A NOTE ON THE RESTORATION OF REPTON CHURCH. 235 



what may seem to modern taste beautiful and fitting must be 

 suffered to tamper with the most remarkable ecclesiastical structure, 

 on the most interesting site, that English Christendom yet possesses. 



Mr. Irvine, who has had perhaps greater experience of the 

 good and of the evil of modern English restorations than any one 

 else of the century, wrote as follows to our society in 1882, and 

 his word will well repay reproducing and re-reading : — 



" It is to be hoped that whenever further improvements and 

 repairs take place in this (St. Wystan's) church, this most interest- 

 ing chancel and its belongings may receive tender handling. It 

 wants but careful cleaning, rather than ought else. The opening 

 of its north light, and the removal of the flat ceiling, the restora- 

 tion of the lost gable cross, with the very, very (the italics are his) 

 careful removal of the modern plaster inside from the stone altar 

 only, but not from the surfaces originally plastered. This is in 

 general all that is wanted to hand forward to posterity one of the 

 most interesting monuments of Saxon architecture that ' Time and 

 the Dane ' (with other and later friends not a bit better, but rather 

 worse than the last) have left to Derbyshire." 



The attention of the archaeologists in August last was also 

 drawn to sundry stone remains in the vicarage garden, to the 

 west of the church. When the garden was being enlarged in the 

 previous summer, Mr. Woodyatt found a large number of roughly- 

 hewn stones a little distance below the surface, lying in a position 

 that suggested their having formed part of some overthrown sub- 

 stantial wall. Many of these stones are now heaped upon the 

 surface, with the only four that showed any traces of carving. 

 Two of these (Figs. 1 and 2) are the top stones of early Saxon 

 windows, and are slightly splayed. Their dimensions are, 

 respectively :- 



Fig. i. 



2ft. ioin. by 2ft. Height of Arch, rft. 2ft. 6in. by 2ft. Height of Arch, 8in. 



