1. Anglo-Saxon, 680-1100 ⎞
2. Early Norman, 1060-1100 ⎠ Primitive Romanesque.
3. Late Norman, 1100-1145 ⎞
4. Transitional, 1145-1190 ⎠ Romanesque.
5. Lancet, 1190-1245 ⎞
6. Early Geometrical, 1245-1280 ⎟ Early ⎞
7. Late Geometrical, 1280-1315 ⎠ ⎟
⎟ Gothic.
8. Curvilinear, 1315-1360 ⎞ ⎟
9. Perpendicular, 1360-1485 ⎟ Late ⎠
10. Tudor, 1485-1660 ⎠
The above classification is, in the main, that of Mr. Sharpe’s “Seven
Periods of English Architecture.”
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Bristol.
[Illustration]
Bristol Cathedral was originally a church of the Regular Canons of the
Augustinian Order, who settled at Bristol in 1142. In 1542, like the
Augustinian churches of Carlisle and Oxford, it became a cathedral. In
1836 the see was united to that of Gloucester: it has recently resumed
its independent status.
I. LATE NORMAN.—The choir and transepts of the cathedral were almost
wholly rebuilt in the fourteenth century; but here and there the original
work of the founder, Robert Fitzhardinge, survives. This includes (1)
the end wall of the south transept, which contains a doorway, afterwards
blocked up, when the south aisle of the Norman nave was constructed with
a doorway into it from the north-east corner of the cloister. Inside the
transept is a Norman cushion-corbel, supporting a later Perpendicular
capital. (2) Outside the south transept are flat pilaster buttresses at
the angles; the set-off of the ancient parapet; and a plain gable window,
set in a rough wall, on which may be seen the weathering of the original
steep roof. (3) The coursed masonry below the big window of the north
transept. (4) The lower part of the tower-piers; for their Perpendicular
mouldings, as in the earlier remodelling of Winchester nave, are such
as could be developed out of a Norman compound pier. (5) The corbels in
the staircase on the north side of the choir. (6) The gatehouse to the
Abbot’s lodgings.
[Illustration: THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
II. TRANSITIONAL.—About 1145 innovations began to be made in Anglo-Norman
Romanesque. Among other things the pointed arch was introduced; at first
chiefly in arches supporting central towers or vaults. In 1155 the
founder received a grant of the forfeited estates of Roger de Berkeley;
and, owing to this vast accession of wealth, was able to finish his
Norman and Transitional work with exceptional richness. (1) In the
_Vestibule_ to the Chapter-house, the bays being oblong, pointed arches
were used on the short sides of each bay, so that their crowns might rise
to the same height as those of the semicircular arches on the longer
sides, as the builders thought was demanded by the requirements of
vaulting. In the same way, beneath the central towers of Oxford Cathedral
and Bolton Priory, pointed arches were built over the narrow transepts;
while over the broader nave and choir the semicircular arch was
employed. (2) The _Chapter-house_, as in most monastic establishments,
_e.g._, Gloucester, Canterbury, Oxford, Chester, was oblong; the more
beautiful polygonal form being more in favour in cathedrals served by
Secular Canons. It was originally 71 by 25 feet. The vast scale of these
conventual arrangements, here and elsewhere, is exceedingly striking. The
monks of St. Albans thought that their church required a nave 300 feet
long; the six canons of Bristol must have been lost in a Chapter-house
71 feet long. The recessed arcades round the walls here and at Worcester
are interesting; simple as they are, they are the germs of the beautiful
arcades of canopied niches round the Chapter-houses of York and Wells
and the Lady Chapel of Ely. Here is preserved a fine piece of archaic
sculpture (see CHICHESTER). (3) Exceedingly rich, too, is the lower part
of the _Great Gateway_ in College Green; “its courses, however, are
nearly double the height of Norman masonry; the hood-moulds of all the
arches are perpendicular, and at the crown of each arch are mitred into a
perpendicular string-course; which, with the high finish of the ornament,
points to the gateway having been wholly rebuilt in Perpendicular times”;
in which case, like the eastern bay of the triforium of Rochester, it is
an early example of “architectural forgery.” Fitzhardinge’s nave and
aisles seem to have been pulled down in the sixteenth century with a view
to rebuilding; which, however, was not carried out till 1877.
[Illustration: ELDER LADY CHAPEL.]
III. LANCET.—Early in the thirteenth century a beautiful Lady chapel
was built, projecting eastward from the north transept, and separated
by a few feet from the north wall of the choir. The same position was
adopted later for the Lady chapels of Peterborough and Ely. This chapel
is the artistic gem of the cathedral; it is surrounded by arcades of
the greatest beauty, with sculptured grotesques interspersed among the
foliage that remind one of the rich sculptured work in the retro-choir of
Worcester, which is possibly a few years earlier. Later on it received
the name of the elder Lady chapel; another Lady chapel having been built
in the more normal position at the extreme east of the choir.
IV. Fitzhardinge’s cathedral, supplemented by the Lady chapel, seems to
have satisfied the Canons very well for the first half of the thirteenth
century. But in the EARLY GEOMETRICAL period (1245-1280), preparations
were made to improve the lighting of the _north transept_ by the
insertion of a big window in its north wall. The tracery of the present
window is later; but its inner jambs, mouldings and shafts, and the
external sill and string, as well as a great part of the buttresses,
seem to have been executed _c._ 1250. About this date is the fine
_doorway_, with a cleverly-contrived lintel, at the south end of the east
walk of the _Cloister_.
V. In the MIDDLE of the GEOMETRICAL period, _c._ 1280, the east end
of the Lady chapel was rebuilt, and a window with Geometrical tracery
inserted; the tracery is of early character, containing nothing but
foliated circles. At the same time it received a simple quadripartite
vault; and to resist the thrust of this vault, the northern buttresses
were reconstructed and weighted with pinnacles. Of these pinnacles only
one, at the north-east corner, remains; the others seem to have been
reconstructed at the time when the pinnacles of the choir were built.
[Illustration: CHOIR.]
VI. CURVILINEAR.—But the great building period at Bristol was between
1315 and 1349—that short but brilliant period when English mediæval
design was at its best—which culminated in the Octagon and Lady chapel of
Ely, the choir-screens of Southwell and Lincoln, and the Percy monument
at Beverley. Everything east of the nave was pulled down and rebuilt
_de novo_. And a very remarkable design it is; in fact, quite unique
among our cathedrals. All other cathedral authorities had agreed long
ago that the cardinal fault in all Romanesque design was its bad system
of lighting, but that the remedy was to be found mainly in improving
the top-lighting—_i.e._, in increasing the dimensions of the clerestory.
