roxburgh-1956-vol-2/-05_029

Transcription

No. 567 -- MELROSE PARISH -- No. 567

from France. The N. transept and nave arcade are
the work of someone familiar with Carlisle.
In the third stage of the reconstruction the parts
left incomplete in the second were finished, and the
new fabric was continued westwards. The wall of
the N. aisle of the nave, for instance, was rebuilt
between the abuttal section on the E. and the W.
gable of the old church, and was provided with
arcaded seating of a simpler type than that of the
second stage (Figs. 338, 340). On the S. side of the
church the second chapel, counting from the transept,
was built, together with two others farther W., while
the fifth chapel was begun in order to provide abut-
ment. Part of the vaulting may also have been erected
at this stage over the presbytery, E. chapels, N.
transept, and the monastic choir. This third stage
extended roughly over the second quarter of the 15th
century, and when it ended the monastic choir was
near completion. In 1441 the convent went to law
over the choir-stalls, which had been ordered many
years previously from Cornelius de Aeltre, citizen
and master of the carpenters' craft in Bruges, and
which, although paid for, had not yet been delivered.
It appears from the record ¹ that the stalls were to
be made after the form and fashion of those in the
Cistercian church of Dunis in West Flanders, and
were to have as much carving on them as there was
on the stalls in the sister church of Thosan, at
Lisseweghe near Bruges.
The fourth stage of the reconstruction may be
dated to the years immediately before and after the
middle of the 15th century, and began in the time of
Abbot Andrew Hunter who held office from about
1444 until 1471. Hunter completed the fifth chapel
W. of the S. transept, started another one beyond
this and laid the lowest courses of the S. wall and W.
gable. He may also have built the crossing-tower.
But his main task was vaulting. The vault of the
S. transept can be definitely assigned to him, and
there is every reason to suppose that he also carried
out the vaults of the nave aisles and of the five lateral
chapels then built. He may also have begun the
high vault of the nave, since he built or completed
its abutment-system. Hunter's immediate suc-
cessors, Robert Blacader and Richard Lambe, have
left no mark upon the fabric, but this does not
necessarily mean that the work came to an immediate
halt with Hunter's death ; on the contrary, three
bays of the nave (infra) W. of the pulpitum may have
been constructed in the last quarter of the 15th
century. But as the evidence stands there was a
considerable interval between the fourth and fifth
stages.
The fifth stage of the work can be attributed to
Abbot William Turnbull, who was in office from 1503
to 1507. Turnbull carried the chapel aisle three bays
westwards, so that it came in alinement with the W.
gable of the original church; but the three chapels
that he built were never completed, having neither
been vaulted nor otherwise covered in.
EXTERIOR OF CHURCH. Even such parts of the
church as were finished are ruinous today. The
structural nave is fragmentary, being represented by
no more than its three E. bays, which have survived
through having been incorporated in a parish church
(p. 268). With the exception of the N. presbytery-
chapel, the E. end and transepts as well as the lateral
chapel-aisle are in better case. The masonry is of
ashlar throughout, the sandstone varying in texture
from fine-grained flagstone to rather coarse grit, and
in colour from pale yellow to pink, red, and purple.
Each of the external corners of the building is defined
by a pair of buttresses, surmounted by crocketed
pinnacles and bearing tabernacled niches on their
outer faces. A base-course with an undulating ogival
section, very similar to that on the W. end of Dry-
burgh and having an upper member moulded with a
bowtel and fillet, runs round the outer walls and
buttresses but does not occur on the walls facing the
cloister. A continuous string-course higher up
emphasises the level of the window-sills.
The presbytery (Figs. 326, 333) is an admirable
composition, the E. gable, with its decoration concen-
trated in a single zone at the top, being especially
noteworthy. The central feature of this gable is a
great five-light window with an equilateral pointed
head filled in with rectilinear tracery ; this is the type
of tracery evolved specifically for the display of
historical stained glass, ² and its occurrence here
proves amply that the prohibition of the use of
stained glass in Cistercian churches no longer held
good at the close of the 14th century. The long
slender mullions rise vertically from the sill of the
E. window to give support to its arch-head and are
themselves stayed against lateral movement by a
transom ; this transom bears a foliated cresting on
its upper surface and is cuspated on its lower edge
to form the cinquefoiled heads of the five lights
beneath it. With two exceptions the subordinate
tracery-members are straight. All are elaborately
foiled. The window opening has simple roll-and-
hollow mouldings, the rolls having fillets. The hood-
mould, crocketed on the upper surface and enriched
on the under one with foliaceous paterae, rises from
carved stops in the form of human heads and bifur-
cates near its apex, the inner branch returning round
the arch-head and the outer one taking an ogival
curve in order to include a richly-treated central
niche containing a representation of the Coronation
of the Virgin. When complete, it terminated in a
gable cross. On each side of the window there is
another niche, its crocketed gablet curved in two

1 Curle, op. cit., 30 ff. ; Arch., xxxi, 346. The original
document is preserved in the archive of Bruges.
2 A small piece of coloured glass from Melrose is pre-
served in the National Museum, cf. P.S.A.S., ii (1854-7),
33. Other pieces examined in 1742 were seen to be of
" uncommon thickness, not strained through but painted
upon " (Glenriddell MS. preserved in the National Library
of Scotland, vi. 25.) These latter were obviously grisaille
glass.

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