With these exceptions, the history of the cathedral mainly reduces itself

to three sets of building operations: first, repairs necessitated by fire

or storm; secondly, attempts to improve the lighting of the building;

and, thirdly, to make it fireproof.

Taking these works in the above order, we first have to note the

mischief done by fire and storm. In 1297 the tower seems to have had

a wooden spire. This was blown down in 1361; and, falling eastward,

damaged the clerestory of the Norman presbytery. Both the spire and

clerestory had to be rebuilt; and in rebuilding the clerestory the monks

took the opportunity to remedy what was the gravest defect in all the

Norman cathedrals—viz., their extreme darkness. Now, it happened that,

only some ten years before, the magnificent clerestory of Gloucester

presbytery had been built; and the report of the brilliant illumination

and gorgeous glass of this grand work was bruited, no doubt, all over

England by pilgrims returning from the shrine of the murdered Edward

II. at Gloucester. Therefore, just as at Gloucester, they determined

to raise the new presbytery higher than the nave—they raised it ten

feet—and to make the clerestory practically a continuous sheet of glass.

In one thing, fortunately, they did not copy Gloucester, as Edington did

in Winchester nave—which is of the same date as the Norwich work—they

did not think it necessary to discard altogether the beautiful flowing

tracery of the Curvilinear period; and so here, as in many Norfolk

churches, we find inserted, side by side, at the same time, Curvilinear

and Perpendicular windows. Another charming feature of Curvilinear work

was the ogee niche, such as those of the arcade of Ely Lady chapel.

These niches, too, were utilised at Norwich cleverly and beautifully,

being used instead of corbels to support the ribs of the roof. This

fourteenth-century roof seems to have been one of wood.

But, earlier than this, a determined attempt had been made to get rid

of the darkness of the nave by inserting (1315-1360) a range of windows

with flowing tracery all along the north aisle of the nave. In the

Perpendicular period (1360-1485) the monks took the same course as at

Ely: they raised the triforium walls, closed the external windows of

the triforium, flattened the roof of the triforium, and thus managed

to get in a range of tall windows, each of four lights, in the hope

that the light from them might find its way into the nave across the

triforium; and that the more easily as the openings of the inner arcade

of the triforium were not obstructed by central shafts. The result is

extraordinary, as seen from the garth. The south side of the cathedral,

instead of the usual three or four stories, seems six stories high.

First there are the openings of the cloister; then the upper story of

the cloister; then the blind arcade of the triforium; then the Norman

triforium windows; then the Perpendicular ditto; then the Norman

clerestory.

[Illustration: CENTRAL TOWER.]

Even this was insufficient. The eastern bays of the nave, where the

stalls were placed, and where, most of all, light was needed, were the

darkest of all, being obstructed by the stalls and by the cloister

roof. So in the exterior of the two easternmost bays of the nave the

Perpendicular triforium windows and the Norman clerestory windows were

thrown into one, to give as much light as possible to the stalls below.

For the same reason large Perpendicular windows were inserted in the

transepts. Several of these, however, have recently been replaced by

Norman windows: “genuine Perpendicular by sham Norman.” In the middle

of the south aisle of the nave Bishop Nix (1501-1536) built himself a

gorgeous chantry, to light which he inserted two large windows, high

up so as to clear the cloister roof. Large square-headed windows were

inserted in the triforium of the presbytery also; and an enormous

Perpendicular window was inserted in the west front, still further to

light the nave. These measures were fairly successful in nave and

transept; but, fortunately for us, less successful than in the presbytery.

[Illustration: SOUTH-EAST APSE.]

Now we come to the measures taken to make the building fireproof.

These took the form of costly stone vaults, and they seem to have been

undertaken by the monks most reluctantly. All the high vaults are the

direct outcome of some great fire, and but for the fire they would not

have been undertaken. There were conflagrations in 1170 and 1271, and in

the fearful riots of 1272 the cathedral was set on fire by the citizens.

Still, when the presbytery was repaired in 1362, it seems to have been

roofed again in wood. In 1463 the wooden spire was struck by lightning,

and set fire to the roofs both of nave and presbytery. At last the

monks had to bestir themselves. To secure the spire against fire they

rebuilt it in stone instead of wood; and, to make the nave and presbytery

fireproof, they made up their minds to vault both in stone. Between 1463

and 1472 Bishop Lyhart put up over the nave the present magnificent

lierne vault, and at his death bequeathed two thousand marks to his

successor to continue the work. Bishop Goldwell vaulted the presbytery

between 1472 and 1499. It seems to have been very difficult to get the

funds for this costly work. Bishop Goldwell, however, was a personal

friend of the Pope, who had consecrated him with his own hands; and he

had not much difficulty in persuading the Pope to grant a perpetual

indulgence in the terms that “all who came to the cathedral on Trinity

Sunday and Lady Day, and made an offering towards the fabric, should be

entitled to an indulgence of twelve years and forty days.” The transepts

had still wooden roofs. It required another fire—in 1509—in which these

roofs were consumed, to compel the monks to complete the vaulting of the

cathedral. This was done in the time of Bishop Nix. At the end of four

hundred years Norwich cathedral was at length fireproof.

And did they do nothing merely for prettiness’ sake? Well, here, as

at Gloucester, they set to work to do what was quite unnecessary—to

harmonise the Norman ground-story of the presbytery with the clerestory

of 1631. By one of those marvellous pieces of engineering, of which

the mediæval architects were so fond—we saw a conspicuous example at

Carlisle—while retaining the Norman triforium and the Perpendicular

clerestory above, they managed to remodel the Norman piers on either

side of the presbytery, and to take out the semicircular arches bodily

and replace them by the fashionable arch of the period—a depressed

four-centered arch. This was done by Bishop Goldwell—no doubt before he

put up the vault above (_c._ 1475).

[Illustration: CHOIR.]

The only other great work was the rebuilding of the cloisters, also

forced on the monks by a great fire—that of 1272. This work was executed

exceedingly slowly, the window tracery ranging from Geometrical, through

Curvilinear, to Perpendicular work.

One word more about the superb interior. It is hardly too much to

say that the interior of this cathedral—but second-rate in point of

dimensions—is unequalled in all England. One reason is that it is vaulted

throughout. Ely, Peterborough St. Albans, Rochester, Romsey, Waltham,

Southwell—with their paltry wooden ceilings—are not to be compared for a

moment with Norwich. Gloucester and Chichester naves are vaulted, but the

vaults are too slight and flimsy for the stern and massive work below.

Durham vault is strong and satisfactory. But the lierne vault of Norwich

is a far more glorious crown and finish than the rude work of Durham. It

might be thought that the richness and magnificence of the lierne vault

of Norwich would be out of harmony with the simplicity and heaviness

of Norman piers and triforium and clerestory. It is not so. A tower,

like that of Magdalen College, Oxford, may be ever so plain below, and

yet terminate fitly with a glorious coronal of battlements, parapet and

pinnacles. So it is with this interior.

Its rivals are to be found in Winchester and Tewkesbury. But at

Winchester the vaults of nave and presbytery are cut in two by the

unvaulted transept. Norwich and Tewkesbury are vaulted everywhere—from

east to west and from north to south. And in both, the vaults being

uniform in character, and not changing character half-way as at

Gloucester, weld together the spreading limbs of the church into a

marvellous unity.

But there is another fine feature about the interior of Norwich, as in

that of Gloucester: it is the striking contrast of light and shade, of

shadowy nave and brilliant choir. Hereford presents us with the reverse

effect—bright nave and gloomy choir. Both effects are dramatic; both,

doubtless, are unintentional. If they had known how, or could have

afforded it, the Hereford people would have flooded their choir with

sunshine, Norwich and Gloucester their naves. The mediæval builders

wanted none of these dramatic contrasts of light and shade; they were

always working to get rid of the dim religious light that nowadays we

venerate; they would have liked their churches lighted thoroughly well

throughout. What they wanted was the light, uniformly good, of Lichfield

and Exeter: or Salisbury, bright and gay as a ball-room.

[Illustration: APSE OF CHOIR.]

