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In the spandrels formed by the interlacing of the semicircles are three green leaves growing out from a brown flower; in short the design is exactly like a Gothic corbel table such as was used on Dom João's church at Batalha turned upside down, and so probably dates from his time.
Beautiful old Shaw House, one of the finest in Berkshire, still shows traces of the fight in the earthworks that partly encircle it. The mansion was built by another celebrated clothier of Newbury, one Thomas Dolman, whose namesake and descendant was knighted at the Restoration. Newbury Church was rebuilt by "Jack of Newbury," and the date of its completion may be seen on a corbel.
=The Vestry.= Before the erection of the cross-wall the vaulting evidently extended eastward continuously to the apse, which still contains a fragment of it with two corbels, while further traces, including another corbel, may be seen upon the south wall.
Here and here only do we find any carving on the exterior walls, but these corbels are carved into many fantastic devices: among them we find the very common forms of evil spirits and lost souls driven away from the sacred building. A legend is connected with a corbel stone near the west end of the north aisle.
It shows how there is no bridge between two human minds. How often have I not come upon a corbel of stone carved into the shape of a face, and that face had upon it either horror or laughter or great sweetness or vision, and I have looked at it as I might have looked upon a living face, save that it was more wonderful than most living faces.
It is not often that the name of a man who worked on a mediæval church has been so preserved, and it is worth noticing that the west door at Lisbon has on it exactly the same ball ornament as that with which Master Robert and his four helpers enriched the archway here. Above the door runs an arched corbel table on which stands the one large window which the church possesses.
Two tiers of corbel brackets on the south wall, and traces of two Norman windows seem to indicate that here, as elsewhere, a slype, with a room above it, intervened between the south end of the transept and the chapter-house.
Here the main arches alone survive, having lost whatever subsidiary arches or tracery they may once have contained, but higher up under the corbel table are large open circles, not as everywhere else enclosed under the large arch, but quite independent of it.
The capitals, at first crude imitations of classic prototypes, soon become the field for the grotesque imagination of the workmen, and each differs from the other and is a mass of light and shade shot with all sorts of uncouth fancies. Wherever, for some constructive reason, a column is omitted against a wall, the capital becomes a corbel, carrying the arches.
Take my word, my rope ladder is entirely new and very strong." "Ah!" exclaimed Stephane, struck with a sudden idea. "I will bet that you have fastened it to that great iron corbel, which stretches its frightful beak up there at the angle of the wall. And just now you were suspended in space on this treacherous floating cord. Monstrous fool that I was not to understand it."
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