Beverley clerestory had taller windows than Durham; Salisbury clerestory
had three windows for every one of Beverley; Exeter spread out its
windows in increasing breadth till they touched the buttresses on either
side; the clerestories of the choir of Gloucester, now in course of
erection, were a vast, lofty, continuous sheet of glass. But there was
an alternative system of improving the lighting, which in many large
churches, such as Grantham, Ledbury, and Leominster, was the result of
fortuitous growth, but which in the choir of the Temple Church, London,
and in Patrington Church now in course of erection, was the result of
deliberate design. It was to magnify the aisles at the expense of the
nave, to lift them up so high that windows of vast height could be
placed in their walls, to dispense with a clerestory altogether, and to
give to the pier-arcade of the nave the additional height gained by the
suppression of the clerestory. It was to substitute side-lighting for
top-lighting; to rely exclusively on the flood of light passing from
vast, lofty aisle windows into the nave through its elevated arches.
Hence the big windows of Bristol choir, each representing a pair of
windows; the lower half the usual small window of an aisle, the upper
half the larger window stolen from the clerestory.
[Illustration: BERKELEY CHAPEL.]
But the new design had another merit, which probably weighed still more
with the Bristol builders. The cardinal difficulty of the mediæval
builders was how to keep up on the top of lofty clerestory walls a
heavy stone vault which was always striving to push them asunder. They
succeeded at length in keeping the clerestory walls from being thrust out
by propping them up with flying-buttresses, perilously exposed, however,
to all the vicissitudes of English weather. But there was another
solution of the problem, which had been worked out in the thirteenth
century in the Temple Church, and in the twelfth century in many a church
in central and southern France, such as the old cathedral of Carcassonne.
It was to stop the outward thrusts of the nave vault not by the inert
resistance of buttress, pinnacle, and flying-buttress, but by bringing
into play opposing thrusts—_i.e._, the inward thrusts of vaults built
over the aisles. But to make these outward and inward thrusts balance and
neutralise one another, the aisle vaults must be of pretty much the same
height and span as those of the nave. The nave must be lowered or the
aisles must be raised, or both. At Bristol the architect has preferred to
raise the aisles. Then, the stability of the nave vault being secured,
all the builder has to do is to stop the outward thrusts of the vaults of
the aisles. This it is easy enough to do by a row of buttresses weighted
with pinnacles. So Bristol Cathedral, to eyes accustomed to contemporary
cathedrals, presents the strange solecism of having neither clerestory
nor flying-buttresses. The whole design may well have been based on that
of the English cathedral at Poitiers.
[Illustration: VAULT OF AISLE.]
The Bristol architect was an architectural Radical. When it came,
however, to the question of vaulting the aisles he had not the courage
of his convictions. Having constructed aisles unusually lofty and
impressive, he immediately sets to work to make them look low and
ordinary by a complicated, costly and unnecessary system of skeleton
vaulting. He seems to have thought that without some method of reducing
the apparent height of the aisles, the church would look like no other
church; it would look not as if it had the ordinary aisled nave, but as
if it had three naves side by side. He ought to have been thankful to
have the means of making it look unlike other churches; and, as a matter
of fact, a design of parallel naves has a most noble effect, as may well
be seen in the nave of Warwick Church, built in the most debased Gothic
of the seventeenth century, but one of the most impressive designs in the
country, full of light and atmosphere.
A little later, but still in the Curvilinear period, the Berkeley chapel
was built, projecting southward from the easternmost bay of the south
aisle of the choir, and a sacristy by which it is approached. Here is
more skeleton-vault and much elaborate carving. The Newton chapel was
also built, projecting eastward from the south transept; and perhaps at
the same time the simple vault of the adjacent bay of the choir aisle was
put up. A curious and by no means pleasing characteristic of the Bristol
fourteenth-century architecture is the series of sepulchral recesses in
the walls; they remind one of the cloister doorway at Norwich.
VII. PERPENDICULAR.—Early in the fifteenth century a central tower was
added. Here again one is struck by the originality of the Bristol people;
it is as beautiful as it is original. Fifteenth-century tower design
rather runs in grooves. Gloucester, Evesham, Wrexham, Taunton, and the
Somerset towers are cast very much in a mould. It is not so with the
Bristol tower. The designer had noticed how beautiful is the effect of a
close-packed range of tall clerestory windows, such as those of Leighton
Buzzard Church. So, instead of restricting himself on each side of the
tower to one or two windows, he inserts no less than three. The range of
clerestory windows which the fourteenth-century builder refused to the
choir becomes the special ornament and glory of the tower.
VIII. In 1888 the new nave and western towers were completed by Mr.
Street. He can hardly be said to have made the most of his opportunities.
The new work is copied closely from the old, and so is somewhat
uninteresting. He had but to remedy some of the faults of the original
design: to omit the ugly skeleton vaulting of the aisles, to simplify the
vaulting of the choir, to discard the sepulchral recesses, to improve
on the design of the windows of the choir—in which, as at Ely, flowing
tracery is not seen at its best; and we should have had something
original and interesting. The new nave might have been a criticism of the
choir.
The Cathedral of Christ Church, Canterbury.
[Illustration: ST. MARTIN’S CHURCH.]
The metropolitan cathedral of Canterbury owes its enthralling interest to
its vastness of scale, its wealth of monuments, its treasures of early
glass, the great historical scenes that have been enacted within its
walls—above all, to that greatest of all historical tragedies to the mind
of the mediæval Englishman, the murder of Becket. It does not owe its
distinction to its architecture. Whole building periods are almost wholly
unrepresented; for the century and a half when English design was at its
best, the Canterbury authorities slumbered and slept. What we have is the
result of two periods only, with some scraps incorporated from earlier
Norman work. What is there is not of the best: the Perpendicular work can
be bettered at Gloucester, Winchester, and York; the work in the choir,
a foreign importation, is not equal to that of its prototype, the French
cathedral of Sens. We have many heterogeneous cathedrals in England. In
the rest there is ever an attempt, usually a successful attempt, as at
Hereford, and Gloucester, and Wells, to weld the conflicting elements of
the design into symmetry and harmony. Canterbury scornfully declines any
attempt at composition. Transepts and turrets and pinnacles are plumped
down anyhow and anywhere; to the east it finishes abruptly in the
ruined crags of a vast round tower; to the west the towers of its façade
were, till lately, as incongruous in character as in date. Externally,
the lofty central tower alone gives some unity to the scattered masses;
internally it is an assemblage of distinct and discordant buildings.
