An essay on the history of English church architecture prior to the separation of England from the Roman obedience . oken. We still plaster them and de-corate them, either by painting or with colouredpaper, on the same principles, however badly ap-plied, as those of a pompeian villa, or a medievalhall. Imagine a handsome apartment, say inGrosvenor square, restored upon the principle ofa spurious truthfulness—its painted decorations, itsenriched plaster-work all removed; and the naked,honest brickwork carefully pointed in colouredmortar :—after the application of such a process,it would not, I
An essay on the history of English church architecture prior to the separation of England from the Roman obedience . oken. We still plaster them and de-corate them, either by painting or with colouredpaper, on the same principles, however badly ap-plied, as those of a pompeian villa, or a medievalhall. Imagine a handsome apartment, say inGrosvenor square, restored upon the principle ofa spurious truthfulness—its painted decorations, itsenriched plaster-work all removed; and the naked,honest brickwork carefully pointed in colouredmortar :—after the application of such a process,it would not, I think, be fair to judge of the inten- Those portions of the design in which the sufferings of theLord, and the anguish of His mother, were represented, have,of course, been destroyed ; but much of the merely decorativework, together with a figure of a bishop upon the southernreveal of the recess, are in an unusually complete state, anddisplay a very remarkable refinement of colour. These houses were discovered only to be destroyed im-mediately afterwards, in order to enlarge the railway goodsyard. PLATE St. ALBANS ABBEY-CHURCH. NORTH SIDE OF THE NAVE. THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. 101 tion of the architect who had designed the room,from the appearance which it might then many of our ancient monuments have faredlittle better. A norman interior so treated serves to illustratethe barbarism, not of the eleventh century, but ofthe nineteenth. Before leaving St. Albans I will mention, in ordersomewhat to relieve the dryness of our subject, acurious history which connects itself with that the rule of the eighteenth abbat (Robertof Gorham), in the middle of the twelfth century,there lived in the parish of Langley, by Watford, aservant or tenant-farmer of the abbey, whose son,Nicholas, having a turn for letters, was desirous tobecome a monk. The lad accordingly underwentthe usual examination, but he failed to pass the re-quired standard, a
Size: 1403px × 1781px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectchurcharchitecture
