?

[Illustration: St. Stephen's Church, Bristol.]

A. Somersetshire contains a number of fine churches, erected apparently
towards the close of the fifteenth or very early in the sixteenth
century; and many of these churches have much of carved woodwork in
screens, rood-lofts, pulpits, and in pewing. The towers are, in
particular, remarkable for their general style of design, and are often
divided into stages by bands of quatrefoils; the sides are more or less
ornamented with projecting canopied niches for statuary, and in many of
these niches the statues have been preserved from the iconoclastic zeal
which has elsewhere prevailed. The belfry windows are partly pierced,
sometimes in quatrefoils, and partly filled with sunk panel-work. The
parapets, whether embattled or straight-sided, are pierced with open work;
and at each angle of the tower, at which buttresses are disposed
rectangular-wise, is finished with a crocketed pinnacle, which is also
often to be met with rising from the middle of the parapet. Towers similar
in general design to those which may be said to prevail in Somersetshire
are not unfrequently met with in other counties, but do not exhibit that
provincialism which is the case in that particular county.

[Illustration: King Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.]

FOOTNOTES:

[121-*] Mr. Rickman, from whom this appellation is derived, has been since
generally followed in his nomenclature.

[137-*] In Compton Church, Surrey, is, or until recently was, the remains
of a wooden screen of late Norman character. Between the chancel and nave
of Stanton Harcourt Church, Oxfordshire, is an early wooden screen in the
style of the thirteenth century: the lower division is of plain
panel-work, whilst the upper division consists of a series of open-pointed
arches, trefoiled in the heads, and supported by slender cylindrical
shafts with moulded bases and capitals, and an annulated moulding
encircles each shaft midway up. In Northfleet Church, Kent, is a wooden
screen which approximates in general design that at Stanton Harcourt, but
is in a more advanced stage of art, being of the Early Decorated style:
the lower portion of this is of plain panelling, while the open work
forming the upper division above consists of a series of pointed arches,
with tracery and foliations in and between the heads, supported by slender
cylindrical shafts banded round midway with moulded bases and capitals,
and these arches supp