BICKENHILL CHURCH WARWICKSHIRE - CHAPEL AT EAST END OF NORTH AISLE, NOW USED AS A VESTRY GROUND PLAN -ELEVATION OF REREDOS ப --B 10 -SCALE SECTION BRACKET SECTION -SECTION ON LINE E. F. All the fittings of the church are new, and the only ancient article of furniture remaining is a very long church chest, hewn out of a single tree trunk. It is in two divisions, with separate lids, and is heavily banded with iron (Plate 5). There are two locks to one of the divisions, and but one to the other. Many such old trunks exist, but, unfortunately, they never have any detail possessing a distinctive character by which to judge of their date. Some have supposed these hollowed tree trunks to be of a date not earlier than the sixteenth century. I have seen a good many, but have never been able to pronounce from the character of the ironwork whether they were of that time or later. Several of them had slits in the lids to admit coins, and I have supposed this to be an evidence of an early date, as I believe they ceased to be used as offertory boxes before the fourteenth century. Some have three divisions, with covers, in one only of which is a slit for money. (See "Bloxam's Ecclesiastical Architecture.") It is probable that these church chests were used to contain valuable properties belonging to the church, and if this of Bickenhill is as old as I suppose it to be, it may have held some of the articles comprised in the list made in the sixth of Edward VI., by Sir George Throckmorton, Knight, John Digby, and Thomas Marrowe, Esquires, and which, although it has several times been published, I cannot well omit to mention :— Item there-oon chalice and iii belles in the Steple. On searching the old chest, I found among several volumes of overseers' accounts, &c., of which more hereafter, the dilapidated glazing from the heads of the three lights of the north window of the chapel, which had been removed to make way for a modern stained-glass window. One of these is represented in Plate 5, the others are less interesting. All the old benches and other furniture have disappeared, but among the coal, kept in the tower, I found some pieces of a stall end of the fifteenth century, of a very interesting character (Plate 3). Dugdale does not speak of any monuments in the church; but he figures shields of arms of Waver, Peche, and Erdington, as existing in the windows in |