to the ill-fated Babington. Babington had been brought up by his mother and two guardians in an atmosphere of stout but secret Roman Catholicism, and no doubt his situation at the age of sixteen as Queen Mary’s page was productive of a chivalrous love for the fair captive. At nineteen years of age he was the moving spirit in a plot to conceal two Jesuits; and three years later his thoughts reverted to the release of the Queen, whose plight had so strongly appealed to his youthful mind. The following year he formed a plot for Mary’s release and Queen Elizabeth’s assassination; but all the while the busy spies of Walsyngham were quietly collecting material from the correspondence relative to his cherished scheme, and were suiting their actions to his, with a view to successfully foiling his attempt. He was hunted down, but escaped till 1587, when he was caught and tried with a dozen other well-born youths, and met his death on September 20th at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In the report of the apprehension of the conspirators is the following:—
“The names of sooche as are touched as made partyes of the confideracye,” followed by the names of Ballard, Savage, Tycheborne, G. Gifford, St. Donne, Tylney, and Gage; “and there were,” the report continues, “13 who were at large, vizt., Babington, Barnewell, Salisbury,” etc.
The Queen, who was removed from Wingfield on January 13th, 1585, was incarcerated at Tutbury. A curious tradition of late years has been put forward; it is to the effect that _her son was born at Wingfield_! The authority for this has been traced to a statement in a guide book to the effect that “Mary Stuart was made a prisoner, and it was at Wingfield Manor that she spent part of her confinement.” This erroneous reading has obtained a footing, and should be promptly eradicated. Thus is “history” made.
On the death of the seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, his three daughters, co-heiresses, divided the estates, Wingfield falling to the eldest, Lady Pembroke. The new owners were now in troublous times, and during the Civil Wars the manor house was stoutly held for the Parliamentary forces. The little garrison of about one hundred men at arms was reduced to sixty at the request of the Parliamentary leader, Fairfax, who was forcing his way northwards into Yorkshire. Sir John Gell complied with the request in 1643, and left the house too weakly defended; the close of the same year saw a vigorous and successful attack by the Royalist troops under the Earl of Newcastle, and the manor house, after a twelve days’ struggle, was occupied on December 19th. On the day following Sir John Gell arrived, and proceeded to stir up the new owners, who were as yet far from fully acquainted with their new quarters. Preliminary skirmishes took place in the vicinity, in which two columns of horse lost their colours, these being sent to London by the triumphant Gell.
The Earl of Newcastle passed on the command to Sir John Fitzherbert, of Tissington, who held the house for six months. The Wingfield garrison proving troublesome to the Parliamentary forces, Sir John Gell was told off to retake the manor house, which he did with difficulty, as it required all the forces at his command, reinforced with 200 foot of Colonel Hutchinson’s. Gell sent to Nottingham for troops, asking for “assistance to beleaguer Wingfield Manor, because it was as great an annoyance to Nottinghamshire as to Derbyshire.” This diplomatic request was productive of the desired result. Strict siege was laid to the manor house for fifteen days, after which Gell’s troops were called off to repel a threatened Royalist attack; this they accomplished to their satisfaction, and they once more returned to the siege. The naturally strong situation of the house was nearly an insurmountable obstacle to Gell, and he found that unless his artillery was considerably reinforced by heavier pieces, he should be compelled to starve the gallant little band out as the only practicable means of reducing their fortress to submission. This plan was evidently not to his liking, as he was likely at any time to be set upon by small bodies of Royalist troops, whose harassing action would compel a temporary raising of the siege, and consequently a corresponding influx of provisions to the defenders during the absence of the beleaguering troops. He therefore requested heavier pieces of ordnance from Major-General Crawford, and on receipt of his new artillery he set to work to make a breach in the walls with all dispatch. So great was his success and so true his fire that after only three hours’ assault with his “foure great peeces for battering,” the whole defending force of 220 men surrendered themselves on condition that every man should be allowed to return home unharmed.
It is hard to determine whether it was fear of the ultimate result of the use of these heavy guns, or the sight of the actual damage done, which caused this sudden collapse of the defence on the day of the great assault, July 20th, 1644. The heavy guns were, it is said, situated on the flat ground on the east of the house, and on the other side of the valley—a distance of one and a quarter miles. Some assert that the range from here (Pentrich Moor) was too great, and that the guns were brought round to the west side and placed in a wood, a breach being opened from there. Should this have been the case, the breach would be in the south-west angle of the larger courtyard, and the approach to this is of such a nature that an entry would be a matter of difficulty. The necessity of an armed assault on the breach was nullified by the collapse of the defence.
The death of the Royalist governor, Colonel Dalby, who succeeded Colonel Roger Molineux, can have had no part in causing the surrender, for, according to Pilkington, he was traitorously shot by a deserter, who had recognized him despite his disguise of a common soldier, and who is said to have put his musket through a hole in the wall of the porter’s lodge and shot him in the face. Pilkington also asserts that one of the cannon-balls which he saw weighed 32 lbs.! This was in 1789.
The surrendered garrison was a resourceful one it appears, as the besiegers either having cut off the water supply (presumably in pipes) or else seized the source of this necessary fluid, they promptly dug a well in the south courtyard, and therefrom secured a sufficient supply. This well fell in about 1850, and the hole was filled up.
An old account of the capture of the manor house runs thus:—
“Colonell Gell finding that his ordinance would do noe good against the Mannor and understanding that Major General Craford had foure great peeces, sent two of his officers unto him to desier him to send them for three or foure days for battering; and in soe doinge he would doe the countrey good service, because it was a place that could not bee otherwise taken without they were pined (starved) out.”
The stirring times of war now left the house, and its further use as a fortress was nullified by an order for its dismantling on June 23rd, 1646.
The fabric of the house now went from bad to worse as it passed from one owner to another. Twenty years after the order for its dismantling was received, it was occupied by one Imanuel Halton, an auditor of the Duke of Norfolk. As a man of culture and learning he was more or less distinguished, being especially noted as an astronomer; while allowing much of the fabric to fall into ruins, he amused himself by decorating the crumbling walls with sun-dials, two of which remain. A piece of gross vandalism was perpetrated by this worthy, for he converted the magnificent banqueting hall into a two-floored dwelling-house, with chimneys in the centre, and made ugly structural alterations to the north windows to suit his convenience. The Halton family continued to enjoy the air of Wingfield, and to pull the manor house about, for the next hundred years, till, in 1744, the “powers that were” decided to pull down the lovely building, which they utilized as a convenient quarry from which to obtain stone for the erection of a truly ugly house—described as “a small box at the foot of the hill”—which is the present Hall. After this disgraceful exploit, the progress of decay was practically unchecked, and at this day the buildings are deteriorating more and more rapidly under the changes of our capricious climate. In the _Topographer_, by Shaw, vol. i., of 1789 (only fifteen years after the removal of the family residence to the new hall), it is stated that the roof was gone from the banqueting hall, and that all the arms and quarterings of the great family of Shrewsbury were open to the destructive influences of the weather. This was in 1789, yet in 1785—only four years previously—a sketch by Colonel Machell shows the banqueting hall as roofed and glazed. At the close of the eighteenth century a great part of the banqueting hall—between the lovely oriel window and the porch—fell down; about a quarter of a century later a tower in the south-east angle of the inner courtyard (at the back of the present farmhouse) collapsed utterly.
The statement often made that no less a person than the much maligned Oliver Cromwell was present at the fall of the manor house in person is, of course, a fiction used by some for the greater entertainment of visitors to the house. Nevertheless, it is a curious coincidence that by the power of a Lord Cromwell these magnificent buildings were raised from the ground, and that by the power and will of another Cromwell they were razed, in places, to the ground, but two hundred years separating the two events, and including much history of more than local interest.
The actual buildings form one of the most beautiful examples of fifteenth century domestic architecture to be found in the kingdom; hence Wingfield is far better known to the architectural student than to the historian. Of the present state of the walls, the less said and seen the better. To look at them recalls the lines from _Idylls of the King_ (Geraint and Enid):—
“All was ruinous. Here stood a shatter’d archway plumed with fern And here had fall’n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from a cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now are silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy stems Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, And sucked the joining of the stones, and look’d A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove.”
It is a pitiable sight to see some of the most beautiful and interesting parts of the grand old house in such a deplorable and tottering state. Nothing so much enhances the value, sentimentally, of an ancient building as a considerable fall of its walls; then, of course, a great outcry is raised—when it is too late. It is not the decay of past years which must be viewed with alarm, but the steady, increasing hold which ruin is obtaining on this structure. “Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed semper cadendo,” is a good maxim to remember, but if remembered in this case, it has never been thought sufficiently true to be worth acting upon. So year by year the stones fall and the mortar crumbles, the ivy, trees, etc., force their way between the stones, the frost shells off the fine, smooth surface of the ashlar, and the wind carries destruction, and future destruction in the form of seedlings, into every part of the beautiful buildings; and the people look on and admire the craft of their forefathers, but they do not stretch forth a hand to save what gives them pleasure. Their country has given them a great treasure, and they enjoy it and value it; they value it so much that they will see not one stone left upon another before they resort to methods of salvation; it is a ruin, it was a ruin, let it remain a ruin, they say. Some day it will be a ruin of such a nature that none shall recognize its likeness to a building, for when it falls down the steep hillsides, “great will be the fall thereof,” and the noise of its fall will be equalled only by the noise of lamentation at such a catastrophe.
The manor house consists of two courtyards, of which the southern is the larger, whilst the northern one contains the more beautiful specimens of architecture. The extreme length of the house is 416 feet, with a total width of 256 feet. There are two entrances to the south courtyard, one on the east in the southern corner and another on the west. The north courtyard is entered from the southern one by a fine gateway, flanked by two turrets, and the north wall is likewise pierced by a now destroyed entrance of fine proportions. There is also a small ogee-headed doorway opening into the kitchens on the west side. The south courtyard was bounded on the east by the retainers’ quarters, now a crumbling ruin; on the south by the fine old barn, still excellently preserved, and also the stables, long since destroyed. The west side, with its sally port, was formed by the quarters of the guards, and the north of the courtyard still retains the mutilated range of buildings which form the southern bounds of the north quadrangle. The farmhouse, which is now occupied, is a mere shell, as all the interior is modern.
The north courtyard has the great tower at its south-west angle, and from here, up the west side, runs the range of apartments once occupied by Mary Queen of Scots. The north boundary is formed by the kitchens on the west, the state apartments in the centre, and the grand banqueting hall on the east. The eastern boundary of this courtyard has disappeared, and here, it is conjectured, was the chapel, which no doubt the Halton family utilized as a quarry, as being to them the least useful part of the house. The southern boundary is formed by the farmhouse and buildings already mentioned as being the northern limit of the south court.
The glory of Wingfield Manor House is the banqueting hall, with its undercroft beneath it. This noble chamber, now sadly mutilated, is 72 ft. 2½ in. long and 36 ft. 1 in. in width. The most notable feature in this scene of by-gone revelry and lavish hospitality is the great oriel window, a piece of architectural excellence hardly to be equalled elsewhere in the kingdom. This beautiful projection is situated at the east end of the south front of the hall, whilst at the opposite end of the same side is a porch, which is well worthy of a place in the same edifice as the above-mentioned window. This porch is of two floors; the ground floor gives entrance to the banqueting hall, and is entered by an archway of boldly conceived design, on which is cut a series of handsome flower petals. On the right of the entrance is a little traceried window, which can only be described as a glittering gem of architecture. The battlements which still remain over porch and oriel window are now denuded of their quartered shields, but the excellent diapered pattern, consisting of quatrefoils, is still in almost its pristine beauty.
The most striking feature of the manor house is part of the great tower, which Wingfield’s old historian, Thomas Blore, has completely omitted in his engraving. Though not of any great height, the aspect of this towering sentinel is imposing.
The apartments which once sheltered Mary Queen of Scots are indeed in a sad state of ruinous decay. Nothing remains but the outer walls, with the fireplaces and chimneys, the former with nodding heads and the latter with, apparently, a serious spinal complaint. The walls themselves are scored by many a huge and gaping wound, not the wounds of honour received in battle, but the wounds caused by the horrid disease of decay unchecked and unheeded. It is sad to think that the first part of the hitherto unbroken line of wall round this courtyard to succumb to this fell disease will be the most interesting portion of this historic house.
The kitchens, which lie between the Queen’s rooms and the banqueting hall, are likewise in a sad state; the depressed form of arch surmounting most of the doorways, despite the presence of “arches of construction,” are fast bowing their heads beneath the weight of masonry and the neglect of centuries. Adjoining the servants’ quarters and the banqueting hall are the state apartments, lighted by a huge and by no means beautiful window of Perpendicular times, if judged by the standard of excellence obtaining elsewhere in the fabric. A curious feature noticeable from the courtyard is the fact that this window, like the little gem of a round one above and the traceried lights below, is far from being central in the gable or in line with its neighbours above and below.
The undercroft, more often known as the crypt—an ecclesiastical term possessing no right here—is of the same dimensions as the hall above. The ceiling is composed of beautifully wrought stone groins, with large circular bosses, cut with fine traceried designs; the springing of the arches is from the walls on either side and the five stone pillars in the centre respectively. This subterranean chamber has now begun to show most unmistakable signs of the gross neglect which so characterizes the remainder of the house, for the stone ribs of the vaulting have fallen over the eastern entrance—and there they lie. The entrances to this undercroft are four in number—one at the north-west corner, one at the south-west, one at the south-east, and one in the centre of the east end. Three of them communicate directly with the banqueting hall above, whilst the fourth opens into the open air. This cellar-like room has been described as the chapel, and also as the retainers’ hall, but the general opinion of those whose opinion is worthy of consideration is that it was a general store house for the huge retinue of owner, guests, and prisoner; such was no doubt its use, but what the intentions of its builders were is quite another question.
The inner courtyard with which I have just dealt is far better preserved than its southern neighbour, which seems to have proved a better mark for Gell’s big guns and Halton’s destructive genius than the other. The entrance gate to the inner court is fairly well preserved, but the greater part of the rest is in but a sorry plight. The great entrance on the east is shorn of its upper storey, but the adjoining barn is in a delightful state of repair, and is of a nature to arouse the enthusiasm of students of our mediæval barns.
On the east side of the house were the old gardens, now presenting a dismal appearance, for the sole surviving signs of the topiary work of our forefathers are the broken ranks of a long line of stunted yew trees; even these trees have not been spared of late years, and the woodman’s axe has been responsible for considerable gaps. On this side, too, remain traces of the old earthworks thrown up by the Royalist garrison to repel the besiegers on this, the most weakly of the naturally strong defences formed by the slope of the hill. In the farmhouse reposes a collection of old cannon balls rescued from the ruins, methods of destruction far preferable to the stealthy creeping action of the prince of destroying agents—Unchecked Decay—now so busy there.
Let us hope, however, that before it is too late a helping hand may lay its healing touch on these walls which crown the slope, a spot noiseless save for the thousand and one sounds of the neighbouring farmyard, and that distant and discordant triumph of modernity, the railway, which, thanks to the situation of the manor house on its hill, finds no near approach.
BRADSHAW AND THE BRADSHAWES
By C. E. B. Bowles, M.A.
Chapel-en-le-frith, a little old-fashioned town in the heart of the Peak, is fairly encompassed by a range of hills, one of the loftiest of which, rising, indeed, to a height of 1,225 feet, is Eccles Pike. About a mile and a half from the town, and on the southern slope of this hill, which towers above it, safeguarding it from the cold blasts of the north wind, stands the old homestead of the Derbyshire Bradshawes. Built in the more peaceful times of the first Stuart King, Bradshaw Hall is to-day a substantial witness to the fact that, unlike our Georgian ancestors, they who lived in the time when James the First was King were like ourselves—most appreciative of a home commanding a wide expanse of land and sky, and yet beneath the friendly shelter of a hill.
The hall is girt on all sides by the lands which have formed part of the domain for many centuries. Many of them, too, are known to-day by the same names which have distinguished the various enclosures through nearly all that time. The ground immediately below the hall on its southern side was the old pleasance, and bears traces of having been originally terraced. Here were the gardens and orchards, the latter certainly in existence as early as 1542, being mentioned in a lease[40] bearing date 20th April, 33 Henry VIII. Below them was the Home Croft, a seven-acred field now called the Hall Meadow. The view from these old pleasure grounds must have been very striking, extending as it does right away to the Combs Moss and Valley, and looking towards the Black Edge.
[40] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxv., p. 59.
In the present day the view is certainly much enhanced by a large sheet of water—the reservoir which supplies the Peak Forest Canal, for it has all the appearance of a natural lake. About half an acre of this water covers land which originally formed part of the Bradshaw domain.
On the east side of the hall lies a field known by the name of Hob Hollin, at the back of which is the Hob Marsh. These are bounded on the east by a field called “Little Park” and a pasture named “The Greavy Croft.” This latter field was in ancient times a wood, probably planted to protect the hall from the east winds. This is evident from an old lease, dated “The assumption of our Lady in the 18 year of King Edward IV. (15 Aug., 1478),” in which the description of the lands which fell under it makes a special exception of “a wode calde ye Greyve Crofte.”[41]
[41] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiv., p. 40.
Below the hall meadow lies the “Hollow Meadow,” the subject of a long protracted dispute as to its ownership which ended in a law suit in the year 1500. All these fields, with others lying above the hall, are mentioned by name in a division of lands between William Bradshawe and his nephew Richard for farming purposes, which is dated 20th April, 33 Henry VIII. (1542). The name Hollow Meadow, however, occurs in a deed far earlier than this—being mentioned in a charter dated 6 Edward III. (1332), where it is called “Holu-medue.” To the south of this field lie some twenty-two acres of pasture, which are known by the name of “The Turncrofts.” This land, probably originally “Town Crofts,” has been so called as far back as 1398, when a grant of “seven acres of land lying in Turncroft was made by John, son of John de Bradshawe, senr., to William, son of John de Bradshawe, junr.” It is dated at Chapel-en-le-Frith the Monday after the feast of St. James, 21 Rich. II.
In more than one deed there is evidence that at one time a dwelling-house and farm buildings stood on this ground, and it then formed a separate farm. For instance, William Redfern and Emmot, his wife, were, on the 4th of October, 1458, granted a lease for ten years of the Turncrofts, and later on, namely, from 1537 to 1543, Henry Bradshawe and his wife Elizabeth were living there as tenants of their nephew Richard, the then head of the family.
A long line of grass fields now extend along the side of the road as far as the outskirts of Chapel-en-le-Frith. The larger portion of these fields are to this day known by the name of “The Broad Marshes,” and by this name they are referred to in deeds as early as 1429, at which date a conveyance of land called Bradmersh was made by John Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, to Wm. Bradshaw for trust purposes. In 1444, and again in 1457, leases of “The Bradmersh lands” are granted by Wm. Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, to Roger Cooper, subject to an annuity already settled on his mother Joyce.
That the Bradshawes have owned the lands now held by their lineal descendant and representative from the times of the early Plantagenet kings is proved by the deeds which have descended to him with the lands. How long the homestead has occupied the identical site where the present hall now stands cannot be ascertained. That this is not the first residence of the Bradshawes erected there is certain, and it is more than probable that they have never lived very far away from that identical spot. The first Bradshaw residence of which there is any documentary evidence must have been built about the years from 1215 to 1221. This is the period covered by an Assart Roll in the Record Office, on which is recorded, among other interesting transactions connected with the forest laws and customs, the various grants made by King John and his son Henry III. of land in the forest of the High Peak. It contains much information with respect to the ancestors of many well-known North Derbyshire families. Among those to whom leave was granted by the King for the erection of a dwelling-house are several members of the Bradshawe family. From these it is not an easy matter to select for certain the immediate ancestor of the man who owned the land and built the house on Eccles Pike. A deed of grant has descended from his Bradshawe ancestors to the writer of this article dated at Chapel-en-le-Frith 6 Edward III. (1332), in which “Richard, son of John de Bradschawe, granted to John de Bradschawe, my father, and to Mary, his wife my mother, certain lands in Bowden.” Of these one portion is described as being in Wytehaln feld, and another, called Perts’ Acre, as situated near the Holumedue, which latter piece of land there is not much doubt is identical with the Hollow Meadow. The mention of the Wytehaln feld, or Whitehall field, in the deed would suggest—as an ancestor to the above John—one Richard, son of William de Bradshawe, who about the time of 19 Henry III. (1235), made an addition to the land in Whitehall[42] which his father William had assarted at some previous time. This is the more probable, because there has always been a tendency to preserve Christian names in a family. But more than one Bradshawe had grants at this date for the clearance of the forest land in Whitehall. Ivo de Bradshawe and Walter de Bradshaw both held land “in capite” of King John and his son Henry III.
[42] Whitehall and Whitehough adjoin, and are about a mile from Bradshaw.
This Walter—son of another Walter de Bradshawe—and one Randolph de Bradshawe, both built a house in Bowden, a part of Chapel-en-le-Frith, in which a portion of the Bradshaw lands are situated to this day. Thus it is quite possible that one of these houses is the original Bradshaw Hall.
The Heralds’ Visitation begins the pedigree with a John de Bradshawe, possibly son of Richard Bradshawe of the deed of 1332, who by his marriage with Cicely, daughter of Thomas Foljambe, was father of William, evidently identical with the William, son of John de Bradshawe, junr., before mentioned, on whom the seven acres of Turncroft were settled in 1398. The lease, however, of 1457, cited before, proves that the Christian name of William’s mother was Joyce. Either she was his stepmother or, as is quite possible, a generation was omitted by the heralds, and the man who married Cicely was the John de Bradshawe, senr., of the 1398 settlement. His son, then, either by her or by a former marriage, would be John de Bradshawe, junr., the husband of Joyce, and the father of William. Cicely must have outlived her husband, for there is evidence that she was in enjoyment of an annuity, from which the estates were released on her death in 1408, for on the 6th of May, 9 Henry IV., John de Bradshawe settled on certain trustees “all the lands in the Ville of Bauden which lately descended to me in right of heirship after the death of Cicely Foljamb.” It will be observed that her maiden name is used. This was not unusual in legal documents of a certain date.
In 1429 John de Bradshawe executed two entail deeds, by which “Two messuages and 40 acres of land, lying in Bradshaw and Turncroft, in the Township of Bowden, were settled on his eldest son William and his heirs male, and in default of male issue on his other sons, John, Robert, and Henry, in tail male.” The other deed entails the Lightbirch Estate on his second son, John, and his brothers, in tail male. The eventual sale of the Lightbirch Estate to Reynold Legh, of Blackbroke, near Chapel-en-le-Frith, was the cause of the dispute about the Hollow Meadow previously alluded to. It originated in a statement made by Reynold Legh that the “Holle Medow,” or Hollow Meadow, was attached to the Lightbirch Estate when sold to him. The first step to disprove this of which there is any evidence was taken on the 2nd of August, 1483, when Nicholas Dickson, parson of Claxbe, co. Leicester, obtained the depositions of William Bradshawe of Bradshaw, on his death-bed. He most solemnly declared that the “Hoole Medow had never formed part of the Lightbirch Estate, and had not been given to his brother John by his father with the Lightbirch lands.” But not until fifteen years later was it apparently found necessary to take the evidence of John Bradshawe, the owner and vendor of the Lightbirch Estate. Possibly during that time Reynold Legh had remained quiet. Then, however, we gather from an original MS. in the writer’s possession that John Bradshawe made a statement before witnesses to the effect that his father, John Bradshawe, had in his own house at Lichfield denied that the land in dispute had ever been owned or sold by him, but that Reynold Legh had endeavoured ineffectually on three separate occasions to obtain an admission from him that it had been included in the Lightbirch Estate, first, by sending a servant with a document for him to sign, then by coming himself, on which occasion he became so pressing that he had found it necessary to leave him and to refuse to speak again with him on the matter, and finally by requesting Thomas Auby, who happened to be at Blackbroke on other business, to go to Lichfield and endeavour to obtain the admission he had himself failed in obtaining.
