bric's heart,'
is Early English on the south side, and Decorated on the north....
At the end of the nave aisle, enclosed by a Perpendicular screen,
is a chantry, founded by the Mauleverers; and below it is the
vault, in which, according to tradition, the Claphams of Beamsley
and their ancestors the Mauleverers were interred upright--
"'Pass, pass who will, yon chantry door;
And, through the chink in the fractured floor
Look down, and see a griesly sight;
A vault where the bodies are buried upright!
There, face by face, and hand by hand,
The Claphams and Mauleverers stand.'
"Whitaker, however, could never see this 'griesly sight' through
the chink in the floor; and it is perhaps altogether traditional.
The ruined portion of the church is entirely Decorated, with the
exception of the lower walls of the choir. The transepts had
eastern aisles. The north transept is nearly perfect: the south
retains only its western wall, in which are two decorated windows.
The piers of a central tower remain; but at what period it was
destroyed, or if it was ever completed, is uncertain. The choir is
long and aisleless. Some fragments of tracery remain in the south
window, which was a very fine one. Below the window runs a
Transitional Norman arcade. Some portions of tomb-slabs remain in
the choir.... The church-yard lies on the north side of the ruins.
This has been made classic ground by Wordsworth's poem."
II. (See p. 118.)
_... the shy recess
Of Barden's lowly quietness._
Compare the poem _The Force of Prayer, or the Founding of Bolton
Priory_, p. 204. Whitaker writes thus of the district of Upper
Wharfedale at Barden. "Grey tower-like projections of rock, stained with
the various hues of lichens, and hung with loose and streaming canopies
of ling, start out at intervals." Before the restoration of Henry
Clifford, the Shepherd-lord, to the estates of his ancestors--on the
accession of Henry VII.--there was only a keeper's lodge or tower at
Barden, "one of six which existed in different parts of Barden Forest.
The Shepherd-lord, whose early life among the Cumberland Fells led him
to seek quiet and retirement after his restoration, preferred Barden to
his greater castles, and enlarged (or rather rebuilt) it so as to
provide accommodation for a moderate train of attendants."
III. (See p. 121.)
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