Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/188

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. AUG. 24, 1907.

tinental example is stated to have occupied three hundred years in all.

Touching the reference to cemeteries, it is not quite clear whether MR. ARKLE, writing from Birkenhead, alludes to that town or Liverpool, which possesses no Oake Street. If Liverpool is meant, then the Jews' Cemetery was at the corner of Oakes Street and Boundary Place (and not Crown Street, as stated, which is some distance away). WILLIAM JAGGARD.

GREENSTED CHURCH, ONGAR : OAK v. CHESTNUT (10 S. viii. 26). It is not at all likely that chestnut was used in part con- struction of this (or any other) church in England earlier than the fifteenth century. A belief existed at one time that, in mediaeval ecclesiastical work, chestnut was somewhat in favour ; but such has since been admitted to be a mistake. A long discussion upon the subject took place, about twenty-five years ago, in The Building News, in which the late Mr. Thomas Blashill, architect to the L.C.C., and other authorities took part. It was found that the earliest example of chestnut so used in this country is to be seen in the fifteenth - century rood-screen at Rodmersham Church, Kent.

Will MR. HENRY TAYLOR please forgive me for adding that no old oak (far less -chestnut) was ever known to get so hard in the course of time " that the saws and axes of workmen are blunted in the act of cutting it " ? This is not the case. Few people, if any, during the last half century, have had more material of that description pass through their hands than I have. Although age distinctly hardens the wood, it can always be more or less freely mani- pulated.

A similar misleading tale ran the round of the newspapers a few years ago, relative to some ancient oak in the parish church of SS. George and Mary at Cockington, near Torquay. This was said to be "like iron," and to turn the edge of every chisel. Pur- posely paying a visit to the place, I asked to see this wonderful wood ; and upon its being shown me, I found it cut easily !

HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

ROOD-LOFTS (10 S. vii. 482; viii. 55). The Rev. P. W. Phipps in his ' Records of Upton-cum-Chalvey ' (pp. 14-17) gives an -account of a richly carved rood-screen of oak which was added to the very ancient church of St. Lawrence at Upton about 1450, and was destroyed in the desecration

of that church in 1836 (when the body of the church itself was only saved from the lime-kiln by the public spirit of a farmer in the neighbourhood, Mr. John Pocock, who paid 501. for it). Besides this screen were two wooden arches. Mr. John Myres (in Records of Buckinghamshire, vol. vii. No. 1, p. 76) says of one of these arches, which is happily left :

" It is exquisitely carved with fine mouldings of early English dog-tooth pattern, and work of so much richness, of such great antiquity, and so beautifully executed, is indeed very rarely to be found in a small country church."

R. B.

Upton.

There is a fine outside staircase at Ling- field, Surrey, which formerly communicated with the rood-screen.

At Banstead, Surrey, is also an arrange- ment of arches in the nave walls east of their easternmost bay, and close to the chancel arch. JOHN A. RANDOLPH.

There is an excellent and tolerably exhaustive account of ' Mediaeval Rood- Lofts and Screens in Kent,' by Mr. Aymer Vallance, F.S.A., in ' Memorials of Old Kent ' (Bemrose's " County Memorials Series "), 1907, pp. 44-109, with fourteen good photographic and other illustrations. G. L. APPERSON.

VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU (10 S. vii. 326 ; viii. 77). Whether Voltaire ever plagiarized J. J. Rousseau I am not in a position to contest ; but that the latter himself was one of the most daring plagiarists I have amply proved in my doctoral paper ' Fremde Gedanken in J. J. Rousseaus erstem Dis- cours,' Braunschweig, 1901. I have fur- nished that proof in the little pamphlet for his first writing only, but have sufficient materials at my disposal to be able to do so for all his others, especially ' Emile ' ; for which be laid also English men of letters under heavy contribution. G. KRUEGER.

Berlin.

The extract I transcribed from ' Madame Tussaud's Memoirs ' will be found to be correctly copied, but I made no comparison of the dates at the time, and so did not notice the " misstatement " which M. M. now points out. On referring, I find the dates to be thus. Voltaire settled in Ferney in 1758 (' Chambers's Encyclopaedia,' x. 21). Madame Tussaxid was born in 1760 ; went to Paris in 1767 to reside with M. Curtius ; and appears to have remained in Paris till 1802, when she came to England.