The next step was taken on the 28th of August following, when Henry Bradshawe, who as his father’s son and heir had been in possession of the estates, including the land in dispute, since the year 1483, obtained a warrant against Reynold Legh to answer for a trespass “upon a meadow in Bowden called Holmedowe,” which was followed by an order made to the Sheriff, May 1st, 1499, at the instance of Reynold Legh himself, to summon a jury to try the case. The jury, which was composed of men well known in the county, such as Peter Pole and John Gell, of Hopton, decided in favour of Henry Bradshawe of Bradshaw, who was thenceforward left as undisputed owner of the field, which is in the possession of his descendant to-day. Five years before William Bradshawe’s death, his son Henry had been practically master at Bradshaw, probably because his father had become conscious of the infirmities of age, for he must have been exceedingly old when he was troubled on his death-bed, in 1483, with the dispute about the Hollow Meadow. A lease had been executed by Wm. Bradshaw,[43] which seems to have been in lieu of a will, letting for twenty-one years to his son “Hare,” “his place calde ye Bradsha, and all ye lade and meydo [land and meadow] with ye apurtenances logyg yereto [belonging thereto], except a wode calde ye Greyve Crofte,” but in making arrangements for the maintenance of his widow, he stipulates that “unless it plesse her bettur to be in any odr plase, ye seyde Hare shall fynde and suffyshundeley kepe his Modr at things to hyr necessare to hyr degre.” He also arranges for his son to relieve him of the worry of paying the King’s taxes in the words, “and ye seyde Hare to pey ye Kyge his dute for ye whole lynelode” [income]. He also gives to “ye seyde Hare all his stuffe of Howsholde, wit all things of his yt longus to husbodry” [that belongs to husbandry]. This curious lease is dated at Chapel-in-ye-Frythe, 18 Edward IV. (1478). William’s wife was Elizabeth, a member of the family of Kyrke, of Whitehough, near Chapel-en-le-Frith[44].
[43] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiv., p. 42.
[44] In possession of the writer; printed in full in _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxv., p. 58.
Henry appears to have been their only son, and probably lived with his parents at Bradshaw Hall. He died in 1523, and his will, made two years before, is a curiously worded one, with quaint spelling. Having satisfied his conscience with regard to the Church, and dealt with the two farms in his occupation, the testator proceeds:—
“I beqweyth to my wyff Elizabeyth to hyr dowary & joyntre a mesne place off land callyd ye Tornecrofts w^t all the aportenās, and all ye Bradmarchys w^t the aportenās unto the end of hyr lyffe & afft^r to ye performacyon off my Wyll y^t ys to Wytt unto my too sonnes Wyllm & Henry unto y^e tyme that Rych^d Bradsha son off John Bradsha cum to ye age off xxi - zeres ffully.”
At the close of the will, the testator mentions John as his eldest son at that time deceased. Richard therefore was legally the heir to the estates, and, as a minor, was left under the guardianship of his two uncles. Henry then expresses the desire that:
“my wyffe & my sayd sonnes kepe to scole the sayd Rych: unto he come to ye age of xxi yeres fully yff he will, & mey be att theyr kepyng & yf noo I wyll y^t my wyffe & my sayd sonnes Wyllam & Henre gyffe to y^e sayyd Rych Bradsha xl^s off gud money yerely to hys ffynding unto ye tyme y^t Rych Bradsha cum to y^e age of xxi yeres.”
His two sons, William and Henry, and his daughter, Margaret, have their fair share of his estate, and he beseeches
“Sir Godfrey Foljamb of Walton Knt & Sir George Savage off y^e Spetyll parson to be y^e Ouersears off thys sympull testamett & last Wyll & to be gode maysturs to my wyffe & too my sonnes ffor Goddes sake & trew preyars ffor them qwycke & ded.”
Henry Bradshawe’s wife Elizabeth was one of the daughters of Robert Eyre, the second son of William Eyre, of North Lees, near Hathersage. His deceased eldest son, John Bradshawe, had married, according to _Lincolnshire Pedigrees_,[45] Isabella, daughter of Peter Ashton, of Halmear Grange, in Spalding, co. Lincoln. Both he and his wife had apparently died leaving only one child, Richard, who could have been little more than ten years of age when, in 1523, his grandfather’s death placed him as heir to the estates, under the guardianship of his two uncles.
[45] _Harl. Society_, vol. iv., page 1139.
Possibly Richard was not easy of control, and did not remain at school sufficiently long to learn wisdom, for before he could have arrived at the age of thirty he had come to grief, and his possessions had all passed into the hands of his uncle William, who was thus the progenitor of the future Bradshawes of Bradshaw.
Various circumstances, however, lead to the supposition that for some time after he had attained his majority, which must have been about the year 1534, Richard had his home at Bradshaw Hall with his uncle Henry, who was, without doubt, living there with Elizabeth, his wife, as tenant up to the year 1541. Before this event, however, the foolish lad had entered upon the extravagant and downward career which ultimately led to his ruin and to his banishment from the old home and lands. His frequent appeals to his uncle William for money resulted in, first a mortgage, and finally, in December, 1542, the absolute sale of his interests in the whole of the Bradshaw domain to his uncle William, of Marple, co. Chester. One of the sums of money sent to him by his uncle was the result of a most piteous appeal, which ends thus: “For I have no money bott off you, nor I cannot boro non but of you, nor I wyll not, and therefore I prey you to be good to me of thys.” In an exceedingly neat and educated handwriting are the few words written in the spare space below Richard’s letter complying with the request, and signed “Wylliam Bradsha.” After the 20th October, 1547, the date of a sale of an annuity by him to a man at Stockport, nothing is known of Richard Bradshawe except that by his wife, Katherine, daughter of Elys Staveley, of Redseats, near Castleton, he left a son, Thomas, described in 1582 as of Swindels, co. Chester.
William Bradshawe thus became possessed of the Bradshawe estates. He is described as of Marple, co. Cheshire, as early as February, 1534, and as late as November, 1549. The first deed in which he is described as of Bradshaw is dated 15th July, 1547.
It is doubtful, however, whether he ever altogether abandoned Marple, as his second son, Henry, appears to have succeeded him there. He must have died about the year 1561, for the first mention of his wife, Margaret, as a widow is in a deed concerning her dower, which is dated 2nd February, 1562. She was a daughter of Christopher Clayton, of Strindes Hall, near Marple, co. Chester.
As the three eldest of their children were born before the times of parish registers, it has been most helpful to discover among the family deeds a long slip of parchment endorsed: “The sevrall ages of Wm. Bradshawe’s children.” The information, which is in Latin, and in a legal handwriting, is as follows:—
Birth of Godfrey Bradshawe, 29th September, the second hour after noon, A.D. 1531.
Birth of Elizabeth Bradshawe, 24th August, in the morning, A.D. 1533.
Birth of Henry Bradshawe, 6th September, the eighth hour before noon, A.D. 1535.
Birth of Margaret Bradshawe, 10th July, the third hour after noon, A.D. 1539.
Birth of Francis Bradshawe, 14th June, the sixth hour after noon, A.D. 1543.
Birth of Anthony Bradshawe, 3rd February, the ninth hour after noon, A.D. 1545.
Birth of Francis, son of Godfrey Bradshawe, 17th February, the eighth hour after noon, A.D. 1555.
Of these children Godfrey, as the eldest son, inherited the Bradshawe estates, as will be presently seen. Henry, the second son, eventually purchased the Marple Hall estate, where he had been bred, and most probably born. He founded the family of Bradshawe, of Marple Hall, co. Chester, now represented by Mr. Bradshawe Isherwood; but he is especially noted for being the grandfather of John Bradshawe, President of the High Court of Justice which tried and sentenced King Charles I. to the scaffold. President Bradshawe, the second son of Henry, the elder of the two sons of Henry Bradshawe, of Marple, was born at Wybersley in December, 1602. Against the entry of his baptism in the Stockport registers for the 10th of that month, some loyalist has written the word “traitor.” He was called to the bar in 1627, and was a member of Gray’s Inn. In 1640 he was appointed Judge of the Sheriff’s Court in Guildhall, London, and Serjeant-at-Law in 1648. When the House of Commons had decided on the trial of the King, they appointed a Court of Commissioners, the presidency of which was offered to John Bradshawe. It is only fair to say that he earnestly pleaded to be excused, though it is possible that this hesitancy may have been due to the undoubted danger attached to the position, which he was apparently aware of if we are to judge by the broad brimmed hat[46] which he wore during the trial, still preserved at Oxford, for it is lined with plated steel as a protection against personal violence.
[46] _Annals of Hyde_, by Thos. Middleton, p. 237.
The High Court began their work on the 20th January. The first few days were entirely occupied by a lengthy dispute between the King and John Bradshawe concerning the authority of the Court, which, as King, Charles naturally refused to acknowledge. On the 29th of January, however, the death warrant was signed, to which the signature of John Bradshawe stands first as president. He did not live to witness the Restoration, for he died 31st October, 1659, and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. His body was, however, exhumed with those of Cromwell and Ireton, and all three were hung and buried at Tyburn.
John Bradshawe seems to have kept up friendly relations with his Derbyshire kinsmen. His signature appears in more than one of the deeds connected with family arrangements, and he acted as one of the overseers to the will of George Bradshawe, of Eyam, the High Sheriff’s brother, made 17th June, 1646.
Anthony Bradshawe the youngest son of William Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, is perhaps better known than his brothers by reason of his quaint monument in Duffield church, a photograph of which illustrates this article. He was born on February 3rd, 1545; was educated at Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree 3rd April, 1566;[47] and entered as a student of the Inner Temple 25th May, 1573. He made his home, however, in Duffield, where he lived in a house called Farley’s Hall. He owned the Duffield mill, and lands in Duffield and Holbrook, and other places in the neighbourhood. He was the author of various interesting articles, which prove that not only was he an adept in his vocation as a barrister, but also was an industrious and intelligent student of the history of his own county. He wrote a most remarkable poem of fifty-four stanzas, giving an interesting account of Duffield and Duffield Frith. It is published at length in the _Reliquary_.[48] All his MSS. were specially left to his son Jacynth, but with the exception of that on his own family, of which a literal transcript is given, they have all mysteriously disappeared. Some of them found their way, many years ago, into the possession of Mr. Barber, of Smalley. Extracts from these are quoted by Rev. C. Kerry, late rector of Upper Stondon, in the article on the “History of Peak Forest” which he contributed to the _Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological Society_ in 1893.[49]
[47] Forster’s _Alumni Oxonienses_.
[48] Vol. xxiii., p. 69.
[49] Vol. xv., p. 67.
One of these MSS., a great portion of which has been there transcribed, supplies most curious and interesting information concerning the customs and duties of the officers of the forest of the High Peak. Other MSS. had been published ten years before by Mr. Kerry for the _Reliquary_.[50] One of these contains “the Account of a Conference” held between himself and a distinguished visitor, “W. N., a Sowthern gent att the howse of the said A. B., called ffarley’s House, in Duffield, in the County of Derby,” on 1st May, 1603.
[50] Vol. xxiii., p. 137.
It begins thus:—
“W. N of C in the Countie of Suffolk gent an auntient Scholar and Companion of the said A B above 40 yeres past in the vniversitie of Oxford (there p’ceding graduats togeather) & afterwords dyvers yeres fealow student by practique w^{th} the said A B in the Inn^r Temple London ... tooke paynes to repose himself for a few daies w^{th} the said A B att his house aforesaid whenne he went to Buxton Well & so to Bradshaugh Hall in Bradshaugh Edge a little there begyled where the said A B was born & his auncestors whither the said A B verie willinglie accompanyed him & the better occasioned to visit his brother & friends there ...
“W. N. And what is that w^{ch} you call Bradshaugh Edge wherein your brother now dwelleth
“A. B. Sr I take that to be a c^rten part of the p’ishe of Chapell de le ffryth w^{ch} the King of England in time past gave vnto one of my Auncestors for s^rvice done as p’tly appereth in some evidences of my brothers w^{ch} are without date afore the conquest of England and I fynd that that p’ish conteyneth three Edges vidlet Bradshaugh Edge Bowdon Edge and Cambis Edge and that so the said Edge called the Bradshaugh Edge conteyneth Ashford p’te of the said p’ishe and was all graunted to my auncestors though my former auncestors were of like vnthriftee and have in tymes past sold away most of the same, and so my brother hath but a small remaynd^r therein And touchinge the Armes of the said house of Bradshaughe I will not take upon me to blaze the same leaving itt to the Heralds for avoyding of offence but the crest is the Buck in his naturell couller vnder the hawthorne tree browsing or rompant.”
With regard to the office he held, and his work as a barrister-at-law, his remarks—greatly abbreviated and modernised in spelling—are as follows:—
“Being in 38 Elizabeth Regina by the Hon^{ble} Gilbert Earl of Shrewsbury her Majestys High Steward of the Honor of Tutbury charged trusted & deputed to be understeward there and also having spent above 30 years time partly in the Inner Temple and partly in the C^t of the Com:n Pleas at Westminster where I also practised above 30 years as Attorney.... For the better instructing of my sons and clerks which I employed under me in that office I ... collected certain little books ... concerning my Service doing in the said courts as namely one little book of such points & learning of the Forest lawes as I supposed to be convenient,” etc.
Among other benefactions to the place in which he had chosen to reside, he founded an almshouse. He alludes to it in these words:—
“Onlie this I ympose & devyse & hope ytt will not offend that where I have erected a litel Almeshouse for harbouring of a ffew poore ffolks in y^e towne of Duffeld aforesaid (as the pore widow offered her myte) & have established for the same poore but thirtie shillings yerely to buy them some symple cloth for coates: I say I have ordered the auntient of the same poore for the tyme being shall keep the kay of the box wherein the same book of Regist^r shall lye in my said house” ...
In the indenture, which he says he intends to leave within his will, he alludes to it thus:—
“I have often ment & prposed & in my litle monument standing in the Church of Duffield abovesaid do shew that I wuld p’vyde to allow an hospithall or litle almeshouse in the towne of Duffeld w^{th} certen allowance for harbouring of ffour poore p’sons widows or others to contynue in man^r & forme in my last will & testem^t declared or to be sett downe or referred and haue now devysed by my last will and testament, God willing, my Tenemt in Derby in Full Streete there now or late occupied by one Thomas Wright And my cotage and garden to y^{tt} adjoyning and belonging in Duffeld abovesaid.... Therefore now ... my desyre & intent is that that my heires & all myne & there heres posteritie to whom the said Tenem^t & rents & cotage shall descend or come by vertue of my said will shall for eu^r & from tyme to tyme hereafter elect allow and admytt ffour poore p’sons of Duffeld viz^t two aged or ympotent men and two like women widows or others of honest behavior to be harboured lodged & dwell in my said hospitall or almsehouse & to use the said garden therew^{th} for and during the lyves & lyfe of any such poore p^rsons ev^ry one of them paying only a godspeny a^{tt} there seu^ral admissions to my said heires,” etc.
The document ends with the rules to be observed by the occupants of the almshouse regarding their language and their attendance at church, where they were to sit “att the backe of my pewe,” which pew, as well as his monument, they were to dust and keep clean. The “monument” referred to here is in the church, and in good preservation. The “almshouses,” which stood in the Town Street between “Duffield Hall and the road, were pulled down in 1804,” says Dr. Cox in his work on _Derbyshire Churches_, and he remarks: “They were most improperly bought of the parish in 1804 by Mrs. Bonnell, of the Hall, for £120, and pulled down, in order to enlarge the grounds.” Quoting a letter written to Mr. Lysons in 1816 he adds: “The annexed lines are inscribed on a stone now making part of the fence in Bonell’s pleasure grounds at Duffield, but formerly placed in front of Bradshaw’s almshouses, which I have heard stood near the same spot, but is now entirely erased.”
“B ehold Lord of Life this myte I restore R endering thanks unto thee for all that we have A nd this little Harbour I leave for the poore D evised to lodge four who else may alms crave S hure trust I repose & myne I exhort H enceforth this Hospital as it needs to renew A llowing such things as my will doth purport W e meane & pray God for ay to continew G od grant that others more able than I H ereafter may better pore people supply.”
Anthony Bradshaw’s monument to himself, his two wives, and twenty children, was erected in 1600; he did not die until 1614, having had in the meantime three additional children. It stands against the east wall of the north transept of Duffield church, and is in a fair state of preservation. At the top of the monument is the Bradshaw coat—_arg._, two bendlets between as many martlets, _sab._, surmounted by the crest of a hart standing under a vine bough. Across the centre of the monument, between the inscription proper and the acrostic, are the small incised effigies (half length) of himself, his wives, and children distinguished by their respective initials. The following are the inscriptions:—
“Parvū monumentū An^{ij} Bradshawgh interioris templi L. generos. (quarti filü W^i Br. de Bradshawgh in hoc comitatu Derb. gent.) nup. coron, ac subvic. com. ejusd. Ac etiam uni. atturn. cur. de banco apud Westmr necuon dep. slli totius feodi de Duffield Hic qui dnas hūit uxores & xx^{ti} liberos subscript. quibus et pro quibus (inter multa) ut sequitur oravit et [~p]cepit, Ac postea p’ult. volun. ac. testm. sua in scriptis remanem unam [~p]vam domum cum gardino sumtu suo proprio in Duffeld hic conditam pro hosp. quatuor pauperum istius ville (per heredes suos de tempore in tempus eligend. et locand.) inter alia volvit et legavit ac devisavit cum allocaoñ in dcō testō mancōnatis impp̄m continuand. ac per heredes suos manutend. modo et forma in eodem testō limitat, et content. et sic obüt hicque sepelit’ ... die ... A^o Jesu X̄r Salutis suæ....
“Griseld Blackwall (daughter & Heire of Richard Blackwall of Blackwall in this county of Derby Gent. & of Anne sister of Thomas Sutton of Over Haddon Esq.) was his first Wief by whom he had 4 sonnes W^m Fra Exupie. & John. W^{ch} Richard was one of the cozeyns & heires of Mr. Boyfield of Barford in the countie of Northton Esq.
“Elizabeth the daughter of Richard Hawghton was his second wyfe by whom he had xvj children, viz. Jacincth, Antonie, Michaell, Elizabeth, Felix, Quyntin, Petronilla, Athanasia, Isadora, Mildrede, Brandona, Erasmus, Josephe, Millicent, Cassandra, Vicesim.
“Quorum cuique A. Br. dixit viz.
“Deum tunc Regem honora ac parentes cognatos cole magistratos metue maiore cede minori parce prox̄mum dilige sicut teipu et cum boni ambula.
“Dum fueris fœlix, multos numerabis amisos, tempora si fuerint nubila solus eris. Ergo sic utere tuo ut alieno ne indigens, ac semper intende [~p]. Dē. [~p]cede et regna.”
Nam.
A s God dyd give this man, N o small charge as you see, T o trayne them he began, H ere ech in there degree, O ft wishing them such grace, N o future course to take, I njurious to there race, E Is end of lief to make.
B less them oh Lord with peace, R esist there adverse fates, A lways them well increase, D efendyng them from hates, S uch lyvelode to them gyve, H ere whylest on earth they bee, A s they may love & lyve, W ee praye O God q^{th} He. G. H.
A. {Different tyme I wishe thee But put thy hous in order} B. {Q^{th} he which here doth lye For surely thou shalt dye} #/
It is of some interest to print for the first time a quaint Bradshaw pedigree, which is an exact copy of one in my own possession, in the handwriting of Anthony Bradshaw; it was too much worn to permit of reproduction in facsimile.
Several of his twenty-three children settled in the neighbourhood, not only at Duffield, but at Makeney, Idridgehay, and Belper, and the Duffield registers[51] record their existence during the whole of the seventeenth century.
[51] _Reliquary_, vol. xxiii., p. 134.
Vicesimus, the last of the children recorded on the monument, was baptized 10th March, 1600, and married Ellen, daughter and heiress of Richard Fletcher, of Makeney. Their descendants intermarried with various local families, and one of them married Thos. Ward, curate of Duffield, early in 1800. Peregrine, born in 1602, after the monument had been erected, was perhaps one of the best known to the world at large of this big family. He settled in London, and later on was of Wymondham, and acted as page to Anne of Denmark, wife of James I., and afterwards as “Esquire to the body of King Charles I.”[52]
[52] _Lincolnshire Pedigrees_, _Harl. Society_, p. 109.
Anthony Bradshawe died 1614. His will was proved on the 3rd May in that year. He leaves legacies to “Francis Bradshawghe, of Bradshawghe, Peter and Henry Bradshawghe,” and a ring is left to John Curzon, of Kedleston, who was father of the first baronet, and ancestor to the present Lord Scarsdale. Jacynth is the fortunate inheritor of his signet ring, furniture, books, and MSS.
Godfrey, the eldest son of William Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, was born 29th September, 1531, and began his experiences of the troubles of life very early. At what date he married Margaret, daughter of Roger Howe, of Ashop, is not recorded; but as early as 1550, when only 19, he and his wife are quarrelling like the children they undoubtedly were, and after ineffectual attempts “to cause them to continue lovingly together as man and wife,” their respective parents took the necessary legal proceedings to separate them so that each might be enabled to marry again. The old MSS. connected with this part of Godfrey’s life are very curious reading, as they arrange for the partition of the household goods, and even to the return to Margaret’s parents of the clothes provided for a possible nursery. After the divorce, Godfrey did not go far afield for a second wife. He married Emma, the daughter of Anthony Shawcross, of Shawcross, quite a near neighbour. In 1568 serious troubles arose[53] in consequence of his having enclosed a portion of his land at Chinley, not two miles distant from Bradshaw. His action was highly resented by the inhabitants, who pulled his fences down, burnt a house, and
[53] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxi., p. 61.
“assembling themselfs together in great companies at the Towne of Hayfield w^{th} unlawfull weapons that is to saye w^{th} bowes pytche fforks clobbes staves swords & daggers drawen Ryotously dyd then & there assaulte & p’sue the sayd Godfrey & Edward Bradshawe.”
On another occasion certain people
“on foote & Raulphe Mellour upon his horse backe ryotouslye followed the sayd Edward Bradshawe & Godfrey Bradshawe the space of one quarter of a myle from the sayd towne of Heyfield & w^{th} drawen weapons had ryotouslye like to have slayne & murthered the sayd Godfrey & Edward.... At another tyme by nyght ... the sayd p^rcell of grounde beinge newlye enclosed agayn by the sayd Godfrye by ther consents beinge quicksetts w^{th} xliii hundreth quicksetts willowes & willowe stacks they dyd pull downe the same agayne,” etc., etc.
The disturbances were eventually quelled, and the rioters tried in the Court of the Star Chamber.
On the 10th April, 1570, Godfrey executed a deed of entail of Bradshawe on himself for life, with remainder to Francis, his eldest son, and then to Leonard, Godfrey, Peter, and Henry, his other four sons, in tail male, in default to his three brothers, Henry, of Marple, Francis, and Anthony. In a list of the principal landowners in the High Peak for 1570 appear the names of Godfrey Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, and of his wife’s brother, Leonard Shallcrosse, of Shalcross.[54]
[54] _Reliquary_, vol. viii., p. 189.
