Welsh Journals

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the new choir stalls. Against the eastern beam of the original rood loft have been fixed at a later date the rich returned stalls with their panelling which forms the second portion of the double screen. All the panels of this second screen, which stands across the chancel with their tracery, have been hacked out. The rebutting for the panels and stumps of the tracery remain broken off, and between the two screens the ceiling is plastered. The space between the two screens, measuring three feet eight inches in width, has been converted into two pews. The southern pew is lined with good Elizabethan panelling with a nicely carved top rail, and the door has turned round heads and a brass plate with the letter P, and an earl's coronet evidences the Earl of Powis as its owner. The northern pew is partly lined with a few scraps of panelling and the door has a carved panelled top. There is abundant evidence that this screen was originally not open but solid in the same style as the remainder of this panelling over the stalls on the north side of the chancel. The fact that this eastern part of the double screen was once solid upholds the local tradition that the second screen and stalls were brought from the Priory of Chirbury after the dissolution of the Priory by Henry VIII and the consequent destruction of the choir of the Monastery. In a Monastic church if also a parish church the choir, as being the Monastic portion of the church, would be entirely cut off from the nave or parish portion by a solid narrow screen against the eastern side of which the Monks' stalls would be returned." The western face of the whole of this second screen indicates clearly that it formerly stood against a wall.13 ( To be continued). 13 The width of Montgomery church and Chirbury church is about 27 feet.