But the most subtle and most important element in the beauty of the

interior of Norwich is to be found in its proportions. The nave is of

an immense length, but it is very narrow. York, Canterbury, Lincoln,

Durham, all have naves far too short for their breadth. And what is

more important still is the ratio of the height of Norwich nave to its

span. In most English cathedrals it is 2 to 1; but in Norwich nave the

ratio rises to 2⁴⁄₇, and in the presbytery it is 3 to 1. In Norwich

presbytery, then, we have just those proportions which we find in the

great Gothic cathedrals of France, but in England hardly anywhere except

in Westminster Abbey. People admire Norwich presbytery and Westminster

presbytery for the same reason, and, no doubt, in most cases, without

knowing what the reason is.

One thing more remains to be said in praise of Norwich, as of Gloucester.

It is that all the glory of the church is concentrated at one spot, and

that the most important spot in the church. It is in approaching the

high altar that vaults and clerestory soar aloft, that loveliest vistas

open out into ambulatory and chapels, while the noble windows above fill

all with light and atmosphere. “I would back it,” says Dean Goulburn,

“against any similar effect in almost any cathedral in Christendom.”

The Cathedral Church of Christ, Oxford.

[Illustration: FROM THE FIELDS.]

“About the year of our Lord 727, there lived in Oxford a Saxon prince

named Didan, who had an only child, Frideswide (‘bond of peace’). Seeing

that he had large possessions and inheritances, and that she was likely

to enjoy most of them after his decease, Frideswide told her father

that he could not do better than bestow them upon some religious fabric

where she and her spiritual sisters might spend their days in prayers

and in singing psalms and hymns to God. Wherefore the good old man built

a church, and committed it wholly to the use of his daughter, purposely

to exercise her devotion therein; and other edifices adjoining to the

church, to serve as lodging-rooms for Frideswide and twelve virgins of

noble extraction. There she became famous for her piety and for those

excellent parts that nature had endowed her withal; and Algar, King

of Leicester, became her adorer by way of marriage. Finding that he

could not prevail with her by all the entreaties and gifts imaginable,

he departed home, but sent to her ambassadors with this special

and sovereign caution, that if she did not concede, to watch their

opportunity and carry her away by force. Frideswide was inexorable.

Wherefore at the dawning of the day the ambassadors clambered the fences

of the house, and by degrees approaching her private lodging, promised to

themselves nothing but surety of their prize. But she, awakening suddenly

and discovering them, and finding it vain to make an escape, being so

closely besieged, fervently prayed to the Almighty that He would preserve

her from the violence of those wicked persons, and that He would show

some special token of revenge upon them for this their bold attempt.

Wherefore the ambassadors were miraculously struck blind, and like madmen

ran headlong yelling about the city. But Algar was filled with rage, and

intended for Oxford, breathing out nothing but fire and sword. Which

thing being told to Frideswide in a dream, with her sisters the nuns

Katherine and Cicely, she fled to the riverside, where there awaited

her a young man with a beautiful countenance and clothed in white, who,

mitigating their fear with pleasant speech, rowed them up the river to

a wood ten miles distant. There the nuns sheltered in a hut, which ivy

and other sprouts quickly overgrew, hiding them from sight of man. Three

years Frideswide lived in Benton wood, when she came back to Binsey and

afterwards to Oxford, in which place this maiden, having gained the

triumph of her virginity, worked many miracles; and when her days were

over and her Spouse called her, she there died.” Such is the account of

her which Anthony-a-Wood drew from William of Malmesbury and Prior Philip

of Oxford, both of whom unfortunately lived long after the events which

they narrate.

I. In the east walls of the north choir-aisle and the Lady chapel three

small rude arches have recently been found, and outside, in the gardens,

the foundations of the walls of three apses. Hence it has been concluded

that we have here the eastern termination of Frideswide’s eighth-century

church. It may be so, but the central arch seems very small for the

chancel-arch of an aisled church. It is indeed a foot wider than the

chancel-arch of the Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon, but that tiny

church has no aisles. Moreover, if the side-arches led into aisles, they

would be likely to be of the same height, whereas the southern arch is

considerably the higher of the two.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

II. At some later period—perhaps in the eighth or ninth century—the

foundation was converted into one of secular canons, married priests

taking the place of the nuns (cf. Ely). The secular canons themselves

in turn gave way to monks, and these in 1111 to regular canons—_i.e._,

canons living in monastic fashion under the rule (_regula_) of St.

Augustine, as at Bristol, Ripon, and Carlisle.

The first business, probably, of the secular canons was to house

themselves—_i.e._, to build themselves the usual cloister, with

its appanages of chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, etc. Of the

chapter-house which they built, _c._ 1125, the doorway still remains.

In 1004 King Ethelred had rebuilt the Saxon church; and probably it was

found possible to put this church into such repair as would allow the

services to be held in it for the time being. At any rate, it was not

till 1158 that they commenced the present cathedral, which they finished

in 1180, leaving not a stone standing of Ethelred’s cathedral. Of the

theory that the present cathedral is in the main the one built in 1004, I

would prefer to say nothing, had it not been adopted in a recent history

of the cathedral; suffice to say that, like the sister theory that

Waltham Abbey was built in 1060, it is an absolute impossibility. The

hands of the archæological clock cannot be turned 160 years back in this

preposterous fashion.

The twelfth-century church was very remarkable in plan. Not only had it

an aisled nave and an aisled choir, but it had the architectural luxury,

unparalleled in our Norman architecture except in the vast churches of

Winchester and Ely, of eastern and western aisles to its transepts. The

site, however, was cramped to the south, and so the southern transept

was shorter than the northern one; moreover, this short transept later

on lost its west aisle, which was lopped off to allow the cloister to be

extended. For the same reason—lack of room—the slype, or vaulted passage,

which in all monastic institutions connected the cloister with the

cemetery, instead of being built between the transept and the cloister,

was built inside the church, as at Hexham, curtailing still further the

floor area of the north transept. It was therefore because the church

was so cramped to the south, that the other transept was given aisles on

both sides. Instead of an eastern aisle, the south transept had merely a

square chapel projecting eastward.

But the canons wanted also a Lady chapel, for the church seems to

have been dedicated originally to the Holy Trinity, St. Mary and St.

Frideswide. The normal position of a Lady chapel was to the east of the

sanctuary. But here also the canons were cramped; for quite close to

the east end of the church ran the city wall. To get in a Lady chapel,

therefore, they had to build an additional aisle north of the north

aisle of the choir. This was three bays long. It was probably walled off

from the transept, but opened into the north choir-aisle by three Norman

arches, reconstructed later on. The same arrangement is found at Ripon.

There was also a short chapel projecting eastward from the northernmost

bay of the east aisle of the north transept.

The east end, as at Rochester and Ripon, was square. The present east

end is a fine composition by Scott, more or less conjectural. The work

commenced, as usual, at the east, as is shown by the gradual improvement

westward in the design of the capitals. The evidence of the vaulting,

too, points in the same direction. In the choir-aisle the ribs are

massive and heavy; in the western aisle of the north transept they are

lighter; in the south aisle of the nave they are pointed and filleted.

The transepts are narrower than the nave and choir; the tower, therefore,

is oblong, and, as at Bolton Priory, its narrow sides have pointed

arches: semicircular arches would have been too low. The faces of the

piers of the towers are flat, because the stalls of the canons were

placed against them and in the eastern bays of the nave, leaving the

whole eastern limb as sanctuary.

The clerestory walls are only 41½ feet high; therefore, to have adopted

the usual Norman design—viz., triforium on the top of pier-arcade—would

have made the interior look very squat: so, instead of building the

triforium above the pier-arcade, it was built beneath it. The lofty

pier-arches, thus gained, add greatly to the apparent height and dignity

of the interior. The lower arches, however, which carry the vault of

the aisle behind, are corbelled into the piers in very clumsy fashion.

The design is not original; it was worked out at Romsey in a single

bay of the nave, but, being thought ugly, was promptly abandoned.

It is worked out more successfully in Dunstable Priory church and

Jedburgh Abbey. The clerestory windows of the nave would be built

not much before 1180; naturally, therefore, they are pointed. The

capitals of all the twelfth-century work are full of interest. Indeed,

Transitional capitals—each an experiment, and all differing—partly

conventional, partly naturalistic, with a dash of Classic—are to me much

more interesting than any of the Gothic capitals, except perhaps the

naturalistic capitals of the later Geometrical period. There is a great

sameness about the foliated capitals of the Early English, Curvilinear,

and Perpendicular periods. I need hardly say that no one of these

capitals came from Ethelred’s church.

