A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



Lady chapel, the lower parts of the walls of which 

 still remain. The old west tower, pulled down 

 1864, is said to have been in part of 14th-century 

 date, though the recorded evidence is by no means 

 decisive on the point, but during the pulling down of 

 the nave arcades enough re-used material of the 

 former nave was recovered to show that it had aisles 

 and arcades of considerable scale in the 13 th century. 

 The oldest worked stone yet found on the site is the 

 relief of an angel holding a scroll with an inscrip- 

 tion, perhaps 10th-century work ; but with this 

 exception no details earlier than the 1 3 th century 

 have come to light. The traditions of the occupation 

 of this or a neighbouring site in Saxon times by a 

 wooden building, though embellished by a good deal 

 of circumstantial evidence, seem to have no more solid 

 foundation than the similar stories told of so many 

 ancient sites in England. There may well have been 

 a wooden building here as elsewhere in early times, 

 but the attempts of various local historians to identify 

 its remains with beams at Ordsall, TrafFord, Stand, &c. 

 need not be taken seriously. A fine 1 3th-century 

 church certainly existed here, and was perhaps not 

 the first stone building on the site. It had aisles 

 to its nave, and perhaps to its chancel also, 

 but its plan must remain uncertain. In a build- 

 ing of such a scale the possibility of a cruciform 

 plan with a central tower must always be taken into 

 account, and it is tempting to see in the positions of 

 the west walls of the Derby chapel, and what was once 

 the Jesus chapel, evidences of former north and south 

 transepts. It would be also quite in the normal course 

 of development if it could be shown that the building 

 of a west tower in the 14th century marked the 

 destruction of an older central tower about that time, 

 and the conversion ofthe church from a cruciform to a 

 continuously aisled plan. Unfortunately five cen- 

 turies of rebuilding and alteration have reduced any 

 such speculations to the level of an academic exercise, 

 and in any case there is ample interest in the archi- 

 tectural history ofthe building from the 15 th century 

 onwards, 



John Huntington, first warden of the college, 

 1422-58, 'built the choir of Manchester Church 

 with the aisles on both sides, being in length thirty 

 yards, and in breadth twenty yards, from the two 

 great pinacles, where the organs stood betwixt, to the 

 east end of the church.' This work seems to have 

 followed the lines of the older building, but very 

 little of it remains in its original position, both 

 arcades of the quire and the north wall of its north 

 aisle having been rebuilt late in the 1 5th century ; 

 so that it is only in the east walls of quire and aisles, 

 and the south wall of the south aisle, that any of 

 Huntington's work can now exist as he left it. The 

 spacing of the two eastern bays of the south wall of 

 the south aisle, 1 2 ft. 9 in. from centre to centre, is 

 practically that of four of the six bays of the Derby 

 chapel, and if it be assumed that the width of the 

 third bay of the south aisle, containing the entrance 

 to the chapter-house, preserves that of the bay which 

 opened to a chapter-house built at this place by 

 Huntington, there is space between it and the west 

 end of the aisle for three more bays of about 1 2 ft. 

 9 in. each. This dimension, then, probably repre- 

 sents the normal width of the bays of Huntington's 

 aisles, and makes it possible that some of the bays of 

 this width in the outer walls of the chapels after- 



wards added to the aisles may be in part Hunting- 

 ton's work moved outwards and reset. 



The main arcades are of six bays, with an average 

 width of 1 3 ft. 5 in. from centre to centre. At the 

 east end, where they abut on the responds of the 

 14th-century work, there is a width of 22 ft. across 

 the main span, but at the west of the quire the width 

 is 25 ft. 3 in. This irregularity is evidently due to a 

 desire to get as great a width as possible for the 

 stalls of the collegiate quire, and is, as it seems, the 

 work of James Stanley, the second warden of that 

 name, after 1485. The details of the arcades, how- 

 ever, are of earlier character than would have been 

 the case if they had been built anew at this time, and it 

 must be concluded that the arcades are Huntington's 

 work reset, and adapted to the later arrangements. 



Huntington died in 1458, and Ralph Langley, who 

 became warden in 146 5, carried on the general scheme 

 of rebuilding. Till his time the nave seems to have 

 been of 1 3th-century date, and in order to bring it into 

 harmony with the new quire he rebuilt it from the 

 ground, using up a good deal of the old materials. 

 His work has been even more unfortunate than that 

 of his predecessor, the outer walls of his nave-aisles 

 having been entirely removed in later alterations, while 

 the north and south arcades of his nave are now repre- 

 sented by faithful but entirely modern copies, and 

 only the south arcade occupies its original position. 

 The details of the work are evidently inspired by 

 those of Huntington's quire, and are of the same 

 excellent and refined style. When in 1883 both 

 arcades of the nave were taken down, it became 

 evident that the north arcade had been previously 

 taken down and rebuilt, its jointing being much 

 inferior to that of the south arcade. The nave is 

 not on the same axis as the tower, but it is clear 

 from the position of the south arcade that it was 

 so at first, and it was doubtless at the rebuilding of 

 the north arcade that the irregularity came into 

 being, the arcade being set up a little to the north 

 of its former line. The object of this widening 

 was to make the nave symmetrical with the quire 

 after its rearrangement by Stanley, and the rebuilding 

 is no doubt due to him. The panelling on the 

 east wall of the tower must also be part of his work, 

 and it is probable, in spite of a tradition that the 

 tower was in the main the work of George West, 

 warden, about 1 5 1 8, that Stanley completed this part 

 of the church also. 



The general development of the church, up to this 

 point, followed without material difference the scheme 

 common to so many Lancashire churches, which con- 

 sists of a long dearstoried chancel and nave with 

 north and south aisles, a west tower, and a pair of , 

 stair turrets at the junction of chancel and nave. 

 The north stair turret must have been rebuilt when 

 the nave was widened northward, and the chancel- 

 arch must also be of Stanley's work, but the south 

 turret may be of Langley's time. It is to be noted 

 that the diameter of the stair it contains is 4 ft. 6 in., 

 as compared with 5 ft. in the north turret. 



In the 1 5 th century the church began to be en- 

 larged by the addition of chantry chapels. The 

 first to be built was that of St. Nicholas, or the 

 Trafford chantry, on the south of the two east 

 bays of the south aisle of the nave ; its date seems 

 doubtful, but the original of the present building 

 was probably set up in i486. Next came the 



Digitized by IVIicrosoft® 



