Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

a flat roof and cieling, and is lighted by large sash windows. The seats are the most offensive description of pews. The one gallery is at the same end with the altar; the font in front of the altar; the pulpit and reading-desk, very massy erections, are on each side of the altar rails. The cost of this building, including various repairs shortly after it was built, was from £18,000 to £20,000!

HOLY TRINITY is in builder's gothic :-it is a mere parallelogram, has no tower, and a roof of low pitch. It cost £7,000; and is of brick, but imitates stone.

This was the state of things in May, 1848. We are anxious to learn what improvements the Bishop has since been enabled to effect;-and especially of what nature is the church at RONDELBOSCH, of which we were led to hope something good. We have readers at the Cape, and

should be obliged to them for more information.

The colony is unfortunate in its stone. There is (1) Ironstone: dug up in small pieces: ugly, and will not stand wet.

(2.) Mountain-stone: hard and durable, but not fit for dressings. (3.) Robbin-island stone: called also slate-stone; splits easily; can only be used in rubble building.

We are informed, however, that search is being made on the neighbouring mountains for a quarry fit for ecclesiastical purposes. Brick has hitherto been employed, mixed with one of the above-mentioned kinds of stone, and then plaistered. The houses are of the same material, and, in the country, are often thatched with reeds.

At Rondelbosch, a village four miles from Cape Town, a church, in the usual colonial fashion, was about to be built when the Bishop landed. He submitted two Middle-Pointed plans to the founders: one of which was likely to be adopted. A church, correct in design and detail, was also promised in Cape Town.

TOURNAI CATHEDRAL.

THE cathedral church of Tournai is, we may venture to assert, the finest certainly the most cathedral-like-in Belgium. It is now most easily accessible by railway communication from Brussels, from Ostend, and from Calais, and yet it has hitherto failed to obtain that attention which it so justly deserves. While the cathedral churches of Malines, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent are repeatedly visited, and are well known to all tourists, this noble church is comparatively neglected, though possessing many more beautiful and remarkable features than any of them, and presenting in its tout ensemble a degree of true dignity, in which all of them are strikingly deficient. superior grandeur seems to arise not merely from possessing a central tower, but from the magnificent development of the Romanesque nave and transepts, aided by the graceful Pointed choir, and the four elegant, but singularly placed lateral steeples, which produce an effect to which the actual lantern tower by itself would be unequal.

This

The plan of the church is a Romanesque nave and transepts, a choir of Transitional character, from First to Middle-Pointed, with a tower at the centre of the cross, and four taller ones singularly placed at the external angles of the transepts, all of which are capped by short shingled spires, that in the centre being octagonal, the others quadrangular. The effect of the four taller steeples grouping round the centre one is very remarkable, and produces in the distant view some curious combinations. Another singular feature is the apsidal termination of the extremity of each transept: the church, in short, is transverse-triapsidal.

The nave has an aisle on each side, with a short additional one on the north, along its two eastern bays, one of which on each side is formed into a porch, and there is a large chapel of later date added on the north side, which appears to be used as a parish-church, and somewhat disturbs the unity of the nave. The choir has on each side an aisle, and a range of chapels which are continued round its eastern apse. Another chapel is added on the south, on which side also is the sacristy. The portal forming the west entrance to the nave has been re-constructed in a Debased Pointed style, of which character is also the large north chapel (or church), which has large pointed windows without tracery. Excepting the features just noticed, the nave and transepts, with the towers attached to them, present a very uniform specimen of plain, but good Romanesque work, though in the towers and transepts, pointed arches are occasionally intermixed with semicircular ones.

The interior is strikingly grand, but the heavy and severe character of the nave contrasts remarkably with the lightness of the Pointed choir. The nave is of nine bays, and has the singularity of a double triforium, as well as a clerestory. The lower arcade and that of the first triforium are nearly similar, and the arches very much of the same dimensions, which is a defect, as it causes the principal arcade to look small and insignificant. The arches are plain, with square-edged orders, neither moulded nor chamfered; the piers of the lower arcade are clustered, having square capitals, with varied sculpture; those of the first triforium are octagonal, each surrounded by four octagonal shafts. The second triforium consists of two low semicircular arches in each bay, springing from a circular shaft. The clerestory windows are large and single, there being between each of them externally, a kind of colonnade of Romanesque shafts. The first triforium opens above the groining of the aisles, and is lighted by a second tier of single windows, ranging above those which light the aisle. On the north side, this arrangement is masked by the addition of the large chapel. The groining of the aisles and of the triforium story is plain and without ribs; that of the nave, originally simple, has been somewhat modernised.