The whole church is exceedingly interesting. It fills a niche in the

history of English architecture all by itself. It is not the plain and

austere Transitional work of the Cistercians. On the other hand, it

has not yet the lightness and grace of Ripon; still less the charm of

Canterbury choir, Chichester presbytery, Wells and Abbey Dore—Gothic in

all but name. In spite of its foliated capitals, in spite of a pointed

arch here and there, it is a Romanesque design; yet not so Romanesque as

Fountains, Kirkstall, Furness.

III. In the LANCET period (1190-1245) the works went on apace. An upper

stage was added to the tower, and on that the spire was built—the first

large stone spire in England. It is a Broach spire: _i.e._, the cardinal

sides of the spire are built right out to the eaves, so that there is no

parapet. On the other hand, instead of having broaches at the angle, it

has pinnacles. Moreover, to bring down the thrusts more vertically, heavy

dormer-windows are inserted at the foot of each of the cardinal sides of

the spire: altogether a very logical and scientific piece of engineering,

much more common in the early spires of Northern France than in England.

The chapter-house also was rebuilt (_c._ 1240); rectangular, to fit the

cloister. Also, the canons rebuilt both the Lady chapel and the adjoining

transeptal chapel. Lancet work will be seen in all the piers on the south

side of the Lady chapel, and in the second and third piers from the west,

on its north side. The cult of the Virgin, much fostered by the Pope,

Innocent III., was at its height in the thirteenth century. The Lady

chapels of Bristol, Hereford, Salisbury, Winchester and Norwich were

contemporaries of that of Oxford.

IV. To the latter half of the GEOMETRICAL period belong the fragments of

the pedestal of St. Frideswide’s shrine, which has beautiful naturalistic

foliage like that of the contemporary pedestal of St. Thomas of Hereford,

A.D. 1289. Some twenty years later is the fine canopied tomb of Prior

Sutton.

[Illustration: CHOIR.]

V. In the CURVILINEAR period (1315-1360) the eastern chapel of the

north transept was pulled down, and in its place was built a chapel of

four bays, with four side windows of singularly beautiful tracery, and

all different. They contain fourteenth-century glass, which should be

compared with that in St. Lucy’s chapel and in Merton College chapel.

The bosses are very beautiful: one of them has a representation of the

water-lilies of the adjacent Cherwell. Hard by is the tomb of Lady

Montacute, who gave the canons about half the Christ Church meadows

to found a chantry. The chapel goes by various names: St. Katharine’s

chapel, the Latin chapel, and the Divinity chapel. It contains good

poppy-heads of Cardinal Wolsey’s time.

About the same time the eastern chapel of the south transept—St. Lucy’s

chapel—was enlarged. The tracery of its east window starts in an unusual

fashion below the spring of the arch.

Also the Norman windows were replaced here and there by large windows

with flowing tracery, to improve the lighting of the church.

VI. There is little to show for the long Perpendicular period

(1360-1485), except the insertion of a few large Perpendicular windows,

and the so-called “Watching-chamber,” the lower part of which is the

tomb of a merchant and his wife, the upper part probably, the chantry

belonging to it, _c._ 1480.

VII. In the Tudor period, however, the canons were exceedingly busy.

They set to work to make the whole church fireproof by covering choir,

transepts, and nave with stone vaults. The choir vault is rather overdone

with prettinesses. It is a copy—and an inferior one—of the massive vault

of the Divinity School, which was completed _c._ 1478. Canon Zouch, who

died in 1503, left money to proceed with the vault of the north transept,

beneath which is his tomb. Only a small portion of this was completed. In

the clerestory of the nave also corbels were inserted to support a stone

vault; but the resources of the canons seem to have failed, and the rest

of the church received roofs of wood. Another considerable work was the

rebuilding of the cloisters.

VIII. Finally, the whole establishment was granted in 1524 to Cardinal

Wolsey, who pulled down the three western bays of the nave, as

obstructing his new quadrangle: one bay has been recently rebuilt.

IX. In 1542 Henry VIII. founded the new diocese of Oxford. Till 1546 the

seat of the bishopric was at Osney Abbey. On the suppression of the abbey

it was transferred to Wolsey’s confiscated foundation; and the ancient

Priory church became a cathedral, while at the same time it is the chapel

of the college of Christ Church. There is an interesting contemporary

window in the south choir aisle, showing the first bishop of Oxford,

King, with Osney Abbey on one side. The “merry Christ Church bells” came

from the tower shown in this window.

X. At the entrance to the Great Hall is the last bit of good Gothic done

in England, a sort of chapter-house in fan-tracery.

XI. The cathedral possesses a charming Jacobean pulpit, and a large

amount of fine Flemish glass of the seventeenth century—all of it taken

out and stowed away in some lumber-room at a recent restoration, except

one window at the west end of the north aisle of the nave, in order to

insert some sham mediæval windows.

XII. There are also five windows from designs by Sir Edward

Burne-Jones—three of them of great beauty; good windows by Clayton and

Bell in the end walls of the transepts; and a charming reredos by Mr.

Bodley, who also has the credit of the bell tower.

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter, Peterborough.

[Illustration: FROM THE SOUTH.]

St. Augustine landed in Kent A.D. 597. In the next year Peada

and Wolfhere, successive kings of Mercia, founded a monastery at

Peterborough, then called Medeshamstead (“the homestead in the meadow”),

and consecrated the church in the names of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St.

Andrew. Then said King Wulfhere with a loud voice: “This day do I freely

give to St. Peter and to the abbot and to the monks of this monastery

these lands and waters and meres and fens and weirs; neither shall

tribute or tax be taken therefrom. Moreover I do make this monastery

free, that it be subject to Rome alone; and I will that all who may not

be able to journey to Rome should repair hither to St. Peter.” This

consecration took place in 664. In 870 this, the first church, was

destroyed by the Danes. It was not fully rebuilt till 972. Abbot Elsinus

(1006-1055) collected many curios: pieces of the swaddling clothes,

of the manger of the cross, and of the sepulchre of Christ; of the

garments of the Virgin, of Aaron’s rod, a bone of one of the Innocents,

bits of St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, and St. Paul, the body of St.

Florentinus, for which he gave 100 lbs. of silver, and, most precious of

all, the incorruptible arm of the Northumbrian king, Oswald, believed

by half the population of England to be an effectual cure for diseases

which defied the material power of drugs. Here is Bede’s account of

it: “When Oswald was once sitting at dinner with Bishop Aidan, on the

holy day of Easter, and a silver dish of dainties was before him, the

servant, whom he had appointed to relieve the poor, came in on a sudden,

and told the king that a great multitude of needy persons were sitting

in the streets begging alms of the king. He immediately ordered the meat

set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish also to be cut

in pieces and divided among them. At which sight the Bishop laid hold

of the King’s right hand, and said, ‘May this hand never perish,’ which

fell out according to his prayer; for his arm and hand being cut off from

his body, when he was slain in battle, remain entire and incorrupted to

this day, and are kept in a silver case as revered relics in St. Peter’s

church in the royal city.” Even King Stephen came to see it; and, what is

more, remitted to the monks forty marks which they owed him. Benedict was

a monk at Canterbury when Becket was murdered; and when he became Abbot

of Peterborough in 1177, he brought with him the slabs of the pavement

which were stained with the blood of the martyr, fragments of his shirt

and surplice, and two vases of his blood. So that the monastery was

called “Peterborough the Proud,” and waxed rich and mighty, and church

and close were holy ground, and all pilgrims, even though of royal blood,

put off their shoes before passing through the western gateway of the

close.

I. The second Saxon church of 972 seems to have lasted till 1116, when it

was destroyed by fire, and the present church, the third, was commenced.

The foundations of part of this Saxon cathedral have been recently

disinterred beneath the present south transept. It was cruciform, with a

square east end. The east limb was 23 feet each way; the transept was 88

feet long. Its walls were under three feet thick, so that it cannot have

been intended for a vault. There is no proof that the nave was ever built.

II. In 1116 the Saxon cathedral was seriously injured by a great fire,

and next year Abbot John of Sais (Seez) commenced the present Norman

cathedral. In 1140 the monks entered on the new choir, which was now

complete, together with the eastern aisles and eastern wall of the

transepts. It is possible that the monks patched up the damaged Saxon

church sufficiently to allow service to be held in it from 1116 to 1140.

