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The Nave of Stone Church in Kent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

The parish church of St Mary the Virgin at Stone near Dartford, under construction in about 1260, is justly famous for its ambitious choir, the work of masons from the premier Gothic building in England, Henry III’s Westminster Abbey. The choir of Stone is a miniature Westminster: its generous bar-tracery windows and its lusciously carved wall arcades bring the metropolitan glamour of the abbey to a north Kent parish church on the Thames estuary (Fig. 1). Not surprisingly, this mysterious transfer has distracted attention from the virtues — indeed almost from the very existence — of the nave of the church. Only John Newman, in what is still the most incisive analysis of the whole building, gave proper weight to the nave’s elegant enrichment and noble proportions. There can be little doubt that the nave, which was built sequentially to the choir in the 1260s, belongs to the same Westminster milieu; but whereas the choir seems to depend solely on the abbey church, the nave reflects a much wider range of inspiration, from the hinterland of Westminster’s own sources, namely the architecture of southern England in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Most importantly, the nave stands in self-conscious contrast to the choir, a contrast which offers important clues to its unnoticed significance. Despite the choir’s élan, it is the nave which ensures Stone’s place of honour in the history of English Gothic architecture.

Type
Section 6: Cathedrals, Abbeys, Churches and Chapels
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

1 Still the best published study of Stone is Street, G. E., ‘Some Account of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone, near Dartford’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 3 (1860), pp. 97134 Google Scholar; see also his ‘The Restoration of St Mary, Stone, Kent’, Ecclesiologist, 21 (1860), pp. 299-301. The first chronological plan of the church appeared in Elliston-Erwood, F. C., ‘Plans of, and Brief Architectural Notes on, Kent Churches’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 64 (1951). pp. 97100 Google Scholar (mainly on the tower bay) and Hoey, L. R., ‘Style, patronage and artistic creativity in Kent parish church architecture: c. 1180-c. 1260’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 115 (1995), pp. 4849 Google Scholar. The fullest account of the history of the church can be found in Epperson, A., ‘St Mary the Virgin, Stone, near Dartford, Kent: An Analysis of the Fabric, Wall Painting and Restoration’, unpublished MA dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, London University, 1993 Google Scholar.

2 Newman, J., The Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 524-27Google Scholar.

3 The slightly steeper outline of the medieval roof may be preserved on the eastern face of the west tower. The roof was destroyed in the fire of 1638, which was described in an anonymous contemporary account, and in the parishioners’ petition to Parliament of 1640. See Street (i860), p. III. In 1777, the chancel and nave were given flat ceilings, which Street removed. They are shown in the engraving of the interior reproduced in Cresy, E., Illustrations of Stone Church (London, Topographical Society, 1840)Google Scholar (see Fig. 3). Street altered the seventeenth-century roof, which was steep over the nave and flatter over the aisles, to one uniform slope, which is probably closer to the medieval pitch: op. cit., pp. 114-15.

4 The choir’s original windows were replaced with Perpendicular ones, probably in the fifteenth century, but Street discovered the remains of the three-light, three-oculus north window of the choir embedded in the north wall, and reconstructed not only it but also its pair on the south wall. To be ‘safe’ he gave his new east window the same form, though it is more likely that it was a four-light composition, especially since that is the format of the hierarchically less important east window of the north aisle of the nave (see Fig. 3). Street, op. cit., pp. 113-14, 124-25.

5 The present vaults are Street’s, but based on a ‘large number of the groining-ribs of the chancel’ which he found during the restoration. Ibid., pp. 123-24, 127-28.

6 For example, the hall nave of St Giles, Skelton, Yorks., ofc. 1240: see C. Wilson, D. O’Connor & A. J. Thompson, St Giles Skelton. A Brief Guide (1978). Christopher Wilson also draws my attention to the original hall nave of St Mary at Shrewsbury, of the late twelfth century. Neither resembled the great halls described in this essay. For the history of the hall, see Thompson, M. W., The Medieval Hall: the Basis for Secular Life, 600-1600 (Aldershot, 1995)Google Scholar.

7 The Canterbury hall, preserved only in fragments embedded in the modern ‘Old Palace’ and Walpole House, is fully discussed by Tatton-Brown, T., ‘The Great Hall of the Archbishop’s Palace’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Canterbury before 1220, BAA Conference Transactions, 5 (Leeds, 1982), pp. 112-19Google Scholar. For Lincoln, see Faulkener, P. A., ‘Domestic Planning from the 12th to the 14th Century’, Archaeological Journal, 115 (1958), pp. 172-73Google Scholar. All these halls, and Exeter’s, are discussed by Wood, M., The English Medieval House (London, 1965), pp. 3548 Google Scholar, and by Barley, M., Houses and History (London, 1986), pp. 58–67 Google Scholar. Of the monastic aisled halls of the period, Haughmond Abbey (c. 1220) probably had timber supports, and Kirkstall Abbey gatehouse hall, of the early thirteenth century, may have had two rows of round stone piers. See Faulkener, op. cit., pp. 170-71.

