n: A Richly Carved Pulpit and Canopy.
Edlesborough, Bucks. _Photograph H. A. Strange._]

Open-air preaching is anything but a modern invention, for long before
the erection of parish churches it was the recognised method of addressing
the people. There is a print of some popular bishop preaching in a
pulpit at Paul's Cross in S. Paul's Churchyard, and in mediaeval days
open-air pulpits were erected near the roads, on bridges and often on
the steps of the market crosses, which are often still known as
preaching crosses.

[Side note: Squints.]

In some of our churches is to be seen a squint, an opening in an oblique
direction through a wall or pier for the purpose of enabling persons in
the aisles or transepts to see the elevation of the Host at the high
altar. They are of frequent occurrence in our churches and are very
numerous in the neighbourhood of Tenby, South Wales, also in Devon and
the West generally. They are usually without any ornament, but are
sometimes arched and enriched with tracery. They are mostly found on one
or both sides of the chancel arch, but they sometimes occur in rooms
above porches, in side-chapels and the like; in every instance they were
so situated that the altar could be seen. When they occur in porches or
the rooms above they are thought to have been for the use of the acolyte
appointed to ring the sanctus bell, who, viewing the performance of mass,
would be thus able to sound the bell at the proper time. The name
hagioscope has been used to describe these oblique openings.

Cruciform marks are sometimes found on our churches, often on a stone in
the porch; they are usually incised crosses or five dots in the form of
a cross. They were, presumably, cut by the bishop when the building was
consecrated, and are called consecration crosses.

[Side note: Screens.]

The rood-screens, separating the chancel or choir of a church from the
nave, usually supported the great Rood or Crucifix, not actually on the
screen itself, but on a beam called the rood-beam, or by a gallery
called the rood-loft, which last was approached from the inside of the
church, by a small stone staircase in the wall, as can be seen in many
of our churches to-day. Although rood-lofts have been generally destroyed
in England, some beautiful examples remain at Long Sutton, Barnwell,
Dunster and Minehead, Somerset; Kemsing, Kent; Newark, Nottingham;
Uffendon, Collumpton, Dartmouth, Kenton, Plymtree and Hartland, Devon