I. NORMAN.—Of the pre-Conquest cathedrals of Canterbury nothing remains,
unless it be fragments of rude masonry in crypt and cloister. Of
Lanfranc’s cathedral, built, together with the Benedictine monastery,
between 1070 and 1077, there remains the plinth of the walls of nave and
transept. In the north transept some of his small square blocks of Caen
stone are well seen just above the site of the martyrdom, as well as
his turret in the north-west corner. His nave was allowed to stand till
the fifteenth century. The present nave and central transept are built
on Lanfranc’s foundations. The Norman work has had a most deleterious
effect on the later design. To preserve the Norman north-west tower of
the façade, the fifteenth century nave was built too short; to preserve
the lines of his transept, it was rebuilt with a projection of only
one bay to north and south, and without aisles, and appears woefully
shrunken when compared with the vast transept of York, or even with the
twelfth century transepts of Winchester and Ely. Lanfranc’s cathedral
was an unambitious building, built in a hurry; closely copied, to save
time probably, both in plan and dimensions, from William the Conqueror’s
abbey-church at Caen, from which Lanfranc came to rule at Canterbury.
[Illustration: SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.]
His choir consisted of but two bays and an apse. This was altogether
inadequate for the church of a big monastery, and the seat of the Primate
of all England. In 1096 it was pulled down and replaced by an enormous
apsidal choir, some ten bays long, with a square Saint’s chapel to the
east as at Rochester, with northern and southern towers flanking the main
eastern apse, and crossed midway by a big eastern transept, from each arm
of which two apsidal chapels projected to the east. What was the object
of this vast eastward extension? It was probably due to the increasing
tendency towards sacerdotalism, to the increase of veneration for the
sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and to the increase of Saint-worship. (1)
In the monastic churches the monks were accustomed to sit in the crossing
and in the western bays of the nave, where their stalls still remain at
Norwich, Gloucester, and St. Albans. They wanted to be segregated and
screened off from the laity, the sheep from the goats; the very stones
of the church must preach the dignity of the priestly function. So they
removed to the east, and shut themselves up in a choir of their own. (2)
Secondly, they wanted a clear space for the high altar, a sanctuary for
it. (3) They wanted space for many chapels and altars; not only those
of the greater saints of the church, St. Mary, St. Peter, and the rest,
but those saints—and they were very numerous at Canterbury—whose bodies
or relics of whom were among the treasures of the cathedral—such as St.
Dunstan, the destroyer of Secular Canons, and the martyred Archbishop
Alphege. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to Canterbury to these shrines; room
had to be found for them to pass round, to gaze for a moment at the holy
relics, to say one prayer. Whatever the object of the extension, it set
a precedent which was followed in the great majority of the cathedrals
of England. In the latter days of the twelfth century Hereford and
Chichester extended their choirs; in the thirteenth century the choirs
of Lincoln, Lichfield, Worcester, Ely, and Exeter were rebuilt, and those
of Winchester, Durham, and Lincoln were enlarged. In the fourteenth
century those of Lichfield and Wells were enlarged, and that of York was
rebuilt on a magnificent scale. Old St. Paul’s had a choir twelve bays
long. Thus, till the end of the fourteenth century, the history of the
English cathedrals was largely a history of the rebuilding or enlarging,
or, as at Gloucester and Norwich, of the remodelling of choirs.
[Illustration: CAPITAL IN CRYPT.]
Of “Conrad’s glorious choir” (it was commenced by Prior Ernulph _c._ 1096
and finished _c._ 1115 by Prior Conrad) a considerable amount remains.
The round-arched work in the crypt is nearly all of this date, except
the carving of many of the capitals, which was executed later; and from
the extent of his crypt one can plot out the exact shape and dimensions
of the Norman choir. Much of it is seen outside, especially in and near
the south-east transept with its intersecting semicircular arcades, and
the most charming little Norman tower imaginable. In the interior many
Norman stones, “cross-hatched,” may be seen in the aisle-wall immediately
after entering the choir-aisle by the flight of steps; the lower part
of the vaulting-shaft in this wall, built of several stones and not of
solid drums, as it is higher up, is also Norman. In the eastern transept
the triforium occurs twice over; the upper of the two was Conrad’s
clerestory. Much of Conrad’s semicircular arcade also remains on the
aisle-walls.
Conrad’s choir was not only far longer than Lanfranc’s, but it had the
curious peculiarity (preserved in the French choir) that it was broader
than the nave, and moreover widened out as it proceeded to the east.
The double apses of each of his transepts were copied by St. Hugh at
Lincoln a century later. A very noble feature of Canterbury choir is
its elevation, necessitated by the construction of the crypt below it.
The raising of the floor adds great dignity to the choir (one misses
it painfully at Bristol); and was still further added to by the French
architect, so that now at Canterbury one goes eastward from height to
height. We climb from the nave to the choir, from the choir to the
sanctuary, from the sanctuary to the eastern chapels. One gets a bathos
at Durham and Worcester, where at the east one plunges into a hole.
II. TRANSITIONAL.—But Conrad’s glorious choir was destroyed by a
great fire in the year 1174, amid much mediæval cursing and swearing,
and the tears of all the people of Canterbury. Then the monks did an
abominable thing. Instead of being satisfied with our home-bred English
architecture, of which such a beautiful example was just being completed
at Ripon, they sent for a foreigner. The present choir of Canterbury,
like that of Westminster, was “made in France.” The only consolation
one has is the fact—which is a fact—that with that stolid insularity
which from the twelfth century has insisted on working out its own
salvation in its own way—English architects ignored them both. The new
French choir was to be a rock on which the main current of English
art struck and parted asunder only to meet again on the other side.
English design passed on, as if Canterbury choir had never existed, from
Ripon and Chichester and Abbey Dore and Wells to Lincoln Minster. The
coupled columns, the French arch-moulds, the Corinthianesque capitals of
Canterbury were un-English; no one would have anything to do with them
anywhere.
[Illustration: SOUTH-EAST TRANSEPT.]
The choir, as rebuilt, was even longer than Conrad’s long choir. It has
an elongated aisled apse beyond, and a curious circular chapel east
of that. The former goes by the name of Trinity chapel, the latter of
Becket’s corona. Becket’s first mass had been said in an older Trinity
chapel; his body lay from 1170 to 1220 in the crypt below it; in 1220 he
was translated to a magnificent shrine in the present Trinity chapel. The
corona may perhaps have been erected to cover another shrine placed here
and containing a fragment of Becket’s scalp. Sens seems to have had a
similar corona.
