[66] The subject of this paper, the probable identity of the architect of S. Mary’s with that of Westminster, interested Street greatly, and he refers to it often. The careful description of conscientious restoration has an interest for us as well. I have therefore reprinted the greater part of it without troubling the reader by indicating the trifling omissions.
[68] One of these windows is still left in the south wall of the chancel.
[69] It appears from a note by Mr. Heathcote, a former Rector, in the parish book, that the church and chancel were ceiled in the year 1777. This is the only note in these books which refers to the building, if I except an entry in regard to the erection of a western gallery, which has been removed in the course of restoring the church. The old parish books are all destroyed, and no record exists earlier than the end of the last century.
[70] “Less usual,” but not unique. The church at East Barnet afforded another example of the same mode of spending money in the palmy days of ample church-rates and irresponsible church-wardens.
[71] John Bokeland, in his will, talks of the chancel door: I believe he means the door in the Rood-screen, from the nave into the chancel.
[72] The central shaft and part of the internal tracery of this window are destroyed, and we have been unable yet to restore them.
[73] I see no evidence of the existence of a clerestory; and the columns are so delicate that I think it is impossible that it can ever have been intended to erect one.
[74] I cannot express my vexation at finding that in spite of my earnest injunctions to the workmen to be careful, this painted cross was destroyed. It is often absolutely impossible for an architect to stop wilful destruction of this kind. I have sometimes thought that it might be a good plan to draw up a contract for church restorations, inflicting a heavy fine on the contractor for any such destruction of any old feature.
[75] See particularly papers by me on _Some Churches in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex_, in the _Ecclesiologist_ of 1850, and _On the Middle-Pointed Churches of Cornwall_, in the _Transactions_ of the Exeter Architectural Society, vol. iv.
[76] There are one or two points which appear to me to make it possible that the sculpture of foliage was not done at Stone, but wrought elsewhere and sent there to be fixed. The northernmost spandrel in the east wall should be examined with a view to this point.