The English Village Explained: Britain’s Living History (14 page)

FIG 8.7:
Examples of church windows showing the development of tracery with lancets (top left), plate tracery, (top right), geometric tracery (bottom left) and reticulated tracery (bottom right); the latter, one of the elaborate forms from the Decorated period
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FIG 8.8:
A drawing of a Perpendicular church with labels highlighting its key features. Large windows with vertical tracery, stepped buttresses, flatter roofs, battlements, large west towers with pinnacles and chantry chapels were distinctive of this period
.

FIG 8.9:
Decorative details around openings are often distinctive of a period. Billets, chevrons and beakheads (a) are usually late 12th century, dog tooth (b) is 13th century, ballflowers (c) are early 14th century and square flowers (d) are late 14th and 15th century in date
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In the late 14th and 15th centuries the emphasis was on the vertical with a new Perpendicular style featuring large windows with tall, straight tracery running their full height. In the finest examples these encompassed most of the wall and flooded the interior with light. Clerestories were larger and often fitted to older churches, roofs were flatter and west towers were the ‘must have’ addition for any parish wishing to display its pretensions. There was also a shift away from the dominance of the mason as stained-glass windows and elaborately carved woodwork screens became equally important features within the building.

FIG 8.10 WRINGTON, SOMERSET:
Towers were the most characteristic feature added to churches in the 14th and 15th centuries and Somerset is blessed with some of the finest
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FIG 8.11:
Tombs for nobles became popular in the 14th century and memorials range from brasses in the floor (popular with the merchant class) to raised chests with effigies depicting the deceased in armour, as above. A sign that the rich were becoming aware of the grim reality of death is the addition of a cadaver (a carved skeleton) viewed through the side of the chest below the effigy (although the actual body in any tomb inside or out was always underground). These memorials are usually the first opportunity you will have to come face to face with local historic figures, although the early effigies are not true representations of the deceased as death masks were not introduced until the later 14th century. The wealthy often continued to bury their dead in the family parish church long after they had moved their home to another manor
.

FIG 8.12:
The Reformation and the period of religious turmoil afterwards caused a dramatic transformation of the parish church as this before (top) and after view (bottom) shows. Wall paintings were limewashed, stained-glass knocked out and screens pulled down
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Another addition to the church which was popular at this time was a chantry chapel, with a private altar where the mass could be sung in memory of the founder (‘chantry’, as in ‘chanting’, comes from the Latin word
cantare
which means ‘to sing’). Tombs and memorials for family members could also be sited here. Anyone in a particularly generous mood could found a collegiate church run by a group of secular clergy who would pray for the soul of the founder. The site would usually include an existing or new edifice, a college building or grammar school for the education of a limited number of pupils and an alms or bede-house for a selection of elderly or poor men. Both chantry and collegiate churches were suppressed at the Reformation in the 1530s, which also marked the beginning of a period of reduced building and development.

Although a few new churches were built in the Classical style during the 17th and 18th centuries, the fabric of existing buildings changed little during this time. Some parts, like towers, were replaced when they fell down but were often built in the now cheaper brick, while many had embellishments added to give them a fashionable makeover to complement a new manor house or landscaped park. Inside seating was often added in this period, including private box pews for important families and galleries high up alongside the
windows and columns to provide extra seating where populations expanded. Church attendance, however, was declining as the more accessible and dynamic nonconformist groups like Baptists and Methodists found a resonance with villagers. They erected chapels which vary mainly in size rather than design, with a symmetrical façade featuring large semi-circular and later, pointed arched windows and a central doorway. Inside, the large single space usually had a gallery supported on wooden or iron columns around three sides.

FIG 8.13: LONGNOR, STAFFS:
Churches built in the 18th century tend to have one large body of the building with tall round-arched windows, as in this example dating from 1780. Nonconformists – religious groups who would not conform with the Anglican doctrine – were from 1689 permitted to worship and in the next ten years nearly 3,000 Quaker, Baptist, Congregationalist and Unitarian chapels appeared. These and many other groups found popularity especially in fledgling industrial villages where the Church of England was slow to erect new buildings, and open settlements where the local lord had little direct involvement. By the 19th century nearly half of the church-attending public went to Chapel, their form similar to the above church, just varying in scale and material
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The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, allowing Catholics to worship openly once again, and the revival in the Church of England in the following decades resulted in the erection of many new churches in the 19th century or the upgrading of older chapels. These were now built in the new Gothic style, some just direct copies of medieval structures, others more creative, but all using the pointed arch. New chapels were still being built, especially for Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists, yet despite all this religious vigour only about half the population in the 19th century regularly attended church, a decline which in modern times has seen numerous smaller churches and chapels become homes, offices, community buildings, or even fall into disrepair.

FIG 8.14 GRINDON, STAFFS:
Victorian churches like this one copied medieval styles and often the only way to differentiate them from original buildings is by the fact the masonry is still sharp edged and consistent throughout the whole building (as it would have been constructed in one go and not developed piecemeal like most medieval churches)
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