The design of the choir is a close copy of the work at Sens, Noyon,
Senlis, and the neighbouring cathedrals. Columns almost classical in
proportion replace the heavy English cylinder. The coupled columns
and Corinthianesque capitals of Sens are faithfully reproduced in the
Trinity chapel. The choir, as at Sens, is arranged in coupled bays with
sexpartite vaulting; while principal and intermediate piers, single and
compound vaulting-shafts occur alternately in either choir. In unstable
French fashion the vaulting-shaft is perched on the abacus. The abacus
is square, except in the eastern part of the crypt. The capitals of
the choir are foliated; the English moulded capital occurs only in the
crypt. Each bay of the triforium in both cathedrals contains a couple
of arches, each arch subdivided by a central shaft. Both cathedrals have
round transverse arches in the vaulting of the aisles. The windows are
not the tall slender lancets of England, but the broad squat lancets
of France. The pointed arches of the apse of Trinity chapel on their
tall stilts have a thoroughly French look. French, too, is the wish to
dispense with a hood-mould round the pier-arches. And, as at Noyon,
flying-buttresses emerge from the gloom of the triforium into the open
air.
But there is another factor besides the personality of William of Sens.
Having engaged a foreigner to do the work, the next step of the monks
probably was to distrust him. The choir, as it appears now, bears
unmistakable marks that not only William of Sens was at work, but also
a British building committee. Being a Frenchman, William of Sens must
have been an iconoclast, and would have liked to clear away the ruins
and start _de novo_. His British employers, here, as in nearly all our
cathedrals, parsimonious in the extreme, insisted on retaining every inch
of old wall or pillar that could be utilised. The towers of St. Anselm
and St. Andrew still stood, more or less stable, to the east. William
therefore had to constrict his choir to pass between them. The result
is the awkward twisting of the arcade and clerestory of the choir. The
choir starts with becoming wider as it advances from the east; then it
suddenly contracts to pass between St. Anselm’s and St. Andrew’s chapels;
then it expands once more into the Trinity chapel. No Frenchman, if he
had had his way, would have permitted his cathedral to be so distorted.
Again, the building committee insisted on utilising the piers of Conrad’s
crypt as far as possible as supports to the arcade of the choir above.
The result is that the piers of the choir are not equally spaced; and
the narrow arches are pointed, while the broad ones are semicircular
and stilted. William must have been ashamed, too, of all the zigzag
and billet ornament. But the building committee had probably a large
stock of it collected from the debris after the fire, and wanted to
work it off. One beautiful feature, however, is to be placed to English
credit—viz., the profuse use of Purbeck marble shafts. On the whole we
may take it that what we have is not William’s design as he would have
wished it, but his design criticised, fettered, altered and ignored by a
clerical building committee.
[Illustration: CHOIR.]
[Illustration: BLACK PRINCE’S TOMB.]
At the beginning of the fifth year of his work, William of Sens was
seriously injured by a fall from the scaffold, and soon after returned
to France. An English William was appointed to succeed him. He completed
Trinity chapel, Becket’s corona, and the crypt beneath the two. It is
usual to attribute to the English William an important part in the design
of the eastern chapels and crypt. The facts point the other way. These
eastern portions are less English and more French than the western work.
There is not a single trace of English influence in the design, except
solely the rounding of the abacus and the moulding of the capitals in
the crypt. With these two minor exceptions, everything was completed in
strict conformity with the French design.
More important even than the architecture is the ancient glass.
Canterbury and York are the great treasure-houses of stained-glass:
Canterbury for early thirteenth-century glass, York for
fourteenth-century glass. The student should take with him to Canterbury
Mr. Lewis Day’s work on Stained Glass. Three of the windows in the
Trinity chapel illustrate the miracles of St. Thomas. On the north side,
in the lower group of the eastern window, is the story of a child (1)
who falls into the Medway, (2) the other boys tell his parents, (3) the
body is drawn out of the water, _cætera desunt_. In the next group is the
story of a boy who was brought to life by a draught of water mixed with
the saint’s blood. But the father omitted to pay the offerings promised
to the saint. In the central medallion another son lies dead, struck by
the sword of St. Thomas, who is seen through the ceiling. In another
group a woman is being flagellated by way of penance. Two other windows
describe miracles of healing: in a medallion in the lower part of the
western window a madman comes up, “_amens accedit_,” beaten with sticks
and bound; in the next he is cured, “_sanus recedit_.” In one is the
only representation extant of the later shrine; the martyr, in a mauve
vestment, appears in a vision to Benedict below. On the shrine is the
box, as described by Erasmus, which contained the archbishop’s sudary.
In the east window of the corona is portrayed Christ’s Passion; in the
two windows of the north aisle are types and antitypes from the Old and
New Testaments; among them the three Magi, all asleep in one bed. The
circular window in the north-east transept also contains the original
glass; and many fragments are seen elsewhere.
[Illustration: SOUTH OF CHOIR]
III. LANCET.—For this period (1190-1245) there is nothing to show except
the north wall of the Cloister, and a lovely doorway in the south-east
corner of the Cloister, cruelly hacked about by the vandals who built the
cloister-vault.
IV. To the GEOMETRICAL period (1245-1315) belongs the Chapter-house up to
the sills of the windows, and the screens north and south of the choir.
A fine window with Kentish tracery was inserted in St. Anselm’s chapel.
V. Of CURVILINEAR work (1315-1360) there is no trace except some
diaper-work in the choir, which may have adorned the shrine of St.
Dunstan, who was buried at the south end of the high altar.
[Illustration: EAST TRANSEPT.]
VI. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—At length Canterbury woke up, and removed
Lanfranc’s nave and transept, which must have looked shockingly low and
mean for the last two hundred years in juxtaposition with the stately
choir. The new nave, built between 1379 and 1400, is very fine, but
somehow no one seems to be a very ardent admirer of it. Its proportions
are not good: Winchester nave is about the same height, but is 70 feet
longer; York choir is loftier, and is 25 feet longer. But the gravest
fault is in the internal elevation. The architect has recognised the
value of tallness of pier-arch; but to get this exceptional height of
pier and arch, he has sacrificed not only triforium, but clerestory as
well. It is fatal to a Gothic design to minimise the clerestory. The
choirs of Gloucester, Norwich, Cirencester, are the types to be followed;
not the naves of Southwell or Lichfield.
To this period belong also the Black Prince’s chantry, and the screens
and reredos of the Lady chapel, all in the crypt; the upper part of the
chapter-house, from which all aspect of antiquity has recently been
removed; the cloisters; St. Michael’s, or the Warrior’s chapel, which
replaced the eastern apse of Lanfranc’s southern transept, and which has
a complicated lierne vault similar in character to that of the north
transept of Gloucester cathedral; the tomb and chantry of Henry IV., with
fan-vaulting, 1433; the western screen at the entrance of the choir; the
south-west tower; Deans’ chapel (Lady chapel), which replaced the eastern
apse of Lanfranc’s northern transept (1450), and which has fan-vaulting.
