Doorway, Royton Lenham, Kentdetails

The door within the porch at Bexon (page 34) may be contrasted with another, from Royton, Lenham, in the same county (page 9). Both are representative of old methods of door construction. The Royton example is composed of a series of boards tongued into one another at the edges. This kind of door-boarding may be moulded as in the present instance—a plan common to East Anglia and West Flanders— somewhat after the manner of linen-fold patterns, only with the mouldings running continuously from top to bottom, without conven- tional finish at the extremities; or it may consist of plain boards, put together like weather-boarding, but vertically of course, the prominent overlapping edges giving an effect of relief or of light and shadow, in place of moulding or any further ornament. The second type of door, of which that at Bexon is an instance, is composed of flat boards, edge to edge, with a moulded fillet covering each joint. Either type of door would usually be studded with nails arranged, as in these two cases, in horizontal lines, or sometimes in much more elaborate devices. Either type, again, is strengthened with transverse boards, or some simple framework, on the inside. The Royton door is much the more ancient of the two, and comprises, moreover, a feature now practically obsolete, viz., the wooden latch, or “heck,” as it used to be named in bygone days. The doorway is of a familiar form of late Gothic. Its head is four-centered, with carved spandrils. Heavy mouldings are carried round the top and almost down to the base of the jambs, until arrested by polygonal moulded stops. The Bexon door-head is more depressed, the point at the apex, obtuse enough in the Royton example, being no longer discernible in this. But the same traditional motif of carved spandrils, of mouldings and stops, albeit on a diminished scale and with shallower cutting, may still be identified. (p. 31)