When they entered into their new Norman choir, the first thing they did,

probably, was to pull down the choir and transept of the Saxon church,

and on the site to erect the rest of the present south transept.

[Illustration: CHOIR AND TRANSEPT.]

Then they built the rest of the north transept. It will be noticed that

it is superior in design to the south transept, its windows are splayed,

and their ornamentation of later character. This north transept is

illustrated by M. Viollet-le-Duc as a specially fine example of English

Romanesque.

Next would be built the remaining piers and arches of the crossing, and

a low lantern tower of one story only. But the western piers would not

stand without abutment, and so a certain amount of the eastern bays

of the nave must have been built at the same time. This comprised two

bays of the triforium, for the tympana of the two eastern bays of the

triforium have rude ornaments not found elsewhere in the nave. Below, it

probably comprised four piers and four arches, for the four eastern piers

on the north side have different bases from those to the west.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

Hitherto the north wall of the Saxon nave, if built, may have been

retained to shut in the cloister on the north. Now it would be pulled

down and replaced by the wall of the present south aisle of the nave.

Then would come the wall of the north aisle, and finally the pier-arcade

and triforium, but not yet the clerestory of the nave. The nave was to

be in plan precisely like that of Durham: it was to be a short nave; the

central aisle to have eight bays; the side aisles were to have only seven

bays, the end of each aisle being occupied by a tower, as at Durham. The

ground stories of these towers now form the third bays from the west on

either side of the nave. It will be noticed that the third piers from

the west are exceptionally massive and strong, and that in this bay the

aisle-walls are thickened. The wide arches of these bays were intended to

open up the towers into the nave.

[Illustration: VAULTING UNDER SOUTH-WEST TOWER.]

But the towers were not built. The Ely monks over the way were building

a nave with no less than twelve bays, and with a western transept as

well. The Peterborough monks would not like to be outdone by Ely; so

they determined also to have a long nave and a western transept as well.

They built only ten bays to the twelve of Ely; on the other hand, their

nave, excluding western transept, was 211 feet long, while that of Ely

was only 208 feet. About the same time, or probably a little earlier,

the clerestory of the nave—in which pointed arches occur—was built.

All this work may be assigned to Abbot Benedict (1175-1193), who is

said by Swapham and John to have built the whole nave as far as—but not

including—the present west front. The statements of Swapham, however,

must be wrong here. He was still living _c._ 1240; so that he was only

a boy when the nave was finished. He may possibly in his boyhood have

seen the clerestory of the nave built, and, in writing half a century

after, have thought that Benedict who built the clerestory, had built

the triforium and ground-story also. But the documentary evidence at

Peterborough must be received with the utmost scepticism. All that we

know for certain is that the choir and the eastern portions of the

central transepts were built between 1118 and 1140; and that the central

transept, central tower, nave and western transept were built between

1140 and 1190.

III. LANCET (1190-1245).—The east end of the church consisted of three

parallel apses. The apses of the aisles were now replaced by narrow

oblong bays: those next to the New Building.

[Illustration: WEST FRONT.]

In the middle of the Lancet period was erected the grand façade in

front of the Transitional western transept. It is not so much a façade,

however, as an open portico or piazza. Several interesting engineering

problems were involved. One was, how to keep up the three gigantic

arches. If they had spread to north or south, the whole façade would have

collapsed. To prevent their spreading, therefore, flanking towers were

built to north and south; which in later days were weighted with spires.

But there was a more serious danger. The two great isolated piers might

be pushed outwards by the western thrust of the arches of the nave.

These thrusts the builders stopped by building two towers; one over the

westernmost bay of each aisle of the nave. The northern of these towers

was soon after heightened; the other—the Bell Tower—remains low. The

central gable had to be narrow, because it is the termination of the nave

roof. The side-arches and side-gables had to be wide, to span the space

from the nave to the sides of the Transitional façade behind. Though

much narrower, however, the central gable rises as high as the lateral

gables, being made to spring at a higher level; and it is made to look

as important as the broad side-gables by being given the company of two

powerful pinnacles. Thus the main features of this magnificent design

are due to difficulties of planning and construction. The design is said

to be drawn from Lincoln; it is more likely that it is an amplification

of John de Cella’s lovely design for the west front of St. Albans. Abbot

Acharius, who may well have commenced the work (1200-1210) had been Prior

of St. Albans under John de Cella. Judging from the billet and nebula

ornament on the gables, and from the arcading, in which semicircular

arches and round-headed trefoils occur, the façade was designed in the

very beginning of the thirteenth century.

[Illustration: GABLE.]

The west front of Peterborough has been severely criticised, especially

by Mr. Pugin. To many it will ever seem the highest effort of English

art, and to be at once the most original and most successful façade

either in English or in Continental Gothic. Yet, magnificent and poetic

as it is, we have not the full effect contemplated by the mediæval

builders. They meant to have four towers, not three. The north-west

tower was once crowned by a wooden spire; we may be sure that there

would have been a spire also on the south-west tower. Add, too, in the

background, the tall spire which was to be added to the central tower,

and you have a group before which even Lichfield and Lincoln would pale

into insignificance. But, even curtailed as it is, the design attains

the sublime. When first its Titanic arches rose into the blue sky, its

builders may well have repeated the psalmist’s words: “Lift up your

heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King

of Glory shall come in.” They had built a worthy portal to the House of

the Almighty.

IV. GEOMETRICAL (1245-1315).—In this period the bell tower was carried

up; and a magnificent Lady chapel was built (_c._ 1290), like that at

Bristol, to the north of the choir, but detached from it. It could not be

built east of the choir, as a high road passed close to the apse. This

Lady chapel was pulled down in the seventeenth century for the sake of

its materials.

[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.]

V. CURVILINEAR.—In this period the weight of the Norman tower, which

had of course very thick walls, and was three or four stories high, was

found to be too much for the exceptionally weak piers on which it stood.

Warned, perhaps, by the fate of the central towers of Ely and Wells, both

of which collapsed about this time, they took down the Norman tower, and

built a new one (which has recently been rebuilt), much lighter and much

lower. And they strengthened its eastern and western semicircular arches

by inserting pointed arches beneath them. The south-west spire was also

built—a design of exquisite beauty.

VI. PERPENDICULAR.—The monks wanted to have a Galilee porch, and

they inserted one between the piers of the west front, where it was

constructionally useful by keeping the piers from bulging in. The wooden

screens were now inserted in the central transept.

Peterborough, after 1116, seems to have had a singular immunity from

fire; so, very unlike Norwich, the monks did not take the slightest

trouble to make their church fireproof. The whole of the high roofs are

of wood. That of the nave may possibly be the original twelfth-century

ceiling. A twelfth-century wooden roof still covers the Bishop’s Palace

at Hereford. The choir has a wooden vault of the fifteenth century.

VIII. In another respect the history of the church is uneventful. The

eastern limb must have been exceedingly inconvenient, for there was

no processional aisle or ambulatory round the apse. Every other large

church pulled down or altered its eastern limb to suit the ritual: the

Peterborough monks, always conservative and always behind the times,

did not provide a processional aisle till the latter days of Gothic.

And even then they took a very long time about it. The works seems to

have been suspended in 1471, and not resumed till 1496. Even then, good

conservatives that they were, they did not pull down the apse, but

erected the New Building round it. It is a rich specimen of TUDOR work,

with a fan vault.

IX. In the matter, too, of the roof-drainage the Peterborough monks were

slow to move. Instead of dripping eaves they constructed gutters and

parapets to the aisles in the early years of the thirteenth century, and

to the apse a little later. It was not till _c._ 1330 that they provided

the high roofs of nave and choir with gutters and parapets; and, with

their wonted conservatism, they retained the Norman corbel-table.

[Illustration: RETRO-CHOIR]

X. What the monks cared most about was the lighting of the church. This

they were always trying to improve. In the thirteenth century they

inserted large geometrical windows in the western transept, and _c._

1290 others in the aisles of the central transepts to light the altars

placed there. Moreover, the Norman windows in the aisles of the nave

were replaced by wide windows of five lights. In the Curvilinear period

the triforium windows were transformed, and charming flowing tracery,

with rear-arches, was inserted in the windows of the apse, which then

looked into the open air, but now look into the New Building. In the

Perpendicular period some seventy-five windows were either enlarged or

filled with rectilinear tracery. The builders certainly achieved their

object. The cathedral is well lighted. We may be thankful that they

did not stick a great Perpendicular window in each end of the central

transept.