[Illustration: CRYPT.]
VII. To the TUDOR period belongs the Angel or Bell Harry Tower
(1495-1503), and the buttressing and arches inserted between its piers.
Also the Christ Church gateway. The great tower is remarkable for the
unbroken verticality of its buttresses; it is as exceptional as it is
successful in design.
The _Chapter-house_ is rectangular, for a rectangular building fitted
more easily into the east walk of a monastic cloister. Nearly all the
monastic chapter-houses are therefore rectangular, but sometimes had
apses; the exceptions being the Benedictine chapter-houses of Worcester,
Westminster, Evesham, and Belvoir (which last was exceptional also in
position, being placed in the very centre of the cloister), and the
Cistercian chapter-houses of Morgam and Abbey Dore, sister designs. While
the Secular Canons, having as a rule no cloister, preferred a polygonal
chapter-house, as at Lincoln, Beverley, Lichfield, Salisbury, Wells,
Elgin, Southwell, York, Old St. Paul’s, Hereford, Howden, Manchester,
Warwick. So did the Regular Canons at Alnwick, Cockersand, Thornton,
Carlisle, Bridlington, and Bolton. This beautiful polygonal form seems
not to occur in France.
[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-WEST.]
At the north-west corner of the cloister is the doorway through which
Becket passed to the north-west transept, with his murderers in pursuit
of him. Near here is a hole in the wall, the Buttery hatch. In the
fifteenth century the south walk of the cloister was divided into
“studies” for the monks by wooden partitions (at Gloucester they are of
stone), and its windows were glazed.
From the cloister we pass to the _West Front_, and commence the tour of
the exterior. The south-west tower (with the Deans’ chapel) was completed
by Prior Goldstone (1449-1468); the copy of it was put up in 1834:
“it was an eyesore that the two towers did not match.” Very bad modern
statues adorn the niches.
Later still (1517) is _Christ Church Gateway_, through which one first
approaches the cathedral, with doors inserted in 1662. Originally it had
two turrets. Outside it is a monument to the dramatist Marlowe.
[Illustration: NAVE.]
On the south side is seen the porch; the nave, a beautiful design; and
the charming pinnacle of the south-west transept. East of the Warrior’s
chapel is the projecting end of Stephen Langton’s tomb. East of this,
the two lower rows of windows are those of Conrad’s choir; the upper row
that of William of Sens. The middle windows in the S.E. transept were
the clerestory windows of Conrad; the windows above them are those of
William of Sens. The three upper stages of the tower on the south of this
transept are late Norman work; one of the prettiest bits in Canterbury.
Farther east we have French design, pure and simple; here, for the first
time in English architecture, the flying-buttresses are openly displayed;
notice how flat and plain they are; it had not yet occurred to architects
to make them decorative. The grand sweep of apse and ambulatory seems to
send one straight back to France. Then comes the broken, rocky outline of
the _corona_—the great puzzle of Canterbury. North-east of the corona
are two groups of ruined Norman pillars and arches discoloured by fire;
once they were continuous, forming one very long building, the _Monks’
Infirmary_, of which the west end was originally an open dormitory,
open to the roof, and the east end, separated off by a screen, the
Chapel; which has a late Geometrical window. A mediæval infirmary of
this type is still in use at Chichester. The Canterbury infirmary had
a north transept, called the Table Hall or Refectory (now part of the
house of the Archdeacon of Maidstone), in which the inmates dined. On
the north side of Trinity chapel is seen the _Chantry of Henry IV._;
then _St. Andrew’s Tower_ and the barred _Treasury_; the lower part of
the latter is late Norman work, largely rebuilt. The south alley of the
_Infirmary Cloister_ was built about 1236. Along this one passes to the
_Baptistery_, which was originally nothing but a mediæval water-tower;
late Norman below, Perpendicular above. Returning towards the Infirmary,
we turn to the north up the east alley of the Infirmary Cloister, now
called the “_Dark Entry_,” at the north end of which is the _Prior’s
Gateway_. On the left are some Norman shafts and arches of beautiful
design. It was the Dark Entry that was haunted by Nell Cook of the
Ingoldsby Legends. West of the Prior’s gateway are the two columns from
the Romano-British church at Reculvers. On the north side of the Prior’s
or Green Court are the Brewery and Bakehouse; to the N.W. is the famous
Norman staircase, which originally led to a great North Hall; perhaps a
Casual Ward—for tramps too found accommodation at the monasteries.
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Carlisle.
[Illustration: FROM NORTH-WEST.]
Carlisle Cathedral, though but a torso, is of exceptional interest, both
archæologically and artistically. It dates from the early years of the
twelfth century. It was originally the church of the Austin or Black
Canons, and also the seat of a bishopric. The Augustinian Cathedral was
dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; and it was re-dedicated to the Holy
and undivided Trinity when placed on the New Foundation.
I. LATE NORMAN.—The Augustinian house was founded by Henry I. in 1101,
at the instigation of Queen Matilda. The Norman church consisted of
an aisled nave of seven bays, a transept with eastern apses, and an
aisled choir. The stones show the marks of the hatchet; the masonry is
well-bonded—too good to be eleventh-century work. The corbel-tables of
aisle and clerestory are particularly strong and vigorous. Norman aisles
were usually vaulted; but the aisle-walls of Carlisle are so thin that
they can never have supported a vault.
II. LANCET.—The lower parts of the northern and southern faces of the
piers of the tower are flat: their shafts being stopped by corbels
instead of descending to the ground. This was to allow the stalls of the
Canons to be placed close up to the piers. Hence it is clear that in the
Norman church the Canons sat, as at Norwich, in the crossing and the
western bays of the nave. Like the Benedictine monks of Canterbury, they
wanted to get into the choir. And so the Norman choir, being altogether
inadequate to contain stalls and sanctuary, as at Canterbury, was pulled
down; and a beautiful early Gothic choir of seven bays was built. Of
this the vaulted aisles and the pier-arches still remain. The work is
late in the Lancet period (1190-1245); for in the south aisle the Lancet
windows are developing into plate-tracery, and the charming arcade on
the wall is cinquefoiled. The new choir was not only far in advance of
its Norman predecessor in length and height; but it was also 12 feet
broader. The church could not be broadened to the south, because the
cloister would prevent any removal of the wall of the south aisle, when
the nave was rebuilt. So the south wall of the choir was rebuilt on the
old foundations: the southern row of piers probably also rest on the
foundations of the Norman piers. The central aisle of the choir was made
much broader than that of the nave, with which, therefore, it is out of
line; the same is the case with the north aisle of the choir.
