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1831.]

Remains at St. Michael's, Crooked-lane.

cited, and that its threatened fate will
be averted.

The proposed mutilation of St. Sa-
viour's Church leads me to another
sacred edifice destroyed by the same
system of improvement which threa-
tens so severe a visitation to this inte-
resting structure; and with reference
to St. Michael's Church, I beg to ob-
serve that the two pointed arches re-
ferred to by A. J. K. (March Mag. p.
196,) could not have formed any part
of a College built by Sir William Wal-
worth, inasmuch as the style of ar-
chitecture of the remains belongs to a
period nearly two centuries earlier.
This relic of ancient London adjoined
the southern wall of the vestry room
of St. Michael's Church, and was pre-
vious to the destruction of that edifice
concealed by some vaults which were
tenanted by a basket-maker, and ap-
proached from Crooked-lane by a flap
door. The remains consisted of the
piers appertaining to two vaulted
compartments of a crypt, and appear

295

to have been constructed about the conclusion of the twelfth century. worked into a small pillar between a The angle of the centre pier was torus and a cavetto, the latter situated on the return of the pier; the capitals lated, but were enriched with simple of the small columns are now mutileaves. This style of decoration was essentially Norman, and is found in chitecture. From the circumstances the earliest specimens of pointed arof the Norman mouldings being accompanied with pointed windows, I am induced to fix the conclusion of structure; and I do not assign an earthe 12th century as the age of the lier period, because the Temple Church, built in 1185, of which the main arches are pointed, has circular-headed windows, and the circumstance of Northe assumption of a more recent date. man mouldings being found, forbid

The accompanying slight sketch mains. preserves the appearance of the re

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The windows being placed so high, show that it was a crypt to which they belonged, the vaulting in all basement structures being made to rise in a sloping direction to the crown of the window arch, which it would otherwise conceal.

The cellar which contained the remains was groined in stone, the vaulting being sustained on square piers; and it will occur to the historian of St. Martin-le-Grand, who doubtless recollects

the cellar, that it closely resembled the vaults discovered on the site of the New Post Office. These cellars, however, did not form any part of the Reformation, or perhaps the Fire of crypt, but were not earlier than the London. I always considered the vaults of St. Martin's to have no older date than the destruction of the monastery; and I felt this opinion to be corroborated by the cellar in Crooked

lane.

296

Family of Rodney.-Registers of London Chapels.

I think it will now be admitted that the remains in question cannot form part of a College built by Sir Wm. Walworth late in the 14th century; and so far A. J. K. will acknowledge the correction. Might not these arches have formed part of the mansion called the Leaden Porch? A similar crypt and nearly coeval with it, belonged to Gisor's Hall. There are some very considerable remains eastward of the site of the destroyed Church, the origin of which I am happy to see is likely to be elucidated by a gentleman who has bestowed so much attention upon the early history and antiquities of the Metropolis as your Correspondent, and I anticipate much research and information from his ensuing communications.

I would in conclusion observe, that the old Church is said to have had its site where the parsonage house was subsequently built; if so, we must be led to seek for the foundations of the earlier structure among the remains of the ancient and massy walls which were disclosed near the south-east angle of the modern Church, but which do not indicate that the original was a "small mean building," as it is said to have been. I shall therefore read with interest A. J. K.'s conjectures on the probable antiquity and destination of walls so compactly and strongly built as are the remains in E. I. C. question.

Mr. URBAN,

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which Sir George Rodney wrote in his blood in the Topographer, vol. I.

George Brydges of Avington was maternal half-brother to the Duke of Shrewsbury, and descended from Thomas Brydges of Keynsham, co. Som. and Cornbury, co. Oxon, in which last church he was buried,-who was younger brother of John first Lord Chandos. See the succession of Monuments and Inscriptions in Keynsham Church, printed in the last edition of Collins's Peerage.

George Brydges was the last of the male line of his own very honourable branch, and left his large estates to the last Duke of Chandos, who died 1789, to keep up the name and honours of the family. See also Hargrave's Law Tracts, regarding the manor of Villiers in Ireland, which came from the Countess of Shrewsbury, the mother of George Brydges, who was drowned in his canal at Avington near Winchester. M. L.

Mr. URBAN,

April 12.

IT will be well known to your readers that previously to the Marriage Act in 1753, marriages were performed at the several Chapels in and about London. Since the Act came into operation, the registers of these marriages have in many instances found their way into private hands; but as it is most desirable that their existence and the place of their deposit should be known, I have to request that any information which your readers can contribute, may be contributed through a List of your medium. I annex Chapels, the Registers of which I have not hitherto been able to discover. Lamb's Chapel. Knightsbridge. Berwick-street. Bancroft's.

Dacre's.
Dean-street, Soho.
Ely House.

Great Queen-street.

St. John's (Bedford

row).
Serjeants' Inn.
Spring Garden.
Wheeler's,Spital-fids.
Wood-st. Compter.
Hammersmith.
Chelsea College.
Southgate.
Poplar,
Ilford.