XI. In 1541 the church was made a cathedral on the new foundation. Henry

VIII. is said to have preserved it as a mausoleum to his first wife,

Catharine of Arragon, who is buried in the choir. It is wretchedly

built—the west front and the New Building as badly as the Norman work—and

practically without foundations. Much underpinning has been done, and

more is required. The west front has been saved for the present by

judicious treatment.

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Wilfrid, Ripon.

[Illustration]

Ripon minster has passed through strange vicissitudes. It was founded

_c._ 660 as a monasterium or minster for Scottish monks attached to the

Celtic church. Soon afterwards it was taken away from them and granted

to the famous St. Wilfrid. In 678 the church became a cathedral, but

only during the lifetime of Bishop Eadhed. Ultimately it passed into the

hands of regular canons of the Augustinian Order. It was dissolved with

the other collegiate churches by Edward VI. It was made collegiate once

more by James I., but with dean and prebendaries instead of Augustinian

canons. In 1836, for the second time, it became a cathedral.

I. Both the minsters built by St. Wilfrid—Ripon and Hexham—retain

their crypts. He was a Romaniser in architecture as in ritual, and

well acquainted with Italy. So his seventh-century church at Ripon

was modelled after the early Christian basilicas which he had seen at

Rome. Like them, it had a confessionary or crypt, which still exists,

beneath the central tower; like them, it was orientated to the west. He

seems even to have brought over Italian masons to direct or to execute

the work, for the crypt is vaulted, and the vaulting is of excellent

construction; the masonry is smooth, and is covered “with a fine and very

hard plaster which takes a polish.” At its west end was the altar, at its

east end an aperture through which a glimpse of the interior might be

obtained from the Saxon nave. Round the walls are little niches in which

lights were placed. “St. Wilfrid’s Needle” is merely a niche with the

back knocked through. Similar Saxon crypts remain at Hexham and Wing, and

a Norman crypt at St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford. They usually consisted

of a small central chamber, with a passage all round it. There were two

staircases descending from either side of the nave; pilgrims went down

one flight of steps, proceeded along the passage, getting a glimpse of

the relics through openings in the wall of the central chamber, and then

returned up the other flight of steps into the nave.

IV. NORMAN.—Early in the twelfth century a Norman cathedral seems to

have been built, wholly or in part, by Archbishop Thurstan. Of this

there remains only an apsidal building, with crypt beneath, on the south

side of the south aisle of the present choir. An eleventh-century chapel

formerly existed, with crypt beneath it, in precisely the same situation

at Worcester; there is a twelfth-century chapel in the same position in

Oxford cathedral. In Oxford this chapel was the Lady chapel. It may be

that the Ripon chapel also may have been a Lady chapel. For if the Norman

choir was of the same length eastward as at present, it would have been

impossible to build a Lady chapel of the type of that, the crypt of which

still exists at Winchester, to the east of the choir; the ground falls

far too steeply eastward. Moreover, the so-called Lady loft now existing

would seem, from its name, to be merely an upper story added to a Lady

chapel. This Norman chapel formerly opened into the Norman church; traces

of the arches may be seen in the walls. In the buttress is a curious room

which may have been a sacristy, a lavatory, a prison, or an anchorite’s

cell, like the one in the east end of Ludlow church.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

V. TRANSITIONAL.—From 1154 to 1181 there ruled at York a man of the

greatest energy and power—Archbishop Roger. He condemned his two Norman

churches at York and Ripon; made no attempt, as at Peterborough and Ely,

to improve them; simply pulled them down, and started again _de novo_.

The two new minsters seem to have been somewhat similar: both had square

east ends, both had exceptionally broad naves. But Ripon minster was

merely the church of Augustinian canons, therefore it was not planned

in cathedral fashion. Our ancient collegiate and parish churches seem

to have followed some other model than the early Christian basilicas

which furnished the plans of the cathedrals. Most of our parish churches

originally were without aisles; and even large churches of the regular

canons frequently had no aisles to the nave. This was the case in Roger’s

new church at Ripon, and at Bolton Priory (also Augustinian). Later on,

indeed, the Ripon canons added north and south aisles to their nave, and

the Bolton canons a north aisle to their nave—they could not add a south

aisle also, as they had a cloister to the south. But originally both

churches had aisleless naves. That of Ripon was 40 feet broad—broader

than any nave in England, except York, which is of the breadth of 45

feet. The combination of unaisled nave and aisled choir must have

produced a very remarkable interior; quite unlike anything now existing

in England, but to be paralleled by the Spanish cathedral at Gerona

(illustrated in Street’s “Gothic Architecture of Spain”).

Of this Transitional nave nothing is now left except two fragments,

one at the east, and one at the west end on either side. All the rest

has been replaced by sixteenth-century piers, arches, and clerestory.

But if in imagination the two ends of the Transitional nave are joined

together—it is well to do so in an actual drawing—the design of the whole

of the original nave can be recovered with exactitude. A very remarkable

design it was. It consisted of three stories; the lower story was simply

a blank wall. The second, the triforium, was merely a passage in the

thickness of the wall, ornamented in front by a tall pointed arcade. The

clerestory had three tall slender lancet windows in each bay, all of the

same height, separated by two detached piers. The strangest feature of

the nave was that neither in the ground-story nor in the triforium were

there any windows. Everywhere else people were trying to get all the

windows possible into their churches; here alone a “dim, religious light”

was preferred. And filtering in, as it did, through small lancet windows

at a great height, as in Pugin’s cathedral at Killarney, the effect must

have been most dramatic. The destruction of this unique nave is one of

the heaviest losses that English architecture has sustained.

Of the central tower, the south-east pier has been rebuilt; the

north-east and south-west piers have been cased. The north and west

arches of the tower survive; the south and east arches have been rebuilt.

The nave was considerably wider than the central aisle of the choir;

the tower was therefore not built square; the northern arch being set

obliquely, and not parallel to the southern one. Outside, however, the

north side of the tower is corbelled out till the tower becomes square.

[Illustration: NORTH TRANSEPT.]

The design of the choir is best seen in the east side of the north

transept, which retains the original round-headed windows. In the choir

the western windows of the north aisle were converted into lancets in

the thirteenth century. The design of transept and choir is almost Greek

in its severity. Very effective is the contrast of broad wall-surface

and plain splayed window with the light and slender shafted arcades

of triforium and clerestory. In proportions, too, it is superior to

nearly all later designs. The pier-arches are tall and narrow, and the

triforium thoroughly subordinated to the tall clerestory; the proportions

approximate closely to those of Westminster Abbey and Beverley Minster.

It is remarkable, too, for the studied absence of foliated ornament.

Not that the builders could not design a foliated capital; they have

left one or two, in unnoticed corners of the north transept, to show

their powers. All the capitals of the choir are moulded capitals, as at

Roche Abbey—perhaps occurring here for the first time. Being a first

attempt, they can hardly be considered a success; they were soon to be

improved upon in the French crypt of Canterbury. The designer relied on

architectural effects pure and simple, and was followed in his ascetic

self-restraint sixty years later in the eastern transept of Fountains and

at Salisbury. Even more remarkable is the complete abolition of Norman

ornament. The billet, the zigzag, the whole barbaric congeries of Norman

ornament is contemptuously cast aside. In this respect, indeed, Ripon

is much more advanced than Canterbury choir, which was not commenced

till 1174. The clerestory, however, is of a familiar Norman type, being

an adaptation of that of Romsey and Waltham Abbey, and Peterborough and

Oxford cathedrals; it was reproduced a little later in Hexham choir.

The vaulting-shafts rest on the abaci, French fashion. In the choir there

are five vaulting-shafts, which in the clerestory diminish to one. The

effect is not satisfactory, and a different treatment is adopted in the

transept. It is noteworthy that the vaulting of the north transept aisle

contains an exceptionally early example of ridge-ribs, both longitudinal

and transverse.