Godfrey died early in the year 1607, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Francis, who was married when quite a child to Anne, one of the four daughters and co-heiresses of Humphry Stafford, of Eyam. Indeed, he was not much more than nine years old according to the register of his birth, for the 4th May, 1565, appears to have been the day on which he was married. The Staffords had been settled at Eyam certainly as far back as the reign of King John, at which time their lands were held “by hereditary right for the free service of finding one lamp burning before the altar of St. Helen in the church at Eyam throughout the year during divine service.”[55]
[55] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiii., p. 83.
The possessions to be divided among the four daughters appear to have been very considerable. In 1568 a deed was executed to enable Francis Bradshawe and Anne, his wife, peaceably to enjoy a fourth part of the lands lately the inheritance of Humphry Stafford. This consisted of much of the ancient domain of the Staffords actually in Eyam, with the Old Hall, and included lands in the vicinity at Monyash, Chelmorton, and other places, as well as the whole of the townships of Bretton and Foolow. No evidence exists as to the destiny of the two children for some years after their marriage. Ten years later, however, they were apparently living in the Old Hall at Eyam, and on the 8th of January, 1576, a settlement of the hall and lands at Eyam was executed on the young couple, and upon their eldest son. The deed must have been drawn up either before or immediately after his birth, for a space has been left blank throughout the original deed for the Christian name of “their son and heir.” The Manor of Abney, which marched with his wife’s estates, was bought in October, 1593. It adjoins Bretton and Foolow, which are townships in the ecclesiastical parish of Eyam.
There is no evidence that Francis Bradshawe ever lived in Bradshaw Hall, which devolved on him on the death of his father, Godfrey, in 1607. Only three years elapsed between this event and his eldest son’s marriage, and in all probability the Hall had no permanent tenant until after it had been rebuilt. At any rate there is little doubt that Francis Bradshawe, the elder, as he is generally styled, lived on at Eyam Hall, where his chief interests lay, until his death, of which date there is no record. After the year 1615,[56] when he qualified as a magistrate for the county, nothing is known about him. His wife died before the 18th December, 1606, the date of a settlement of “money which rightly belonged to the said Francis in right of Anne, his late wife.” Francis, the eldest son of their very large family, succeeded him. The first date of which there is any evidence of his being in possession of the estates is 10th June, 1619, when he executed a deed entailing them on his heirs male. This same year, too, evidently marked the completion of the rebuilding of the Hall, for a stone is still in existence inscribed F.B., B.B., 1619, which most probably formed the centre-piece over the doorway in the entrance porch, now demolished. His wife was Barbara, daughter of Sir John Davenport, of Davenport, co. Chester. In his marriage settlements, bearing the date of 1610, he is described as barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple. Possibly he made London and Eyam Hall his headquarters till the completion of the hall, which work may well have begun soon after his grandfather’s death in 1607, when it was probably assigned to him as a future residence. It is fairly certain that the present hall was the first stone-built residence of the Bradshawes, for the following reason. After the civil wars of Stephen’s reign, it was found necessary to forbid such substantial residences to be built without permission from the King. Timber, therefore, was the principal material used for ordinary buildings, and only in the time of the Tudor Sovereigns did the long established custom of ignoring the stone of the district begin to die out. The half-timbered houses still so prevalent in Cheshire are scarce in our own county, but 300 years ago they were probably common enough, and as a contrast to the stone walls must have added considerably to the beauty of the Peak country. Such a house, therefore, we may well imagine the original Bradshaw Hall to have been, standing in a conspicuous place on the slope of Eccles Pike.
[56] _Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals_, by Dr. Cox, vol. i., p. 38.
In the time of Henry VIII., however, the ancient custom of allowing the smoke to find its own way out through a hole in the tiling, which was called the “louvre,” began to be discontinued, and stone-built chimneys were then added outside the timber house for the sake of safety. Mr. Gunson, in his article on Bradshaw Hall,[57] says:—
[57] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxv., p. 5. I am indebted to Mr. Gunson for much of the description of the actual building.
This chimney contained a broad archway opening into the room in which the log fire was kindled. This seems to have been the case at Bradshaw, for on the line of what was formerly the outside wall of the hall is still standing a great stone chimney stack. That it was the chimney to the ancient Hall, and is the oldest portion of the present building, there can be but little doubt, for it plays no part in the later design. Moreover, a portion of the top where the plaster ‘parging’ of its flue can still be seen has been taken down to allow the main timbers of the present roof to pass over its head; it has been filled in and its archway beneath built up. When the architect designed the later building he found that this old stack fell into line with his plan and served as a support for the great staircase which he built around it.”
No doubt it was the presence of this huge and apparently useless block of masonry, running the whole height of the house, which gave rise to the generally accepted notion that Bradshaw Hall possessed a secret chamber or “priest hole.” This legend is adopted by Mr. Allan Fea, who remarks in his interesting book on _Secret Chambers and Hiding Places_: “Bradshaw Hall has or had a concealed chamber high up in the wall of a room on the ground floor, which was capable of holding three persons.” Of course, tradition says “the wicked judge was hidden here.” The actual place here described is a modern cupboard, which has not been in existence a century as yet!
One other remnant of the old house remains in the present structure. To use Mr. Gunson’s words:
“The staircase is supported on bearing timbers made of principals from the old high-pitched roof, in which the mortices and oak pins still disclose their previous use and design; these, after serving their original purpose for generations, were yet sound enough to be used to sustain the heavy staircase—a remarkable testimony to the quality of the oak selected for such purposes some six centuries ago, and still apparently as good as ever.”
The interior of the house some sixty or seventy years ago was somewhat altered to meet the requirements of two families of farm tenants; but as originally built, it contained the dining-hall—which was also the usual living room of the family—out of this opened the withdrawing room. These two rooms occupied the whole of one wing, and were accessible from the main entrance through a vestibule or small hall, lighted by a quaint little window on the right, and entirely shut off from the big staircase. The dining-hall was a spacious room, lighted by a pair of four-light windows, now converted into modern sash lights.
“Above, to support the floor of the upper storey are massive oak beams about 16 ins. deep by 14 ins. wide. On the left is a very fine segmental arch over the entrance to the staircase; it has a span of 4 ft., and its depth from front to back is 4 ft. 1 in., being deeply splayed on the outer side. Altogether the design is striking, and if the old window lighting the staircase behind it were but opened out, the effect would be distinctly quaint and picturesque.”
Another archway leads to the kitchen, and at the top of the hall was the original great fireplace and a door, which led into the withdrawing room. The same kind of beams cross the ceiling of this room, though in a different direction to those of the hall, and it is lighted by similar windows. All the rooms at Bradshaw are exceptionally lofty, and the windows, which have not been tampered with,
“are beautifully proportioned examples of the plain mullioned and transomed type. An especial feature of Bradshaw is that all the door jambs have been splayed off. The direction always follows the line of general traffic, and the idea evidently was to cut off the corners, and especially in the case of the kitchens, no doubt to facilitate the carriage of the heavily laden trenchers to the dining hall.”
The kitchen and offices formed the other wing.
“The massive staircase is about 4 ft. in width, and consists of solid oak steps; it is supported by the ancient chimney stack, and opens into a small landing on the first floor, from which access is given to various bedrooms, and through them to others. This landing, which was originally lighted by the usual four-light window, now partially built up, has a remarkable ceiling, cornice, and frieze, in plaster work. Around the latter in raised letters is the following verse:—
LOVE GOD BVT NOT GOLD. A MAN WITHOVT MERCY OF MERCY SHALL MISS BVT HE SHALL HAVE MERCY THAT MERCYFVL IS.”
An inventory[58] of the contents of the hall, taken after the death of Francis Bradshawe gives us not only an idea of the contents of the mansion house of a gentleman of that period, but it also furnishes us with the names of the various rooms. Among them is mentioned “The Gallerie, the Gallerie Chamber, and the Clocke Chamber.” The contents of his own bedroom are as follows:
[58] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxv., p. 66.
“One bedstedd w^{th} curtaines and Vallancies and all other Furniture, a Truckle Bedd and Fether bedd thereon Two tables one Standinge Cupboard Three Chaires two plaine Chaires Nyne Joynt Stooles two little ones a Close Stoole six Tables and Cupboard Cloathes. Two Skreenes, a Lookeing Glasse Three Brushes a p^r of Snuffers Firepan and Tongs.”
Over the kitchen a fine example of an oak panelled room still remains in good condition. The contents of the cellars are described in the inventory as “one greate tuninge vessel and 3 lesser vessells and twentie barrells.” These big cellars have apparently been filled in and flagged over, for in spite of the legend that they still exist, it has been found impossible to discover their position. Of the outbuildings, the big cow house still remains, of the same date as the hall, with windows of a similar design.
The principal entrance to the hall, with its porch, now removed, originally faced Eccles Pike, over which ran an ancient highway, and connected with this was an old bridle road leading to the stone-built arch which was the main gateway. This is still in admirable condition, and beyond the fact that there are indications that originally the archway was enclosed with double gates, which are not now in existence, it is much as it left the builders’ hands. Over it, on the side facing the hill, is a shield bearing a coat of arms, as follows: “Argent two bendlets between two martlets sable” for Bradshawe. Impaling “or a chevron gules between three martlets sable” for Stafford. Above the shield is the Bradshawe crest, “A stag at gaze proper under a Vine Tree fruited proper.”
This coat bears the impress of the work of an amateur, as Francis Bradshawe could only have impaled the Davenport arms as borne by his wife’s family, while he had the right to bear the Stafford arms quarterly with his own, because his mother was an heiress. Had his father built the archway, as some writers have suggested, the Stafford coat would have been borne over the Bradshawe shield on a “Scutcheon of pretence.”
On the reverse side of the archway is the inscription, “Francis Bradshawe, 1620,” below which is a shield bearing the curious device, apparently heraldic, of a thorn between six nails. It has puzzled several students of heraldry. The suggestion was made a few years ago, which is almost certainly the correct one, that it is no heraldic achievement, but “a rebus” on the name Bradshawe:
“viz six nailes for the plural ‘Brads’ a species of nail, and the thorn for the old English Haw hence Brads-haw, that the scroll of foliage surrounding the shield may be a spray of barberry, the whole being in honour of Barbara Bradshawe, whose name would thus appropriately follow that of her husband as her initials did upon the stone of the previous year.”
A feature of the walling round Bradshaw is its heavy double coping. The building of the archway and stone fence would not have been built till after “the bulky traffic necessary during the building operations no longer prohibited a restricted approach.” This would account for the date of the gateway being a year later than that of the hall. Here, then, Francis Bradshawe and his wife took up their abode, in the old home rebuilt and modernized according to the fashion of the times. In the year 1630–1 he served the office of High Sheriff for the county, succeeding Sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston. The accounts connected with his shrievalty were kept with scrupulous care. They were published in the _Archæological Journal_ for 1904, and are very quaint reading. The board and lodging of the two judges on circuit, for all the officials connected with the Court of Assize, and for the prisoners awaiting their trial, as well as the expense entailed by the execution and burial of those condemned to be hanged, are all included. Contrary to the custom of the present day, the grand jury were fed at the High Sheriff’s expense, and a band was provided to entertain them. Among his personal expenses we read that £11 6s. was paid for lace, £1 3s. 10d. for twenty-six long buttons, 19s. for two dozen “silke and gould buttons and a neeke button,” £30 for twenty-six hatbands, 10s. for his boots, £2 3s. 4d. for his saddle, 11s. 8d. for the fringe, and £1 3s. 10d. for the “silver boole,” which may have been his buckle, but might possibly have been a bowl to be used as a loving cup. At Kirk Ireton he is charged for the hire of a horse, as well as for the keep of the one he left behind, which item suggests the probability that in riding his own horse, as would have been most likely, all the way from Bradshaw to Derby, he had been obliged to change horses on the road, and Kirk Ireton, being on his line of route in travelling by the old but now disused road from Bakewell, he had elected to make the exchange there. During this year he had the misfortune to lose his wife. The entry of her death in the parish registers of Chapel-en-le-Frith for the year 1631 is as follows: “Barbara, the wife of Francis Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, High Sheriff for this Countie this yeare, was buried in the chancell the xviiijth day.” On the 31st of July, 1632, he married as his second wife Lettice Clarke, widow, described in the Chapel-en-le-Frith register as “step-daughter to Sir Harvey Bagott, Knt.” She was the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Dilke, of Maxstoke Castle, co. Warwick. After his death she married, as her third husband, Sir John Pate, Bart. Francis Bradshawe died 25th March, 1635, and was buried with his wife on the 27th. His will, made about a month after his second marriage, left two-thirds of his residue to his brother George, his successor in the family estates, and one-third to his widow. She appears to have made Bradshaw her residence till about the year 1637, at which date Bradshaw Hall was apparently occupied by a Mr. Thomas Wigstone; at any rate, he is described as of Bradshaw in the register of the baptism of his daughter Lettice in the October of that year. He may have been a friend or relation, but Nicholas Lomas, who, according to the register, died at Bradshaw in 1640, would certainly have been a tenant. Francis Bradshawe was the last member of the family to reside at Bradshaw; notwithstanding the large amount of money that had been expended on the hall only fifteen years before.
George Bradshawe, his brother and successor, lived throughout his married life at Eyam; the old Hall, the home of the Staffords, his mother’s ancestors, having been entirely rebuilt for him. He was buried in Eyam Church, 25th June, 1646. His widow lived on at Eyam until she and her only unmarried daughter were driven away by the plague, which was raging in that village during the years 1665 and 1666. Francis, the eldest son, who inherited all the Bradshaw estates, had married in 1652 Elizabeth Vesey, a Yorkshire heiress, and he elected to live in his wife’s ancestral home at Brampton, co. York, and there did all the future Bradshawes, of Bradshaw, live, forsaking the old home and county. Francis Bradshawe died at Brampton, 21st December, 1659, leaving two sons. Francis, the elder, who succeeded to the estates but died unmarried in 1677, left all his estates to his brother, John Bradshawe. Living as his father had done in the old hall at Brampton, John Bradshawe allowed strangers to continue to rent Bradshaw Hall. In 1660, during the minority of his brother, the hall had been let to Edward Ash and Thomas Wright, and he himself let it to John Lowe in 1693. In 1717 John Bradshawe was High Sheriff for the County of Derby, but he died where he had lived, at Brampton, co. York, in November, 1726, leaving by his wife Dorothy, daughter of Anthony Eyre, of Rampton, co. Notts, a son, George, and a daughter, Elizabeth. George Bradshawe succeeded to the Bradshawe estates, but dying childless in 1735, the estates devolved on his sister’s son as heir-at-law and from him the present representative of the family is descended.
It is a curious coincidence that the last official act of George, the last Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, of which there is any evidence, was, only three months before his death, to execute a lease, dated 13th September, 1735, for eleven years to Robert Lowe and John Jackson of the old hall of his ancestors, in which document it is described as “all that capital messuage with the appurtenances lying and being in the parish of Chapel-en-le-Frith, commonly called or known by the name of Bradshaw Hall.”
OFFERTON HALL.
By S. O. Addy, M.A.
The hamlet of Offerton is near Hathersage, and now consists of three houses, called Offerton Hall, Offerton House, and Offerton Cottage. It stands high, but the moors on the south rise higher still, and partly hide the rays of the midday sun from these buildings. So, as you walk up the hill on a summer’s morning, the gateway of the hall, already darkened by time, is further darkened by shadows. But there is plenty of light when you get into the courtyard.
You ascend a little-used, narrow lane, with walls on either side, and leaving Offerton House, itself a quaint old building, on your right, you presently enter the courtyard of Offerton Hall through a tall gateway, which stands between farm buildings on one side and a barn on the other. Within the archway on either side are mullioned windows, and just beyond the archway is a door, as if a porter once kept the gate.
Open the barn doors and peep inside. At one end, raised high above the floor, you will see a large wooden platform, which can be raised up and down at will, and is used for clipping sheep. You will also notice that the great oak beams or rafters which support the roof of the barn extend down to the ground. These beams are thick and rude, and have hardly been touched by the carpenter’s tools. They are locally known as “crucks,” which is an older form of “crutches.” A book which has just been published contains an extract from a lease dated 1432, in which “crukkes” are mentioned, and it is remarkable that the word is used as a translation of _laquearia_.[59] The barn at Offerton Hall consists of four bays, measuring 15 feet by 16 feet each, so that the floor of each contains 240 square feet. Some of the crutches are bigger and heavier than the others, and they all rest on stone pedestals, varying, according to the size of the crutches, from two to four feet from the ground, the crutches which stand on the two lowest pedestals being the thickest. All the crutches have mortise holes for rafters on their outer faces about a foot above the lowest of the two tie-beams by which they are joined together. This shows that the roof of the barn, or the roof of an earlier building which the crutches once supported, sloped from the ridge to the ground. The tie-beams are held in their places by tree-nails or wooden pegs.
[59] The lessee covenants to build a house “de octo laquearibus, Anglice viii. _crukkes_.”—Ling Roth’s _The Yorkshire Coiners_, 1906, p. 155.
As I have shown elsewhere, the bay was a unit of measurement, containing 240 square feet. The evidence supporting this conclusion may be seen in various ancient documents. For instance, in the twelfth century, the villans of Aucklandshire had to “make the bishop’s hall in the forest, of the length of 60 feet, and of the breadth within the posts (_infra postes_) of sixteen feet.”[60] In other words, the hall was to consist of four bays of 240 square feet each, like those in the barn at Offerton. In 1694 there was a fire at Long Eaton, near Derby, which “consumed fourteen dwelling houses, togeather with the barnes, stables, outhouses, and other buildings, containeinge ninety bayes of buildings.”[61] Here the houses of a village are estimated by the bay, which must have been a recognised measure of quantity. It appears in the Eckington Court Rolls that in 1758 a man borrowed £40 on the security of “all that one bay of a barn, situate and being in the High Lane, called the Farr Bay, and all that close there called the Farr Over Close adjoining to the High Lane aforesaid southwards, containing by estimation three acres.” In 1764 an Eckington man and his wife surrendered “all that middle bay of a barn situate and being at High Lane aforesaid, together with twelve yards and two feet of land in length on the north side of the said barn, and one yard in breadth, with all the priveledges and appurtenances to the same belonging,” to the use of John Gill, of Cuckhold’s Haven, in the parish of Eckington, sicklesmith. The meaning is that bays, being measures of quantity, were sold like acres, or, rather, like links of sausages. We must not, of course, suppose that all bays were exactly of the same size, or that each of them contained an area of exactly 240 square feet. We might as well expect every acre in the fields to contain exactly 4,840 square yards.
[60] _Boldon Buke_ (Surtees Soc.), pp. 26, 62.
[61] Document in Cox’s _Annals of Derbyshire_, vol. ii., p. 294.
In examining the outside of Offerton Hall, the first thing to be noticed is a small projection from the back or western side. It is a quadrangular tower, and contains the stairs which supply the two upper floors of the building. As will be imagined from the outer appearance, the stairs are not spiral, but go in short, straight flights, with proper landings. The steps are of stone; first, six steps and then a landing; in nine more steps you get to the first floor; after this, six steps and a landing, then, the uppermost floor or garret. The staircase is really a detached room, and you can only get into it by opening a door. Taking the word in its etymological meaning, a staircase is a “case” which holds a “stair” or ladder. In some old Lincolnshire houses the “stair” is in fact a ladder inside a little closet, like a voting compartment, in a corner of one of the rooms. At Garner House, about a mile from Offerton, the winding stair, now of wood, but formerly of stone, is in a round turret at the back of the house; half of the turret is visible outside, the other half is concealed in the wall.
Offerton Hall is one of those buildings which have escaped the practical joke of “restoration.” It consists of a “house-place” or large central room, with a projecting wing on either side—a form which was very common in the seventeenth century. In the angle formed by the “house-place” and the southern wing is a yellow-washed stone porch, about two feet deep. Just above the entrance to the porch is a tiny window, with diamond panes and angular top. Below, in an incised panel, the letters M.G. are carved, and, just beneath those letters, R.G. 1658. Although the plan of the house is consistent throughout, it was not all built at the same time, and the two pairs of initials may represent two different owners or builders. Ralph Glossop, of Offerton, appears in the Hope Easter Roll for this very year 1658, and also Edward Glossop, of the same place.[62] A list of the freeholders of Derbyshire made in 1633[63] shows that Ralph Glossop was the only freeholder at Offerton in that year. According to Hunter’s large _Pedigree Book_, printed by the Harleian Society, Ralph Glossop, of Offerton, married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Jeremy Ward, of Ashop, in Derbyshire.[64] This Ralph Glossop is not, like his neighbour Thomas Eyre, of Highlow, described in the list of freeholders as an esquire, and accordingly Offerton Hall would seem to have been the residence of a substantial yeoman.
[62] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xi., p. 21.
[63] _Op. cit._, vol. vi., p. 7.
[64] _Familiæ Minorum Gentium_, 647.
Opening out of the little porch is a strong oak door, studded with iron nails. The height of the door is five feet eight inches, and it is below the level of the sill or threshold, so that when you enter the house you go down one step. As you enter you must take care both of your head and your feet, or you may come to grief at both ends. Dr. Troels Lund says that in Danish houses of the sixteenth century “the door was extremely low, so that a person entering had to bend down, and at the same time the sill was so high that the foot had to be well lifted up. And if a man had reason to fear a hostile attack, it was a considerable help that the entrance, which was always a weak point, should be as narrow and low as possible; if the door were burst open, the enemy might get his death-blow as he stepped over the sill with his back bent and his foot lifted up.”[65]
[65] _Das Tägliche Leben in Skandinavien während des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts_, Copenhagen, 1882, p. 12.
At Offerton Hall, instead of lifting your leg up you have to drop it down, and at the same time if you are a tall man you have to bend your neck. In the English, as in the Danish case, the intention was to make entrance difficult, and to prevent surprises. The thick oak door opens inwardly. As you go in you do not see the house-place; you face the great chimney wall, and to get into the house-place you pass through another door on your right. Thus the house contains both an inner and an outer porch, the inner porch answering to the “speer” of Lancashire cottages which have no outer porch. The door of entrance is fastened by an oak bolt one foot nine inches in length, and three inches by four in thickness. The bolt fits into a hole in the wall, and is drawn out by an iron ring.
The house-place, or “house-body” as they call it at Halifax, is still the centre of domestic intercourse, as it has always been. As you enter, your back is turned to the great fireplace which once warmed all the house, and which was kept burning day and night. When you get inside the house-place the great vault of the chimney, more than eleven feet wide, is before you, spanned by a depressed arch. People in the neighbourhood speak of the chimney of Offerton Hall as “a lantern chimney.” If you ask them why it was so called, somebody may tell you, without blushing, that it was because a man went up to sweep it with a lantern. The term “lantern chimney” is not to be found in dictionaries, and may therefore be presumed to be unknown. There must once have been a louver or lantern at the top of the chimney at Offerton, like the one, for instance, at Tisbury, in Wiltshire, figured in Parker’s _Glossary_. The chimney at Tisbury is octangular, with a conical roof, like the top of a stable lantern, and with lateral holes for the emission of smoke. The summit of the chimney at Offerton may originally have been of this form.
The base of the chimney has a breadth of twelve feet six inches on one side, and ten feet six inches on the other. It is built of stone, and in the chamber above the house-place it begins to taper off, so that its sides might be compared to the “steps” on the Great Pyramid. Big central chimneys like this are the first rude attempts to get rid of the open hearth, from which the smoke escaped by a hole in the roof, or by a louver. It is said that “chimneys were not used in the farmhouses of Cheshire till within forty years of the publication of King’s _Vale Royal_ (1636); the fire was in the midst of the house, against a hob of clay, and the oxen lived under the same roof.”[66]
[66] Whitaker’s _Craven_, 1812, p. 334.
The rooms of the house are about eight feet high on the ground floor, and seven feet on the upper floor, and the principals supporting the roof in the garret are a good deal like the crutches which have just been described. There is no panelling in the house, and no cellar. In front of the building is an old-fashioned garden.
