Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/279

 REIGATE HUNDRED

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��as conclusive evidence. The construction of the walls being masked, it can only be assumed that they are built of local sandstone rubble in the old parts, as in the new, the original dressings being of Reigate stone, and those in the new parts of Bath stone. The timber tower, where it rises from the aisle roof, is covered with oak shingles and crowned by a slender shingled spire set well within the walls. The modern west porch is of stone with a half timber gable, and it, together with the rest of the church, is roofed with tiles, but Horsham slabs remained upon the roofs down to the restoration of 1881-2, when they were most unfortunately removed. The church was enlarged in 1901 (Sir A. Blomfield), and this extension, which took the form of a wide south aisle, organ chamber and vestry, more than equal in area to the old nave, has necessarily entirely altered its appearance. Until 1901 the plan consisted of a nave about 61 ft. long by 19 ft. at its eastern end, and 20 ft. 7 in. through- out the greater part of its length ; chancel about 3 1 ft. long by 1 8 it. wide, a transept on the south of the nave at its eastern end about 17 ft. by 146., and a large north aisle and chapel under a parallel gabled roof, 70 ft. long by 1 8 ft. 8 in. wide, having a small but lofty north porch, 7 ft. 8 in. by 7 ft. 3 in. In the west end of the aisle was, and is, the timber tower, inclosing a space about 1 5 ft. square. Of this structure, the spacious north aisle con- tained the earliest work, and it has therefore been somewhat hastily assumed that it formed the nave and chancel of the original church, and that the coeval arcade on its southern side opened into a narrow south aisle, which subsequently gave place to a wide nave and chancel, tacked on to what thus became an ordin- ary aisle. 1 " There is no evidence worth considering to support this far-fetched theory of plan development, and it may be taken for certain that the north aisle always has been an aisle, its chapel or chancel forming the chantry of the Salaman family, by whom it was probably built ; and that it was added in the ordinary way to a church of I2th or 13th-century date, pos- sibly then of timber construction, which afterwards was either rebuilt in stone, or entirely altered in the I 5th century. Practically all the old features of the nave and chancel were of one or more dates between 1400 and 1500, while the transept had lost its old windows with the exception of one that has been preserved as the east window of the modern organ chamber a two-light 15th-century opening. It should be recorded that two of the large three-light windows now in the south wall of the modern south aisle originally stood in the same relative positions in the south wall of the nave. They differ slightly in design, and the character of the tracery in the heads is somewhat unusual. The west window of the nave has modern tracery, the opening in Cracklow's view showing a wooden frame, while the doorway below, now within the porch, is ancient and has a plain four-centred arch. The buttresses and the west window of the south aisle are of course modern. The east window of the chancel is of three lights, and appears to have been entirely renewed in Bath stone

��in 1 88 1-2, and the original plain design (c. 1500) was not strictly reproduced. The window in the north wall, of two lights with tracery, has been more or less renewed, but upon the old lines, and its design is somewhat unusual and earlier than the other (c. I 390). On the opposite side the evidence has been obliterated by restoration and subsequent enlargements, but prior to these works there were two two-light windows and a small priest's door between then ; the windows, if one may judge by the solitary restored specimen now remaining, being of plainer and later character than that in the north wall. The existing piscina is modern.

The transeptal chapel with gabled roof, on the south of the nave, known as the Bastwick Chapel (possibly the original Lady Chapel), removed in 1901, seems to have had features of late date, but perhaps incorporated 1 3th-century stonework in its walls. It opened to the nave, not by an arch, but by a timber framing of a beam and posts. The nave wall at its junction with this transept was thickened out, so as to form a projection of about 2 ft. on the inside, per- haps to contain a newel-stair in connexion with the rood-loft ; no trace of this now remains. The modern south aisle has been built with an arcade of four arches on octagonal piers, in general conformity with the 15th-century period.

The chief interest of the church centres in its beautiful north aisle, which presents a very valuable and regularly designed example of early 1 4th-century work. Most unfortunately, its elaborate and graceful window tracery, which was in Reigate stone and in excellent preservation, was almost entirely renewed in 1 88 1-2 in Bath stone, when the ancient corbels, carved as human heads, that formed the termination to the hood-mouldings on the outside, were destroyed, and their places taken by square blocks, not even carved to imitate the destroyed heads. From drawings of the old work that have been preserved, 13 * it is some consolation to observe that the ancient design of the tracery was closely copied, while the internal arches and jambs were suffered to remain in the original stone. It has been supposed that the aisle and its chapel were the work of John de Rutherwyk, ' the very prudent and very useful lord and venerated Abbot,' as he is styled in the deed of 1313, when the Abbot and convent of Chertsey, the patrons of the church, obtained licence to appropriate this church and that of Epsom. But this seems somewhat un- likely on various grounds, partly from the great dis- similarity in style between the work here and that in the chancel of Great Bookham Church, which is actually proved to have been reconstructed by this great church-builder in the year i34i. 1M More probably the aisle was erected by the Salaman family as their bury ing- place, and the chancel or chapel at its eastern end as the chapel of St. Katherine. It is quite possible, of course, that Chertsey Abbey co- operated in the work. The exact date is about the year 1315, but possibly it occupied some years in building. The east window, for example, bears a somewhat later stamp than the arcade to the nave.

��"" Paper by the late Major Heales, F.S.A., in Surr. Arch. Call, vii, 169.

188 Reproduced with an account of the church in its pre-restoration state, by the late Major Heales, F.S.A., in Surr. Arch. CM. vii, 172-3.

��u *As ii recorded on the well-known dedication stone built into the chancel wall at Great Bookham. A similar dedi- cation stone, with the date 1327, at Egham, preserves the record of the rebuild-

205

��ing of the chancel of that church (destroyed in 1817) by John de Rutherwyk, traces of whose work were visible also in Sutton and Epsom Churches, prior to their 19th- century re-construction.

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