The transepts are almost exactly similar, and the semicircular apses at the ends have a magnificent effect, each having a fine arcade of seven stilted arches, upon circular columns, with square capitals of rude foliage. The triforium is pierced for windows, which contain much stained glass; the clerestory differs from that of the nave, and

exhibits internally a sort of colonnade with alternate large and small octagonal shafts, supporting nearly flat arches. The arcade corresponding with the second triforium is somewhat similar. The groining of the transepts is First-Pointed: that of the northern has studded ribs. The lantern tower is open to the interior to a considerable height, and displays both within and without two tiers of semicircular arches, some of which are pierced and glazed. The four large arches which support it are all of First-Pointed character, though differing in proportions. The eastern one is the loftiest, and the western the lowest, but all spring from similar clustered shafts.

The porches correspond in general character, but that on the north is the most enriched. The doors have several orders of ornamental Romanesque sculpture, and are surmounted by a kind of trefoiled pediment.

There is an Italian rood-screen across the entrance to the choir, the organ is at the west end of the nave, and the pulpit exhibits some of the elaborate carving often seen in Belgium.

The choir has large and fine flying buttresses, with pinnacles externally, and all the bays of its aisles are gabled. The parapets and the pediments of the clerestory are as usual unfinished. Internally, the choir is extremely light, and has lofty and beautiful arcades, which are of a kind unusual in Belgium, and which may be called FirstPointed. There are seven arches on each side, as far as the beginning of the apse, the piers being square, having clusters of shafts with square capitals sculptured with foliage, and the front clusters supporting the groining. The apse forms a pentagon, and has stilted arches, the piers of which are very light, of nearly circular form, surrounded by shafts. The triforium is rich and beautiful, each bay containing three arched compartments, of which the lateral ones have tracery, and the central one is only trefoiled. The triforium wall is pierced with small quatrefoil-shaped windows, which being resplendent with stained glass, and seen through the tracery, produce a fine effect. The clerestory windows are very large, but unfortunately without tracery, excepting the eastern one of the apse, which seems to have had its tracery lately restored, and is filled with modern stained glass. The apsidal chapels are small but elegant, and the windows, which are of two lights, are so closely set as to have almost a green-house effect, which would be much improved by stained glass. The groining of the choir is throughout plain First-Pointed. The windows of the aisles are mostly of three lights, with early Middle-Pointed tracery.

The four lateral towers, it has been remarked, are slightly dissimilar in their ornament. They are lofty and slender, having seven or eight stages of arched openings, mostly semicircular, but some pointed, and with much varied arrangement. The spire of the central tower is octagonal and slated, and there is a clumsy pinnacle at each angle of the tower.

We had much pleasure in perceiving that the work of restoration was going on in this cathedral. Stained glass and polychrome have recently been added, and we do not despair of seeing the tracery replaced, which is now wanting in the clerestory of the choir.

105

ARCHITECTURAL LOCALISMS, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE CHURCHES OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE AND LEICESTER. SHIRE.

A Paper read before the Oxford Architectural Society, June 6th, 1849,* by EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., Corresponding Secretary.

(Continued from page 37.)

AND now we come to the very glory of English parochial architecture, the spires of Northamptonshire, whose mention is alone sufficient to call up countless visions of beauty to the mind of every one who has tarried much among the inexhaustible stores of grace and magnificence which they supply. These superb compositions fall naturally into two classes, the broaches, and the elsewhere more ordinary form, though here the exception, where the tower is furnished with a parapet, from within which the spire rises.