April 10. GENERAL MUNDY, in his Life of Lord Rodney (reviewed in p. 244), has given rather a blundering account of the great Admiral's ancient family. He was not brought up under the patronage of the Duke of Chandos, to whom he was not at all related; but of old George Rodney Brydges of Avington and Keynsham, whose grandmother was the heiress of the elder branch of the Rodneys. It is doubtful whether the Admiral could produce strict proof of his descent from a younger son of that venerable house; though he is called grandson of Anthony, stated to be son of George by Anne Lake (misprinted Jakes, p. 26), widow of Lord Roos, of whom see the curious history in Memoirs of King James's Peers; and see the prosecution against her husband for incest, and the consequences to her father Sir Thomas Lake; see also the poem *If Lord Rodney was descended from this George Rodney by this Anne Lake, was related also to the Duke of Chandos's branch, though very remotely.

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Grosvenor square.
Hill's, Rochester-row.
Kingsland.
King-st. Oxford-st.
Long Acre.
London House.
Westminster, New.
New-st. St. Giles's.
Oxendon.

Oxford (Marylebone).
Queen-sq. (Westmr.)
Yours, &c.

Brentwood.

Romford.
Ashford.

Hounslow.

Hampton Court.
Fulham Palace.

Highgate.
Kentish Town.

J. S. B.

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1831.]

NEW CHURCHES.-No. XXX. ST. MARY'S CHAPEL, LAMBETH BUTTS.

St. Mary's Chapel, Lambeth,

297

arch, a tolerably fair copy of a genuine window of the 15th century; and in the side divisions are lofty niches with ogee canopies, of a perfect modern design. The entire front rises to a pediment, the cornice ornamented in the same style as the porch. Above the front is a turret of entirely modern design, rising from the ridge, of the pointed roof. It consists first of a low square basement; then of an octangular plinth, with dials: to this succeeds a lantern of the same form, consisting of eight arches divided by buttresses ending in pinnacles; and the whole is closed with a spire enriched with a few "fancy" mouldings, and crowned with a cross. Yet, although it is made into so many parts, the entire steeple possesses neither elevation nor magnitude.

The flanks of the building are uniform; they are each made into six divisions by buttresses terminated by pinnacles. In every division, except the first, is a window divided into two lights by a mullion, with a quatrefoil in the head of the arch, of a modern and unsanctioned design, differing from the window in the west front, and very inferior to it. The arch is most awkwardly constructed; it is slightly curved at the haunches, but the remainder is formed of two straight lines, ending in an obtuse angle. The first window from the west is lancet-formed, and below it is an entrance, which with admirable propriety is lintelled, instead of being arched.

Architect, Bedford.

THE distinction between a Church and Chapel of Ease is purely ecclesiastical, in point of architecture and arrangement, both descriptions of edifice have every part and member in common. We see a Chapel with the plan and detail of a Cathedral, and a Parish Church little raised in point of appearance above the tithe barn. But our modern architects think and act otherwise; they make a broad distinction between the design of a church and that intended for a chapel; if they have occasion to erect an edifice of the latter denomination, they take the nearest Meetinghouse as their model, and finding

it necessary that some provision

should be made for a bell, they set a cage or turret upon one of the gables, copied either from the watch box, when such things existed, or the first public stables. · Lambeth Chapel, which forms the first subject of the engraving (Plate I.) is a building of this class, although it differs from some others in being erected in what the architect would, I suppose, designate the Gothic style. The body of the structure consists of an oblong square, without aisles or chancel, and covered with a slated roof, and the whole might pass for a veritable Meeting-house, were it not for a pyramidal composition perched on the western gable, and intended of course for a steeple. Viewing the structure in detail, we shall observe on the onset, that it is not an imitation of any style which prevailed in the ancient history of Pointed architecture, but is a production entirely of the Wyatt school, a complete specimen of Carpenter's Gothic. The western front is made by buttresses into three divisions, the angles being crowned with slender and ill-formed pinnacles. In the centre is a porch with an obtuse arch and a low gable; the inclined cornice being ornamented with some puerile arch-formed ornaments, copied perhaps from some of the pasteboard watch-cases which are sold at the fancy stationers. Above is a window of three lights, with perpendicular mullions in the head of the GENT. MAG. April, 1831.

The east end is a comely wall of brick;" it has a large window in the centre with mullions and tracery, the latter crossed in the Chinese style,

... THE INTERIOR

1

is equal in all its parts to the outside. It is made into a nave and aisles by five clusters of columns; an arrangement perfectly unnecessary, and as it is not indicated by the external construction, at variance with utility as well as precedent. The architect's idea of a column is evidently taken from a scaffold pole; four such poles united in a cruciform plan, with rings round the tops to prevent their splitting, gives the design of each cluster -a genuine carpenter's composition; and with admirable consistency, the four, though they have different capi.

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