Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/325

 n s. vii. APBi L 26, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

321

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1913.

CONTENTS. No. 174.

NOTES -The Ground Plan of New College Chapel, 321 Inscriptions at St. James's, Piccadilly, 324-Demohtion of Dickensian Landmarks in Birmingham, 325 ' Vittona Corombona' Hymn to St. Anne The Earl of Pembroke and Richard Burbage, 326 Misprint-Early English Printed Books William Hone Sydney Smith and L.C.C. Tablets, 327

OUERIES : Rughcombe, Wilts Incumbents of Salehurst, Sussex, 327 Cleaning and Restoration of Parchments- Diary of James Dawson Works of John Pechey, Physician Authorship of 'Pax Vobis 'Cocks' Heads The Fly-Fisher's Entomology 'General Elliot, 328 Author of Quotation Wanted Diminutive Almanacs Bawdwen Jacobite Earl of Beverley ' The Rape of the Table 'Prayer for Twins Vitre : Tre'moulliere, 329 Title-Page Wanted William Purrear Salt-Mines The Fourth Duke of Queensberry Authors Wanted Tolling on Good Friday Mr. Richard Ball, B.D., 330.

REPLIES : Lord Wellesley's Issue, 330 Hosier Lane, West Smithfield Roinney Adam : a Mediaeval Conceit, 333 Companions of George I. The Red Hand of Ulster, 334 The Sanctity of Royalty Bibliographies of Chartu- larics Fire-Ritual, 335 ' Eccejitric Biography 'Hay-

Letters of Old Plate Vertical Sundials Gilbert of Kilminchy, 338.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'Biographical Register of Christ's College ' ' The Quarterly Review ' ' The Edinburgh.'

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

JSotes.

THE GROUND PLAN OF NEW COLLEGE CHAPEL.

MR. AYMER VALLANCE in ' The Old Colleges of Oxford,' pp. xi-xiii, says :

" The Wykehamite ante-chapel is usually alleged to have been imitated from the accidentally nave- less chapel of Merton, but this explanation of its origin is historically untenable. New College Chapel, ante-chapel included, was devised and finished nearly forty years before the ante-chapel of Merton was built. That the foundations of the last-named had indeed been laid earlier, about 1330, and that Wykeham, at some time or other before founding his own chapel, would have seen their raw outline, is beyond dispute. But while Merton College was still apparently vacillating over the

question of a transept and nave Wykeham

boldly took the initiative and raised his own chapel on an entirely original plan. If he was indebted to Merton at all, it was but the merest germ of an idea that he borrowed, his genius in the event transforming it into something radically different. For whereas to this day Merton Chapel remains

patently but a portion of an uncompleted cruciform church, with quire and transepts opening through arches from the central tower, on the contrary, New College Chapel and the two existing chapels modelled upon "it, viz., All Souls' and Magdalen, represent no abortive scheme, but an organic

whole, fully and effectually carried out The

Wykehamite plan is essentially distinct from that of Mertou, for the latter is cruciform, \vhile the Wykehamite plan is not. It comprises a quire and short nave of equal width, in one range together under one roof, which is continuous, externally as well as internally, from end to end of the building. There is no chancel-arch nor other structural boundary between quire and nave. The latter is flanked by aisles of its own length, opening out of it on either side through an arcade of two arches. These aisles, as the axis of the roofing shows, are parallel, and not at right angles, to the nave. The fact that the axis of their roofs is longitudinal, not transverse, settles the point beyond dispute. Their outer north and south walls are unequivocally lateral walls, and not like those at Merton, the end walls of a transept. Between the latter, which, as its name implies, is a cross-aisle, and a nave that continues in one and the same direction as the quire, there is a fundamental distinction. The west ends of Merton and of Magdalen chapels are sufficiently unlike one another to demonstrate the fact. Beside that at Merton there is only one ante-chapel in Oxford conceived and constructed

on a purely transeptal principle, viz., at Oriel

Again, whereas the ends of the ante-chapels of Merton and Oriel are those of true transepts, with one arched window under a gable ; those of New College, All Souls', Magdalen, and old Queen's College, being, as already explained, lateral walls of aisles, are horizontal and pierced each by two windows, the number, of course, determined by correspondence with the bays of the aisles them- selves A transeptal ante-chapel occurs at Eton

College, but the true Wykehamite plan exists nowhere out of Oxford, save at Haddon Hall,

Derbyshire Its origin, to sum up, is not a

reproduction of the chance imperfection of Merton Chapel, but the outcome of definite design and prevision on the part of Wykeham. He wanted, for one thing, to provide room for formal scholastic

disputations and, in the next place, to obtain

ample space for making the solemn station in front of the Great Rood every Sunday and principal feast-day before the celebration of High Mass. But to appreciate what was the chief and most practical reason of all, it is only necessary to recall the ' nine altars ' of Durham and Fountains Abbeys. Wykeham's foundation comprised a priestly staff, for whose use the normal three altars of a college chapel, viz., the high altar in the quire, and the two against the screen at the quire entrance, would have been totally inadequate. His ante-chapel, then, afforded space for at least four more altars than the older parallelogram-shaped chapel could accommodate, for two could be set against the east wall of each aisle. The advantage of this plan, once experienced, was such that ensured its prompt adoption by Chicheley at All Souls', and later by Waynflete at Magdalen. Nay, even the old fourteenth-century chapel at Queen's College was remodelled on the same lines by the addition of a short nave with aisles in 1518. This was the latest instance of the occurrence of the genuine Wykehamite plan."