At the same time the eastern apse of the south transept was rebuilt in
the style of the day, with the crisply carved foliage of the later years
of the Lancet period. The northern transept was to have been rebuilt on
a more extensive scale, not being cramped as the south transept was,
by monastic buildings adjacent. It was to have had an eastern aisle;
but when one pier of the aisle had been built, and part of its eastern
wall (a fragment of which, with string-course, survives), the work was
suddenly stopped.
[Illustration: EAST END.]
III. CURVILINEAR.—But hardly was the new choir completed when, together
with belfry and bells, it was destroyed by a great fire, with the
exception of the aisles, which were protected by their stone vaults.
The Canons, not a whit disheartened, resolved to rebuild the choir, and
to rebuild it even longer and loftier than before. To its length they
added an eastern bay, just wide enough to provide a processional path at
the back of the high altar. They increased its height to 72 feet. But
the piers and walls were too thin to bear the additional weight. They
increased the thickness of the aisle-walls to 5 feet; the piers they
rebuilt. The thirteenth-century arches, however, which were apparently
not much damaged by the fire, they managed in some inexplicable way
to retain. A modern contractor would take the arches down, and then
rebuild them with the old stones. A mediæval builder would be more
likely to underpin the arches, take the piers away and then rebuild them
without disturbing the arches at all. The old builders revelled in such
engineering feats. At Exeter they retained the clerestory wall while
constructing new piers and arches below it; at York they transplanted two
arches in the transept. The capitals of the new piers are exceedingly
rich and interesting; they contain the best mediæval representation we
possess of the Seasons; six capitals on the south side from east to
west, six on the north side from west to east. The corbels also of the
vaulting-shafts have rich naturalistic foliage. With that respect for
good earlier work that is characteristic of the Curvilinear period, and
so rare at any other time, they carried the cinquefoiled arcading of the
aisles round the east wall, introducing, however, the characteristic
detail of the period, not to bewilder unfortunate antiquaries of later
days.
Their _chef-d’œuvre_, however, was the east front. On this they lavished
all their wealth and all their art. It is a very poem in stone. Its only
rival is the contemporary east front of Selby. “The great window,” says
Professor Freeman, “is the grandest of its kind in England.” It certainly
has no rival, unless it be that of York. The four lateral lights on
either side of the Carlisle windows are gathered up into two pointed
arches; at York these two arches are ogees; the free swing of the ogee
arches contrasting most effectively with the pointed arch which embraces
them both. The glass in the tracery represents our Lord sitting in
Judgment; the procession of the Blessed to the Palace of Heaven, shown in
two silvery quatrefoils; and very realistic representations of Hell and
of the General Resurrection. It contains a portrait of John of Gaunt; the
window was probably glazed when he was Governor of Carlisle, 1380-84.
So far the Canons spared no expense; everything was of the best. But
their resources were taxed too heavily; it was impossible to finish
the choir with the magnificence with which it was commenced. Triforium
and clerestory are thin and poor; the inner arcade of the latter of
the barest character. The piers had been rebuilt and strengthened,
apparently to support a vault; but a vault was found too expensive, and
was abandoned. Then hammerbeams were constructed for a roof of the type
of the magnificent roofs of March Church and Westminster Hall. This in
its turn was abandoned, and the present wagon-roof of wood was put up.
For similar economical reasons the south transept was rebuilt without the
aisle commenced in the thirteenth century.
IV. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—But the misfortunes of the Canons were
not over yet. Another fire destroyed the new north transept. This
was rebuilt between 1400 and 1419 by Bishop Strickland, who built the
forty-six stalls of the choir. Then came the question of the central
tower and the nave. The original plan had been that, when the choir
was finished, a new central tower and a new nave should be built, both
of the same width as the choir. But their troubles had been too much
for them. The courage of the Canons gave way. They saw no prospect of
ever being able to rebuild the Norman nave; so instead of pulling down
the Norman tower and building one as broad as the choir, they left it
standing merely adding a new upper story to it. It is, of course, far
too small for its position; and while ranging with the nave, is quite
lop-sided when seen in connection with the roof of the choir; though the
awkwardness is lessened, and even made picturesque, by the addition of a
staircase-turret on the north side of the tower. This was about 1401.
[Illustration: CHOIR.]
V. TUDOR.—Things seem to have improved towards the end of the fifteenth
century. Prior Gondebour painted the ceiling of the choir and the backs
of the stalls; and to him are due the beautiful screens in the south
transept chapel. He also built a grand barn with a magnificent roof of
beams nearly two feet thick: much of it is still standing. The refectory
also is due to him; it has a pretty pulpit for the reader, as at Beaulieu
and Chester. The Gate Tower or Abbey Gate House was rebuilt in 1528.
VI. RENAISSANCE.—Launcelot Salkeld, the last Prior and the first Dean of
Carlisle, added the charming Renaissance screen on the north side of the
tower.
VII. In the seventeenth century the western bays of the Norman nave were
pulled down, during the Civil War, to provide materials for the repair of
the city walls and guardhouses.
The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin, Chester.
[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.]
The cathedral of Chester had originally an establishment of Secular
Canons (see Southwell and Wells.) Its patron saint was St. Werburgh,
a kinswoman of St. Ethelreda of Ely. In the eleventh century it was
refounded as a Benedictine monastery by that great noble Hugh Lupus,
Earl of Chester, who ruled the Welsh Marshes with almost regal sway.
Henry VIII. made it the seat of a bishopric, which, though but a part
of the ancient Mercian diocese of Lichfield, extended northwards into
Yorkshire and Westmorland. Nowadays the diocese and county of Chester are
coextensive.
If we proceed to the west doors, we have before us a vista of exceptional
beauty. The apparent length of the interior is greatly increased by the
screen thrown across it, which, however, is not so solid and lofty as to
block up the vista entirely, as at Canterbury and York, nor so exiguous
as the metal screens at Lichfield and Ely.
Passing under the new organ screen, we come to the most ancient work to
be found in the cathedral—viz., genuine early Norman work of the eleventh
century. It is to be compared with that of the south transepts of St.
Albans and Hereford. Below, in the east wall, is an arch, which once led
into an apse. Above is a balustraded arcade, quite of the St. Albans and
Hereford type. Above, there must have been small clerestory windows, such
as those built up in the opposite wall. The whole transept must have been
low and humble, and is invaluable as showing us what eleventh-century
work was really like, and of enabling us to realise the vast progress
that had taken place in design, in masonry, and in carving by the time
that Durham, Romsey, and Peterborough were built. This early transept was
of one bay only. Notice how small the stones are, the gaping joints, and
the irregularity of the courses.