In 1545 Robert Glossop, of Offerton, was fined for trespassing on Abney Common.[67] In 1465 John Glossop, of Wodsetys, in Norton (Norton Woodseats, near Sheffield), leased to Henry Foliaumbe a messuage in Offerton called Le Storthe for twelve years.[68] It would not be difficult to make out a considerable history of the Glossop family and their relations from the Lichfield wills and the other usual sources of information.
[67] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiii., p. 89.
[68] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_.
We must not be in too great a hurry to conclude that Offerton means upper farm, as Over Haddon means Upper Haddon. Overton, in Ashover, means upper farm, but Mr. Jeayes has shown that in the thirteenth century Offerton, in Hathersage, occurs once as Hofnertoun, and that a man called Eustace de Hofnerton lived there.[69] Other early forms of the name are Offirtun and Offreton; in _Domesday_ it appears as Offertune, a berewick of Hope. Mr. Searle has told us that _Offerd_ is found in Old English charters and in _Domesday_ as a form of the man’s name _Osfrith_,[70] and, if we could put aside Hofnertoun as a scribe’s error, this is probably the first element of the word. In the thirteenth century we have Over Offerton and Nether Offerton, otherwise _Kauereshegge_.[71] Was Nether Offerton ever so called? Possibly the scribe should have written _Hauereshegge_, a form of Hathersage, as old documents show.
[69] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_.
[70] _Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum_, Cambridge, 1897.
[71] Jeayes, _op. cit._
The Offerton Hall estate is the property of H. Cunliffe Shawe, Esq., of Weddington Hall, Nuneaton, to whom it has descended from Robert Newton, Esq., of Norton House, who was born in 1713 and died in 1789. Mr. Newton was a wealthy man and a great purchaser of land, this being one of his many estates. In a survey belonging to Mr. Shawe, made about eighty years ago, the Offerton Hall property is described as containing eighty-five acres, and as including the following fields: The Acre with Kentny Barn, Great Kentny, Kentny Meadow, Kentny Wood, Breedy Acre with the Precipice, Wild Hey, Siss Acres, Cornhill Cap Meadow, and Great White Ley. As the map shows, Kentny Meadow is close to the hall. A place called Kenteney, in Upper Offerton, is mentioned in deeds of the thirteenth century.[72] This name represents an older _Centan-īg_, meaning Centa’s “island,” and we have the same termination _ey_ (_īg_ or _īeg_) in Abney, which adjoins Offerton, and in a manuscript survey of 1451 is written Albeney.[73] We can rely upon this form of the name, not only because it was taken from an older survey, but because the surname De Albeney occurs in North Derbyshire in 1250.[74] Now the surname Albeyn is found at Chesterfield in 1339,[75] and is the English form of the Latin _Albāgnus_. Abney, therefore, means Alban’s “island.” Eyam, which adjoins, is written Eium or Eyum in the thirteenth century, and the termination _-um_ is so very frequent that we cannot doubt that it is a dative plural, and that the word means “islands.” These “islands,” it need hardly be said, were not pieces of land surrounded by water. They remind us of the intermixed townships which are so frequent in some parts of England, as if strangers or conquerors had settled amongst a conquered people. At Eyam, the “islands” seem to have been the lands which were held by military tenure, or “hastler lands,” as they were known in the neighbourhood.
[72] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_.
[73] _Feodarium_, in the possession of the Duke of Norfolk.
[74] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_.
[75] Jeayes, _op. cit._
Siss Acres may be six acres, for Chaucer has _sis_ for six. If so, the word is interesting as pointing to French influence in the neighbourhood.
In 1611 it is said that Offerton is a manor of itself, then in the tenure of Henry Cavendish, Esq.[76]
[76] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiii., 89.
ROODS, SCREENS, AND LOFTS IN DERBYSHIRE CHURCHES
By Aymer Vallance, F.S.A.
Although still comprising a considerable amount of excellent screenwork, the county of Derby has suffered grievous losses in this regard, losses for which, if fanaticism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was primarily responsible, ignorance and indifference in the eighteenth century, and wilful perversity of so-called “restorers” during the “Gothic revival” of the nineteenth, have produced consequences not less disastrous.
At the beginning of the religious revolution in England, inaugurated in the reign of Henry VIII., every church and chapel in the land had its rood-screen, surmounted by a rood-loft. Above them both was the great rood, or cross, with a figure of Our Lord outstretched upon it, flanked almost invariably by statues of St. Mary and St. John. Of these ornaments the rood-loft was the latest to be developed, not becoming general previously to the fifteenth century. It had, however, been preceded in cathedral and monastic churches by the pulpitum, a thick wall with a gallery on the top of it at the west end of the quire. In churches of this class, the rood-screen would be situated parallel to the pulpitum, but further westwards, in the nave.
The pulpitum and the parish church rood-screen, although the former is usually a solid stone structure, while the latter consists of openwork, and is of wood rather than of stone, so far resemble one another that both have a central doorway, whereas the cathedral and monastic rood-screen appears to have had, as a rule, two doorways in it, one at the north and the other at the south end, with an altar (which ranked as the principal one among the altars of the nave) placed between them. It was in front of this altar, and at the foot of the great rood, that the procession, which perambulated the church before High Mass on Sundays and great feasts, having traversed the appointed route, finally drew up to make a solemn station. This done, those taking part in the procession would file off to right and left in two divisions, either of them passing through one of the doors in the rood-screen, and thence under the pulpitum into the quire for the celebration of the chief service of the day.
In illustration of the foregoing, it is of interest to recall that excavations, carried on at the end of the seventies of the nineteenth century, on the site of the Premonstratensian Abbey of Dale, revealed, at the eastern crossing, the bases of the two parallel walls of the pulpitum, about five feet apart, and pierced by a central doorway, 4 ft. 6 in. wide. A year later much of the tile pavement of the nave was unearthed, disclosing the tiles spaced and arranged in bands to mark the exact position for the procession, as before described. Further may be cited the accounts of the sale of the effects of the abbey, drawn up by order of the Royal Commissioners on its dissolution in 1538. This document is dated 24th October, in the thirtieth year of King Henry VIII.’s reign. It enumerates, beside “the seats in the Quier; a crucifyx, Mary and John; a payre of organs; ... the rode alter in the Churche,” _i.e._, in the nave, “and a rode there,” _i.e._, presumably the great rood. Another item disposed of, viz., “The partition of tymber in the body of the Churche,” most probably refers to the rood-screen in the nave; while the before-named “rode alter” would be, by analogy, the altar in the midst of the rood-screen; for such was the usual dedication. The greater number of the fittings of Dale Abbey were acquired at the sale by Francis Pole, of Radburne. It is, therefore, not without good reason that certain linen-fold panels in Radburne Church—eighteen in all—have been identified as belonging formerly to the rood-screen of the abbey church. And yet another item sold, “a grate of yren” (iron) “abowte the Founder and the tymber worke there” would include parclose screenwork such as is described hereafter.
The church of another Premonstratensian abbey also, that of Beauchief (founded between 1172 and 1176), had its altar of the Holy Cross. Evidence of the fact is extant in the shape of a deed, _circa_ 1300, by which Sir Thomas de Chaworth, lord of Norton, made over the entire village of Greenhill, moor included, by way of endowment, to maintain a canon to celebrate mass at the altar of that name in perpetuity. I have found no other particulars of Beauchief bearing on the present subject except in the inventory, dated 2nd August, 1536, wherein occurs:—“It’m a p’ of organnes,” which same may be assumed to have stood upon the top of the pulpitum.
Neither, again, has very much that is relevant come to light concerning the vanished church of the Augustinian canons at Darley. Their abbey, in its time the largest and most important of the religious houses of Derbyshire, was suppressed in the autumn of 1538, as the result of three months’ unremitting pressure on the part of Cromwell’s agent, Thomas Thacker. This man actually wrote, at the close of the first three months, to inform his master how little effect his cajoleries and threats had had upon the abbot; and to solicit the all-powerful minister’s favour and help in securing possession of the house and goods for himself, when he should have succeeded in the design of coercing the unhappy man. It is at least some slight satisfaction to know that Thacker’s petition was disregarded as far as Darley Abbey was concerned. The abbot’s consent to the suppression at length wrung from him, no time was lost before cataloguing and selling the effects of the abbey. The inventory of the sale is dated 24th October (only two days later than the signing of the act of “surrender”), and comprises the “Great Crucyfyx” of the abbey church and “tymber about ... Seint Sythes Chapell,” meaning, obviously, the parclose screens that surrounded it.
With the foregoing may be compared the priory church of another Augustinian house, founded in 1172 at Repton. The inventory of the sale, dated likewise in October in the year 1538, specifies, besides the rood, at least six partitions of timber, or parcloses, fencing round the chapels respectively of Our Lady, St. John, St. Nicholas, and St. Thomas. The church, dismantled, as has been stated, under Henry VIII., still continued standing “most beautiful,” according to the testimony of the historian Fuller, until the reign of Queen Mary, when, in a single day, it was utterly demolished by the intruder in occupation, Gilbert Thacker. This miscreant belonged to a family deeply tainted with the guilt of sacrilege. He was, in fact, son and heir of the before-named Thomas Thacker, and becoming alarmed at the news of the rehabilitation of the religious orders, and determined to prevent such an eventuality in the case of Repton Priory, promptly acted on that resolve by destroying, as he himself expressed it, “the nest, for fear the birds should build therein again.” Excavations conducted in 1882 and two successive years on the site of the former church, discovered practically all that is ever likely, under the circumstances, to be learned from investigations on the spot. The results, embodied in two reports by Mr. W. H. St. John Hope, were published in volumes vi. and vii. of the _Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological Society_, from which, as comprising the whole of the available information relevant to the present subject, the following particulars have, for the most part, been extracted.
The stone pulpitum, like that at Dale, occupied the space between the two piers of the eastern crossing; but, unlike the Dale pulpitum, the Repton one was a solid structure. It measures 5 ft. 4½ in. deep from east to west, and is pierced by a central doorway 4 ft. 4½ in. wide. Its eastward front, against which backed the return stalls, measures 26 ft. 2 in., the total width of the quire. The westward façade (except for the door-jambs, which are moulded and flanked on either side by an ornamental buttress, and when uncovered in 1883 showed traces of brilliant scarlet and black colouring) was austerely plain. Its flatness was relieved, however, by the loft above being made to overhang. That this was so is deduced from the fact that had the loft-floor not projected beyond the area of the base of the pulpitum, there would have been insufficient room for anyone ascending to the top to turn round on emerging from the staircase. The latter, 3 ft. 2½ in. wide, was hollowed out of the solid in the northern half of the pulpitum, and raked upwards in a straight flight from south to north. The “pair of organs” named in the inventory, stood, it may be assumed, on the platform at the top. That the pulpitum itself must have been coeval (_circa_ 1275–1300) with the piers and integral in structure with them, is manifest from the plinth that forms the base of pulpitum and piers alike being finished with the same hollow chamfer continuously all round it. A curious feature is that, notwithstanding there is a step leading up from the nave to the pulpitum door, on the east side there is a descent of one step again on to the floor of the quire. South of the pulpitum a screen of wood shut off the quire’s south aisle (which is ten feet wide) from the transept. Another screen, in line with the last-named one, extending 21 ft. 9 in., _i.e._, as far as the south wall of the transept, enclosed the spacious chapel of Our Lady, which was situated parallel to the quire, on the south side of the quire’s south aisle. The former existence of these screens is proved by holes sunk in the masonry to receive the timber work. The north transept was too ruinous to furnish any indication of its ancient screen arrangements; but there were found some signs of a screen having stood between the first pair of piers in the nave (which, exclusive of the aisles, is 22 ft. 2 in. wide). This would, of course, be the position of the rood-screen proper.
To resume, as to collegiate churches, some were provided, like cathedrals, with a solid pulpitum, others with a rood-loft only, which in their case had to do duty for pulpitum; that is to say, the ceremonial singing of the Gospel was wont, as in cathedrals and monastic churches, to take place on the top of it at High Mass on Sundays and great feasts. The knowledge of this circumstance has given rise, apparently, to the mistaken notion that the rood-loft in ordinary parochial churches was used for the same purpose, which was decidedly not the case. Nay, in some parish churches sculptured stone desks, projecting from the north wall of the chancel, near the high altar, were provided expressly, as authorities on the subject agree, for the reading of the Gospel at that spot, in contradistinction to the cathedral, monastic, and collegiate usage. The Derbyshire parish churches of Chaddesden, Crich, Etwall, Mickleover, Spondon, and Taddington are especially remarkable as being fitted with lecterns of this description.
Against the east side of a pulpitum return stalls for clergy or monks were invariably fixed; but that this arrangement was not confined exclusively to cathedral, monastic, and collegiate churches is proved by the fact that certain Derbyshire churches, which have never belonged to any of those categories, and could scarcely even be described as connected except indirectly with cells of religious houses in their neighbourhood, _e.g._, those at Chaddesden, Elvaston, Norbury, and Sawley, were provided with return stalls in the chancel. And again, not least extraordinary, in the out-of-the-way parish of Chelmorton, the ancient rood-screen, itself of stone, to this day still has a stone bench attached to it, and running the length of its eastern side, for clergy to occupy, backs to the screen and faces towards the altar, just as though in a cathedral quire or in that of some religious order.
Three of the before-named churches, viz., Chaddesden, Elvaston, and Norbury, present (or, rather, if the handiwork of the mediæval joiners had not been subsequently tampered with in any of them, would present) a feature highly characteristic of Derbyshire churches in the treatment of the outer ends of the return stalls that flank the passage through the rood-screen into the chancel. The Norbury specimen (see illustration), handsomely sculptured, with a panel of vine ornament, and with a projecting elbow formed of the half-length figure of an angel, is, however, in point of size the least accentuated of the three. But the pair at Chaddesden, with a series of enormous crockets climbing high up the eastward face of the muntins which form the entrance jambs, if scarcely noticeable when the screen is viewed from the nave, are very conspicuous from within the chancel; so much so, indeed, as to dominate and outscale all the rest of the screenwork to which they belong. How so strange an anomaly ever came to be introduced into an ordinary parish church is merely conjecture. The quire of the church of All Hallows, Derby—the sole collegiate foundation in the county surviving as such until the sixteenth century—must, of course, have been furnished with return stalls; but whether they exhibited the huge proportions of those at Chaddesden, or whether, if that were so, the Chaddesden stall ends were or were not deliberately imitated from those of All Hallows’, one may wonder and argue as one will, without the possibility of arriving any the nearer to positive assurance on the subject.
In default of a cathedral church within the borders of Derbyshire, the tendency would be to emphasize the dignity and importance of its greater churches. Among these the grand collegiate church of All Hallows was foremost, and as such it came to be regarded as, in some sort, the minster and mother church of all the southern part of the county. Thus it would, perhaps, be but natural that All Saints’, Derby, should supply the model for numbers of churches round about, and that its individual features should reproduce themselves even in some of the furthest corners of the shire. The love of generations of Derbyshire men for the fabric of this glorious church, and the jealous pride with which they defended its ancient privileges, are matters of history; and if it is not possible now to trace to a common original the distinguishing features of the churches of the county in general, which would, in all probability, have had their prototype in All Saints’, the ever-to-be-regretted reason is that the whole of the venerable building, with the exception of the tower at the west end, has disappeared—wantonly and wilfully destroyed in February, 1722–3. This irreparable loss was brought about solely through the guile and strategy of one unscrupulous tyrant, the then minister in charge, Rev. Michael Hutchinson, D.D., the memory of whose deed and name deserves to be handed down in undying opprobrium.
Neither plan nor any satisfactorily complete description of the mediæval church of All Hallows is extant; but this much is known, that it comprised nave and aisles and quire, with a chapel on the south, and that it contained, besides other altars, a chantry of Our Lady and one, also, of St. Nicholas. Both of these—the fact is established by a process of elimination, the south chapel having been appropriated to St. Katherine—were situated in the body of the church, and would almost certainly have been enclosed within screens such as survive in a number of Derbyshire churches to this day.
And here, before proceeding further, it is necessary to point out how largely the ground plan favoured in the churches of mediæval Derbyshire has affected and determined the conditions of their screening system. At the same time, I would add that what I am about to say does not pretend to universal application in every individual church throughout the county; for, in the nature of things, there are bound to be plenty of exceptions. Nevertheless, that the main trend of development proceeded along the lines indicated will not, I think, admit of dispute.
Now, in other districts, a church of the scale and grandeur of that, say, of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Melbourne, Norbury, or Spondon, could scarcely have failed to be enlarged, when extra chapels came to be called for, by the addition of chancel aisles. And yet in every one of these Derbyshire instances the chancel is aisleless—an anomaly, surely, remarkable enough! Nay (albeit the important churches of Chesterfield, Morley, and Norton, for example, testify to the contrary), it is noticeable in how many cases almost any other device was more welcome than that which would have involved interfering with and arcading the side walls of the chancel. An east aisle to the transept would occur more readily than the erection of a new aisle to the chancel in cruciform churches (as, for instance, at Ashbourne and Bakewell), or, in churches where there was no transept to widen nor to appropriate, the area of the nave itself (as at Fenny Bentley), or of the nave aisles (as at Elvaston and Sawley), would be encroached upon for the purpose; the wealthy corporate body or individual having as little hesitation about annexing and enclosing the amount of the parish church’s space which they wanted for their own uses, as they would about enclosing (provided it could be accomplished with impunity) the people’s common land. A typical Derbyshire parclose, then, is no mere grate within an arch, to connect the one side of it with the other, but rather a formidable barrier fencing in, on two sides, a specific portion of the body of the church, and even, may be, comprehending (as in the before-mentioned instances of Elvaston and Sawley) a column or more of the arcade itself.
Whatever may be thought of the propriety of this local caprice (for what else was it which, in a county abounding with excellent building stone, could have caused the bodies of parish churches to be thus cut up with internal partitions, instead of extending them from without by additional chapels and chancel aisles for the reception of fresh chantries?), the net result has been to enrich Derbyshire with even greater distinction in respect of its parcloses than of its rood-screens; notwithstanding the parcloses which still remain represent only a proportion of all those ascertained to have been formerly in existence, but such that have now gone, many of them, and left nothing beyond the bare record behind; or of that, no doubt, larger quantity whereof even the very memorial has perished.
Some of them have been shifted from their original positions and made up afresh, others have been cut short or otherwise maltreated and defaced; but, for all that, it is not too much to say that there is not a county in the kingdom can boast as magnificent a series of parclose screens as this one still possesses, in more or less perfect condition, in the respective churches of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Chesterfield, Elvaston, and Kirk Langley. The exquisite parclose which runs the whole length of the south transept at Chesterfield, with its vaulted cornice, rather resembles a rood-screen. The truly characteristic variety of parcloses, however, should be sought, not at Chesterfield, but at Ashbourne, Bakewell, Elvaston, and Sawley. A peculiarity common to all four is the pierced tracery panelling of the lower half of the screen. In each case, except in the Bakewell parclose, it takes the form of a horizontal band of ornament immediately beneath the rail or cill of the fenestration. Such is the feature which, as I submit, constitutes the speciality of parcloses as distinguished from rood-screens. And it is just because of its being present also in the screenwork now made up into a chancel-screen at St. Peter’s, Derby, that I am disinclined to believe that this particular screen was designed in the first place for a purpose other than that of a parclose.
The history of this screen has not been uneventful. It is well known to have belonged formerly to the church at Crich, and to have been ejected from thence at the devastating “restoration” which befel in 1861. Conveyed to a timber-merchant’s yard, for awhile it lay there awaiting a ruin that seemed imminent, until the late Rev. W. Hope, at that time vicar of St. Peter’s, fortunately saw it, acquired it, and set it up, repaired and remodelled, in its present position. To return, now, for a moment to the matter of Crich church. It is on record that there were two chantries founded here by William de Wakebridge in the fourteenth century. The one, receiving episcopal licence in 1357, was situated in the north aisle; the other, in 1368, at Our Lady’s altar, which may be presumed to have occupied a corresponding position in the south aisle. Both of these chantries would eventually, according to the prevailing Derbyshire custom, have been surrounded with parclose screenwork. Of the remains of that which stood in the north aisle, the heraldic painter, Bassano, and also J. Reynolds, took note when they visited Crich church, the first in 1710, the second in 1758. I do not gather, however, that either of them recorded the existence of a rood-screen there. This negative evidence on their part is too significant to be set aside, and so, commonly though it is stated that the screen at St. Peter’s, Derby, is identical with the ancient rood-screen of Crich church, I am not convinced. I can more readily suppose that the Rev. W. Hope was too thankful at having secured so authentic a relic of antiquity to spend time in prosecuting any very searching inquiry as to the precise nature of the office it might have fulfilled in days gone by; but that, seeing his own church was bare of a rood-screen, he very naturally adapted the screen which he had become possessed of to supply the deficiency, although comparative study of the design and formation of Derbyshire screens in general might have led him, as it has led me, to conclude that this one from Crich could not originally have been a rood-screen.
Neither, again, may the apparent exception, which the chancel-screen in Haddon Hall chapel affords, be adduced. For, though it is true that to-day visitors to Haddon find, beneath the fenestration cill on either half of the screen there, a band of Gothic tracery—authentic, if of a somewhat flamboyant type—which fits its position plausibly enough, the view of the chapel by George Cattermole, lithographed by S. Rayner, and published in 1839, while agreeing in every other particular with the present unchanged aspect of the place, shows no ornament here at all. The panels were still without tracery when, between 1880 and 1885, a photograph of the interior was taken, which is reproduced in the third volume of _The Abbey Square Sketch Book_; and the Rev. Dr. Cox possesses a coloured sketch, dated 1898, which does not differ in this regard from the earlier representations. But in either event the screen at Haddon, whether traceried or plain, is no case in point, for the simple reason that the panelling itself is blind. In order to be analogous to the parcloses at Ashbourne, Elvaston, and Sawley, it would need to be perforated.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the following are the churches which contain the most notable parclose screens:—Ashbourne, Bakewell, Chesterfield, Darley Dale (stone), Elvaston, Fenny Bentley (moved from its place), Kirk Langley (portions made up), and Sawley (the lower parts only of two parcloses); while, if not now, there existed anciently, or there are believed to have existed, parcloses at Alkmonton hospital chapel, Ashover, Chelmorton (stone), Church Broughton, Crich, old St. Alkmund’s, and old All Hallows’ and St. Peter’s in Derby, Horsley, Longford, Longstone, Mugginton, Norbury, Radburne, Tideswell, Weston-on-Trent, and Youlgreave. But all this on the subject of parcloses is to anticipate.
The earliest surviving screenwork in Derbyshire does not date back any earlier than the beginning of the fourteenth century, and is, as might be expected, of stone. Of this material, the most imposing specimen is the rood-screen at Ilkeston, and that notwithstanding the excessive “restorations” it has had to undergo at various times, particularly in 1855—ordeals out of which it has emerged in a very different condition from that which it must originally have presented. The upper part has been scraped and renovated; the columns smoothed and repolished. And as for the lower part, one can only say that to afford any effective protection to the chancel it must have been something far more substantial than the gaunt skeleton framework it is at the present day. The screen occupies the opening from the nave into the chancel. It consists of an arcade of five arches, which, cinquefoil-cusped and having pierced quatrefoils in the spandrils, spring from cylindrical columns of grey marble, with circular moulded caps and bases. These again rise from a horizontal moulded rail, supported on similar columns; the whole standing upon a stone plinth. The mouldings and capitals of the columns (some of which only are original) have an Early English appearance, but the main part of the screen is of later style. The markedly ogival form of the doorhead betokens a fairly developed phase of Decorated. Along the top of the screen runs a simple coping ridge, which, if not the original, represents well enough the type of finish a screen of the period would have had in the days before the introduction of rood-lofts into parish churches. The doorway centres 4 ft. 2½ in., with a clear opening of 3 ft. 10 in.; the side bays having an average centring of 3 ft. 2½ in. The total height of the screen, as at present made up, is 14 ft. 6 in., a dimension greatly disproportionate to its comparatively short length of 17 ft. 4½ in. It may be explained that the photograph was taken from the chancel in order to avoid the halation of the east window, both sides of the screen being alike.
