154 EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN DERBYSHIRE. 



with a work that is of artistic and technical value, and at the 

 same time popularly written, to supply information as to the 

 architecture of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. 



The intention of this short notice, in addition to drawing 

 general attention to a noteworthy book, is to point out to 

 Derbyshire folk the interest that attaches to their own county 

 in the buildings of this period. Mr. Gotch has found far 

 more material to illustrate his work in this county than in any 

 other English shire of a like size. This must not be looked for 

 in the church fabrics. The English Reformation unhappily 

 imbibed not a few of the extravagant notions of certain con- 

 tinental enthusiasts — those " poor withered souls," as Sir W. B. 

 Richmond recently termed them at the Nottingham Church 

 Congress — who were convinced that the worship of the Great 

 Designer of the Universe ought to be divorced from everything 

 connected with skilful handicraft or beauty of design. The 

 movement in England, associated as it was with the spoliations 

 of Henry VIII., and more particularly of Edward VI., not only 

 put a rude check on church building or extension that lasted 

 for some three centuries, but also worked the destruction (out- 

 side the religious houses) of a vast number of interesting 

 ecclesiastical buildings. In Derbyshire alone, as has been 

 pointed out,* upwards of one hundred churches or chapels fell 

 into desuetude and consequent ruin during the reign of Elizabeth. 

 Mr. Gotch boldly asserts that there is no ecclesiastical archi- 

 tecture of early Renaissance character in England. This is 

 undoubtedly the fact, for when we think of the instances of 

 pre-reformation churches of the first thirty years of the six- 

 teenth century, they are all entirely Gothic in treatment. 

 Moreover the two or three isolated examples of church building 

 or church extension of the Stuart days are all of a debased 

 imitative Gothic style. The only instance that we know of 

 genuine Renaissance stone work in connection with an English 

 church during the whole of the long reign of Elizabeth was at 

 Holdenby, Northamptonshire, where Sir Christopher Hatton em- 

 ployed John Thorpe to build the vast and magnificent Holdenby 

 * Notes on Churches of Derbyshire, vol. iv, 537-8. 