_North-West Tower._—Bearing in mind the character of this masonry, pass
out into the north aisle of the nave, and proceed to the Norman tower
at the end of it. The work here is clumsy and massive, but far superior
to that of the north transept, _c._ 1120. The north wall of the nave
(now covered with mosaics) is also Norman. Other traces of the Norman
cathedral will be found in the north aisle of the choir, to which we
retrace our steps. On the right will be seen a great circular capital
upside down, which has been used as a foundation for the north-east pier
of the tower. A few feet farther is one of the original circular bases,
proving that the Norman choir had vast circular piers like those of
Gloucester, Durham, and St. John’s, Chester. Two bays farther east will
be found in the pavement a semicircular band of dark marble. This marks
foundations that have been found of the apsidal ending of this aisle;
one of the stones of this Norman apse remains in the pavement. Moreover,
it has been found that the central aisle of the choir, at the end of the
second bay from the tower, ended in a semicircular range of columns,
like St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield. From these indications we can
restore the plan of the original Norman cathedral with some certainty.
It had a nave and aisles of the same dimensions as the present ones;
unaisled transepts, each of a single bay, and an eastern apse to each
transept; perhaps a low central tower; a choir of two bays, ending in
a semicircular range of columns and arches, and surrounded to the east
by a semicircular ambulatory or processional path. On either side were
aisles, three and a half bays long, each terminating in an eastern apse.
So that the Norman cathedral had five eastern apses, and resembled in
plan Gloucester and Norwich, except that the chapels of the choir-aisles
of Chester point, not north-east and south-east, but due east.
[Illustration: NORTH TRANSEPT.]
_Norman Cloisters._—Returning to the north aisle of the nave we pass
through the doorway at the east end of the aisle into the cloister. This
doorway, as seen from the cloister, is, from its ornamentation, of later
date than the north transept, and may also be about 1120. The south wall
of the cloister is now seen to be Norman; Norman abbots are buried in the
recesses. Passing along the cloister westwards, we have in front another
Norman door, and a very late Norman passage. Passing along the west
walk of the cloister, a doorway on the left leads into a large Norman
undercroft, with two aisles roofed with massive unribbed vaulting. Above,
as the division in the vaulting shows, were a large and a small hall.
These buildings on the west of the cloisters may have been originally the
cellars, refectory and dormitory of the lay brethren, as at Fountains and
Kirkstall; and afterwards the cellar and halls of the Abbot’s house. To
the south, above the late Norman passage, is the Episcopal chapel, also
Norman, with good Jacobean work.
_Vestry._—We now return through the north transept to the north aisle
of the choir. The next work done in the cathedral is to be found in the
vestry to the left. The Norman apse of the north transept was pulled
down; the arch in the west wall is nearly all that is left of it; and a
new chapel was built here in the Transitional period, between 1145 and
1190, to which period the vaulting belongs. Later on, the east end of it
was remodelled, and the western arch built up. Part of the foundation of
the original Norman apse may be seen in the pavement near the door.
_Vestibule._—Now we come to the Lancet or Early Gothic work (1190-1245),
including vestibule, chapter-house, fratery, refectory, Lady chapel, and
the eastern bays of the choir. Passing through the north transept again,
and out through its north door, we enter the vestibule, the architectural
gem of the cathedral. The piers have bases, but no capitals—a feature
common enough in late Gothic, but very unusual in such early work. Pass
into the cloister to see the lovely trefoiled doorway of the vestibule.
Then return to the _Chapter-house_, which is of the same date as the
vestibule. It is rectangular, as were most of the monastic Chapter-houses
originally: _e.g._, Exeter, Durham, Oxford, and Bristol. The windows
have an inner arcade. Here is a bust of Canon Kingsley, by Mr. Belt.
Returning to the vestibule, and passing out of it by the modern north
doorway, we cross the Slype with its elaborate vault, and pass into a
vaulted building of two aisles, each of four bays, laboriously restored
at considerable expense, and then allowed to relapse into a coal-cellar:
this is the so-called fratery. Rooms in similar positions occur at
Fountains and Kirkstall; their use is not known. Notice the day-stairs
which led to the Monks’ dormitory, which was overhead, on the east side
of the cloister, also the curious cusped windows adjacent. Along the
whole of the north side of the cloister extended the _Refectory_, the
Monks’ dining-hall; now the west end has been lopped off, and a passage
driven through the east of it. Towards the west end will be found a fine
doorway by which it was originally entered. To the right of the doorway
is a recess marking the site of the lavatory. Inside, in the south wall,
is the original staircase and pulpit of the refectory. Table talk was
forbidden in all monasteries; a good book was read aloud to the monks
during meals. Another equally fine pulpit remains in the refectory of
Beaulieu, Hampshire; another, in the open air, opposite Shrewsbury Abbey.
The upper part of the refectory has Perpendicular tracery inserted in the
original windows.
[Illustration: VESTIBULE OF CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
Now we return to the cathedral, to the _Lady chapel_: much restored,
of similar date and character to those of Hereford and Bristol. It
was a remarkable specimen of mediæval “jerry-building,” built without
foundations of any sort or kind. One of the bosses, figured in Dean
Howson’s book on “The Dee,” depicts the murder of Thomas Becket.
Originally the Lady chapel had three windows, each triplets, on either
side.
_Eastern choir._—To the same period belongs the east wall of the choir,
and the two eastern bays. The east wall is pierced by but one arch, as
at Hereford and Chichester; an inferior ending to the triple eastern
arches of the choirs of Wells and Salisbury. The mouldings of the
southern arches are a cheap imitation of the better work on the north.
_Western choir._—The remaining bays to the west have piers of altogether
different section, and are Early Geometrical in character (1245-1280);
and should be compared with Westminster choir and the Angel choir
of Lincoln. In digging, the foundations of the east ends of the
thirteenth-century aisles have been found. They turn out to have been
polygonal. Sir G. G. Scott has been allowed to rebuild this aisle in
apsidal form, and to crown his work with a hideous “extinguisher” roof.
To put up this sham Gothic, he pulled down the Perpendicular choir-aisle,
and expelled the monuments of three ancient county families in favour of
an eminent contractor. This is what is called “restoration.”
All the above work stops at the top of the beautiful triforium, a
trefoiled arcade. The clerestory is late Geometrical work; the tracery
of the windows is thin and uninteresting (1280-1315). The proportions
of the choir as thus completed are not at all satisfactory; the tall
clerestory, with its big broad windows, is ruinous to the effect of the
low pier-arcade and the diminutive triforium: it looks top-heavy. Compare
the choir of Lichfield.