The stone rood-screen at Chelmorton, if less ancient than the foregoing by some thirty or forty years, is the more interesting, because it has been allowed to retain its original form almost untouched. The screen stands in the chancel arch (12 ft. 6 in. wide), and consists of two parts, having a clear opening of four feet between them. The northern half measures 4 ft. 3½ in. long, the southern half one inch less. The motif is that of an embattled wall, 6 ft. 6 in. high, with a pierced band of quatrefoils to the depth of twenty inches from the level of the top, and, beneath, blind panelling of trefoil-headed ogival arches. The screen wall being flat on its upper surface, might well have afforded a foundation for timber screenwork above it; for owing to the rise of the ground towards the east, the chancel floor is three steps higher than that of the nave, and consequently the screen has but a moderate elevation on its eastward side. There is, however, no sign of any mortice holes visible in it. Built into the wall of the porch is a slab of stone, sculptured with quatrefoils, which was dug up under the floor, and is conjectured to have formed part of a parclose, matching the rood-screen and screening of the south transept for a chantry chapel.
At Monks’ Dale, in Tideswell parish, was formerly a grange, with a chapel attached, supposed to have belonged to Lenton Priory. The walls of the chapel are overthrown down to the foundations. “All that remains of it above ground are the beautifully carved stones of the low ... stone screen that divided the chancel from the nave. They are of fourteenth century work”—of the date 1360, _circa_, according to the late Rev. Prebendary Andrew—“and exactly correspond to those ... in the chancel of Chelmorton.” This account appeared in 1877. By 1882 the aforesaid stonework had been removed to the vicarage garden at Tideswell.
Embedded in a wall in Allestree parish, near the site of the old manor house, on the road to Mackworth, is, or recently was, to be seen another fragment of worked stone, with sculptured quatrefoils, and altogether so closely resembling the before-named examples as to lead to the conclusion that it must have formed part of an ancient screen in Allestree or some neighbouring church.
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.”
The stone screens, then, existing, or accountable for as known to have existed, in Derbyshire comprise those at Allestree, Chelmorton, Darley Dale, Ilkeston, and Monks’ Dale. Another one also must be included in the list, viz., the former rood-screen at Bakewell. From a description of it in 1823, while it might still be seen _in situ_ separating the chancel from the rest of the church, it appears to have been of Decorated workmanship. Either half of it measured six feet long, exclusive of the space for the central entrance. The recorded height, 4 ft. 9 in., implies that it was the base or plinth merely, not the complete screen. At some subsequent time during the “repairs” which went on from 1841 to 1851—a sad decade of disaster for Bakewell church!—its stone screen was carried off by that notorious archæological raider, Mr. Thomas Bateman, to swell his predatory collection at Lomberdale House. The virtuoso himself being long since dead, and the contents of his museum dispersed, there is now practically no likelihood of the missing screenwork ever being traced and recovered. If it be still in existence anywhere, it should probably be sought for in the Weston Museum at Sheffield, whither most of the Derbyshire spoils from Lomberdale House are said to have found their way. If that be so, the screen ought certainly to be restored to its rightful place again at Bakewell. The loss of so venerable a monument cannot be too deeply deplored, and reflects the utmost discredit on all persons concerned in the removal of this ancient screenwork from the church to which it belonged.
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.
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.
But it is rather in parclose screens that this feature of excessive elongation is more especially in evidence. To counteract its ungainly appearance, without at the same time diminishing the extent of the aperture, resort is had in the principal screens at Chesterfield to the device of a transom to divide the fenestration about midway. This horizontal member, being feathered underneath, not only enhances the decorative character of the screenwork by the added effect of a lower tier of tracery-headed lights, but also makes for structural strength by providing a latitudinal junction from muntin to muntin.
Another point of similarity between Derbyshire rood-screens and the typical midland screens at (_e.g._, at Somerton, in Oxfordshire; Blore, in Staffordshire; Wormleighton, in Warwickshire; and Strelley, in Nottinghamshire), and of divergence between the former and southern examples, is that, where the design comprises vaulting, the springing of the ribs is not necessarily in line with the cord or base of the pierced tracery of the bay-heads (as is practically the rule for it to be in Kent, Devonshire, and Somerset), but at a higher level, sometimes with a discrepancy of nearly two feet between the two levels. The result of this arrangement is not altogether happy. For traceried ornament that extends below the limits of a tympanum, failing to define the springing-point, tends to make the vaulting itself look dwarfed and curtailed. For the latter to show to best advantage, the ribs should have an obvious correspondence with the sweep of the fenestration arch from spring to crown. Wherever it is otherwise, a sense of lack of homogeneity between the parts cannot but be felt.
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 side are buttressed, the buttresses on the west terminate, as is usual in the case of vaulted screens, with boutels and caps for the springing of the groins; upon the east side, on the contrary, the buttresses continue nearly to the top, tapering off as they approach the lintel into graceful crocketed pinnacles.
The only recorded instances known to me of the occurrence of painting or gilding on Derbyshire screenwork (with the exception of the Parwich beam referred to hereafter), are those of the rood-screens at Ashover and Norbury, and of a parclose which divided the chancel from the north chapel at Mugginton, and which had fifteen coats of arms blazoned in colours upon it. The screen itself has long since vanished, but the account of it is preserved among the Harleian manuscripts in the report of Richard St. George’s Heraldic Visitation taken in the year 1611. As a rule, the sort of ornament to be found upon screenwork (except in the case of panels decorated with figures, of which Derbyshire, unless I have been mistaken, furnishes no examples) is of so essentially abstract, and, so to speak, non-committal a character, that the enemies of screens are seldom able, with any pretence of reason, to avail themselves of the pleas put forward by iconoclasts as a matter of principle.
A small and feathered angel is introduced in the carved work above the doorway of the rood-screen at Elvaston; and there are some exceptionally fine half-length figures of angels along the top of one of the screens at Chesterfield. The particular screen that this carving rests upon (now turned, though it is, into a parclose between the north transept and its eastern chapel) is known to have been the ancient rood-screen in Chesterfield church, and to have stood in its place until about 1843, not long subsequently to which time it was re-erected in the position it now occupies.
That this screen dates from the first half of the fifteenth century, maybe, perhaps, as early as about 1430, I infer from the character of its fenestration. The latter, consisting of a single panel of pierced tracery in each bay, is an exact counterpart of the stone window-tracery of the period. It differs from the method of timber screen construction evolved subsequently, in which the muntins run from top to bottom of the openings, and in which the effect of tracery in each several bay-head is obtained by a combined series of separate units of pierced work let into grooves sunk in the upper part of the muntins. In the Chesterfield rood-screen, on the contrary (as also in the fourteenth century rood-screen at Kirk Langley, already described), the upright shafts in each bay merely support from below the tracery above in the head, instead of holding it in position as between two sides of a frame. Neither, again, in the Chesterfield example does the spacing of the batement lights correspond with that of the three lights at the bottom. The uneven number of the latter is abnormal. It became far more usual, as timber screen-work developed, for the fenestration to be divided by a central muntin into two lights (as at Breadsall and Fenny Bentley), or (as in other parts of England) for the central muntin, remaining a constant factor, to be supplemented by one pair or more pairs of muntins, as the case might be, so that the number of lights comprised in a single bay would, in all events, work out to an even number.
And now to describe the sculptured figure work at Chesterfield in detail, beginning at the north end of it, and proceeding from left to right. First, then, is an eagle; and next, a composite beast, having the head and horns of an antelope, the snout of a boar, and a chain round the neck, clawed feet, and the body and tail of an ox. Although, therefore, the one represents St. John, it is out of the question that the other can ever have been intended for an evangelistic symbol, notwithstanding they are both accompanied by scrolls. Then succeed six demi-angels, clothed in albs, and issuant from conventional cloud-wreaths; their wings pointing downwards in an oblique direction, with the ends of the feathers crossed in saltire, every one’s over his neighbour’s. Each angel bears one or more emblems or instruments of the Passion: the first, the crown of thorns; the second, the cross; the third, the seamless coat, together with the dice; the fourth, a shield displaying the five sacred wounds; the fifth, the lance and three nails; the sixth, the scourge and hammer. That this series was originally longer is evident from the abruptly mutilated feather-tips of another angel’s wing upon the southern or right hand extremity. He would, doubtless, have held the ladder and pincers; but even thus, the usual tale of emblems would scarcely be complete without the reed and sponge, the thirty pieces of silver, or the cock that crew thrice. How many, then, altogether of the angel figures are missing it is impossible to tell. Moreover, it seems probable enough that there would also have been animals with scrolls to balance those at the opposite end. A detail of the rood-screen and of the sculpture above it, is shown in the accompanying illustration.
The date of the angel ornament appears to be somewhere between 1465 and 1480. What remains of it now measures in length 14 ft. 6 in. by one foot in height; the figures being carved out of the solid, and occupying, in ordered row, the concave space of a band sunk between two beads. That this is no rood-beam, but a superficial ornament for the breast-summer, I can vouch, for two reasons; firstly, because the timber itself is a mere board, not exceeding four inches in thickness at the top, the thickest part of it; and secondly, because at the back are unmistakable traces of mortice holes for the joists that were fixed at right angles to it to carry the rood-loft floor. I know nothing that so much resembles this admirably appropriate ornament as that in a corresponding position in the stone pulpitum at Canterbury Cathedral; and in a wooden parclose at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. And yet I have no hesitation in pronouncing that the Chesterfield example surpasses the others in beauty and variety of design. It is, in a word, a very model of its kind.
Now that screens in churches cannot have been, by quite unanimous consent, regarded as contravening “the principles of the Protestant Reformation,” whatever is to be understood by that portentous phrase, is clear from the practice of erecting such fixtures having from time to time continued long after the demise of Derby’s benefactress, Queen Mary Tudor. Thus the chapel at Risley, erected in 1593, was furnished with a chancel-screen of curious design, comprising cherub-heads and other Renaissance details. Later on, the south aisle at the old parish church of Wilne having been prolonged eastward to form a memorial chapel to Sir John Willoughby, who died in 1602, there was set up across the archway a heavy timber screen, with gates, which bear the arms of Willoughby and Hawe. The composition as a whole affords a striking sample of the depraved taste and secular spirit of the age. Among the elaborate carved ornaments may be identified representations of Hercules with his club; a Roman lictor with fasces and axe; satyrs and centaurs; all intermingled with pompous, warlike trophies of cannons, muskets, and drums! On the back of the screen is the date of its production, 1624. Later on, a church was built at Foremark in a spurious Gothic style, and Bishop Hacket consecrated it in 1662. It contains a characteristic oak chancel-screen of massive build and lofty elevation, with four glazed openings. To the above, all of them noteworthy instances of post-Reformation screenwork in Derbyshire, must be added the screen which separates the chancel from the nave or ante-chapel in the chapel at Haddon Hall. For, though parts of its woodwork, particularly the buttressed muntins, must be assigned to an earlier date, the main portion of it unquestionably was remodelled at the close of the sixteenth or during the first half of the seventeenth century. The turned balusters, which in this case supply the place of fenestration in a Gothic screen, are, like the wainscoting which lines the chancel walls, obvious products of a later epoch.
In fact, so persistent altogether was the tradition, and so hard to kill, that even in Dr. Hutchinson’s debased structure, which took the place of the demolished All Hallows’, the new chancel was not left unwarded, but was screened by iron grates. These, though exhibiting in their design the style of the period, yet reproduced, strange to say, quite a mediæval scheme of arrangement. A grate divided the chancel from the nave, and was continued northward and southward right across the building from wall to wall. And other grates again separated the chancel from the chancel aisles. These grates, though not altogether undisturbed, for the most part remained in position until 1873, when the interior of the building, then barely a century and a half old, was “restored,” and in the process the chancel grille itself, together with other fittings hitherto spared, was taken down. Numerous details of it are figured in the _Chronicles of All Saints’_, issued under the joint authorship of the Rev. Dr. Cox and Mr. W. H. St. John Hope in 1881, to which volume all who may be interested in a genuinely historic specimen of eighteenth century wrought ironwork are hereby referred.
There is one peculiar variety of mediæval screen arrangement which may be said to belong to a class by itself. It is sufficiently uncommon, being confined almost exclusively to domestic chapels, of which the former infirmary chapel of Dale Abbey, and such that now serves the purpose of parish church of Dale, furnishes an interesting example. A sketch of the interior, in 1870 or thereabouts, is given on plate xvii. of the late Rev. Samuel Fox’s _History of St. Matthew’s, Morley_ (1872).
The chapel consists of chancel, nave, and south aisle, the latter separated from the nave by a wooden partition, formerly solid; long since, however, by its panels being sawn out, converted into open screenwork. But the main point of interest is the screen which divides the nave from the chancel. Screen and partition alike are of oak, and rest on a stone plinth. The chancel screen is very quaint in its severe simplicity. It has no tracery, but the mouldings are of the fifteenth century, the approximate date assigned to it being 1480. It consists of seven rectagonal compartments, _i.e._, a central doorway with three openings on either side; the muntins supporting a flat ceiling of timber, which, extending back as far as the wall, divides all that portion of the chapel westward of the screen itself into two floors. The upper one of these opens, gallery wise, into the chancel. Traces of a somewhat similar arrangement exist in a ruined oratory at Godstow Nunnery, on the banks of the upper river, near Oxford; and another instance has been noted in one of the chapels at Tewkesbury Abbey church. It is paralleled also in a sort at the private chapel of Brede Place, Sussex, but the plan of an upper storey, supported by a partition screen, does not express itself there in nearly so striking and complete a manner as at Dale. Other instances known are the chapels at Berkeley Castle and Compton Wynyates respectively. It may be mentioned that at Dale, since there is no internal communication between the gallery and the ground floor, the former has to be approached by an external staircase through a door on the upper level.
And, next, to consider the subject of the rood-loft. It would, of course, be situated at a greater height than the screen; as a rule, immediately above the latter, and connected organically with it, the structural braces being boxed within a casing of coved panel-work or of vaulting, with groins and bosses in imitation of stone masonry. As originally erected, the ancient rood-screens at Ashover, Breadsall, Chaddesden, and Norbury furnished instances of groined vaulting, now perished. The only screens, to the best of my knowledge, in Derbyshire which have not lost their vaulting are the rood-screens at Fenny Bentley and the parclose of the south transept in Chesterfield church. The first-named has been a good deal restored, and the latter has not altogether escaped. Both are examples of screens in which the irregularly shaped panels between the ribs are enriched with tracery ornament, a device that enhances the overhanging vaults with a delightful suggestion of mystery lurking within their shadowy recesses. I do not think that the Chesterfield parclose was ever surmounted, in rood-loft fashion, with a parapet, although the upper part of it expands eastwards and westwards quite far enough to have provided the accommodation of an average rood-loft had it been required.
The nearest approach (except the Fenny Bentley example before quoted) to a rood-loft survives at Wingerworth, a structure in some respects unique, in Derbyshire at any rate. Of its peculiar character the photograph conveys a better idea than any verbal description. I do not think it can have been erected earlier than 1480, nor later than 1520. Perhaps midway between the two, _i.e._, 1500, _circa_, is the most correct date to assign to it.
On the left-hand side may be observed the doorway, twenty inches wide, through which, pierced in the easternmost spandril of the north arcade, a rood-stair, now consisting of seven steps, emerges on to the platform itself. The head of this aperture consists of a stone lintel, which, being cut on its under side into the form of an obtuse angle, produces, roughly, the appearance of a four-centred arch. In the south or left-hand jamb are still fastened two iron hangers for the door, now no more, which opened navewards upon the loft.
In the early sixties of the nineteenth century, there remained on the plaster of the east wall of the nave, above the ancient loft, considerable traces of colour. In vivid contrast to this painted background showed up the bare silhouettes of a large cross, and of an upright figure on either side of it; thus marking clearly the place where the great rood, with the Mary and John, had stood in former days. At the present time nothing of these interesting relics is to be seen; the interior of Wingerworth church having been freshly distempered over with a smart coat of colour wash, while two immense hatchments, with pompous black cloth surrounds, occupy the place sacred from of yore to the memorial of mankind’s Redemption. What could be more unseemly than selecting this one, of all sites in a church, for the parading of the worldly distinctions of one’s family? Whether it is too late to save the remains of the rood-painting by scraping off the distemper which hides it, I cannot say; but there can be no question whatever but that the profane hatchments ought to be taken down as quickly as possible, and placed somewhere—anywhere—else than where I saw them in March, 1907.
The painting at Wingerworth is not the only instance of its kind known to have survived in Derbyshire down to the nineteenth century. Thus at Hayfield, according to a memorandum made on the spot by one of the brothers Lysons, who visited the old church shortly before its demolition in 1815, there was to be seen “at the back of the gallery, facing the nave ... a painting of the Crucifixion, with St. John and St. Peter ... said to have been painted (in) 1775, but probably from an ancient one which had remained undisturbed at the time of the Reformation.” That this work, for the figure of St. Peter to have been substituted for that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, must have been retouched by some post-Reformation hand, may readily be believed; but, in the same connection, the question presents itself as to whether the gallery noted by the famous topographer could by any manner of means have been the ancient rood-loft at Hayfield church.
But to return from speculation to facts and figures. The timber extant of the rood-loft at Wingerworth reaches from side to side of the nave, a length of 15 ft. 1 in. The distance from the floor of the nave to the base of this structure (itself barely an inch above the crown of the chancel arch) is 8 ft. 8½ in.; from the nave-floor to the platform at the top of it, 11 ft. 8½ in.; giving it an elevation of exactly three feet. The width of the platform from back to front is 38 inches. In the upper surface of the breast-summer, or main beam of the westward projection, are the remains of fourteen mortice holes (averaging 4 inches in length each, with a centring of 13½ inches), sunk to receive the tenons of the upright stiles that framed the front of the loft parapet, the height of which there is no present means of gauging. The uppermost front edge is embattled. Below, in a cavetto, at intervals, are nine square pateras of Gothic leaf ornament. The receding cove beneath the breast-summer is divided by moulded ribs into eight panels, the longitudinal ribs centred at 44 inches, and being crossed by a single latitudinal rib, with carved square bosses and Gothic leaves in the angles of intersection. This panelling occupies a superficial breadth of 32 inches between the breast-summer above and the moulded timber at the base.
The back of this structure fits close against the wall, and there is not the slightest trace of any supporting screenwork ever having touched, still less been attached to, its lower edge. I am disposed to think that the arrangements at Wingerworth must have been analogous to those of Sawley church, and that the solution of the problems they both present is to be arrived at by a comparison of the existing remains of rood-loft and screenwork in these several churches, the one supplementing the details which lack in the other, for the reconstruction of the original scheme. In both cases is a round-headed arch—that at Wingerworth is not later than the beginning of the twelfth century, while that at Sawley has been pronounced, on expert authority, to have been erected still earlier, bearing as it does the evidences of pre-Norman workmanship—an arch which, were it not for the impost at the spring on either side, resembles more than anything else (with its broad, flat soffit, no splays, no orders, no mouldings) a simple aperture cut in the solid wall. The arch at Wingerworth has an opening of 6 ft. 7 in. wide, or 7 ft. at the spring, by 8 ft. 8 in. (short measure) from floor to crown; that at Sawley, 14 ft. 1 in. wide, its height in proportion.
Now although at Wingerworth there is nothing of the sort remaining, at Sawley, on the contrary, the original fittings of the chancel have, fortunately, been preserved. These, comprising return stalls, with the rood-screen behind them, stand complete _within_ the chancel. Nor could the screen, so placed (because of the thickness of the wall, interposing a bulk of 3 ft. 2 in. between chancel and nave), possibly have formed one organic structure, with the rood-loft on the other side, in the nave. I take it that in both cases the chancel was fully and finally furnished with its stalls and screen at a time when rood-lofts had not yet become a necessity—the fittings actually are of a heavy and somewhat primitive type of Perpendicular—and that when, later on, a rood-loft did require to be provided, circumstances left no choice open but to treat it as something entirely independent of the already erected screen. For to have set it up on the top of the latter, on the chancel side of the arch, would have defeated the primary object for which the rood-loft, as an adjunct to the performance of public worship, existed. Without doubt the only place where it could adequately fulfil the requirements of a rood-loft was against the east wall of the nave, above the chancel arch. The length, then, of the rood-loft at Sawley would be the same as the width of the nave, viz., 26 ft. 3 in.
All this is no idle theory. It is confirmed by the existence, in Sawley church, of a pair of stone corbels projecting from the masonry at the east end of the nave above the chancel arch. The level of the corbel in the north-east corner is 17 ft. 1 in. above the floor; that of the opposite one in the south-east corner, 17 ft. 3 in. These would have supported the ancient rood-beam, there being ample wall-surface at the east end of the nave for the rood, as well as for the rood-loft (containing, possibly, the “payre of orgyns” named in the inventory of the sixth year of Edward VI.), to have been situated beneath, either crossing the opening of, or (as at Wingerworth) crowning the summit of, the chancel arch.
Neither are the above-named cases themselves without parallel. It is recorded that there was in the nave (19 ft. 10 in. wide) of the old church at Parwich (pulled down in 1872) a sort of rood-loft projection similar in construction to that at Wingerworth, and that in the course of demolition the ends of four stout, squared timbers were taken out of the masonry about two feet above the crown of the Norman chancel-arch, a low-pitched one like (although, being more richly ornamented, of later date than) the Wingerworth example itself.
Owing to the scarcity of wills, churchwardens’ accounts, and such other documents as might have thrown light on the subject, the exact date of the introduction of the rood-loft cannot, in the case of the great majority of churches in Derbyshire, be ascertained. At Elvaston church, in 1474, the first Lord Mountjoy left instructions for the carrying out of certain works, which would most likely have included the erection of a rood-loft there, though the latter is not named in the bequest. In fact, the earliest and only instance I know of in which the rood-loft was explicitly provided for, is the will of Sir Henry Vernon, of Haddon. The date of this document is 18th January, 1514, and the item in point runs: “I bequethe to the churche of Bakewell and to makying of the Rode lofte £6.” The will was proved on 5th May of the next year, 1515, not later than which date the testator’s wishes, so I assume, would be carried into execution.
I have already indicated how the general absence of aisles from the chancels of its churches drove chantry-founders in Derbyshire to occupy the space of the nave or nave aisles. But, more than that, it effectually checked the expansion of the rood-loft and screen, and confined them within the nave’s width. For wherever the eastern wall of an aisle, conterminous with the nave, is pierced by a window (instead of by an arch leading into a chapel beyond), it does not admit of either screen or loft being carried across it in continuation of the screen and loft in the nave. The only sure sign of the alternative plan having been adopted, _i.e._, of rood-loft having extended to the outer wall of the aisle, would be a rood-entrance in that outer wall. But such a sign I have not met with anywhere in Derbyshire. I searched for it in Chesterfield church, the plan of which, so it seemed to me, might have admitted the rood-loft being carried right across the building, including the aisles; but in vain. I cannot point to a single instance in a Derbyshire church of which it could be positively asserted that the rood-loft extended beyond the limit of the width of the nave.
