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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL JUNE 22, 1907.
ROOD-LOFTS.
IN the parish church of Moreton Hamp- stead, Devon, I have noticed a very curious contrivance for ascending to the leads of the south aisle. In many churches where an aisle roof is on a different level from that of the nave it is made accessible pre- sumably for the purpose of " ridding the gutter," so familiar an item in old church- wardens' accounts by a " vise," or winding stone staircase, in a special turret apart from the belfry or tower. At South Tawton there is a stair in such a turret, outside the south-west angle of the church, for the south aisle, and another stair, within the thick- ness of the walling, at the north-west corner, for the north aisle. Can any one tell me which is the earlier type of construction ?
At Moreton Hampstead the turret is attached externally to the south side of the chancel, though it does not rise from the ground, but is Corbelled out from the face of the wall, its base being at about half the height from the ground to the eaves. On examining the interior of the chancel I found a doorway high up in the south wall, opposite to the upper doorway of the disused rood- loft stairs in the wall of the north aisle. Evidently, in this case, the southern leads were attained by crossing the rood-loft and mounting the short flight of steps in the turret.
Abbot Gasquet in his * Parish Life in Mediaeval England,' p. 56, says that rood- lofts were sometimes entered from without the church, and he instances an outside entrance to a rood-loft at St. John's, Win- chester. May it be that the stairs in this or other instances originally reached higher than the loft, having exits both on the loft and on the leads ? Mr. R. H. Murray, in a very instructive paper on ' The Evolution of Church Chancels ' in the Archceological Transactions of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, gives instances of external entrance to the loft, from the churchyard, at Dunston in Somersetshire, at Watchett, and at Minehead. At the last there was also a stair inside the church, down from the southern end of the loft. In an article in The Gentleman's Magazine signed G. C. ("G. M. Lib.," * Ecclesiology, ed. G. L. Gomme,' p. 85) we are told that in St. Michael's, Beccles (between Decorated and Perpendicular periods), the priest's door has a low, very small, flat-topped porch, over which is a doorway (without chamfer, dripstone, or moulding) on the probable level of the rood-loft, its sill being 9 ft.
from the ground. " What," he asks, " was
its purpose ? " The rood-stairs, he adds,,
are in the north aisle. Several other of his
questions on the subject of rood-lofts might
have elicited interesting answers.
My conjectural explanation of the outside entrance to the loft is that it was for the use of lay musicians, vocal or (query) instrumental, who, it appears, were often itinerants engaged for special occasions,, such as the Easter or Christmas celebrations,, and were sometimes, as at Chagf ord, members of the local " Young Men's Guild." An outside entrance would obviate disturbance,, and profanation, of the chancel by lay intruders.
A variety of different purposes has been assigned to rood-lofts ; probably a chrono- logical distinction between these uses might be established. According to Mr. Murray and other writers, the rood-loft was not a feature of English church-interiors until the fourteenth century. Before this we- had only the rood- or " candle-beam," stretching from wall to wall of the chancel^ above the altar ; and wherever Norman,. Early English, or Decorated stonework contains rood-loft stairs, these are, Mr. Murray considers, after-insertions (chancel piers are often pierced for such) of the Perpendicular period.
At Lydford, where they are in the angle of the chancel and south aisle, and are evidently an afterthought, being extra- ordinarily contracted, and faultily close to a " squint," the doorway is so high in the wall that the lowest step is only about on a level with the floor of the " squint," or the shoulder of a sitting person. I have noticed the same pecu- liarity in some other churches, and have wondered whether the steps in the wall were supplemented by portable ones. But what are we to think when we find the stairs so narrow that it must have been perilous^ if not impossible, for a stout man to ascend them ? May one suppose that the earliest form of loft (whether attached to a screen or not is a secondary question) was but a slight gallery suitable for the slender acolyte to walk along, for the purpose of dusting or draping the high cross and images that stood on its front rail, and of lighting the candles ranged (in sconces perhaps, or on brackets) " before " these ? The accom- modation of musicians in the loft may perhaps have been a later development. And if the vicar with deacon and sub-deacon ever ascended to it, as is said to have been at one time customary, for the reading of