In spite of round-headed windows and round-headed arches here and there,

the whole design of the interior is light and graceful, thoroughly

Gothic. Externally it is just the reverse; but for a pointed arcade in

the clerestory one might imagine one was back again in the early days

of the twelfth century. But when one compares the interior with that

of Oxford Cathedral, which is precisely contemporary, and in which the

spirit of Gothic is wholly absent, suspicion rises to certainty: Ripon

Minster must have been designed under French influence. The tall, acute,

pointed pier-arches of Notre Dame, Chalons-sur-Marne, and Sens (commenced

_c._ 1140) reappear in Ripon choir, and the undoubtedly French choir of

Canterbury. The Chalons triforium reappears in the north wall of Ripon

transept; the Chalons clerestory in that of Ripon nave. The clerestory of

Ripon choir is practically that of the French choir of Canterbury, itself

probably suggested by that of Sens. French too, are the vaulting-shafts

of the choir, insecurely balancing on the abaci; and the broadness and

plain splays of the windows.

IV. LANCET.—To this period belong the vaulting and piers of the present

chapter-house; and the west front, which, like York transept and

Southwell choir, is attributed to Archbishop Gray (_ob._ 1255). The west

front is too flat; deficient in play of light and shade; correct and

uninteresting. It is ruined by the loss of its wooden spires, removed in

1664; and by the miserable little pinnacles put up in 1797. Before the

aisles were built, these towers projected clear of the nave, their inner

walls are Transitional; but the Transitional arch has been taken out and

replaced by one of the Lancet period.

V. GEOMETRICAL.—The lower row of lancets in the west front once had

charming tracery, inserted early in the Geometrical period. This was

destroyed by Scott.

[Illustration: CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.]

About 1280 the east end of the choir seems to have collapsed—partly,

perhaps, in consequence of the steep fall of the ground eastwards. It

was rebuilt, with the damaged portions of the choir, with exceptional

strength in consequence. The east end is a vigorous, massive design,

something like that of Guisborough or Selby. Only the eastern portion of

the choir has flying buttresses. The clerestory windows have an inner

arcade. Ripon choir alone, of English cathedrals, possesses a glazed

triforium, the lean-to roof of the aisles having been replaced by a flat

roof (see ELY).

VI. To the CURVILINEAR period (1315-1360) belong the Lady loft and the

sedilia. The latter originally stood one bay more to the west. In the

Tudor period the arches of the sedilia seem to have received the present

clumsy shafts.

VII. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—In 1458 the southern and eastern sides

of the central tower collapsed, greatly damaging the adjacent parts of

the choir and transept, as well as the stalls. The eastern aisle of the

south transept and much of the south side of the choir, as well as part

of the tower, had to be rebuilt; and about 1490 the present choir-stalls

were put up. In the choir the builders, with a conservatism which does

them credit, both in the work of 1280 and in that of 1458, preserved all

they could of the twelfth-century work, and both in the Geometrical and

the Perpendicular bays of the triforium retained the semicircular arch

of the older design. The result is a curious blend of styles. Starting

from the east, the first pier on the north side is Geometrical, the rest

Transitional. On the south side the first pier is Geometrical, the second

Transitional, the third and fourth Perpendicular. To give more support to

the tower, the north-east and south-west piers were cased; the south-east

pier was rebuilt, and the southern and eastern arches were rebuilt. To

strengthen the eastern piers of the tower, the two western bays of the

arcade of the choir were blocked up, and a massive choir-screen was

inserted _c._ 1480.

[Illustration: CHOIR, LOOKING WEST.]

VIII. TUDOR.—Early in the sixteenth century the canons unhappily

determined to give their unique church more of the look of a cathedral

by adding aisles to the nave. It is pleasant to add that they were

unsuccessful. The nave is exceedingly low in proportion to its

exceptional span, and being, moreover, unprovided with a triforium, does

not look in the least like a cathedral, but like a very inferior parish

church. Externally, the buttresses are of fine composition, and if the

pinnacles were completed, the nave would be very handsome externally.

In 1593 the central spire—of timber and lead—was struck by lightning,

and in 1660 it was removed. It was 120 feet high. In 1664, for fear of a

similar catastrophe, the western spires also were removed. The result is

that, seen from a distance, _minus_ spires and _minus_ pinnacles, Ripon

Minster is stunted and squat.

The Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, Rochester.

[Illustration: FROM NORTH-EAST.]

Rochester and London, next to Canterbury, are the oldest of all the

English bishoprics, unless, indeed, we are prepared to accept a

pre-Augustine bishopric of Hereford. St. Augustine, soon after his

landing in 597, came to preach at Rochester. His reception was not

encouraging; the rude people hung fish-tails to his coat. Wherefore in

anger the saint prayed “that the Lord would smite them _in posteriora_ to

their everlasting ignominy. So that not only on their own but on their

successors’ persons similar tails grew ever after.” The worst of it was

that the story spread, and not only Rochester people but all English folk

were believed on the Continent to be _caudati_ (tailed). So that even

in the sixteenth century “an Englishman now cannot travel in another

land by way of merchandise or any other honest occupying, but it is most

contumeliously thrown in his teeth that all Englishmen have tails.”

Among St. Augustine’s Italian missioners were St. Justus and St.

Paulinus. St. Justus became first bishop of Rochester in 604. St.

Paulinus, after eight years of mission work in Northumbria, became bishop

of Rochester in 633. The first English bishop was St. Ythamar (644-655).

These three were the chief local saints of Rochester in early days.

St. Augustine and his missioners had come from the monastery of St.

Andrew, Rome. To St. Andrew, therefore, they dedicated the first Saxon

cathedral. In 1542 the cathedral was re-dedicated to Christ and the

Blessed Virgin Mary of Rochester. Till 1077 the cathedral was served by

secular canons; Gundulph replaced them by Benedictine monks.

I. In 1888 the foundations of an early church were found. It had an apse,

but neither aisles nor transepts; walls only 2 feet 4 inches thick; 42

feet long, 28 feet broad. From the resemblance of its plan to that of St.

Pancras, Canterbury, and the presence of Roman brick in the walls, it

seems as likely to be a Romano-British as an Anglo Saxon church.

II. Between 1080 and 1089 Bishop Gundulph completed a Norman cathedral,

except the western part of the nave. In plan it was entirely different

from any Norman cathedral of the day: one can hardly help believing that

it must have been designed by an Englishman. The plan of it is given

in the _Builder_. It was a long oblong aisled cathedral, with nave and

aisles running on without a break from the west end of the nave to the

east end of the choir. But in the choir the side-aisles were cut off from

the central aisle by a solid wall, as in the contemporary choir of St.

Albans and in the Premonstratensian abbey of St. Radigund, near Dover.

There was probably no crossing, and therefore no central tower. There

were no transepts proper; but, as in such Anglo-Saxon churches as Worth,

low porch-like transepts projected north and south, with a breadth of

only 14 feet. The east end, as in most Anglo-Saxon churches, was square;

and there projected from it eastward a small square chapel. Beneath was

a crypt, the western part of which remains. There were two towers, both

abnormal in position. The southern tower was set in the angle of the

choir and the south transept, and may have been the belfry. The other

tower, fragments of which still remain, was set in a similar position,

but entirely detached. Being detached, and having walls six feet thick,

it was no doubt a military keep. Gundulph was fond of building keeps;

those of the Tower of London and Malling still exist. Rochester was

exposed to and had suffered from attacks of the Danes, sailing up the

Medway, in 840, 884, and 999. There was a striking memento of them on the

great west doors of the cathedral, which Pepys, as late as 1661, found

“covered with the skins of Danes.” We may conjecture that it was as a

refuge against similar attacks that Gundulph built the northern keep.

All this work of Gundulph’s is now gone except portions of the crypt,

the keep, and the nave. The original monastery was built in the normal

position, south of the nave. To enclose the cloister, therefore, on the

north, the south side of the nave was proceeded with next. The south

aisle-wall is very thin—as was customary in Anglo-Saxon architecture—and

we may conjecture that English influence stopped at this point; for the

piers and arches of the nave are quite Norman in character. Of Gundulph’s

nave there remain on the south side five arches, together with the lower

parts of the walls of both aisles. It is very doubtful whether he built

any part of the triforium or clerestory. At present his work can only

be seen in its original condition from the side of the aisles. The pier

arches had originally two square orders, which remain unaltered on the

side of the aisle (cf. Winchester transept). Gundulph’s masonry was in

rough tufa.