The Northamptonshire broaches are perhaps, for the most part, of the Geometrical period; a few are pure Lancet, a good many are confirmed Decorated, and the fashion endured so long that there are several Perpendicular examples. With some splendid exceptions, as at Raunds, Irchester, and Stanion, they are not very lofty, in fact rather squat than otherwise, and with a very marked character produced by two or three rows of strongly projecting spire-lights. An enriched corbel table is very usual. The towers also on which they are placed are not usually remarkable for height, being often very much like the low Early tower of the other part of the county, with the addition of the spire. There is equal variety in the buttresses, but the diagonal buttress and corner turret are more usual than in the towers without spires. There is very frequently no western doorway, and the west window is commonly a single lancet, or other composition of no great size.

Of strictly Lancet or Early English broaches, I cannot mention very many. A very good, though low, example, has been added to the Norman tower at Kingscliffe, in which the most remarkable feature is this, that the lower range of spire-lights is partially carried down into the perpendicular walls of the tower. The magnificent steeple at Raunds, with its wonderful display of arcades and other ornaments, is familiar to every one, but it is hardly a typical example. The type of the belfry-stage, both in this and the next style, is undoubtedly that with a two-light window, as we have seen in the case of those without spires; a couplet of lancets under a containing arch, and that as often round as pointed, is the most usual form. A good but plain steeple of this kind occurs at Wansford, others at Hargrave and Ringstead; the latter is remarkable for the great height of the spire,

We have not thought it right in a paper bearing the name of its author to alter his nomenclature; but in retaining that of Rickman in this instance, we beg to have it understood that we are not at all more favourable to it than we have hitherto been.-ED.

[blocks in formation]

and the entire absence of belfry-windows. But the best example I know is at Polebrook, which, notwithstanding its injudicious position, is one of the most perfect designs in existence, though without any pretensions to ornament. The spire is perhaps a little later, but the difference is hardly perceptible. The belfry-stage has the flat buttress, the lower parts the diagonal. The belfry-windows are under a round arch. The like is the case at Etton, an extremely beautiful design, though the spire here is not of the genuine broach form, but of that which is square at the base, and immediately becomes octagonal; one much better adapted to wooden than stone spires. The buttresses here are double at the angles, and at the south-west angle a turret is formed, somewhat awkwardly, by the union of two of them.

But still more attractive than these are the spires of the incipient Geometrical period, amongst which that of Warmington must undoubtedly rank first, both for harmony of conception and gorgeousness of detail. Its proportions are much the same as at Polebrook, but the character of the design is altogether different, on account of the double buttresses which extend to the belfry stage, and the much larger belfry windows under pointed arches. The amount of enrichment lavished on these, on the superb western doorway, and even on the spire-lights, is perfectly wonderful, and all pure Early English. Next to this, in point of ornament, we may place Barnwell S. Andrew's, a beautiful steeple, but even more inferior to Warmington, in point of design, than of enrichment. The belfry-stage, which

is diminished from the lower ones, a not very common feature, is decidedly too small, and wants buttresses. There is a belfry-turret at the south-east angle. Paston is also an excellent example; its belfrywindows and spire-lights are a perfect study of rudimental tracery; and we may remark the pedimented diagonal buttresses, and especially the turret, which does not, as is usual when it occurs, terminate under the belfry-stage, but is carried up the whole height, and finishes, in a manner certainly ingenious, but hardly to be called elegant, under one of the squinches of the spire.

Complete Decorated spires are very common. The best are perhaps those earliest in the style, some of which are good studies of Geometrical tracery. Pinnacles and double belfry-windows are now sometimes introduced, as at Wollaston and Wellingborough, unquestionably the finest spires of this style in the county; they are of excellent proportion, and of considerable richness; on the whole, the belfry-stage of Wellingborough recessed between its shafted flat buttresses is to be preferred. Crick is well known, but to my mind very inferior: it has the same kind of spire as Etton; there is a belfry-turret at the north-east angle, and the angles of the belfry-stage are chamfered and enriched with ball-flowers, much as at Canons Ashby, an arrangement I do not much admire: certainly it is not to be compared with the clustered shaft as at Wollaston, or the ever effective flat buttress. Later in the style, verging on Perpendicular, is the steeple at Irchester, remarkable for its immense height; the squinches are so low that pinnacles would have been an improvement; the present arrangement,

« PředchozíPokračovat »