The usual place for the rood-loft door and staircase in this county would appear to be either in the nave or in the inner corner of an aisle immediately adjacent to the nave. Such approaches, or traces of them, exist or are known to have existed at, among other churches, those of Ashbourne, Ashover, Aston, Bakewell, Barrow-upon-Trent, Breadsall, Chaddesden, Derby (old St. Michael’s), Kirk Langley, Monyash, Repton, Spondon, Tideswell, Wilne, North Wingfield, and Wingerworth. Nevertheless, as compared with other districts of England, Derbyshire cannot be reckoned among those counties in which rood-entrances and rood-stairs are of very common occurrence. However, where either they do survive or traces of them occur, they afford no exception to the normal dimensions of such structures. Indeed, in Derbyshire there are to be found rood-entrances as narrow as, if not even narrower than, anywhere else in the kingdom. Thus those at Chaddesden and Wingerworth measure each only eighteen inches wide.
In some cases the ascent starts abruptly at a very awkward height from the ground. For instance, at Ashover the lowest step of the rood-stair is 6 feet above the floor level; 6 ft. 3 in. at Wingerworth. Nor in either case is there any perceptible trace of the steps having descended lower towards the ground. For them to be reached, then, where they are, is a feat that could not be accomplished without the help of a ladder. In the case of Wingerworth, however, it is true that, as to whether the rood-stair originally terminated at its present distance from the floor, there is, for the following reasons, much uncertainty. The mother of one Arthur Mower, of Barlow, dying in 1574, and being buried in Wingerworth church, her son wrote down minute particulars of the site of her interment; and the old memorandum book, still extant, records how she “lyeth in the church in the north alley at the head of the alley on the north side, and her feet lieth as nigh of the north side of the grysse” (_i.e._, stair, from the Latin _gressus_) “that goeth up into the Rood-loft as may be.” Now nobody at the present day who wanted to be accurate—and the sole _raison d’être_ of a memorandum like this is to preserve and hand down as trustworthy a record as possible—would dream of describing the feet of a body lying in the north-east corner of the north aisle as being close to the ascent of the rood-stair! To obviate the discrepancy, then, is one not forced to the conclusion that the rood-stair must have been somehow or other prolonged downwards in a northerly direction until it reached the ground at the spot indicated?
Rood-stairs, being no longer required once the lofts had been overthrown, have met with shameful neglect, often with violent maltreatment. In some cases they have been allowed to survive only through having been turned into cupboards for brooms and ladders, gas meters, or water cisterns; but, nevertheless, after full allowance is made for rood-stairs that formerly were and now have perished, there is still left a large percentage of Derbyshire churches in which no permanent stone stairs can be supposed to have existed. In such cases, unless there was a fixed wooden staircase, access must have been obtained by no better means than a ladder the whole way from floor to loft. The practical inconvenience of this proceeding, together with the narrow dimensions of rood-doors and stairs—while their builders were constructing them, it would in most cases have been just as easy to make them half a dozen or so inches wider had there been any occasion—affords corroborative evidence of the impossibility of parochial rood-lofts having been used, or designed to be used, for ceremonial purposes by the officiants at divine service.
In Derbyshire, as elsewhere, ornamental treatment, either of rood-stair entrance or of rood-door itself, is so abnormal as to call, wherever such does occur, for notice. Ashbourne church may be said to furnish an instance in point. There, in the southern transept, the south-east pier of the central tower contains a staircase, which, though constructed doubtless contemporaneously with the building of the tower itself, and, therefore, anterior to the general introduction of rood-lofts, would certainly have served to give access to the rood-loft as soon as ever that adjunct was provided at Ashbourne church. The door, then (see illustration), may not unjustly be ranked among rare examples of ornamented rood-doors. Under a moulded label, terminating on the left in a sculptured head that cannot strictly claim to be an authentic product of the period, stands this handsome oak door of late thirteenth century workmanship. It is divided vertically into two ogival-headed panels, and is enriched with wrought-iron bands and hinges, in a very fair state of preservation, although it is to be regretted that their elegant contour is partly hidden by a clumsy modern timber lining inserted into the masonry opening.
It cannot have escaped the notice of attentive observers how often the steps of rood-stairs in parish churches have been trodden into hollows, as though they had been subjected to much wear and tear. Such must, indeed, have been very constant to have left its mark thus pronouncedly upon rood-stairs, and that, too, in the comparatively short period of their use—in many cases, of not above, perhaps, a hundred years’ duration—between the date of their erection and of the Reformation changes, which sent them back again into disuse. Some other explanation, then, more convincing and more in accord with the evidence of fact than the suggestion of a mere ceremonial function in the rood-loft on special occasions, must be adduced to account for the regular employment of the rood-stair. That the lay folk, being many, rather than the officiant minister and his clerks, being few, were they who trod the stairs leading into the parochial rood-loft, is evident. The main function of the rood-loft in parish churches was to accommodate singers, musicians, and their instruments. Again, it should be borne in mind that very often (as churches, for example, like Ashover, Old Brampton, Edensor, Staveley, Tideswell, and Wingerworth attest) a sacring-bell hung in the eastern gable of the nave, or (as in cruciform churches like that of Ashbourne) in the central tower, in either event immediately above the rood-loft. Than the latter, then, there was no better position that the sacrist could be placed in; the rood-loft affording him an excellent vantage-ground from which to keep an eye upon the movements of a priest saying mass at any altar in the building, and to summon the people at the bidding of the bell when the right moment came for them to raise their eyes and worship the uplifted Host.
Incidentally, again, the rood-loft would have been resorted to as a convenient place from which to reach the rood for its veiling and unveiling. And it must have been hither, also, that those whose office it was to tend and light the beam-lights would have had frequent occasion of coming.
But these are points which open up the subject of the rood itself, and of the various devotions and customs that grew up around it in pre-Reformation days.
The great crucifix, with the flanking statues which usually accompanied it, would either rise from the rood-loft direct, being attached to the top of the parapet, or, in the case of churches which were lofty enough to admit of it and not to cramp the heads of the figures by the roof descending too closely upon them, would be carried above the level of the rood-loft upon a separate beam crossing the eastern extremity of the nave—always provided that the essential condition was to impart the utmost dignity to the rood itself, and to insure its becoming the most conspicuous object in the whole building. Specific mention of a rood having existed in mediæval days is forthcoming in the case of the three monastic churches of Dale, Darley, and Repton, already named; in the collegiate church of All Hallows, Derby; as also in the parochial churches of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Breadsall, Chesterfield, Morley, and Repton.
The figures, to wit, the Christ upon the Cross and the Mary and John beside it, were usually sculptured and coloured, or, less commonly, gilded; and sometimes even clothed also. The existence of the last-named practice is attested in respect of images in general by a long list of jewels and garments belonging to the statue of the Madonna and Child in the Bridge Chapel at Derby, and by an item of “2 cootes of ymagys of lynen cloth and 1 of sylke” at Kirk Ireton; and in respect of roods in particular, by another item which occurs in the inventory of the church goods at Ashbourne, drawn up by order in the first year of Edward VI. The entry in point runs thus: “1 holde cote,” _i.e._, one old coat, “for the roode.” This garment, being described as “old,” would imply, not so much that the custom of employing such things had declined, as that the particular coat in question had become worn through long using. It is more than likely, indeed, that the rood’s wardrobe had been replenished through the generosity of some devout donor with fresh and costlier clothing when required, to take the place of that which had become worn out—for it was very far from being in accord with the spirit of our mediæval ancestors to offer to the Lord and His service that which cost them nothing—but that it had been forfeit already ere this time. It must be borne in mind that the best of everything worth looting had been seized by Edward’s predecessor, and that the catalogues of ecclesiastical ornaments and utensils, drawn up officially in the boy-King’s reign, represent but the pitiful remnants, of little value, left over because they had failed to tempt the rapacity of Henry VIII. And yet, poor and insignificant as they might be, they were not to be allowed to escape further diminution at the hands of Edward VI.’s counsellors and ministers, men whose conduct exhibits a peculiarly revolting blend of avarice and puritanism. That these foregoing remarks are well-founded is illustrated by the language of the inventories themselves, wherein frequently occur such qualifying descriptions as “old,” “outworn,” “torn,” or “broken,” whereas those items are rare to which the adjective “whole” is appended for differentiating the good and complete state of such few articles as happen to be above the average mediocrity of the greater number.
The great rood, as well as all images and pictures in churches, was veiled throughout Passiontide until the latter end of Holy Week, as is exemplified by the mention, in 1466, in a list of the ornaments then belonging to All Hallows’, Derby, of a “grete clothe that coverethe the Rode.” But an item in the inventory taken of the goods of Morley church at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign, viz., “a shete y^t hanged afor y^e Rode,” would appear to have been rather a hanging for the front of the rood-loft, in the presence of or at the foot of the rood itself. Rood-lofts, as is known from other sources, were often covered with “stayned” or painted hangings to enhance their ornamental qualities; or, on the other hand, veiled in white shrouds, like the rood, in Lent, in churches where the imagery and decoration upon the woodwork of the loft itself was too gay and garnished in appearance to be consistent with the solemnity of the penitential season. The past tense in the case of the hanging at Morley church is evidence that the ancient use, whichsoever alternative is referred to, had, by the date of the taking of the inventory, been already discontinued.
In the parish church at Bakewell was an altar of the Holy Cross, “built by the said cross,” situated, that is, near to the great rood, at the eastern end of the south aisle of the building. And in connection with this altar, in the reign of Edward III., a chantry was founded and endowed by Sir Godfrey Foljambe, ratification of the same being granted by royal letters patent in 1345. Further, the deed of confirmation by the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield is extant, wherein are set forth in detail the duties of the office of chaplain of the Holy Cross. From this document it appears that the chantry priest, though celebrating at the same altar, was to say a different votive mass on every day of the week in specified rotation, the mass on Friday being always that of the Holy Cross. Moreover, at every mass, after the _Confiteor_, he was to turn to the people and say, in his mother tongue: “Pray ye for the soul of Sir Godfrey Foljambe, and Anne, his wife, and his children, and brothers of the guild of the Holy Cross, and all the faithful deceased.” Again, a grant of the date 1405 exists, by which one Dom John Chepe, chaplain of the chantry of the Holy Cross in Bakewell, makes over in reversion certain landed property to the service of the said chantry for ever. Another document, of the year 1535, incidentally makes mention of “the burgage of the Holy Cross,” by which is to be understood a piece of land, probably with house property upon it, lying within the bounds of the town, and forming part of the endowments either of the chantry or the guild of that title. The last incumbent of this chantry was William Oldeffeld. On its dissolution, as the pension roll of 30th October, 1552, shows, he was allowed an annuity of £6 in lieu of his former stipend; while William Hole, chantry priest of the holy rood at Wirksworth, is known, from Cardinal Pole’s pension roll, to have been granted £5 per annum. The “rode chauntrye” at Wirksworth was founded, in his lifetime, by Sir Henry Vernon, the same whose will, as already recorded, contained a bequest for the rood-loft at Bakewell.
In Ashbourne church, until the middle of the sixteenth century (as scheduled in the chantry roll drawn up for the purposes of confiscation shortly after the accession of Edward VI.), there stood near the nave, at the foot of the rood-screen, or as near unto as might be, in the south aisle, an altar dedicated to the Holy Cross; to which was attached a chantry, founded in 1392 by the feofees of Nicholas Kniveton, for the daily celebration of the Holy Sacrifice in perpetuity. The deed of confirmation of the same by the Bishop, Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, dated 1404, is extant; as well as an indenture, dated 15th January in the seventh year of Henry VIII. on the occasion of the appointment of a new chaplain. By this document the incoming “rood-priest” covenants to take due care of, and not to waste nor alienate, the chantry goods committed to his custody; the list of which, set forth at length, comprises all the requisite ornaments for the performance of divine service (including “two chests in ye Roodequere” for the safekeeping of the aforesaid ornaments), and the domestic furniture and utensils of the chaplain’s residence as well. At the Reformation, the property and endowments were forfeited to the Crown; but it is of interest to recall how long and in what wise the memory of the institution has been kept alive by the people, for in the ancient garden of the chaplain’s house is a well, which, down to within the eighteenth century, used, by time-honoured custom, to be “dressed” or garlanded with flowers every Ascension Day after a special service in the church, and which, as lately as the last decade of the nineteenth century, was known among the oldest inhabitants of the place by the traditional name of “the rood-well.” For similar reasons a certain parcel of meadow-land in Ashbourne, being another piece of chantry property secularised, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was named “Lampholme”; while certain tenements, as appears from the negotiations which preceded the endowing of the grammar school in 1585, were termed “candle-rents.” Again, a curious illustration of analogous tradition in another part of Derbyshire is furnished by a manuscript commonplace-book which belonged to one Roger Columbell, of Darley Hall. As he died in 1565, it cannot have been written later than in the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The entry is to the effect that in former days the custom prevailed of paying, at Easter, on every house in a parish a duty of “1 fartheynge called a wax farthinge ... for lyght of the alter.”
I have met with no earlier recorded example of a rood-light endowment in Derbyshire than of that at Breadsall. Its charter is dated 1330, on the Sunday after the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By this instrument one Geoffrey, “the Reve” (or steward), son of Ranulph de Breydishale, gives and concedes half an acre of land in Breadsall to the light of the Holy Cross in the church there, “in pure and perpetual alms for ever, freely, quietly, well and in peace.” The charter concludes with, “Warranty to the said light against all people,” above the signatures of the witnesses.
Again, in a list of “serges” (wax candles; in French, _cierges_) “holden up” (maintained) by the bounty of individuals or by the several craft guilds connected with the church and parish of All Hallows, Derby, it is recorded that, in 1484, five such lights had been provided to burn before the rood. For it was not unusual for lay folk to band themselves into a confraternity under the style of the Holy Cross, among the chief duties undertaken by them being that of keeping up the requisite light or lights to burn before the rood in their parish church. Among their privileges, as in the above case of the chantry in Bakewell church, would be that of being specially remembered whenever the chaplain offered the Holy Sacrifice. Chesterfield had its guild of the Holy Cross, for whose sodality meetings and offices was set apart, with the same dedication, the east chapel of the north transept—the very chapel now enclosed by the ancient rood-screen. There was a guild of the rood at Repton also, towards whose funds, in the year 1520, one William Bothe, of Barrow, bequeathed 10s. in his will.
The mediæval custom of burning lights before the rood, and other images, too, was—if one may so express it—a definite and perfectly natural reflex of the life and conditions of the time. Previously to the closing decade of the fifteenth century, the vast continent of America still remained the dreamland Atlantis it had been to Brendan and Meldune; the Queens Consort of Spain decked themselves in the gorgeous bravery of their jewels, and the questing dove fretted unavailingly against restraining bars, until at length one devoted woman, King Ferdinand’s wife, Isabella (the same were parents of our Catherine of Aragon, and grandparents of our own Mary Tudor), offering up her jewels in pawn, found the wherewithal to equip and send forth the great navigator on his momentous voyage. Nor even then could it be otherwise than that several generations must pass away before any practical result of Columbus’s discovery could affect the great mass of the European population, and before cane-sugar could supersede the old-fashioned use of honey for sweetening purposes. Meanwhile, in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, the ancient traditions lingered long; and year by year, when the warm weather came on, the bee-keeper of the Peak would carry his skeps, or wheel them in a hand-barrow (choosing, if he were a prudent man, the night hours for the transit), out on to the moors. And there, amid the wild thyme and heather, he would set the bees down, and leave them all the summer through to gather in their store as long as the flowers were in bloom, bringing them back again into shelter at the first approach of winter. The honey, then an indispensable commodity in every household, would be carefully strained and separated from the comb; helping to pay landlord’s rent in kind, while the wax would go in tithes and free-will offerings to the service of the church. Such, then, since the devotional practices of our pre-Reformation forefathers were not aloof from their social and domestic life, but intimately interwoven and bound up with it, not out of joint nor harmony, but dovetailing and accordant the one with the other; such is the economic connection between votive candle-burning and the industry of bee-culture.
The large share of importance attached to bees, and the widespread extent of the habit of bee-keeping in former times, has left its mark upon the face of the country in many a popular place-name and field-name, whose significance is not perhaps generally appreciated by others than students of folklore and archæology. Mr. Sydney Oldall Addy, in his learned work on Hallamshire, entitled _The Hall of Waltheof_ (1893), enumerates the following instances in Derbyshire:—_Honey_ Spots, a field of two acres between Hope and _Pin_dale; _Bean_ Yard, at Ashover; _Poin_ton Cross, at Hucklow; _Poyn_ton Wood, just outside Dore; and several fields bearing the name of _Pitcher_ Croft in the immediate neighbourhood; and he shows how every one of the words, or roots of words, italicised, in some way or another preserves a directly etymological allusion to the bees or beehives having been kept from of old in the locality so named. If Beeley, Beelow, and Beeholme are doubtful instances in point, as being capable of another interpretation, it is perhaps not wholly unfeasible that the received derivation of Bentley from Benets’ _lag_, or meadow, may have to be amended to bee-field.
But be that as it may, the olden system, in the tangible form of payments reckoned in honey and wax (itself a computation dating from at least as far back as the _Domesday Book_, in which two Derbyshire manors, those of Darley and Parwich, to wit, are valued at so much current coin of the realm and so many sextaries of honey apiece), endured without a break all through the catastrophe of the Reformation, and afterwards almost down to our own times. Thus, in the parish of Hope, part of the small tithes pertaining to the vicar were paid in honey and wax. As far back as 1254, tithes of honey formed part of the emolument of the Vicar of Tideswell. In fact, in the Peak district generally, it was customary for every tenth swarm of bees to be claimed by the parson of the parish, a right which continued to be acknowledged until nearly as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. Thus in 1743, the then Vicar of Castleton records in his journal the receipt of a swarm of bees by way of tithe. Elsewhere, though actual payment in kind had become obsolete, a small fixed duty, payable to the parson in money, long survived. In some parishes, in addition to the ordinary tithes, Easter dues upon various kinds of stock and produce were chargeable, under which head the assessment of bee-keepers was fixed at 2d. per head. In the parish of Twyford, as the _Terrier_ shows, the like sum was claimed “for every hive of bees in lieu of tithe-honey and wax”—a claim which did not cease to be recognised until the nineteenth century, when, in a general re-adjustment and commutation, it was abolished. So the last lingering tradition of the old order was changed, and finally perished.
And here is the place to speak of the fate of the rood and of its accessory loft. Now, although the destruction of rood-lofts, screens and roods, in so far as they were involved in the destruction of the monasteries themselves, may be said to have begun under Henry VIII. in 1536, being followed, two years after, _i.e._, in 1538, by the order for the demolition of all roods and images alleged to be abused by superstitious devotions and offerings—the diversion of the latter into the hands of the King and his myrmidons being, of course, the real motive of the attack—the general and systematic destruction of roods did not take place until Edward VI. came to the throne, nor that of rood-lofts until nearly the end of the third year of Queen Elizabeth. The precise date of the order is 10th October, 1561. It decreed that rood-lofts should be taken down in every church and chapel in the land. It is essential, however, to note that at the same time that rood-lofts were abolished, the partition of the chancel—such was the term then used for the rood-screen—was expressly and emphatically ordered to be maintained. It is a noteworthy fact, also, that in the set of articles put forth for Archbishop Parker’s first metropolitical visitation (that of 1560–1), which included the county of Derbyshire as part of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, no reference whatever is made either to roods or rood-lofts. Meanwhile, however, the order of 1561 was promulgated, and Parker then entered upon the campaign in earnest. His visitation articles of 1563 contain the inquiry: “Whether your rood-lofts be pulled down according to order prescribed, and if the partition between the chancel and church [_i.e._, nave] be kept?” The same question would naturally go the round of the southern province, within which, as is well known, Derbyshire lies. In 1565, then, when Bentham made a visitation of the county, among the instructions issued for the occasion is found the following:—“That you do take down your rood-lofts unto the lower beams, and do set a comely crest or vault upon it, according to the Queen’s Majesty’s Injunctions set forth for the same.” This shows that Derbyshire enjoyed no exemption from the general order already mentioned. Two years later, _i.e._, in 1567, Parker, in his metropolitical visitation, reiterated his previous order of 1563; evidence as to the standard that was required throughout the country. Nor did his successor, Edmund Grindall, fail to follow his example. In the new archbishop’s articles to be inquired of within the province of Canterbury in the metropolitical visitation of 1576, the question is asked: “Whether your rood-lofts be taken down and altered, so that the upper parts thereof with the soller or loft be quite taken down unto the cross beam” (this, of course, means not the rood-beam but the transverse beam or breast-summer), “and that the said beam have some convenient crest put upon the same?” Later on, when, in 1584, Overton visited the Lichfield diocese, he inquired, among other points: “Whether your rood-lofts be clean defaced and taken away?” It is unnecessary to pursue this phase of the subject any further; but it is scarcely to be wondered at if, from such persistent and accumulated hostility on the part of the authorities, as I have retailed, no Derbyshire rood-loft has survived to this day in its complete and original state.
According to an inventory of the year 1527, there were in All Hallows church, Derby, a “pair” of great organs, and another small “pair” beside. Further entries, occurring both under the dates 1569–70 and 1582–3, mention the existence of the leaden weights “which lay upon the organs” to compress the bellows. Whence it has been inferred that because the almost invariable place for the organ in pre-Reformation times was the rood-loft, therefore the latter structure was still standing in the church down to 1583. But surely the evidence on the point is negative, and far too slight to warrant any such conclusion! For the documents which speak of the organs are altogether silent as to their whereabouts in the building; and even though they may have been situated originally on the top of the rood-loft in All Saints, in the face of the notorious fact that rood-lofts throughout the country had been condemned twelve years previously, the bare mention of an organ outliving the general wrecking of the rood-loft (which, indeed, it was fully entitled to do, from the legal point of view) cannot be taken for proof of the law in force against rood-lofts having been disregarded in this or in any individual instance, unless there be produced some more direct and explicit testimony to the contrary.
If Dr. Pegge is to be credited, the rood-loft was still standing in Chesterfield church in 1783. At Staveley, it is recorded to have stood until 1790. At Hayfield, until about 1815, it remained entire, according to the Lysons; and according to the same authority’s manuscript notes at the British Museum, though the fact is not recorded in their published history of the county, the rood-loft still survived at Taddington in or about the year 1812. Possibly, also, at Tideswell the rood-loft, although transferred to the west end of the church, remained until as lately as about 1820. Beside these, there are no authenticated instances of the survival of the ancient rood-loft in Derbyshire after the date of the general destruction.
This measure was as arbitrary as also it proved, within no great space of time after, to have been shortsighted. It was arbitrary because, considering the circumstances at the date of the decree being issued, it was uncalled for and unwarrantable, once roods themselves had ceased to be. For the ruin of roods accomplished under King Edward had been so immense, that their restoration in the short space of Mary’s reign could not but be partial; and already Elizabeth’s puritan friends, acting upon her injunctions of 1559 against “monuments of superstition,” had hastened to destroy as many images as were found standing at the date of her accession—and that, one may be sure, with the greater energy and thoroughness, since the Queen herself was really suspected at first of being unsound in this very matter of the crucifix. The order of 1561 was unreasonable, therefore, because every one of those customs, such as the burning of lights before the rood, or hanging up festal branches and garlands about it, clothing it with holiday robes or Lenten wrappings, the ceremonial stations at its feet, accompanied by sprinkling with holy water or by censings—these and, in fine, whatsoever other observances in olden days had had the rood for centre and object, were necessarily quashed and rendered no longer practicable thenceforward, the rood itself having been abolished. That the order was shortsighted, too, is patent from the fact that in consequence of it there sprang up a fresh crop of difficulties, which have never been satisfactorily settled nor disposed of to this day. I refer, of course, to the question of organs and choristers, and of the most convenient and suitable positions for them relatively to occupy in a church. The rood itself had indeed vanished, but with it not all the functions and uses of the rood-loft. That the latter had, from a practical point of view, enormous advantages, is a fact which, lost sight of at the time amid the frenzy of bigotry, which insisted on its being condemned to destruction, very quickly began to be appreciated after that the ancient rood-loft was no more.
