Our Churches and Chapels eBook

Titus Pomponius Atticus
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 386 pages of information about Our Churches and Chapels.

Our Churches and Chapels eBook

Titus Pomponius Atticus
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 386 pages of information about Our Churches and Chapels.

The interior of Christ Church is plain, and rather heavy-looking.  But it is very clean and orderly.  The chancel of the building is circular, tastefully painted, with a calm subdued light, and looks rich.  The ceiling of the church is lofty, and very woody—­is crossed by four or five unpoetical-looking beams which deprive the building of that airiness and capaciousness it would otherwise possess.  Contiguous to the chancel there is a galleried transept; a large gallery also runs along the sides and at the front end of the general building.  The seats below are substantial and high; very small people when they sit down in them go right out of sight—­if you are sitting behind you can’t see them at all; people less diminutive show their occiput moderately; ordinarily-sized folk keep their heads and a portion of their shoulders just fairly in sight.  About 560 people can be accommodated below and 440 in the galleries.  There are several free sittings in front of the pulpit—­good seats for hearing, but rather too conspicuous; just within each entrance on the ground floor there are more free sittings; and all the pews in the galleries except the two bottom rows—­let at a low figure—­ are, we believe, also free.  Altogether there are about 400 seats free and tolerably easy in the building.  There are many pretty stained glass memorial windows in the church; indeed, if it were not for these the building would have a very cold and unpleasantly Normanised look.  They tone down its severity of style, and cast gently into it a mellowed light akin to that of the “dim religious” order.  They are narrow, circular-headed; and occupy the front, the sides, the transept, and the chancel.  All the lower windows in the building, except two or three, are filled in with stained glass.  The windows were put in by the following parties:- Four by Mr. Edward Gorst (afterwards Lowndes), one in memory of his wife and two children, another in memory of Mr. Septimus Gorst, his wife and only child, and two in commemoration of the 20 years services of the late Rev T. Clark at the church; five by the late Mr. J. Bairstow—­two of them being in memory of his sisters, Miss Bairstow and Mrs. Levy; two in memory of the late Mr. J. Horrocks, sen., and Mrs. Horrocks his wife, by their children; one in memory of the late Mr. John Horrocks, jun., by his widow and two sisters; one to the memory of Mr. Lowndes by his son; two by the late Mrs. Clark, one, we believe, being in memory of her mother, whilst the other does not appear to have any personal reference; one by the Rev. Raywood Firth, the present incumbent, in memory of Miss Buck, who remembered him kindly in her will; and one by the Rev. Mr. Firth and his wife, which was put up when the Rev. T. Clark relinquished the incumbency, and gave way for his son-in-law.  This “in memoriam” act was done out of affection and not because the incumbency was changing hands.  The pulpit in the Church is tall and somewhat handsome.  It occupies a central position, in front of the chancel,

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Our Churches and Chapels from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.