Page:Wood carvings in English churches II.djvu/81

 tracery of Lincoln and Chester, with its makeshift look, is reduced in importance, forming merely the backing of the three upper niches. The spirelet above is also greatly enriched, and additional pinnacles are introduced. A little prim the design may be in comparison with the exuberance of Lincoln, Chester and Nantwich, but the proportions are fine, and were the statuettes once more in their niches, it would be a very satisfactory composition. Such work as this has well been resembled to "a whole wood, or say a thicket of old hawthorn with its topmost branches spared, slowly growing into stalls."

At St Asaph's cathedral the stalls and part of the canopies are ancient. The cathedral was gutted by fire in 1402, and the stalls were not re-erected till 1471-1495.

Fifty years later than the Carlisle stalls were put up those of Ripon Minster (60). As two of the misericords are inscribed 1489 and 1494, they cannot be earlier than the latter year. Just as the Chester stalls were a criticism of those of Lincoln, and the Lincoln stalls of those of Ely, so the stalls of Ripon are a criticism of those of Nantwich and Carlisle. In the latter the upper story had been emphasised; at Ripon the bottom story is given the dominance; compared with the simplicity of the Carlisle design, the lower stage at Ripon, as at Nantwich, is surpassingly rich; gables and pinnacles and window tracery are loaded with beautiful detail, cusped arches are added below; finally figure sculpture is called in, and capitals and corbels are beset with tiny angels. In the string-course between the two stories quatrefoils are abandoned; it is molded, foliated and battlemented. In the upper story reappears the forest of pinnacles of Carlisle and the window tracery of Lincoln. Here, as elsewhere, the design suffers grievously from the loss of the statuettes which once ranged continuously in the upper story.

Some twenty years later, stallwork was put up in the collegiate church of Manchester. On the north side of the choir is a curious shield with the initials of Richard Beck, a Manchester merchant, by whom all the stalls on that side were erected: the southern stalls were erected by Bishop Stanley, and at the west end of them is the shield of Stanley with the Stanley legend of the eagle and child. At Manchester craftsman ambition had to surpass Ripon and Nantwich. But the lower stages of Nantwich and Ripon were unsurpassable; so they were copied, angelettes included. The string-course is strengthened and improved by additional battlements; but undue emphasis is prevented by making it discontinuous.