Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/330

 322 NOTES AND QUERIES. n s. vn. A>«L 28,1913. It is difficult to see how Wykeham can have boen in any way indebted to Morton Chapel for the ground plan of New College Chapel. At Morton, before 1380, he would have seen the lovely quire, the piers and arches of the crossing, and probably portions of the unfinished transepts in situ. On 6 Nov., 1424, the whole church of Merton College then existing was rededicated. The famous tower was not begun until twenty- four years later ; and Merton had probably abandoned all design of building a nave after 1386, the date of the completion of Wykeham's chapel. At any rate, no nave was ever built, and that the great West window is an afterthought is patent to-day, for it does not perfectly fit the arch, which was designed to be the entrance to the nave. Wykeham's " Sainte Marie College of Wynchester in Oxenford " was nicknamed in perpetuity " New " College, in contra- distinction from Merton, the earliest of Oxford colleges, the main provisions of •whose statutes he clearly reproduced in those of his own foundation. His later " Sainte Marie College of Wynchester" (1387-93), New College's younger sister, has a different arrangement with regard to chapel and hall. There the hall is set west- ward of the chapel : whereby the latter is allowed a great east window, and is not terminated, as in the Oxford plan, by a splendid stone screen, or reredos, owing to the hall joining the east end of the chapel. At All Souls', it is true, the hall was originally built at right angles to the chapel, and not in a straight line with it, as at New College, Winchester, and Magdalen ; but it none the less effectually precluded an east window. But the ground plan of Winchester College Chapel is simpler than that of New College. The width is uniform throughout, and its dimensions are said to be—93 ft. long, 30 ft. wide, and 67 ft. high. It was divided into two by a rood screen, the place of entrance to which can still be seen on the south wall, a little east of the Chantry under ToWer. Thus the chapel proper and the ante-chapel were of equal width ; whereas at New College the ante-chapel is con- siderably more than double the width of the quire. The chapel of Haddon Hall is a work of various periods. Large portions of twelfth- century date still remain, it being probably in those days outside the palisade and the parochial chapel of the hamlet of Nether Haddon. During the fifteenth century a new chancel and octagonal bell-turret were added. The Chapel of the Nine Altars {1242- c. 1280) is, in reality, an eastern transept: its position repeats, at Durham Cathedral, that of Fountains Abbey, which was finished in 1247, and which is also known as the Chapel of the Nine Altars. The object of the eastern extension at Durham was partly to provide nine more chapels, and partly to make room for the shrine of St. Cuthbert, which, like those of SS. Swithun and Birinus at Winchester, and that of St. All.an at St. Albans, stood to the east of the high altar, and contained the body of St. Cuth- bert and the head of St. Oswald. Henry VI.'s collegiate church, commonly known as Eton College Chapel (1441-C.I480), was to have had a nave 168ft. in length. This, owing to his deposition, was never begun, or even indicated as at Merton College. The quire (150 ft. long by 40 ft. broad) was probably finished about 1458; and Waynflete completed the church, as we now see it—with the exception of Lupton's Chapel—by adding the present transeptal ante-chapel, in Headington stone. May not Wykeham have adapted the ground plan of New College Chapel from the ritual arrangements prevalent in a great mon- astic church ? His quire is aisleless, because there was no need for a processional path or for a Lady-chapel eastwards of the high altar. No structural boundary was neces- sary between quire and nave. The pulpitum, or quire screen, and the rood screen were blended in one as a chancel screen, after the manner of a parish church ; and the ante-chapel, consisting of a truncated nave of two bays with its attendant aisles, gave space for extra altars. The dimensions of New College Chapel are as follows : quire, 103 ft. long by 32$ ft. wide ; ante-chapel, 37ft. long by 80ft. wide. Those of Mag- dalen are : quire, 76$ ft. long by 30 ft. wide ; ante-chapel, 35ft. long by 72J ft. in width. The dimensions of All Souls' Chapel, fifty- six years later than New College, and thirty- eight earlier than Magdalen, are somewhat less than those of the latter. They appear to be about 75 ft. by 28 ft. for the quire, and 25ft. by 70ft. for the ante-chapel. Merton chapel quire, apparently, with its seven bays to the five of New College and its two legitimate successors, measures a trifle less in length than the quire of Wyke- ham's chapel ; the width is also a little less, and more nearly corresponds to the width of Magdalen quire. Merton ante- chapel, consisting of the crossing and transepts, is about 28 ft. long by 100} ft. wide, viz., not so long as, but wider than, New College ante-chapel. The latter, then.