Page:Cornwall; Cambridge county geographies.djvu/138

 122 CORNWALL No great elaboration of tracery was possible with granite, and the architects abandoned the thought of making the churches attractive externally, devoting their attention to the internal decoration. The appearance of a large Cornish church now is that it is a long low shed, lacking in height and dignity. But the architect divided it in two by the screen, and thus brought it into propor- tion. Unfortunately, however, in very few have the beautiful rood-screens been left, which were generally spared in the Devonshire churches. Those of Cornwall in no way fell short of those in Devon, but the Puritans first of all, and then the barbarians of the Georgian period swept them away, and the churches in the nineteenth century fell into the hands of local architects who left them "naked, swept" but not "garnished." They were, let us hope, the last of the Cornish wreckers. A few, but only a few screens remain. In the interior of the Cornish churches the chief feature is the absence of a chancel arch, which is almost universal. The arch was unnecessary when the roodloft extended upwards and was backed by a painted board. In some of the churches there are interesting bench ends. At St Austell, the miners' tools are represented on them ; on some rabbits running in and out of their burrows are figured, and seagulls are frequent. In painted glass Cornwall is not rich, except in the 15 windows of St Neot near Liskeard, and in that in the north aisle, and the fragments in the south aisle of St Kewe. The church towers in Cornwall are for the most part square without buttresses, and with four pinnacles. One