The Churches of Coventry eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 98 pages of information about The Churches of Coventry.

The Churches of Coventry eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 98 pages of information about The Churches of Coventry.

The graceful treatment of the windows of the nave and choir clearstories is shown in the illustration.  Comparing these with the clearstory of Trinity nave questions of priority arise.  If not designed by the same mind the influence of one on the other is easily seen.  On the whole the greater rigidity of treatment and the anxiety to increase the area of glass in the Trinity windows suggest that the date is rather later and that the designs did not spring from the same brain.  The roof is very simple, the curved brackets springing from the shafts which run down to the arches below.  The wall is deeply recessed beneath the windows.  The north windows, however, are continued down in plain panels, but this only makes more apparent the fact that they are not placed centrally over the arches.

The north aisle has a doorway and two north windows.  The windows are of good Perpendicular design, and the mullions are continued down the wall below, forming panels.  The lowered sill and recess probably formed a convenient retable to an altar against the wall.  The west window preserves some fragments of glass dated 1532.  There is an obliterated inscription and small etched figures—­among them an acolyte carrying a cross, one of those whose services are mentioned in the accounts after this wise:  “to the crosebeirer and torchebeirer, for Seynt George day, hollieroode day, shire thuresday and Whit Sunday, 12_d_.; to 2 childern for the same dayes 6_d_.”

The south aisle of the nave, including the lower part of the transept, is doubtless the aisle erected for the Gild by William Walsheman in 1357.  The two windows are not central with the nave arches, and the third is not in the centre of the transept.  Their tracery is somewhat peculiar in design and refined in detail, and has the transitional character one would expect from its date.  There are signs on the face of each western tower pier of the altars which once stood there, probably those of the Trinity and St. Katharine, which are known to have existed.

The eastern piers of the tower are later than the western, and very unlike them in plan.  A bold and ingenious treatment of the vaulting shaft of the tower groining is used on these piers; on the western ones the shafts stop upon the ends of the hood moulding.

The choir is now closed by a screen carrying a large rood carved in oak.  Like St. Michael’s, but to a smaller extent, the axis of the choir inclines to the north.  Whether symbolic, or only a part of what may be described as the studied irregularity of the whole building it is hard to say.  The column on each side of the choir is later than the east respond and also later than the west tower pier, but corresponds with the east tower pier.  The deep panelling beneath the windows must have been carried out when the clearstories were constructed in the fifteenth century.

The south aisle of the choir, the original chapel of the patron saint, is now fitted up and used as a morning chapel.  The piscina still remains in the south wall, and there is a trace of the old altar visible on the wall.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Churches of Coventry from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.