The screens of this period
are constructed in a semi-classic style of design, with features and
details of English growth, and are often surmounted with scroll-work,
shields, and other accessories. Of this description of work the screen in
the south aisle of Yarnton Church, Oxfordshire, constructed A. D. 1611, may
be instanced as a curious specimen.
[Illustration: Arabesque.]
Q. What peculiarity may be noted in the alterations and additions of this
era?
A. A very common practice prevailed, from about the middle of the
sixteenth century, when any alteration or addition was made in or to a
church, of affixing a stone in the masonry, with the date of such in
figures. Thus over the east window of Hillmorton Church, Warwickshire,
(which is a pointed window of four lights, formed by three plain mullions
curving and intersecting each other in the head, which is filled with
nearly lozenge-shaped lights, but all without foliations,) is a stone
bearing the date of 1640. In the south wall of the tower of the same
church (which is low, heavy, and clumsily built, without any pretension to
architectural design) is a stone to denote the period of its erection,
which bears the date of 1655. Pulpits, communion-tables, church chests,
poor-boxes, and pewing of the latter part of the sixteenth and of the
seventeenth century, also very frequently exhibit, in figures carved on
them, the precise periods of their construction.
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