8 Cunningham, J., ‘Auckland Castle: some Recent Discoveries’, in Fernie, E. & Crossley, P. (eds), Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context: Studies in Honour of Peter Kidson (London & Ronceverte, 1990), pp. 8190 Google Scholar. She reconstructs the original roofline, which would have sprung from the aisle walls much lower than it does at present.

9 For the royal halls see Brown, R. Allen, Colvin, H. M. & Taylor, A. J., The History of the King’s Works, 1 (London, 1963), pp. 8486, 123-24, and 11Google Scholar, pp. 854-64, 910-18, 1010.

10 For Oakham (whose roof was remodelled in the seventeenth century) and Nurstead, see Wood (1965), pp. 38, 41, and Smith, J., ‘Medieval Aisled Halls and their Derivatives’, Archaeological Journal, 112 (1955), pp. 84, 87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 For Chichester, see Tatton-Brown, T., ‘The Medieval Fabric’ in Hibbs, M. (ed.), Chichester Cathedral. An Historical Survey (Chichester, 1994)Google Scholar. For Salisbury, see Cocke, T. & Kidson, P., Salisbury Cathedral. Perspectives on the Architectural History (London, 1993), pls 50, 51 Google Scholar; and for the dating, Blum, P., ‘The Sequences of Building Campaigns at Salisbury, Art Bulletin, 73 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Jansen, V., ‘Salisbury Cathedral and the Episcopal Style in the Early 13th Century’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Salisbury Cathedral, BAA Conference Transactions, 17 (Leeds, 1996), pp. 3239 Google Scholar.

12 Binski, P., The Painted Chamber at Westminster, Society of Antiquaries Occasional Papers, 9 (London, 1986), pls XXVIXXXII Google Scholar.

13 The wording comes from the Close Roll of April 1243: see Wood (1965), p. 40, and Tatton-Brown (1982), p. 115 & n. 8. The 80-foot width of the Dublin hall proves that its roof was supported on two rows of piers, making a three-aisled hall. In a lecture delivered to the conference on West Country Gothic, held at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge on 9 December 2000, Roger Stalley pointed to the possibility that the aisle windows of the church of Gowran (Co. Kilkenny) may reflect those of the Dublin hall. It may be coincidental, but the two-light plate-tracery windows at Gowran, with a ‘screen’ of identical two-light forms on the inner plane of the wall, are almost identical with the easternmost window of the north aisle of the nave at Stone (see Fig. 9). See also Stalley, R., ‘Irish Gothic and English Fashion’ in The English in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1984), pp. 7376 Google Scholar

14 For Henry III’s halls, see King’s Works, loc. cit. (n. 9).

15 De Vita Galfridi Archiepiscopi Eboracensis, Rolls Series, 21 (1873), IV, p. 367, quoted in Cunningham (1990), p. 90 n. 23.

16 Dixon-Smith, S., ‘The Image and Reality of Alms-Giving in the Great Halls of Henry III’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 152 (1999), pp. 7996 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the wider implications of what halls meant for English kings from William II to Richard II, see Wilson, C., ‘Rulers, Artificers and shoppers: Richard II’s Remodelling of Westminster Hall, 1393-99’, in Gordon, D., Monnas, L. & Elam, C. (eds), Richard II and the Wilton Diptych (London, 1997), pp. 33–59 Google Scholar.

17 The written evidence for the halls is fully laid out in King’s Works, loc. cit (n. 9), esp. pp. 84-86, 123-24.

18 The early history is outlined by Street (1860), pp. 97-102.

19 Ibid., p. 99. For Bishop Laurence, see Neve, J. Le, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066-1300, 11, compiled by Greenway, D. E. (London, 1971), p. 77 Google Scholar.

20 The leaf-swallowing dragon in the choir wall arcade is close to the vault boss sculpture of the Muniment room, dated to John of Gloucester’s reign; the three-light, three-oculi tracery occurs (in expansive form) in the blind tracery of the north transept gable and (in a form much closer to Stone’s) in the tracery of the north cloister walk, the latter attributed to Robert of Beverley; the stiff-lead nailhead appears tentatively in the arches of the gallery in the north transept, work confidently attributed to John of Gloucester. See Binski, P., Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets. Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200-1400 (New Haven & London, 1995), pp. 2329, 31-32Google Scholar, and Wilson, C., ‘The Gothic abbey Church’, in Westminster Abbey (New Bell’s Cathedral Guides, Cambridge, 1985), pp. 6567, 81-82Google Scholar.

