Article contents
John Colt and the Charterhouse Chapel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
The Survey of London has recently turned its attention to the Charterhouse, that extraordinary combination of medieval priory, Renaissance mansion and Jacobean almshouse and school on the northern fringe of the City. The results of the Survey’s research are due for publication shortly; here there is only space to dwell on a few of the discoveries which have been made, most of them concerning the sculptor John Colt and his role in the refurbishment of the chapel, on Laudian principles, in the mid-1630s. John Newman’s work on Laud’s impact on architecture and interiors is well-known, and we hope this will be a fitting contribution to his celebratory volume.
- Type
- Section 6: Cathedrals, Abbeys, Churches and Chapels
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001
References
Notes
1 See, for example, ‘Laudian literature and the interpretation of Caroline churches in London’, in Howarth, David (ed.), Art and Patronage in the Caroline Courts (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 168-88Google Scholar.
2 Cross, F. L. (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, s.v. Aaron.
3 London Metropolitan Archives (formerly Greater London Record Office; hereafter abbreviated as LMA): acc/1876/AR/3/17a, midsummer quarter.
4 ‘Ye first stone with ye cherubins head in ye midle’. It is evident that the compiler of the account began at the bottom and worked his way to the top.
5 ‘Two . . . quartwooses on wch stand Moses & Aron’.
6 ‘The cherubins head in the clouds wch is over the tables of white marble’.
7 ‘The cornish with the halfe round’.
8 For his career see Croft-Murray, Edward, Decorative Painting in England, I (London, 1962), pp. 194–95Google Scholar; Waterhouse, Ellis, The Dictionary of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century British Painters (Woodbridge, 1988)Google Scholar, s.v. Buckett; Reid, Aileen and Mainura, Robert (eds), Edward AUeyn: Elizabethan Actor, Jacobean Gentleman (London, 1994), pp. 36–37 Google Scholar.
9 White, Adam, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of London Tomb Sculptors, c.1560-c.1660’, Walpole Society, LXI (1999)Google Scholar, s.v. Colt.
10 LMA, acc/1876/AR/3/28c.
11 It is recorded in the hospital’s First Ledger Book which is preserved in the archive of the Whitgift Foundation. The entry, which appears on fol.3 of the volume, is not dated, but from the surrounding circumstances it can be tentatively assigned to the year 1601 and was certainly made no later than 1604. The chapel was consecrated in July 1599. We are grateful to Mr F. H. G. Percy, Archivist to the Whitgift Foundation, for this information.
12 Leesberg, Marjoleen (compiler), Leeflang, Huigen & Schuckman, Christian (eds), The New Hollstein. Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Karel van Mander (Rotterdam, 1999), no. 20 Google Scholar.
13 For a description of the table, see Seymour, Robert, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster . . ., 1 (London, 1734), p. 495 Google Scholar.
14 Addleshaw, G. W. O. & Etchells, Frederick, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (1948), p. 158 Google Scholar.
15 Croft-Murray, op. cit. (n. 8 above), pp. 48, 196. Only the heads of the two statues survive.
16 LMA, acc/1870/AR/3/18a, midsummer quarter.
17 For apostle altarpieces later in the century, see Addleshaw & Etchells, op. cit. (n. 14 above), pp. 159 n. 1 & 161, text & n. 2.
18 As n. 3 above (Christmas quarter). In August 1636 Thomas Turner, joiner, was paid for ‘altring the rail’ (ibid., midsummer quarter).
19 Bodleian Library, MS Gough London 11, fol.49.
20 An unpublished account for this work is among Sutton’s ‘Funerali Chardges’ (LMA, acc/1876/F/9/1); see also White, op. cit. (n. 9 above), p. 120, no. 5.
21 LMA, acc/1876/F/9/1, Funeral expenses, 23 November 1615, 22 February 1616.
- 1
- Cited by