Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/116

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��the 1 2 80 period. Owing to the rise in the ground outside, there are now three steps down into the aisle. In the eastern part of this south wall there are indications of a blocked piscina.

The transeptal chapel, which opens by a modern or greatly modernized arch, with a screen in it, into the aisle, is apparently only a little later than the aisle. It has two buttresses at either angle, and the setting of a large ancient window filled with modern tracery, and in its east wall are two windows of two lights worked in chalk, which appear to be ancient ; the sub-arches are simply pointed, and there is no cusping in the head. Under the southern of these is an ancient piscina. This transept, which has been incongruously roofed with slate, was restored and richly decorated in colour, from the designs of Mr. Pugin, as a mortuary chapel for the Drummond

���ALBURY OLD CHURCH : THE PORCH

family, whose motto, ' Gang warily,' with the initial D, is powdered on the walls, roof, and screens inside. All the windows are filled with stained glass. Be- tween the two eastern windows is a modern niche, containing a carving of the Crucifixion, with our Lady and St. John ; and against the south wall, on a raised platform, is an altar-tomb to Mr. Drummond, mem- bers of whose family are commemorated by slabs with brass crosses in the floor below.

The roofs over the nave and aisle, much patched, and covered with lath and plaster, are ancient. The

��floors are paved with old stone slabs, and some ancient tiles remain in the aisle.

One of the most interesting features of the building is the beautiful timber porch on the north side of the nave. The north doorway, to which it conducts (which retains its original oak door and strap-hinges, oak lock-case, and a key over a foot long), is a century and a half earlier (c. 1330), the porch dating from about 1480. A curious point is that it is nearly a foot longer on its eastern side (9 ft. 6 in.) than on its western. The openings in the sides are square-headed and delicately moulded, 61 with a moulded cornice on the inside and a richly traceried and carved barge-board, in which are pierced quatrefoils with rosettes in their centres. The wide outer opening has a flat four-centred head, with roses in the spandrels.

This porch door the principal entrance from the old village commands a view of a remarkable painting of St. Christopher, over the opposite door in the south wall of the aisle, which was brought to light during some repairs a few years ago. The details (such as the pleated shirt worn by the saint) fix the date of the painting at about 1480, the same as the porch. On the east wall of the aisle is a fragment of earlier painting, probably nearly two centuries older, and there are traces of colour on the columns and elsewhere. Probably the nave and arcade walls would yield other subjects if carefully searched.

The early font has been carried off to the new parish church, but its base block, a great circular drum of Bargate stone, remains close to the western column of the arcade.

In the floor of the aisle is a slab of blue marble, slightly tapering, 6 ft. 3 in. long by 2 ft. I in. at the head, with a very worn in- scription, which appears to read as follows :

WILLEMVM : TERNVM : DE : WESTONE : SVSCIPE : CIST (for CHRISTE) : LVMEN : ETERNVM : QVEM : DEPRIMIT : Hie : LAPIS : ISTE :

From the character of the lettering, which appears to have been filled with a black sub- stance, this may be the tomb slab of the founder of the western aisle or chantry towards the end of the i 3th century.

Westward of this is another marble slab in the pavement, bearing the brass of John Weston of Weston, who died in 1440. He is represented in complete plate armour. Above the head is the matrix of a shield, set diagonally, and over it there may have been a helm and crest. It is somewhat singular that, point for point, down to the minutest detail, this brass agrees with that of Sir John Throck- morton, dated 1445, in Fladbury Church, Worcester- shire. Each shows a small spring pin passing through a ring, or staple, on the left side of the breastplate, and another on the left elbow-piece both connected with extra defences to the left, or bridle, arm. 5 * The ground on which the feet stand is covered with flowers. Beneath is the inscription : Hicjacet Johis Weston de Weston Armiger qui obijt xxiii die :

��M The mouldings and plain square- 53 Although this type of military brass

headed openings are exactly like those of is a fairly common one, the detail referred

��the chapel screen of Croydon Palace, and also a parclose screen in Wonersh Church, near Albury.

��to is very seldom met with. It occurs also on the brass of a knight of the De

7 6

��Cuttles family, in Arkesden Church, Essex, c. 144.0. These three brasses may well have been executed by the same engraver in London.

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