21 Materials, usually marble or freestone, much of it probably already carved, were sent not only to St Martin-le-Grand but also to the London Blackfriars (from 1259) and Windsor Castle (1258/9). The practice may have something to do with Henry III’s decision, in 1256, to place the royal works under one or two experienced craftsmen (royal architect, royal carpenter) with direct responsibility to the king. See Harvey, J., English Medieval Architects. A Biographical Dictionary down to 1550, 2nd edn (London, 1984), pp. xliii & 118-20Google Scholar; and King’s Works, 1, pp. 105-09, 157-58.

22 Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the PRO, 1247-58, p. 91.

23 Oakley, A., ‘The Cathedral Priory of St Andrew, Rochester’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 91 (1975), p. 48 Google Scholar, points out that the claim that Laurence secured the canonization of William while in Rome is not supported by any papal bull.

24 See Tristram, E. W., Medieval English Wall Painting: the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1950), p. 294 Google Scholar.

25 For the German version of this type, see Schurer, O., ‘Romanische Doppelkapellen. Eine typengeschichtliche Untersuchung’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, 5 (1929), pp. 99–192 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Its extensive use is surveyed in Untermann, M., Der Zentralbau im Mittelalter. Form. Funktion. Verbreitung (Darmstadt, 1989), pp. 192-98Google Scholar.

26 Götz, W., Zentralbau und Zentralbautendenz in der gotischen Architektur (Berlin, 1968), pp. 8693 Google Scholar.

27 King’s Works, II, p. 808.

28 Martin, A. R., Franciscan Architecture in England (Manchester, 1937), pp. 179, 192–99Google Scholar; King’s Works, 1, pp. 205-06.

29 See particularly Wilson, C., ‘Holy Trinity Hull’, in Alexander, J. & Binski, P. (eds), Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 (London, 1987), p. 228 Google Scholar.

30 Bony, Jean, The English Decorated Style. Gothic Architecture Transformed 1250-1350 (Oxford, 1979), p. 34 Google Scholar.

31 R. K. Morris suggested that Thomas of Witney may have been engaged in an important capacity on the church at Winchelsea and its tombs from c. 1294 (the date of his disappearance from the accounts for St Stephen’s chapel, Westminster) and c. 1310, when he appears at Winchester Cathedral. See ‘Thomas of Witney at Exeter, Winchester and Wells’, Medieval Art and Architecture at Exeter Cathedral, BAA Conference Transactions, 11 (Leeds, 1991), p. 71. The fullest account of St Thomas’s can now be found in Opacie, Zoe, ‘The Architecture of St Thomas’s Church, Winchelsea and its Context’, unpublished MA dissertation, Courtauld Institute, 1995, esp. pp. 5258 Google Scholar, where she casts doubt on Witney’s participation at St Thomas’s and suggests that the unknown architect may have been the architect of the transepts of Holy Trinity, Hull.

32 Bony, op. cit., p. 34.

33 Morris, R. K., ‘European prodigy or regional eccentric? The rebuilding of St Augustine’s Abbey Church, Bristol’, in Almost the Richest city’: Bristol in the Middle Ages, BAA Conference Transactions, 29 (Leeds, 1997), pp. 4156 Google Scholar. Also ibid., ‘The Architecture of Arthurian Enthusiasm: Castle Symbolism in the Reigns of Edward I and his Successors’, in M. Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, Proceedings of the 1995 Harlaxton Symposium, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 7 (Stamford, 1998), pp. 63–81. I am grateful to Richard Morris for kindly sending me offprints of both these articles.

34 Maddison, John, ‘Decorated Architecture in the North-West Midlands. An Investigation of the Work of Provincial Masons and their Sources’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Manchester University, 1978, pp. 3646, 49Google Scholar.

35 See especially Wilson (1997), p. 34 (n. 16 above).

36 Thompson, M. W., ‘The Green Knight’s Castle’, in Harper-Bill, C. et al. (eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. A. Allen Brown (Woodbndge, 1989), pp. 317-25Google Scholar; Morris (1998). Though Arthurian and literary associations were also present earlier, during Henry II’s reign — see Heslop, T. A., ‘Orford Castle, Nostalgia and Sophisticated Living’, Architectural History, 34 (1991), pp. 3658 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks to Sandy Heslop for sending me an offprint of this article.

37 Dixon-Smith (1999) and Binski (1995), esp. pp. 48-76.

38 The best and most recent survey of mendicant architecture in Europe is Schenkluhn, E., Architektur der Bettelorden. Die Baukunst der Dominikaner und Franziskaner in Europa (Darmstadt, 2000), esp. pp. 4580 Google Scholar.

39 Binski (1995), pp. 49-51.