ALTAENON OHTJEOH. 269 



destroyed, and the carved work thereof broken down with 

 axes and hammers. When the church was restored, in 1865, 

 it was rightly decided to do the necessary work well and 

 thoroughly, and to leave the screen untouched. Had the 

 screen been then removed, — as forsooth being more or less 

 dilapidated, and having witnessed Roman Catholic ceremonies 

 upon its gallery in by-gone days, — and this happened 

 in a church, which shall be nameless, restored about the same 

 time — an exuberance of Puritanical zeal would have robbed 

 posterity of "by far the finest specimen of 15th century wood- 

 work in Cornwall, and one of the very best existing examples of 

 perpendicular oak-work in England." To guard against such a 

 fate hereafter, when time should have made it more shaky, it was 

 resolved to augment a small nucleus-fund, already in existence, 

 and restore the screen as a memento of the jubilee. Mr. Harry 

 Hems had provided two designs, (1) with groining, and (2) with 

 new tracery in spandril spaces, relieved by a cornice. The latter 

 course was out of the question ; tracery should not be placed 

 where tracery had never been ; existing material should be 

 restored, and any lost tracery renewed, but the spandrils should 

 be plain match-boarded, so that, if desired, groining might be 

 added in time to come, without rendering useless such tracery as 

 would have been inserted in the spaces it ought to occupy. This 

 was accordingly done. But, as the work progressed, it occurred 

 that though the screen had borne, on the face of it, abundant 

 evidence, by mortice-slot and dowel-hole, of previous groining, 

 yet, when the spandrils were boarded over, such evidence would 

 be obscured ; and, therefore, to shew that the jubilee restorers 

 knew their business, it was decided to groin l^ bays at either 

 end, and to leave the extremities of cresting, etc., unfinished, as 

 a gentle hint to aftercomers in what direction their superfluous 

 funds might be expended. Groining, of course, but of a simpler 

 kind, ought to be added on the other side of the screen as 

 well ; and then the completed gallery would form a commanding 

 and suitable pulpit, from which the sermon might well be 

 preached, when the church is filled with its four or five hundred 

 worshippers, at harvest thanksgivings and like functions.* 



* A print is given of the screen before Restoration, because the anatomy is 

 better seen than would be the case, if it were shown as restored. 



