Welsh Journals

MONTGOMERYSHIRE SCREENS AND ROODLOFTS. By ARCHDEACON THOMAS, M.A., F.S.A. ONE of the duties of an Archdeacon being to inspect periodically the fabrics and the furniture of the churches and their records, I have, in the course of my visits, met with many beautiful remains of Screens and Rood- lofts, and with occasional notices of the removal of others. As some of them are marvels of skill in design and execution, and yet their history is little known, it will not be uninteresting to recall briefly their purpose and history, and to place on permanent record in the Montgomeryshire Collections some account of those at least within the county. Their Origin.-In the ordinary division of our Parish Churches into nave and chancel, we are reminded that the chancel derives its name from the Cancelli, Lattices or balusters, that marked off the portion where the divine offices were celebrated from the body of the church, where the people joined in the worship. For the first three centuries, indeed, of the Christian era, we find no record of any such partition; but if we may argue from analogy, it is most probable that something of the kind did exist. For just as the great Festivals and the Sacraments of the Christian Church were the Evangelical development of those of the Jewish Church, so it is most likely that in the arrangement of the fabric, the divine pattern, followed in the Tabernacle and the Temple, would influence that of the Ecclesia. And we do find, as a matter of fact, that from the early part of the fourth century, that is, "after the