III. LATE NORMAN.—The works on the church were now probably suspended

for a considerable time, while the monks, as at Gloucester, replaced the

temporary buildings of the monastery by permanent ones. These temporary

wooden buildings seem to have been situated in the usual position—viz.,

south of the nave. It was probably not to interfere with these that

the permanent monastic buildings were placed in an abnormal position,

south of the choir. Much of this work was done by Bishop Ernulph

(1115-1124), who had been a great builder at Canterbury, while prior,

and at Peterborough, as abbot. Parts of the cloister, refectory, and

chapter-house remain.

[Illustration: NAVE, NORTH SIDE.]

When at length the builders returned to the nave of the cathedral

(_c._ 1120), fashions had changed. Gundulph’s eleventh-century design

and his rough tufa masonry seemed archaic and barbaric. His tufa was

therefore cased with good Caen stone, as was done later in the century

at Chichester; his piers and capitals were remodelled, and on the side

of the nave the outer square order of the pier-arch was covered with

zigzag ornament. The aisles, as at Hereford, where a precisely similar

transformation of eleventh-into twelfth-century work was taking place at

the same time, were left unaltered. Gundulph had placed pilasters along

the inner face of the aisle-walls, evidently intending that the aisles

should be vaulted; but his successors apparently thought the walls too

thin, as at Carlisle, to support a vault; so, instead of vaulting the

aisles and obtaining thus a continuous passage the whole length of the

church, they constructed a passage in the thickness of the wall of

the triforium. Thus Rochester, like Vignory, has the distinction of

possessing a sham triforium. Waltham Abbey also has a triforium arcade,

but no triforium floor; but that is because the vaults which originally

covered the aisles had subsequently to be taken down.

Still later—about the middle of the twelfth century—is the west front,

with its magnificent doorway, and the diaper of the triforium.

IV. In 1179 the cathedral was greatly damaged by fire. Either because

of this, or because the eastern half of the cathedral had been planned

so inconveniently, or because the plan was not the fashionable one of

Norman times, the monks set to work to rebuild the whole cathedral. As

usual, they arranged their building operations so as to avoid interfering

with the services in the choir as long as possible. First, they rebuilt

the north aisle of the choir, but not so high as it is at present. The

aisle remained narrow, because Gundulph’s tower was in the way. But the

south aisle of the choir they doubled in width. Next, they set to work

at the east end, planning it, as at Hereford, as an eastern transept

with an eastern aisle, and projecting eastward an oblong sanctuary

(cf. Southwell). The new transept was lofty and broad; and it is quite

possible that it was built over the top of Gundulph’s east end without

disturbing daily services within it. Then, when all was finished,

Gundulph’s east end was pulled down. Unlike the Worcester monks they

preserved the level of the eleventh-century choir, and consequently had

to continue Gundulph’s crypt eastward. In the new presbytery is seen the

same curious mixture of quadripartite and sexpartite vaulting as in St.

Hugh’s eastern transept at Lincoln. All this work was finished in 1227.

Next they pulled down Gundulph’s narrow north transept and rebuilt it as

broad as the central aisle of the nave. The new transept has a sexpartite

vault with a longitudinal ridge rib, as in the great transept of Lincoln

(_c._ 1245).

Then came the rebuilding of the south transept (_c._ 1280). They resolved

also to have a central tower and to rebuild the nave. Of the nave they

rebuilt the two easternmost bays, and then completed the piers and arches

of the crossing; but not yet the tower.

Up to this point the works had gone on continuously for a century. What

enabled the monks to undertake such a great work as the rebuilding of the

whole cathedral, and why, after doing so much, they suddenly stopped,

has now to be explained. The secret of the flush of money at Rochester

was that in 1201 the monks acquired a new saint, St. William. “He was

by birth a Scot, of Perth; by trade, a baker; in charity so abundant

that he gave to the poor the tenth loaf of his workmanship; in zeal so

fervent that in vow he promised, and in deed attempted, to visit the

places where Christ was conversant on earth; in which journey, he made

Rochester his way, where, after that he had rested two or three days, he

departed toward Canterbury. But ere he had gone far from the city, his

servant—a foundling who had been brought up by him out of charity—led

him of purpose out of the highway, and spoiled him both of his money

and his life. The servant escaped, but his master (because he died in

so holy a purpose of mind) was by the monks conveyed to St. Andrew’s

and laid in the choir. And soon he wrought miracles plentifully.” It

was, then, from offerings at the shrine of St. Thomas of Perth, left by

countless pilgrims on their way to the shrine of a yet greater Thomas

at Canterbury, that the expenses of the new choir were paid. And it was

simply because in the course of eighty years the repute of the murdered

baker had paled and waned before the ever-growing fame of the murdered

archbishop, that the monks had to renounce, once for all, their ambitious

project of rebuilding the whole of the nave. It seems, however, that

they were for a considerable time unwilling to give up hope; for one bay

of the Norman triforium was pulled down, leaving a gap, which was not

filled up till the fourteenth century; when, oddly enough, it was rebuilt

in the same Norman style as before, but in greensand—a rare mediæval

example of “architectural forgery” (cf. Durham Galilee).

[Illustration: CHOIR.]

V. But though the rebuilding of the nave was definitely abandoned, a good

deal of work was done in the Curvilinear period (1315-1360). The central

tower was at length erected; it was removed in 1749. A solid stone

screen was built between the piers, as at Ripon; the south aisle of the

choir was brought into its present form by the absorption of Gundulph’s

southern tower; a grand doorway to the chapter-house was built, and

monuments were erected to Bishop Hamo de Hythe (d. 1352), and Bishop John

de Sheppey (d. 1360).

The monks now also provided a Lady chapel. This they got in a very

inexpensive way—a proof that their resources had greatly fallen off—by

appropriating for the purpose the southern transept, the two eastern bays

of which they threw into one to form a recess for the altar of the Virgin.

VI. After this little was done at Rochester, except to build out a

chapel of three bays westward from the south transept, giving a sort of

nave to the Lady chapel.

VII. The windows, however, were, as usual, in the builders’ hands

throughout the whole of the fourteenth century—especially those of the

dark Norman nave.

In the Curvilinear period flowing tracery was inserted in the lower range

of lights in the sanctuary, and improvements were made in the clerestory

of the south transept, now that it was to be used as a Lady chapel.

In the Perpendicular period the narrow north aisle of the choir, darkened

by Gundulph’s tower on one side and on the other by the solid wall of the

choir, was raised, lighted, and vaulted. Then the nave was taken in hand;

Perpendicular windows were inserted in the aisles, and a great window in

the west end; the whole of the Norman clerestory was taken off, a new

clerestory and a new wooden roof were put up. Thus the nave got plenty of

light.

VIII. In 1664 the south aisle of the nave was recased; and in 1670 the

third, fourth and fifth bays, counting from the west, in the north aisle

of the choir, were rebuilt.

IX. In 1830 Cottingham put up the present central tower. In 1871 the

cathedral was restored by Scott.

The Cathedral Church of St. Alban.

[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-WEST.]

Of all our cathedrals none is so composite and heterogeneous as the

ancient church of the Benedictine abbey of St. Alban. It is mainly

built—even the fourteenth-century Lady chapel—of Roman tiles. Saxon

balusters appear in the triforium of the transepts. In the nave and

transepts and tower is Early Norman work, unequalled in extent and

grandeur; in the south transept are built up the fragments of a Late

Norman doorway, to which period, or to the first days of the Transitional

period (1145-1190), belongs the interlacing arcade now placed above it.

