ch is to St Peter and St Paul, it is not
unlikely that the prominence given to the north chapel may be due to the
provision of altars for both saints. The same consideration may have
influenced the building of the church at Wisbech, which is also
dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. Here, the twelfth century chancel had
a south chapel; but when, at the end of the thirteenth century, the
chancel was lengthened, the south chapel was also enlarged into what is
practically a second chancel. Not only this, but the south aisle of the
church was rebuilt on the scale of a second nave, a second south aisle
was built out beyond it, and the whole church, which afterwards was
enlarged towards the north and otherwise altered, was more than doubled
in size.
Sec. 70. Where chantry chapels are attached to one side or other of a
chancel, their variations in size and plan are almost infinite. In the
smallest examples, they are mere projections from the wall of the
chancel, and little more than tomb recesses, such as the Cresacre chapel
at Barnburgh, near Rotherham, or the Booth chapel on the south side of
the chancel at Sawley in Derbyshire. The little north chapel of the
chancel at Clapton-in-Gordano in Somerset may have served as a vestry.
At Brancepeth, near Durham, where there is a long chancel and an aisled
nave with transeptal chapels, a south chantry chapel adjoins the east
side of the south transeptal chapel, while a north chantry chapel forms
an independent excrescence from the north wall, and is shut off from the
chancel by a doorway. Brigstock in Northamptonshire has a very large
north chancel chapel, which is virtually the eastern portion of a
widened aisle: the south chapel, on the other hand, is of much later
date, and is so small that there must have been room in it for an altar
and little more. These smaller chantry chapels, like the beautiful south
chapel at Aldwinkle All Saints, Northants, have often great
architectural beauty of their own, and give great variety to the plan of
the church. But chancel chapels are often larger and more important,
like the fourteenth century south chapel at Leverton, near Boston, which
is practically a separate building, separated from the chancel by a wall
without an arcade, or like the very spacious north chapel of the priory
church at Brecon. The south chapel of the chancel at Berkeley in
Gloucestershire, and the Clopton chapel at Long Melford in Suffolk, are
shut off from the adjacent
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