roxburgh-1956-vol-1/04_327

Transcription

No. 504 Kelso Parish
shaped light, and a string-course enriched with
dog-tooth ornament which starts from the capitals
of the angle-shafts to return upwards round the
window. The gable now rises only a few courses
above this window, but the survivor of the two
flanking buttresses, which contains a staircase, rises
higher and is developed to an octagon on plan like the
corresponding buttresses at Jedburgh. From the
staircase an access leads out to a walk on the inner
thickness of the gable, the gable-head having been
carried up on a thin wall on the outer plane.
The sides of the Galilee and the W. sides of the
transepts show a similar treatment. Their height
from ground to wall-head is divided into four storeys
by string-courses, while a shallow buttress at each
end, and another at the centre of each wall, makes a
horizontal division two bays wide. The lowest storey
contains an interlaced arcade. All the shafts of this
arcade are missing, but their scalloped capitals and
spreading moulded bases still remain together with
the arches, the latter wrought with a bold quirked
edge-roll. The two storeys above the arcade have a
single window in each bay, built in two orders, the
outer one supported on nook-shafts with capitals
either scalloped or carved with rudimentary foliage.
The clearstorey windows are smaller than those
below and although they are also built in two orders
they were not intended to have nook-shafts. The
wall-head course above them is borne on small
moulded corbels now very much decayed. The only
alterations traceable, apart from some relatively
modern repairs, are two 17th-century doorways
opened respectively in the N. wall of the Galilee and
in the W. wall of the S. transept, both of which have
now been filled in.
The gable of the N. transept (fig.1) still entire,
is of earlier character than the W. gable, although
built within the same period. Like the W. gable its
corners are clasped by buttresses from between
which advances the parish doorway surmounted by
a parvise. This entrance also is built in recessed
orders and its jambs have been shafted; the moulded
shaft-bases show the elliptical contour typical of
Transitional work, while the capitals are variously
scalloped and foliated, the foliage being a simple
development from the scallop. The arch-head,
slightly elliptical in its curve, is built in three orders,
the outermost one having both nail-head enrichment
and a projecting member enriched at intervals with
petals. The two other orders bear paterae, the inner
ones square, the outer ones star-shaped. From a
string-course above the arch-head rises an interlaced
arcade. In this the five central bays out of the total
of nine have lancet lights in their backs. The
triangular pediment completing the doorway bears
a reticulated enrichment, also seen on the front of
Lincoln Cathedral and ultimately derived from
Carolingian ornament.
At the base of the gable, the spaces between the
doorway and the buttresses that flank it are each
occupied by s single bay of plain arcading. Higher
up, the lesena or shallow pilaster rises from the apex
of the door-pediment and divides the two middle
storeys into two equal bays, each of which has a
window at the triforium and clearstorey levels similar
to those on the outer sides of the transepts and
Galilee. The stage between the clearstorey and the
wall-head, which is defined by a string-course, has
in the centre, above the lesena, a single circular light
surmounted by a pointed relieving-arch, the upper
part of this circular window and its relieving-arch
representing a reconstruction, most obvious from
inside. Two circular stair-turrets, developing one
course below wall-head level, surmount the clasping
buttresses at the gable corners. They originally
flanked a triangular gable-head, like those which
surmounted the Galilee and S. transept-gables and
generally similar to the one still extant at the W.end
of Jedburgh Abbey (No. 414). But the gable-head
has been removed and replaced by the present arcade
of three open arches, each of which still contained a
bell in the late 18th century;[1] no doubt it was the
chain or "tow" of the western bell that eroded the
vertical groove seen on the W. side of the relieving-
arch previously mentioned. This arcade has moulded
archivolts, generally resembling those of the nave
triforium gallery although rather smaller in scale,
springing from imposts enriched with dog-tooth
ornament. It is completed by a triangular pediment
having a circular opening in its tympanum. The
pediment tabling bears an enrichment, whether
indented or a dog-tooth is uncertain. An arcade
such as this is an unusual terminal for a mediaeval
gable, and it is, moreover, obvious that the transept
roof must have cut across the openings unless it was
hipped back; these two facts suggest a late date for
the construction of the arcade, although its archi-
tectural detail resembles early 13th-centry work
and as the figures 16[49?] appear on the pediment
above the circular opening, the erection of the arcade
should probably be dated to that year.
The gable of the S. transept (Fig. 298) is also
clasped by corner buttresses, in this instance rising
from the wall-head of the W. range of the cloisters
and not from the ground. Above the vault covering
the lower storey of the range two openings can be
traced in the gable; both were extant when Slezer's
view was prepared but they have now been filled in.
These openings, which are formed of re-used material,
are clearly secondary. Otherwise the gable shows
no openings below the clearstorey, where there are
two windows corresponding to the clearstorey lights
of the other divisions, the only difference being the
absence of a lesena between them. The upper part
of the gable has been renewed, and part of a circular
window has been included in the modern masonry;
the inclusion of this window hardly seems to be
justified, as Slezer's view shows no light in this

1. Arch., ii, 83; Grose, Antiquities of Scotland, i, 113
243

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