BRADBOURNE CHURCH. 77 



that these windows and arcade are Decorated, because they have 

 more of the Decorated character about them than of the style 

 that succeeded it. It would be more strictly proper to describe 

 them as of the period of the Transition between Decorated and 

 Perpendicular, which succeeded it. 



We now come to some features in the building which at tirst 

 sight are rather puzzling. First, the very uncommon window in 

 the south-west corner of the chancel. It was evidently put in as 

 a special memorial, but it is difficult to date it from its stone 

 details ; the forms are as coarse as they can be, but the mouldings 

 could scarcely be finer, and it might be of any date between 1350 

 and 1450, in an out-of-the-way part like the Peak. The restorers 

 have left us, fortunately, some original glass in the head, and this 

 again is anomalous, the shield being of such a form that it might 

 be as old as 1320, but the details of the diaper, and specially a 

 rose of two sets of five leaves, with a small seeded centre, shows 

 that the window must be a lingering example of an earlier style, 

 a late instance of flowing Decorated, perhaps 1360. The arms 

 in the window are Arg. a chevron between three horse shoes Sa. 

 for Edensor, who, I believe, married a late fourteenth century 

 Bradbourne ; it looks at first sight like a Ferrers coat, but that 

 family bore no chevron. To about the same time we must assign 

 the chancel arch, and the east window, which is a good example 

 of reticulated tracery for any one who admires such rather 

 common-place work, which ran a long course. 



We are now on the confines of Perpendicular, and to this 

 period belongs the next window in the chancel ; it may be 1380, 

 but, as I intimated before, in a part of the world where a 

 knowledge of the progress of architecture must have been fitful 

 and uncertain, we cannot apply fixed rules for dating different 

 parts of a church ; the character of the masonry, and details like 

 straight joints, and not forms of windows, but mouldings, are 

 really the only reliable guides. 



The mouldings of the parapet of the tower indisputably prove 

 that it cannot possibly be Norman, though it may appear from 

 below old enough to be so ancient. As a matter of fact it must 