It is a highly instructive object-lesson, and one not unprofitable eke for our own times, to note what ensued; nor can I, with the facts of the case before me, impugn the logic of the extreme reformers, who were so ill-content with the disappearance of the rood-loft that they never ceased to agitate for the prohibition of church organs as well. This, then, happened. The opponents of instrumental music in divine service were not allowed to have their will; and yet the retention of an organ after the organ-platform, the rood-loft, to wit, had been done away with, was very quickly found to be unworkable, unless some other provision were made for it and for the singers, whose voices the organ was meant to accompany. The removal of the rood-loft at the east end of the nave, therefore, was inevitably followed, sooner or later, by the erection of a gallery at the opposite end of the nave. In some instances, indeed, portions of the old rood-loft were actually re-erected, being incorporated in a new organ-gallery at the west end of the church. Thus, at Parwich, when, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the old west gallery came to be taken down, the main beam of it was found to have a carefully chamfered edge and to have been enriched with painting and gilding, thus proving beyond all question that it must have formed one of the timbers of the ancient rood-loft, if not the original rood-beam itself.
Scarcely more than fifty years had elapsed since the demolition of rood-lofts had been ordained before a gallery was erected at the west end of All Hallows, Derby, and, what is more remarkable, in 1636 another, upon which the term, not void of significance, “loft” actually occurred in the inscription to commemorate the donor’s name and benefaction. Nor was this the only example on record. Another inscribed “loft” was erected at the west end of Heanor church in 1633, and another at Osmaston in 1747, while several more, though not explicitly so inscribed, were, as contemporary evidence proves, referred to at the time as “lofts.” Of these, the gallery at Ashover (1722), at Bakewell (1751), and at Stanley (1765) are examples. At Marston-on-Dove, in 1712, the parish agreed to erect a “loft,” as the recorded proposal for the scheme shows, “for ye schoolmaster of Hilton and his scholars and ye singers to sitt in.” At Hayfield, as shown in a plan of the seating accommodation and scale of charges for the same, under the date 1741, “every singer upon ye organ loft” paid the modest sum of 4d. a year by way of pew-rent. Again, at Hayfield a new “loft” was set up at the west end of the building in 1746.
If the Osmaston example carries the tradition of the “loft” forward as far as 1747, on the other hand the Heanor example affords a most valuable link with the remoter past by carrying back the tradition to the period of the pre-Reformation rood-loft. Standing until within living memory, it bore the inscription: “This loft was built at ye sole cost of John Clarke, of Codnor, gent., in the year 1633, who dyed An^o. Dn^i. 1641, et Anno Ætatis 88”; on the face of it a dry and prosaic statement of fact, but yet to all who can read between the lines, how eloquent a tale of the times does it unfold, for this man, who at eighty set up a singers’ gallery or loft in his parish church, would be a child of about eight years of age at the date when the royal decree went forth for the general destruction of rood-lofts.
If the coincidence is the more striking in the case of galleries erected at the east end of the nave, exactly on the site of the ancient rood-loft, as at Chesterfield and the neighbouring village of Old Brampton, at Eyam, Mellor, and Tideswell, it must be admitted that the west end of the nave was the more usually selected position. Western galleries are known to have been in use in the nineteenth century in the following churches, amongst others: Allestree, Ashbourne, Beighton, Brailsford, All Saints’ new church in Derby, Duffield, Eckington, Etwall, Killamarsh, Kirk Ireton, Long Eaton, Mackworth, Marston Montgomery, Matlock, Morley, Mugginton, North Wingfield, Parwich (old church), Smalley, Spondon, Stanley, Taddington, Tickenhall (old church), Wilne, and Wingerworth. Although at the last-named the base of the rood-loft remains, the destruction of the parapet had made it unsafe for use, and necessitated the erection of the newer gallery. The above list might be very much extended, but there is no need to multiply instances.
The renewal of the west gallery at Tideswell church in 1824, and the erection of that at Sawley in 1838, or that at Beeston as late as 1840 (only, however, to be restored away again in 1871), brings the tradition of building organ-galleries down almost to the middle of the nineteenth century. Some, indeed, among those named in the above list continued in position as late as the seventies of the nineteenth century, that at Ashbourne even until 1882.
Between the earliest recorded instance of a gallery being built, in 1614, to the latest, in 1840, represents a lively stream of tradition, uninterrupted for just 220 years, until the influence of the Tractarian movement set the tide flowing in the contrary direction, and eventually succeeded in compassing the doom of the old-fashioned organ-gallery altogether. The responsibility rests not with Puritans, but with the opposite party in the Church of England; and it is a sad, if edifying, commentary on the fallibility of human judgment that, at the very time when Holman Hunt was painting his mystical pre-Raphaelite picture of “Christ wounded in the House of His Friends,” the Tractarians—they, of all people!—were busy, from one end of England to the other, obliterating the last historic vestiges of the ancient rood-loft in our churches. If only these well-meaning men (and many others like them, down to the present time) had been content to restore literally rather than ostensibly; if, instead of introducing surpliced choirs into parochial churches where such a thing had never been known before in the whole course of their history; if, instead of dragging down the organ from its antique gallery where they found it into the main body of the building, and thereby displacing table-tombs and other memorials of the faithful departed; shutting out the glorious light of windows (as at Ashover), hiding their exquisite tracery, or, worse, positively thrusting out windows and overthrowing walls, and erecting externally (as at Ashover, Bolsover, Langwith, Littleover, Mackworth, South Normanton, and Spondon) counterfeit Gothic organ-chambers to accommodate this huge and vehement obstruction; if, instead of perpetrating all these innovations and disfigurements, they had simply been content to follow loyally the precedent of their forefathers, and had relegated organs and singers together to a gallery situated in the ancient place for them, viz., over the entrance to the chancel, how much heart-burning and division might have been avoided; how many a venerable church fabric, now irretrievably ruined in contour and proportions, might have been saved from injury, and have retained both in the original form in which they had come down to modern days, intact!
That which follows consists of additional particulars concerning the present subject, arranged, in alphabetical order, under the names of the various localities.
Alkmonton.—At this place, a township of Longford, was a hospital dedicated under the invocation of St. Leonard. Lord Mountjoy endowed it by will in 1474, at the same time directing that a quire and parclose screen should be erected in the chapel attached to the hospital. The institution was suppressed at the Reformation, and no remains whatever of the chapel and its screenwork survive.
Allestree.—The church was entirely rebuilt in 1866–7. The length of the ancient rood-loft, assuming that it did not exceed the width of the nave, would have been 19 ft. 3 in., the dimensions of the old church. For stone screenwork, supposed to have belonged to Allestree church, see _supra_.
Ashbourne.—The eastern aisle of the north transept is screened off from the rest of the transept and from the chancel, to form the Cockayne chapel. The screen, which runs from north to south, is divided by a column into two sections. The northern section is 14 ft. 3 in. long, and comprises eight compartments, including the entrance; the southern section is 14 ft. 8½ in. long, and comprises nine compartments. The section of the parclose which runs from west to east is 19 ft. long, and comprises eleven and a half compartments, including the gates, which open into the chancel. The total height of the screen is 8 ft. 10 in., the compartments varying in centring from 1 ft. 6 in. to 1 ft. 10½ in. The tracery in the heads (rectagonal in formation) measures 13½ in. deep at the deepest. The openings in the north to south section are 65 in. high, the lower part 3 ft. high; the openings in the west to east section 68 in. high, the lower part 33 in. high. Immediately below the rail, which is embattled, runs a horizontal panel of pierced quatrefoil tracery to the depth of 8½ inches. The screen is surmounted by a moulded cornice, with a cavetto, occupied at intervals by square pateras. The muntins are buttressed. The whole is of Perpendicular design of about the middle of the fifteenth century. Each compartment of the openings is protected by an iron stanchion and saddlebar; the stanchions being obviously modern, with cast-iron fleur-de-lys finials. The door which opens into the stair in the south-east pier of the central tower is 1 ft. 7 in. wide by 5 ft 9 in. high to the crown of its two centred arch. There is no sign of the door which opened into the rood-loft, but the stair leads to a passage which runs round all four sides of the tower at the crossing.
Ashover.—The rood-screen stands in the hollow order of the chancel arch, so that its westward face does not project beyond the level of the east wall of the nave. The screen stands 10 ft. 3 in. high by 13 ft. 7 in. long. It consists of six bays, of which the two midmost comprise the doorway, with an opening of 3 ft. 8 in. and a height of 6 ft. 11 in. to the crown of the depressed arch. The bays have an average centring of 27½ inches, the fenestration being 5 ft. 5 in. high from the cill to the crown of the arch, with tracery in the head to the depth of 20½ inches, that is, 11 inches lower than the level of the spring of the former vaulting. The cill is ornamented with flamboyant geometrical tracery. The solid part from the top of the cill to the ground is 3 ft. 6 in. high, with blind tracery to the depth of 8¾ inches in the head. The screen is without gates, and is surmounted by an embattled cresting, beneath which is a band of pierced quatrefoil ornament. Neither of these can be in its original position, the screen having formerly been vaulted, although the whole of the groining ribs, as well as the springing-caps and the bases, are now wanting. The carved lintel over the doorway is crested along the top, the spandrils being filled with Tudor roses. These, together with the four-centred arches of the bays, point to a late phase of Perpendicular. The coat of arms of Babington, impaling Fitzherbert, in the middle, being only fastened on where the vaulting ought to be, affords in itself no criterion as to the date; although the general style of the screen is entirely consistent with the tradition that it was the gift of Thomas Babington, who died in 1518. This screen originally was enriched with painting and gilding, the last traces of which were egregiously removed in 1843. This was the date, also, of the destruction of the remains of the handsomely carved parclose-screenwork which surrounded the Babington chantry in the easternmost bay of the south aisle. The parclose had a door opening into the nave and another into the aisle; and the coats of arms now attached to the rood-screen used to be respectively over these two doorways. The Babington chantry was founded in 1511, in which year the rood-screen and rood-loft are believed to have been erected. The rood-stair was blocked up at the “restoration” of 1843, but has since been reopened. What remains of it consists of six stone steps, starting in the south-east corner of the north aisle, and emerging through the easternmost spandril of the north arcade into the nave at a height of 10 ft. 10 in. from the floor. The rood-door opened naveward, two iron hangers still remaining in the south jamb of the doorway, which is 18½ in. wide by 5 ft. 8½ in. high. The door-head consists of a horizontal lintel. The rood-loft itself cannot have extended beyond the width of the nave, a length of 20 feet. The rope of the sacring-bell in the gable immediately above the loft is shown in the photograph.
Bakewell.—A spiral staircase in the wall adjoining the north-east pier of the central tower stood practically undisturbed until the rebuilding of the piers in 1841. It was entered from the south-east corner of the north transept, and would in all probability have served for the rood-stair when the rood-loft came to be introduced. The oak parclose which shuts off the east aisle of the south transept to form the Vernon chapel, is divided by the columns of the arcade into three sections. Each of these is 11 ft. 7 in. long by 8 ft. 5½ in. high (exclusive of the modern cornice), and consists of eight rectagonal compartments centring from 1 ft. 4¾ in. to 1 ft. 5½ in. The openings are 4 ft. 3½ in. high, with Early Perpendicular tracery in the heads to the depth of 1 ft. 0½ in. The cill of each compartment shows traces of having been guarded by two stanchions, no longer existing. The lower part of the screen is 4 feet high. The rail is carved with a wave pattern, with a trefoiled circle in each trough and swell, and a band of quatrefoils runs along the base. The upper half of the panels below the rail is perforated with a pattern like a square-headed traceried window of the period. The greater muntins have shafts, with polygonal bases. The screen is left, in midland fashion, unfinished at the back. The two midmost compartments of the southernmost section form the doors.
Belper.—In 1821 the chancel of St. John Baptist chapel was separated from the nave “by a plain screen composed of small arches and round columns of wood.” The screen itself eventually disappeared, but long afterwards the marks remained in the walls showing where it had been fixed.
Bolsover.—A new organ-chamber, built in 1878, was eloquently described as having “dwarfed the old chancel and spoilt the north aspect of the church.” The ruin which the “restoration” of the above year began, an accidental fire in 1897 completed.
Brackenfield.—The rood-screen from the old, ruined chapel, built in 1520–30, now stands in the modern church. It has suffered much, not only from exposure to the weather in the interval between the dismantling of the chapel and the transfer of the screen itself to its present position at the west end of the new building, but also from excessive repair (see illustration). The screen measures 16 ft. 9 in. long by 7 ft. 7 in. high. It is rectagonal in construction, and consists of a central bay divided into two lights above the lintel of the doorway; on either hand of the latter being two bays of three lights each. The head of all the lights is occupied to the depth of 10½ in. by tracery of Decorated design, coarsely executed, with heavy cusps and crockets. The openings of the bays are 4 ft. 5½ in. high; the bays centring from 3 ft. to 3 ft. 2½ in. The lesser muntins are arrested by the cill, the panels beneath which are wanting. The cornice and principal muntins are rudely moulded. The door has a clear opening of 3 ft. 1 in., and is 5 ft. 8 in. high to the crown of the four-centred arch of the lintel. One of the spandrils of the latter is carved with the arms of Willoughby and Beck impaled. From a drawing which is hung up, _ad captandum vulgus_, inside the building, it appears that a project is on foot to adapt this ancient screen to the chancel entrance of the modern church. And, as though the unfortunate screen had not suffered cruelly enough already, the scheme involves its further dismemberment by cutting out the doorway in the centre, and mounting it on the top of a fresh doorway as a scaffold for a novel and Christless cross. It is earnestly to be hoped that those in power will not have the money nor the unwisdom to inflict this last unwarrantable indignity on the venerable screen of Brackenfield chapel.
Breadsall.—In 1826 the rood-screen is known to have been standing in its original place, defining the boundary of nave and chancel. It was then much dilapidated, “the centre portions of the ornamental work thereof being entirely gone.” It is not quite clear whether by the parts referred to as missing, the entrance gates or the traceried fenestration-heads are meant. At any rate, a drawing made thirty years later, and published in the Anastatic Drawing Society’s volume for 1856, howsoever inaccurate in detail, shows what had then become of the remains of the rood-screen. Though much of the delicate feathering is omitted from the pierced tracery ornament, the main outline unmistakably identifies it as having been made up into communion rails. And it is doubtless to this circumstance that the beautiful details of the rood-screen, when once taken down from its proper position, owe their preservation. Such as they were represented in 1856, they remained at least as late as 1877, when the church itself was “restored.” The removal, about the year 1360, of the chancel arch, the structural demarcation between nave and chancel, had rendered a rood-screen æsthetically indispensable. And so, when this prominent ornament was broken up—some time between 1830 and 1840, more probably at the former date—it left a blank so unsightly that at the “restoration” of 1877 a misdirected attempt to remedy the defect was made by the insertion of a paltry, sham-Gothic arch. At the same time the ancient levels of the building were falsified by the improper raising of the chancel floor. In 1877, “many parts of the base” of the ancient screen could “be detected in the pews of the body of the church.” Subsequently, all these fragments were collected, and, together with those portions of the screen that had been turned into communion rails, carefully stored up with a view to ultimate reconstruction. Meanwhile, however, a few strips of screen-tracery were ill-advisedly worked up into a cornice round the brim of the present pulpit, a situation for which, as anybody can see, they are in no wise suited. The restoration of the screen itself was contemplated as far back as 1877, but thirty years were destined to elapse before it could be realised. The project had long been dear to the heart of Mr. F. Walker Cox, though he did not live to see it fulfilled; and so, when he died in 1905, it was decided to restore the rood-screen as a suitable memorial to him. The work was completed by the end of July, 1907. In this case there were certain well-determined data to serve as guides for the proposed reconstruction. The width of the nave, 23 feet, had only to be divided by the unit of the bays (the remaining tracery of which demonstrated that the average centring was rather less than 2 ft. 6 in.) to show that there should be ten bays in all; while the tread of the topmost step of the rood-stair, which pierces the arcade wall and opens southwards into the nave at a height of 13 ft. 0½ in. above the floor level, indicates the proper height of the ancient rood-loft floor. Each bay is divided into two lights by a central muntin. The tracery resembles Decorated design more than Perpendicular, but certain very late details in the spandril of the ancient gates, the design of which otherwise corresponds, preclude the work from being dated earlier than the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Of the twenty pieces of tracery in the fenestration-heads, ten are original and untouched, five are old ones repaired, while five had to be supplied altogether new; the necessary carved work being ably done by Mr. H. W. Whitaker, son of the rector. There are two variations in the tracery pattern which runs along the west side of the rail. The heads of the rectagonal panels are filled with tracery to the depth of 6¾ inches.
Chaddesden.—The church was “restored” in 1859, when, I presume, it was that the rood-screen came to be surmounted by an embattled cornice. At the recent “restoration,” by Mr. Bodley, the battlements were removed, and the upper part of the screen finished more in accordance with the original design, with vaulting, on the western front The authentic portion of the screen is 9 ft. 11 in. high by 15 ft. 9 in. long. It consists of eight bays, of which the two central ones go to form the entrance, having an opening of 3 ft. 3½ in., the bays centring at 1 ft. 11½ in. The openings are 5 ft. 7½ in. high, with tracery in the heads to a depth of 3 feet, _i.e._, 21 inches lower than the level of the springing. The entrance has a semi-circular arch, cusped on the under side. The bottom part of the screen is 4 ft. 3½ in. high, with blind tracery in the panel heads to the depth of 12½ inches. On the west side the principal muntins are buttressed, the buttresses square in plan, with moulded bases; out of the top of the buttresses rise boutel shafts, with polygonal and embattled caps, from which the groined vaulting springs. The rood-screen stands at the entrance of the chancel, and the rood-loft must have extended only from side to side of the nave. The rood-stair entrance, now stopped and bricked up, is in the north-east corner of the south aisle. The doorway is 18 in. wide by 6 ft. 7 in. high from the floor to the crown of the arch, or obtuse angle, which is cut in the underside of the lintel. The exit from the stair on to the loft, though blocked, is traceable in the wall in the easternmost spandril of the south arcade of the nave.
Chesterfield.—The rood-loft is recorded to have been extant as late as the year 1783. There is not the slightest trace of a rood-stair entrance visible. In 1841, Sir Stephen Glynne found the nave galleried completely round, including the eastern part of it. “The gallery,” he says, “at the eastern extremity contains the organ.... In the gallery beneath the organ is incorporated a portion of wood screenwork of rather elegant character,” all which goes to show that the rood-screen stood at the western crossing, the arch there having a clear opening of 14 ft. 2½ in. In 1843, the “restoration” of the church was begun; and the building having first been thoroughly swept of its fittings, Mr. Gilbert Scott (afterwards knighted) was then called in to do the garnishing. “I found,” he writes in his _Recollections_, “the rood-screen to have been pulled down and sold; but we protested, and it was recovered.” In a footnote he adds, “There is no such screen now in Chesterfield church.” In this, as happily the event proved, the architect was mistaken, but his remark would seem to imply that Sir Gilbert Scott himself is not to be held responsible for the rood-screen being improperly re-erected in its present position between the north transept and its eastern chapel. The screen is 14 ft. 6 in. long, and consists of five bays, centring 2 ft. 10½ in., of which the middle bay, having a clear opening of 2 ft. 5¼ in., comprises the doorway. It is fitted with doors, but they are not original. Indeed, the screen as a whole has been much renovated. The total height of it as it stands is 13 ft. 3½ in. down to the floor. The fenestration openings are 7 ft. 3 in. high, and the pierced tracery in the head extends to a depth of 21½ inches, and contains an embattled transom, which makes a horizontal line right across the screen from side to side. At a distance of 1 ft. 11 in. below the base of the tracery a second transom intersects the screen, not, however, continuously, on account of the doorway in the middle. The bays, though fashioned in rectagonal compartments, exhibit a pronouncedly arched formation, which suggests that they should be vaulted. At the same time the spandrils are traceried and cusped, a feature inconsistent with vaulting, and such, therefore, that I am inclined to attribute to the meddling hand of the “restorer.” It only remains to add that the principal muntins are buttressed on the westward front, and that the tracery has the usual midland characteristic of a flat surface at the back.
More complete than the above-named is the imposing parclose which stands in the south transept, and, extending throughout the entire length of the transept, divides it for the two chantry chapels to eastwards. These chapels were dedicated to Our Lady and St George respectively, while against the westward face of the screen stood the altar of St Michael on the left, and that of St Mary Magdalene on the right. The screen consists of ten bays, four-centred; the third bay from either end forming a doorway to lead into the corresponding chapel beyond it. The bays vary in centring from 3 ft 4½ in. to 4 ft. 1 in. The upper part of the screen expands eastwards and westwards with groined vaults (partly renovated, the interspaces traceried on the west side but plain on the east) into a wide platform of from 5 to 6 feet from front to back, and such that was apparently never finished with a loft. The elevation of the whole (exclusive of a stone plinth of 4½ inches) is 15 feet in height. The fenestration is strikingly lofty, the distance from the cill to the summit of the opening being 8 ft. 6 in., with tracery in the head to the depth of 26 inches. The base of this tracery descends 10 inches below the level of the caps and the springing of the vaults. The tracery itself is of handsome Perpendicular design, and is enriched with tall, crocketed pinnacles running up through the midst of the batement lights. The opening is sub-divided horizontally, at a distance of 49 inches from the crown of the arch, by a transom cusped and feathered on its under side. The solid part of the screen is 4 ft. 7 in. high. The rail is carved with a waving tracery pattern; the blind panelling is traceried in the head, and has a band of quatrefoil ornament along the bottom. The principal muntins are faced with clustered shafts. The more northern of the two doorways, with Tudor roses in the spandrils and cinquefoil cusping on the under side, is original, but the other doorway is an unsatisfactory piece of patch work.
With regard to the third screen, Sir Gilbert Scott, in the above-quoted _Recollections_, wrote: “There existed in the church, as I found it, a curious and beautiful family pew and chapel, enclosed by screenwork, to the west of one of the piers of the central tower. This was called the Foljambe chapel, and was a beautiful work of Henry VIII.’s time. What to do with it I did not know. It was right in the way of the arrangements, and could not but have been removed. I at last determined to use its screenwork to form a reredos.” Such is the “restorer’s” frank and ingenuous confession of his wanton abuse of a grand, historical monument. The remains of this chantry parclose (its openwork still disfigured by metal panels painted with the Ten Commandments, according to the fashion of the day, _circa_ 1843–5) were forced to migrate once more in 1898, and now (March, 1907) stand against the west wall of the south transept. The screenwork is rectagonal in plan. As at present made up it is just under 22 feet long, and consists of six compartments, centring from 3 ft. 6½ in. to 3 ft. 8 in., of three lights each. The openings are 3 ft. 7 in. high, with stem-like tracery in the head to the depth of 9½ inches. The upper part is coved, projecting 35 inches from back to front. The total height from the top of the cresting to the ground just exceeds eight feet. The solid part below the openings has apparently been cut down, since it is only 2 ft. 11 in. high. The rail is carved with a band of quatrefoils and trefoils in the alternate swell and trough of a wave line, and the blind panelling is traceried in the head to the depth of 5 inches. The cornice is elaborately carved with a grape and vine pattern on a wave basis, with shields introduced; the band itself, however, absurdly turned upside down. It displays the following seven distinct coats of arms, which appear by themselves and in various combinations of impalement:—
Ashton A mullet. Breton A chevron between three escallops. Bussex Barry of six (represented as seven). Foljambe A bend between six escallops. Leeke On a saltire (not represented, as it ought to be, engrailed), nine annulets. Loudham On a bend, five cross crosslets. Nevile A saltire ermine.