We have seen that by the end of the thirteenth century the monks had
rebuilt all the work to the east and north of the cloister, as well as
the Lady chapel and the whole of the choir. In the fourteenth century
they set to work to rebuild the whole of the south transept, the central
tower, and the nave. None of the upper parts of these, however, were
finished till the following century. The _South Transept_ is so vast
that the old church of St. Oswald may have still remained in use while
the transept was building around it. It has western as well as eastern
aisles: which it is rare to find except in cathedrals of the first rank,
such as Ely and York. Some of the aisle windows retain very beautiful
Curvilinear tracery. The springers of vaults remain, but no vaulting
was executed, except one bay at the south end of the east aisle, till
recently, when the remainder of this aisle was vaulted. The vast size of
this transept—it is as large as the choir, and nearly as large as the
nave—is in striking contrast to the diminutive North Transept, and is the
most remarkable feature in the ground plan of the cathedral. Originally
there stood here an independent church, belonging to the parish of St.
Oswald. But in the fourteenth century, when the abbey was in possession
of great wealth, the monks desired to enlarge their church. They could
not enlarge it to the north, for on the north were their cloisters,
chapter-house, refectory, and dormitory; on the south was the parish
church of St. Oswald. They therefore came to terms with the parishioners,
in accordance with which they built a new parish church for them, where
now stands the Music Hall. But in the fifteenth century the parishioners
were able to evade their bargain, and vindicated their claim to the whole
of the new south transept, which the monks by this time had completed.
“Sic vos non vobis.” And to get into it they cut the fifteenth-century
doorway, which is still to be seen through the lower part of the window
at the south end of the west aisle of the new transept. And here they
remained in possession till the present century, using the transept as
their parish church. In 1824 the transept was actually blocked from the
cathedral by a solid wall. But in 1874 a new church, St. Thomas, was once
more built for the parishioners, and they were again ejected from the
site of the old church of St. Oswald. The dividing wall was pulled down,
and the transept has been again thrown into the cathedral. Unfortunately,
the congregation being gone, there is no one to fill it, and it remains a
squalid and desolate solitude. Why not have replaced the dividing-wall by
an open screen and have left the parishioners in peace?
_Central Tower._—This was probably commenced in the fourteenth and
finished in the fifteenth century. It has been found that the north-west
pier rests upon some floriated gravestones of the thirteenth century,
which disposes of the idea that the piers of the tower have a Norman
core. Notice the variation in the treatment of the tower-arches.
_Nave._—Here also there is Curvilinear tracery in the windows of
the south aisle. The piers and arches, also, on the south side are
of fourteenth-century work, of simple but good design. The northern
pier-arcade differs in some features; it may be a little later. On the
other hand the initials of Abbot Simon Ripley (1485-1492) are found on
the first pier from the west; and so this arcade may be really later
work, assimilated in character to the earlier work on the south side.
[Illustration: CHOIR.]
_South Transept._—The next thing seems to have been to complete the
south transept in the Perpendicular style; and also the easternmost bay
of the nave, which was needed to give abutment to the rising tower. To
this period, perhaps the fifteenth century, may be assigned all those
Perpendicular windows which are cusped, in the transepts, the nave, the
refectory, and elsewhere.
_Nave._—The final operations comprised all those windows which are
without cusps—_e.g._, the clerestory windows and the north aisle windows
of the nave; also the south porch and west front and the commencement
of a south-west tower, and the fine wooden roof of the north transept.
All this was done early in the sixteenth century. Perhaps piety had
waxed cold, and pilgrims’ offertories were less productive. At any
rate, all the upper part of the interior of the nave is bare, bald, and
poverty-stricken. For the beautiful triforium of the choir we have here
a blank wall; unhappy, too, in proportions, the nave of Chester is one
of the least satisfactory designs of the Middle Ages. In the south-west
tower is the Consistory Court, with good Jacobean woodwork.
One other alteration had to be made. There was no access to the Lady
chapel except through the one arch at the east end of the choir. When
St. Werburgh’s shrine was placed at the entrance of the Lady chapel in
the fourteenth century, it was awkward to have but a single approach
to the Lady chapel; so the eastern apses of the two choir aisles were
pulled down, and two Perpendicular aisles added, one on each side of the
Lady chapel. (The one on the north is still allowed to exist; the one
on the south was pulled down by Scott). Thus the west window on either
side of the Lady chapel was converted into a doorway, and a convenient
processional path was provided round St. Werburgh’s shrine.
To the late Perpendicular or Tudor period belong the eastern, northern,
and western walks of the cloister, which should be visited next. In
part of the west walk, and in the new south walk, there is a double
arcade; dividing the walks into a series of separate compartments or
studies for the monks. An analogous arrangement occurs in the cloisters
of Gloucester. Notice, also, the _insouciance_ with which these Tudor
builders dropped the ribs of their vaults down on earlier doors and
arches. Similar reckless disregard of the good work of preceding builders
occurs at Canterbury, where the most beautiful doorway in the Cathedral
is cut into by later vaulting.
_North Aisle of Nave._—This has been recased, and provided with rich
vaulting. It was to provide abutment for this new vault that the south
walk of the cloister was rebuilt. The nave and choir have been vaulted in
wood; following the precedents of York Minster and Selby Abbey.
The exterior is, to all intents and purposes, nineteenth-century work.
The original design had almost wholly disappeared through the decay
of the soft sandstone. It is, however, very handsome and effective;
especially in contrast with the exterior, equally new, of Worcester.
[Illustration: NAVE, NORTH SIDE.]
Of minor work the chief objects of interest are the Byzantine font,
perhaps of the eighth century; the remains of the fourteenth-century
shrine of St. Werburgh and the contemporary sedilia; the fine misereres
and stalls (Perpendicular); the Renaissance gates of Spanish ironwork,
and the Renaissance candelabra (Italian); the epitaphs of John Lowe,
tobacconist, John Paul, publican, and John Phillips, merchant, in the
south transept; those of Mayor Green, and an American loyalist, on the
south-west pier of the tower; the tablet of Randolph Caldecott and the
pretentious monument of Bishop Pearson in the north transept; the tablet
of Dean Arderne in the south aisle of the choir; and in the north aisle
those of Subdean Bispham and Bishop Jacobson, and the epitaph on the
gravestone of E. P. Gastrell. The new organ rests on five Renaissance
columns brought from Italy; the communion table is of wood from the Holy
Land. On the wall near the west door is a tablet to Bishop Hall, and
another