.
The general construction of wooden screens is close panelling below,
from which rise tall slender balusters, or wooden mullions supporting
tracery rich with cornices and crestings, frequently painted and gilded.
The lower panels often depict saints and martyrs. From the top of the
screen certain parts of the services and the lessons were read. They
were occasionally close together and glazed, as we see by a most beautiful
example at Charlton-on-Otmoor, in Oxfordshire. These screens, many of
which have been over-restored, are very common, and in addition to those
above mentioned, are found at S. Mary's, Stamford, Ottery S. Mary,
Chudleigh, Bovey, and in nearly all the Devon parish churches. At
Dunstable a screen of Queen Mary's time separates the vestry from the
chancel.

[Illustration: Screen with Rood Loft.
Kenton, Devon. _Photograph by Chapman._]

Of stone screens space will permit of only the briefest mention. They
were used in various situations, to enclose tombs and to separate
chapels, and occasionally the rood-screen was of stone.

[Illustration: The Carved Oak Balustrade in Compton Church.
Held to be the oldest existing piece of carved woodwork in England.]

The oldest piece of screen work in this country is that at Compton
Church, Surrey; it is of wood and shows the transition from the Norman
to the Early English styles. Stone screens are often massive structures
enriched with niches, statues, tabernacles, pinnacles, crestings, etc.,
as those at Canterbury, York and Gloucester.

[Side note: The Reredos.]

The reredos forms no part of the altar, and is often highly enriched
with niches, buttresses, pinnacles, and other ornaments. Not infrequently
it extends across the whole breadth of the church, and is sometimes
carried nearly up to the roof, as at S. Alban's Abbey, Durham and
Gloucester Cathedrals, S. Saviour's, Southwark and in that remarkably
fine example at Christchurch, Hants. In village churches they are mostly
very simple, and generally have no ornaments formed in the wall, though
niches and corbels are sometimes provided to carry images, and that part
of the wall immediately over the altar is panelled, as at S. Michael's,
Oxford; Solihull, Warwickshire; Euston and Hanwell, Oxfordshire, etc.

It is interesting to note that the open fire-hearth, once used in
domestic halls, was also called a "reredos."

CHAPTER IX.

BELLS AND BELFRIES.

The history of bells is lost in antiqui