Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/191

ROOD-SCREEN, PRIORY CHURCH, CIIRISTCHURCH, HANTS. 143 The niches are separated by graduated buttresses, flanked on tlie lower stage by little shafts, which merge into pyrami- dal heads, and are thence carried up as angular pinnacles. There is peculiar beauty in the arrangement of the lower tier of niches ; the pedestal of each consists of four short columns and bases, liaving boldly carved foliated capitals, the foliage of each capital being ditlcrent, its tendrils or stems running into bosses and forming small groinings between the columns, three of which are insulated and the fourth attached to the back of the niche, producing a most agreeable effect of light and shadow. The screen, which is 9 ft. in thickness, and breaks forward 6 ft. west of the piers of the centre lantern, each return having a doul)le tier of niches of like character to those of the front, is remarkably wide, and unlike those at Canterbury, York, Exe- ter, Wells, St. Al ban's, and Southwell, which extend no further than the centre of the tower piers, this spreads so far laterally as to cut ofi' from view the whole lower part of the massive Norman pillars intended to carry the centre lantern. Such an arrangement under ordinary circumstances might have produced a bad appearance, but in this instance it is eminently success- ful, as tending to conceal an unusual and objectionable contrac- tion of the entrance to the chancel, which is produced in con- sequence of the choir (erected in the time of Henry VI.) being 7 ft. narrower than the Norman nave. The difference in width between these two portions is filled up by piers ornamented with shallow stone panelling inserted under the easternmost arch of the tower ; but the bad effect of this diminished width of the clioii* is greatly obviated by the wide-spreading screen, which also hides the rude corbelling projecting 2 ft, () in. on each side, supporting the piers. This contraction in the dimensions of the choir was manifestly in order to reconstruct it upon the old foundations, as the Norman crypt under the easternmost bay of the choir coincides with the width of the supei'structure, and hence it became necessary to corbel the piers in the manner described, to obtain height and space for the coved canopy work of the stalls, as without this expedient the requisite number of stalls could not have been formed. To have taken down this screen, therefore, (as at one time meditated,) would have laid bare many peculiar- ities of construction most skilfully nuisked, besides destroying the conq)leteness of the building.