That the screens now standing do not represent the full complement of screenwork with which Chesterfield Church was enriched when the shock of the Reformation fell upon it, is attested by additional fragments of tracery, one of them let into the underpart of a communion table in the south-east chapel, and more in a low rail about the site of the former high altar.
Church Broughton.—In 1820, portions of the parcloses that used to shut off the chantries or side altars at the end of the aisles still existed; but in 1845–6 the church was “repaired,” with the usual result that the screens were dismembered. Considerable remains, however, of the oak tracery are embodied in a modern reredos behind the altar.
Crich.—The screen which is now in St. Peter’s, Derby, and which was originally in Crich church, is constructed on a rectagonal principle, that is to say, it was never vaulted. It consists of six compartments, each having an average opening of 13 inches and an average centring of 1 ft. 5 in. The height of the fenestration from the cill to the top of the opening is 58 inches, the head being occupied to the depth of 12½ inches by pierced tracery of Perpendicular design, with an embattled transom intersecting it in a straight line from side to side. The screen itself is divided into two halves, each 4 ft. 4 in. long, and each having, immediately below the cill, a pierced panel of cusped tracery of trellis-like design, 3 ft. 10 in. long by 6¾ in. high. For the rest, seeing that the screen has been made up for its present position, to give the dimensions of its total height and length would only be to mislead.
Denby.—“A rudely carved screen between nave and chancel”—such was the description given of it in 1825—was swept away in the atrocious “restoration” of 1838.
Derby.—It is piteous to recall with what reckless devastation the mediæval churches of the borough of Derby have been visited. The fate of All Hallows’ has been already told. Another of the ancient churches of the place, St. Alkmund’s, was destroyed in 1844. Its former rood-loft, to judge from the ground plan of the building, must have extended across the width of the nave only. It has been related by those who knew the old church, that the tower, together with the westernmost bay of either aisle of the nave, were divided by screening from the remainder of the building. What these screens were like records do not state, but it is probable enough that they may have been made out of the remains of the rood-screen or parclose screenwork. St. Michael’s Church, totally demolished in 1856–7, contained a carved screen of Perpendicular workmanship. The rood-entrance and staircase led up to the loft from the south aisle. At St. Peter’s tradition tells that a parclose formerly separated the eastern portion of the north aisle from the body of the church; and remnants of wooden screen work were discovered under the flooring of the pews at the re-pewing in 1859. The screen which now occupies the place of the original rood-screen, belonging, as it did, to Crich church, has been already described under that head.
Doveridge.—In 1877 it was observed that three pieces of carving known to have come from hence, and suspected to have belonged to the former screen here, were affixed to the chest in Sudbury church. These pieces comprised the centrepiece on the front of the chest, and the ornaments on the two sides of it.
Elvaston.—The drastic “restoration” of 1904, for all the unstinting munificence of the vicar, Rev. C. Prodgers, who entrusted the work to no less eminent an architect than Mr. Bodley, has swept away a number of landmarks, the removal of which the antiquary must record only with pain and sorrow. Beside the lengthening of the chancel by eleven feet eastwards, and the abolition of the east window, a proceeding alien to the traditions of an English parish church, the rood-screen itself has been shifted and tampered with in a manner far from conservative. Previously to the “restoration” the screen consisted of eight bays (the two midmost bays comprising the doorway), and stood in the recess of the chancel arch, into which space it exactly fitted. In the course of the “restoration” the screen (found to have been patched with common deal in many places, and the whole of it thickly coated with brown paint) was taken to Cambridge to be pickled, and to have the decayed and the deal portions replaced in oak. Thus far, good. But returning renovated and lengthened by a fresh, narrow bay of blind panelling at each end, so as to ruin its proportions, the rood-screen, now too long for its former site, was erected anew in a more westerly position against the east wall of the nave. It was, moreover, provided with elaborate metal gates, which are too high to give a satisfactory effect, inasmuch as they break the horizontal line of the wooden rail to right and left. Another flagrant offence is that the carved ornaments, integrally joined (as at Chaddesden) to the east side of the entrance jambs of the screen to form the ends of the return stalls, have been detached from their proper place and egregiously misappropriated for the ends of new sedilia. Their sides are richly panelled with Perpendicular tracery, in the top of which is a human face, with the hair and beard treated like Gothic leafage. The upper extremities of these stall-ends represent cherubim, below which are large carved crockets, models for boldness of outline and vigorous crispness of execution. The occurrence on the elbows respectively of a lion and an antelope, chained and collared, both of them seated on their haunches, confines the production of the work within determinate historical limits. The lion has been described as “chained,” but after examining it in search of the chain, I came to the conclusion that the latter is merely a wavy lock of the lion’s mane. As to whether there is a chain or not will probably always remain a moot question, like the heads of the famous lions over the gate of Mycenæ. Assuming, then, that this particular lion is chainless, it would stand either for the lion of England or the white lion of the house of March; while the antelope, gorged and chained, is the familiar cognisance of the de Bohuns. These two together would be the heraldic supporters of Edward IV. (1466–1483), and therefore bear out the presumption that the rood-loft and screen were erected in his time by bequest of Lord Mountjoy. This nobleman’s will, dated 1474, directs that the parish church and chancel of Our Lady at Elvaston should be “made up and finished completely” at the cost of his estate. The “chancel” referred to can hardly be other than the enclosed chapel, now occupied by the Earl of Harrington’s family pew, in the south aisle. As long as the stall ends remained in their original situation attached to the rood-screen, the heraldry they display afforded a valuable clue to the date of its execution. But their dislocation and perversion amounts to the falsification of a historical document. For who that in years to come shall see them as at present made up into sham sedilia, will ever be able to identify them for what they truly are? The harm, done, however, is happily not irremediable, for the stall ends can yet be restored to their rightful place. To do so without delay is no more than an act of justice due to the past and the present, as also to future generations. The dimensions of the Elvaston rood-screen (exclusive of the modern accretions) are: height, 10 ft. 7 in., and length, 16 ft. 4 in. The bays centre at two feet, the doorway having a clear opening of 3 ft. 8 in., with a height of 8 ft. 3 in. from the floor level to the crown of the door-head arch. The latter is segmental, and on the under side feathered with rose-tipped cusps. The shield in the middle is modern, and so also (though doubtless a reproduction of the old) is much of the encrusted ornament which surmounts the door-head. The pattern of it is one of inter-twisted stems, branching into crockets on the upper side. The fenestration on either side of the doorway has a clear opening of 5 ft. 8½ in. high, with tracery (forming the outline of an ogival arch) and encrusted ornament in the heads to the depth of 35½ inches. An embattled transom runs through the head of the side bays, but is arrested in the two bays of the doorway. Beneath the fenestration the solid part of the screen is 4 ft. 3 in. high; each bay with tracery in the head to the depth of 11½ inches. The whole screen is a magnificent specimen of Perpendicular design. The parclose in the south aisle encloses the easternmost bay of the nave arcade. It measures 17 feet long from east to west, and then, turning at a right angle, with a length of 14 feet from north to south, joins the south wall of the aisle. Its height, exclusive of the stone platform on which it is mounted, is 8 ft. 10½ in. It has a doorway of 2 ft. 1½ in. wide on the north, and one of 1 ft. 11½ in. on the west. The bays or compartments vary from 18½ inches to 21 inches wide. The height of the fenestration is 54½ inches, with tracery in the heads to the depth of 25½ inches. The lower part of the screen is 46 inches high, and it is pierced, parclose fashion, by a band of pierced tracery, forming long panels 9½ inches high. For the rest, this parclose is similar in design to the rood-screen, only that the main shafts of the parclose are more handsomely treated with buttresses and tall, graceful gables, terminating in crocketed pinnacles. The cavetto of the lintel contains square Gothic pateras. Neither screen shows any trace of colour. No rood-entrance nor stair remains, but from the plan of the building it is evident that the former rood-loft could not have exceeded in length the width of the nave.
Fenny Bentley.—There is no structural division between nave and chancel, and the rood-screen has been repeatedly shifted backwards and forwards, but it is now standing approximately in its original position. Injured, but surviving the many dangers and vicissitudes through which it had to pass, it remained without repair until about 1848–50, when it underwent complete “restoration” (the vaulting being practically all renewed), and that very creditably done for the time. The screen is 18 ft 2 in. long by 9 ft. 4½ in. high. It consists of eight bays (centring 2 ft. 3¼ in.), whereof the two midmost go to make the doorway, which is 6 ft. 0¼ in. high to the crown of its four-centred arch, with a clear opening of 4 ft. 1½ in., protected by gates. The fenestration openings are four-centred, and measure 5 feet high from crown to cill, with tracery in the heads to the depth of 1 ft. 8¾ in., nine inches below the level of the vault-springing. The door-lintel has the left-hand spandril carved with a fox and a goose in his mouth; the right-hand spandril with a Gothic flower, not a rose. The lower part of the screen is 3 ft. high, the rail being ornamented with geometrical tracery. The ridiculous travesty of metal stanchions and saddle-bars, carried out in wood, ought to be got rid of as soon as possible. They may not deceive at the present day, but the danger is that the longer they are allowed to remain, the more they will tone down until they have acquired that specious air of antiquity which may enable them to pass for genuine, until some expert will detect the fraud, and perhaps be provoked on their account to call in question the authenticity of the whole screen into which they have become thus unwarrantably intruders. There is no vaulting at the top of the screen on the eastern side. The loft floor measures 57 inches from front to back, exclusive of the modern cresting on the front. There is no sign of any entrance to the rood-loft, but the stair was probably on the north side, in the wall which has now been rebuilt and converted into an arcade. The rood-screen exhibits a fully-matured phase of Perpendicular. It has been variously dated from 1460 to 1500. One local tradition declared it to have been erected by Thomas Beresford (of Agincourt fame) as a thank-offering after the Wars of the Roses. At any rate, it must have been already _in situ_ before 1512, when a chantry was founded by James Beresford, LL.D., and there being no aisle nor chapel to contain the altar, a parclose screen was erected round it in the south-east corner of the nave. The enclosure had its own flooring of encaustic tiles. Locally called “the cage,” it stood in its original place untouched until 1877, when, in the same year of his appointment to the rectory of Fenny Bentley, Rev. E. J. Hayton, with the proverbial officiousness of a new broom, nimbly cleared it aside. The only possible justification for this disturbance of a historic landmark is that it enables the beautiful rood-screen to be seen to greater advantage than it could have been while the other screen stood in front of it. The exact place where the parclose abutted on to the rood-screen is defined by a missing moulding and a light mark in the wood of the lower part of the bay immediately to the south of the entrance gates (see illustration). Subsequently the displaced parclose, incorporated with much new work, was set up, in one continuous length, between the modern north aisle of the nave and the modern north chapel. It now measures 14 ft. 8 in. long by 6 ft. 8 in. high, and consists of thirteen rectagonal compartments, with two different patterns of tracery in the head; eight of one pattern and five of the other.
Hathersage.—A small piece of carved oak tracery of Perpendicular style, being part of a screen originally in this church, was to be seen subsequently among the objects in the Lomberdale House Museum.
Hault Hucknall.—In 1875 there were kept in the vestry two fragments of oak tracery of Perpendicular design; placed, one upside down, with their two lower edges contiguous, so that the arched forms were made to appear like circles. They are thus depicted in the first volume of Cox’s _Derbyshire Churches_. Beside these, in the eighties of the nineteenth century, there were in the church tower several more pieces of tracery and at least one long beam; all of them portions, presumably, of former screenwork.
Hope.—The rood-screen, including its gates, complete, is surmised to have remained standing through all the disasters of the civil wars—at least until the closing days of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate—because of an incidental reference under the date 1658. In a list of the parochial Easter dues discharged in that year, occurs the item of a sum received from young people “at the chancell gate.” This might, however, have meant no more than the spot in the alley where chancel and nave converge, since the common spelling of the word “gate” of the present day was “yate” until the eighteenth century, the original sense of “gate” being rather the equivalent of gangway, path, or thoroughfare. At any rate, all that was left of the screen by 1881 was the oak beam of the plinth or base, showing that there had been at that point one step ascending from the nave into the chancel. This historical relic, however, was not respected, for in 1881–2, the vicar, Rev. Henry Buckston, following the example of Dr. Hutchinson, the bane of All Hallows’, in obstinate defiance of remonstrances, subjected the old chancel to the most drastic and unnecessary treatment.
Horsley.—In or about the year 1825 it was noted by Rev. R. R. Rawlins that “a screen of rudely ornamented open-work surrounded a portion of the north aisle.”
Kirk Langley.—There were originally three screens in this church, namely, the rood-screen and two parcloses. All three of them have been so repeatedly altered and mixed up that it is difficult to follow their history with certain accuracy. The year of darkest tragedy in the annals of the fabric was 1839, when a devastating “restoration” ravaged the ancient wood-fittings. Hitherto the parclose-screen of the Meynell chantry, standing at the eastern extremity of the north aisle, and extending as far as the centre of the first arch, had remained; but it was then removed, and certain portions of it made into a reredos. These fragments, and whatever else could be found belonging to the same parclose, were diligently gathered together by Rev. Frank Meynell, and are now incorporated in a new parclose encompassing the first bay of the north aisle. The cornice, much repaired, contains a handsome border, 4¾ inches deep, of vine and grape ornament upon a wave basis; and there are, in all, fourteen of the old panels, carefully patched together and mounted on canvas backing to strengthen them. They comprise seven (or, to count one slight variant as additional, eight) distinct patterns of late Perpendicular in point of date, but such that so far from being jaded or commonplace, give the lie to the “correct” view of the decadence of later mediæval art, and testify to the inexhaustible vitality and resourcefulness of Gothic fancy to the end. The other parclose stood between the south aisle and the south chapel, screening the Twyford chantry. In 1710 Bassano noted the screen, with the arms of Twyford over its entrance doorway. By 1879 this parclose had been demolished, and parts of it made up with the rood-screen, which yet stood _in situ_, presenting an incongruous blend of Perpendicular and earlier woodwork. Even this, however, has since given place to a brand-new screen, and whatever still remains of the ancient screenwork is now embodied in the box-door in the west tower, as above described. The abolished rood-loft must have been approached from the south, for, although there are no longer any traces to be seen of it, in 1879 it was noted that “the squint from the Twyford quire is within the doorway of the old stairs leading to the rood-loft.”
Long Eaton.—“Within the chancel (now used as a vestry),” writes Rev. Dr. Cox in 1879, “is a piece of old oak carving, which was found, in 1868, used as a joist under the floor. It looks as if it had been part of the cornice of the rood-screen, and is carved with three four-leaved flowers and two heads. Its date is _circa_ 1460.” This carving was probably displaced and abused in the manner described, in 1731, when the church is known to have undergone re-pewing and other “repairs.” The ancient rood-loft extended from side to side of the nave, which is 20 ft. 6 in. wide—or rather it should be, if the whole building had not been tampered with and falsified in 1868.
Longford.—The eastern extremity of both the aisles was formerly partitioned off by carved oak parcloses to form chantry chapels, but in 1826 both these screens were demolished. “From the east wall of the nave, close to the north side of the chancel archway, projects” a stone corbel, which must have had some connection with the ancient rood arrangements, as a support either for the loft or the rood-beam.
Longstone.—“The east end of the south aisle is” [1877] “shut off by an old oak screen, so as to form a family pew. It has a finely carved cornice, and on the north side has the arms of Eyre impaling Stafford ... and over the door which forms the west entrance to the screen is the well-known crest of the Eyre family—an armed leg.”
Mackworth.—Some old oak carving, portions, apparently, of ancient screenwork, were made up into the wainscot at the back of a seat within the porch. The ancient rood-loft may be assumed not to have exceeded the width of the nave, _i.e._, 21 ft. 3 in.
Melbourne.—At the general restoration of the church in 1859–60, the rood-screen was so unsparingly treated as to make it difficult to tell what its original design could have been. It is 13 ft. 9 in. long, and stands at the entrance of the chancel in the eastern crossing. A drawing, published in the Anastatic Drawing Society’s volume for 1862, represents the church in the process of “restoration.” The screen, as there depicted, though it cannot have been even then in its original condition (having lost its vaulting, gates, and solid part at the bottom), differs considerably from the screen in its present state. It dated from the Perpendicular period, and consisted (as in fact it does still) of three bays, the middle one, for the entrance, being the largest. But the three main arches, which once constituted its most prominent feature, have since been replaced by obtuse chevrons, the ungainly massiveness of which is barely relieved by the ill-designed tracery underneath, or by a recent attempt to amend the bungling “restoration” of thirty years previously. It was in 1890, or thereabouts, that this unavailing re-restoration took place. The fact is that nothing can be done with Sir Gilbert Scott’s clumsy framework. To overlay it with applied ornament is only to emphasise its defects. There is but one satisfactory remedy, and that is to remove it altogether, and to replace it by something else fashioned on the beautiful flowing lines of the old Gothic design. The upper part contains eight pierced ornaments, 21½ inches in height from the crown of the two-centred arch to the base of the tracery, and 15 inches in width. Beyond these there is practically nothing of the original work left in the whole screen, which not only gives a very poor idea of what the majestic structure of the fifteenth century must have been, but also is in every way unworthy of the grandeur of its surroundings.
Mickleover.—Rev. R. R. Rawlins, in 1825, described the entrance from the nave as being “through a wooden arch,” near to which were the remains of a piscina. Whether this wooden arch represents the ancient rood-screen or not, it is impossible to tell. At any rate, the piscina shows that an altar must anciently have stood against the front of the screen.
Monyash.—Previously to the “restoration” of 1886–8, in the east wall of the north transept, at a height of about twelve feet from the ground, there projected a wide stone, which had served as the step of the doorway that led on to the top of the rood-loft. The outline of the doorway itself could be traced until the unhappy changes at the above date caused it to disappear.
Morley.—This is one of the few Derbyshire instances of which the plan might have admitted the ancient rood-loft being carried beyond the width of the nave across the aisles to the outer walls of the church. At any rate a piscina at the south-east corner of each aisle shows that there must have been an altar at the end of both aisles, and would also seem to imply that the aisles themselves were partitioned from the eastern chapels beyond by screens in a line with the chancel screen. As to the latter, the tradition in the parish in the time of Rev. S. Fox, who died in 1870, was that the screen, “rather handsome but decayed,” had stood in its place until within rather less than 50 or 60 years of the above date, _i.e._, until as late, perhaps, as 1820, when, not being thought well of by those in power at the time, it was taken down and “sold to a farmer in the village for a guinea or so to serve for a hen-roost or some such agricultural purpose.” However, according to another account, the rood-screen disappeared when the church was “repaired and beautified” in or about the year 1800.
Mugginton.—In addition to the parclose before-mentioned, “a good oak screen of Perpendicular tracery,” it is written in Cox’s _Churches of Derbyshire_, in 1877, “in fair preservation, with a door in the centre, divides the” south “aisle from the chapel. Originally this screen has been continued across the nave, so as to divide it from the chancel. Part of the base of this screen can still be seen in the supports of the pews; and a band of well-carved foliage round the pulpit has probably formed part of the cornice.” It is believed that this screen was broken up at the time of the ruthless “renovation,” _circa_ 1845.
Norbury.—The rood-screen had been fine, but was much mutilated in 1840, according to Sir Stephen Glynne. This screen has since been cheaply and very badly “restored.” It was originally vaulted, but is now made up in a new framework of rectagonal form. The original portions consist of the misused fenestration tracery. These number eight complete, and, over the doorway, two incomplete pierced ornaments, 29 inches deep, and averaging 19 inches wide. Upon some of them are traces of scarlet colour. They are of Perpendicular workmanship, and are all plain and smooth at the back. On the east side of the bottom part of the screen are eight of the original panel-heads of blind tracery, 14¼ inches wide by 10½ inches deep. There is no sign of the rood-stair. There being no chancel arch, there must have been ample space for the display of the rood on a beam across the chancel opening above the rood-loft, which would have extended across the width of the nave, 19 ft. 6 in. The eastern part of the chancel is panelled with oak, which might have come from the former rood-loft. Along the top of this wainscot runs what looks like a breast-summer, consisting of mouldings and a pierced band of vine ornament, to the length altogether of somewhat over 25 feet. The eastern end of the north aisle was formerly screened by a carved oak parclose, which, however, disappeared in 1841.
Ockbrook.—The screen having been brought hither from Wigston Hospital, Leicester, is not to be reckoned among the screens of Derbyshire.
Osmaston, a chapelry of Brailsford.—In 1834 it was noted that a small, plain screen of wood stood between nave and chancel. The entire fabric, however, was swept away in 1844–5, and rebuilt from the ground.
Radbourne.—A parclose, dating from the fifteenth century, if not earlier, formerly screened in the eastern portion of the north aisle.
Repton.—In the parish church, “traces of the stairway to the rood-loft across the chancel arch can still” (it was written in 1876) “be seen in the north-east angle of the south aisle, and it is probable that it was ... removed” in 1792, when the whole church underwent the ordeal of “beautifying” in accordance with the degraded taste of the period. It is, however, only just to the “restorers” of that date to mention that they did abolish the cumbrous blank walls which they found obstructing the openings between the aisles and the corresponding eastern chapels—walls that had, at some previous era of barbarism, been erected, there can be little doubt, in place of the original carved wood parcloses. It is on record that remains of ecclesiastical screenwork, with armorial devices, had become dispersed about the place, and, falling into private hands, were worked up into panelling for a dining-room, the wainscot of a summer-house, and other such-like profane uses.
Sandiacre.—“Up to 1855” (the quotation is from Cox’s _Churches of Derbyshire_), “there were some parts of the old rood-screen still remaining across the chancel arch of Decorated date. Some of this tracery has been used up in the reading-desk, and the pulpit has been made to correspond.” The length of the vanished rood-loft cannot have exceeded the width of the nave, namely, 22 ft. 9 in.
Sawley.—The oak rood-screen extends from side to side of the chancel, 18 ft. 5 in. Its height is 9 ft. 7 in. The heavy lintel is embattled and moulded. The doorway is a plain, rectagonal opening of 3 ft. 5½ in. wide, and without gates. On either side of it are five rectagonal compartments or lights, separated by muntins, and opening 51½ inches high, centred from 1 ft. 3 in. to 1 ft. 5½ in., with early Perpendicular tracery in the heads to the depth of 11 inches, smooth on the eastward surface. The solid part at the bottom consists of a deep, moulded rail and, below, rectagonal panelling without tracery. The westward face of each of the doorway jambs is buttressed, the buttress having a square base. The joinery as a whole is so very coarse and rude as to suggest the product of a rural workshop. The eastern portion of each aisle was formerly screened from the rest of the church by parcloses, which stood intact until 1838. The base of that section of the southern parclose which ran from east to west between the aisle and the nave, was removed on the plea of expediency not long ago by the present rector, who broke it up and caused the soundest parts of it to be turned into music desks for the choir boys in the chancel. The only portions, therefore, that now remain are the lower halves of the western section of either parclose running from north to south. That in the north aisle (which enclosed the chantry of Our Lady) extends over a length of 16 ft. 1½ in., with an interval of 2 ft. 8½ in. for the entrance. It consists of five compartments, and stands 4 ft. 3½ in. high, the buttressed muntins sawn off to the level of the fenestration