In the west front and the western bays of the nave is Lancet work of two

periods (1190-1245). In the sanctuary is seen Early Geometrical work

(1245-1280); the ante-chapel, commenced in the Early, was finished in

the Late Geometrical period (1280-1315). The Lady chapel (1291-1326) is

a most interesting example of the transition from the Late Geometrical

to the Curvilinear style. The latter is represented by the five eastern

bays on the south side of the nave, by the remains of the cloisters,

by the shrines of St. Alban and St. Amphibalus, and by the Holy Rood

screen (1315-1360). Perpendicular work is represented by the alterations

to the cloisters, by the abbey gatehouse, by the triforium windows on

the north side of the nave and choir, inserted when the aisle roofs

were lowered, by the watching-loft, by the chantries of the Duke of

Gloucester and Abbot Wheathampstead, and by the reredos and painted

ceiling. Tudor work appears in the chapel of the Transfiguration, and

in the admirable chantry of Abbot Ramryge; while the “Gothic revival”

is stamped on every feature of Lord Grimthorpe’s façades to the west,

north and south. There is not a single hiatus in the series. St. Alban’s

is a veritable architectural handbook, written in brick and stone. The

student should remember, however, that at St. Alban’s there is a good

deal of what is called assimilation. The Lancet bays and the Curvilinear

bays in the nave are not typical and characteristic of their respective

periods. The architects of these bays had not a free hand. They were not

able to compose the design simply to suit the fashion of the day. Their

bays were to be Lancet and Curvilinear only so far as might be without

ruining the general design and proportions of the nave as a whole. With

these reservations, the tyro in architecture is recommended to select St.

Alban’s as his “Introduction to Mediæval Architecture.” If he comes from

London, he should choose the longer route, by the London & North-Western

Railway: he will have less distance to walk on arriving, and will see the

cathedral from the most picturesque point of view. If time permits, he

should proceed direct from the railway station to Verulamium, and see the

Roman walls and fosse, and the interesting church of St. Michael’s, with

the famous monument of Lord Bacon, before visiting the cathedral.

[Illustration: NAVE, NORTH SIDE.]

In Roman times the town was on the other side of the little river, the

Ver, a tributary of the Colne, and hence was called Verulamium. In the

revolt of Boadicea it was burnt, but was soon rebuilt. In the year 303,

“there was gret persecution of Christen pepell by the tyrant Diocletian”;

and Alban, a citizen of Verulamium, who had given shelter to a Welsh

priest, Amphibalus, was scourged, and then dragged along the ancient

British causeway, which still exists, across the Ver, and up the lane to

the top of the hill afterwards called Holmhurst, and there put to death.

Amphibalus suffered the same fate. On the west wall of the north transept

of the cathedral, just under a round-headed window, is a small black

cross cut in stone. “This marks the traditional site of the martyrdom

of St. Alban, when there was neither town nor abbey in this place, but

only a flowery slope planted with trees.” In the fifth century the

English conquered the district. They abandoned Verulamium, and built

the present town on the hill of Holmhurst, calling it Watlingceaster, as

Watling Street ran through it. In the year 793, Offa, king of Mercia,

treacherously murdered Ethelbert, king of East Anglia (see HEREFORD). It

was revealed to him in a vision that, by way of penance, he should seek

out the body of St. Alban, and there erect a monastery. King, archbishop,

bishops, priests, and a great multitude of common people, searched the

hill of Holmhurst, and found the relics of the martyr. A church was

built, and richly endowed, and was entrusted to Benedictine monks. It

remained a Benedictine abbey-church till the Dissolution, in 1539. Then

it became a parish church, and in 1875 a cathedral.

[Illustration: TRIFORIUM OF TRANSEPT.]

The relics of St. Alban had an eventful history. First they were carried

off by pirates to Denmark, but were afterwards restored. Then, in

expectation of another Danish raid, they were sent for safety to Ely.

When the Danes had gone, the monks of Ely, being desirous to keep the

precious bones in their possession, palmed on the monks of St. Alban’s

some suppositious relics. Whereupon the monks of St. Alban’s asserted

that neither had they sent to Ely the genuine relics, but only sham ones,

to draw attention away from the fact that they had hidden the authentic

bones of the martyr in a hole in the wall of their own church! “_Credat

Judæus Apelles._”

Towards the end of the eleventh century Nicholas Breakspear was born at

Abbots Langley, in Hertfordshire. He applied to the abbey of St. Alban

to be admitted a monk, but was scornfully rejected, and rebuked for his

impudence, being, as he was, son of one of the menials of the convent.

This same man became Pope in 1154—the only Englishman who ever became

Pope. And when he became Pope, under the title of Adrian IV., he forgot

not the monks of St. Alban’s, but forgave them, and made their monastery

free of episcopal jurisdiction for ever, and subject only to the see of

Rome. And to the abbot he gave precedence over all other English abbots;

which precedency, after much dispute with Westminster, St. Alban’s

retained till the Dissolution.

In 1455 was fought the first battle of St. Albans, when Henry VI. was

wounded in the neck by an arrow, and made prisoner by the Yorkists under

the Earl of Warwick. The forces met in Holywell Street (where we entered

the town), between the Key and the Chequer. In the second battle, 1461,

the Earl of Warwick was defeated by Queen Margaret.

St. Alban’s was an exceedingly wealthy abbey; it had estates in almost

every county in England, and at the present value of money its income

would amount to at least a million. Its conventual buildings must

have been immense. One of the guest-halls, in addition to parlours

and bedrooms, had stables for three hundred horses. Of all these vast

structures nothing remains but one of the gatehouses, built in 1380. In

it were detained the French prisoners in the Napoleonic wars; afterwards

it became a common gaol, now it houses the Grammar School.

[Illustration: NAVE, NORTH SIDE.]

Internally, the church is divided from west to east, in ancient monastic

fashion, into (1) nave, (2) choir, (3) sanctuary, (4) Saints’ chapel, (5)

retro-choir or ante-chapel, (6) Lady chapel. (1) The ritual nave occupies

the ten western bays only of the architectural nave, and terminates at

the Holy Rood screen. (2) The ritual choir is not placed in the eastern

limb; but, following a far more ancient precedent, in the three eastern

bays of the architectural nave, and in the crossing (that part of the

transept which is beneath the central tower). This was the place of the

choir in the primitive basilicas, and in the early monastic churches. The

“Coro” of the Spanish cathedrals is still placed in the nave. The same

arrangement survives in this country in Westminster Abbey and Norwich,

and has lately been restored at Peterborough. (3) The sanctuary extends

from the tower to the great reredos, and provided a free and unencumbered

space in front of the high altar, which “dwelt apart.” (4) The Saint’s

chapel was occupied, like the feretory at Winchester, by magnificent

shrines which towered behind and above the high altar, visible far

down the nave, at least before the great reredos was erected. (5) The

retro-choir or ante-chapel provided a processional path, or ambulatory,

or eastern choir aisle at the back of the shrines. Romsey and Hereford

possess the earliest of these processional paths, Winchester the largest.

(6) The Lady chapel occupies its normal position, to the extreme east.

But where there was no room for farther eastward extension of the

cathedral, the Lady chapel may be found on the north or south side of the

choir, as at Bristol and Oxford. Here, as at Salisbury and Winchester,

the high roofs do not extend over retro-choir and Lady chapel, which are

only one story high; at York and Lincoln and Ely, the church retains

its full height uninterruptedly to the extreme east end; the ritualistic

divisions of the church being marked by screens only.

[Illustration: LADY-CHAPEL LOOKING EAST.]

In Norman times the church did not extend so far eastward. The sanctuary

ended in three semicircular apses, of which those of the aisles were

semicircular inside but square outside, as at Romsey. And, in lieu of

eastern aisles, the transepts had each a pair of little semicircular

chapels, the arches leading into which may still be seen in their eastern

walls.

“In 1077, Paul, a monk of St. Stephen’s, Caen (the Abbaye-aux-hommes),

was elected Abbot, through the influence of Archbishop Lanfranc, whose

kinsman he was.” In these words we have the origin of St. Alban’s

Cathedral; and not of St. Alban’s only, but of all the mediæval

architecture of our land, whether Romanesque or Gothic. Before the

Norman conquest we had a native style of our own; a kind of primitive

Romanesque, of which remains survive at Jarrow, Wing, Worth, Deerhurst,

and elsewhere, as well as in the crypts of Ripon, Hexham, and Repton. But

the invasion of the Normans changed all this. The primitive indigenous

Romanesque of England was thrown aside in favour of the far more advanced

Romanesque of Normandy. From the great monastery of St. Stephen, Caen,

came Lanfranc, the first, and Anselm, the second Norman Archbishop of

Canterbury. When Lanfranc set to work to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral,

he made it in length and breadth and height an exact copy of the church

of St. Stephen, Caen. What Lanfranc did at Canterbury, the Walkelins did

at Winchester and Ely, and Abbot Paul at St. Alban’s. They set to work to

rebuild their churches on the vast scale, and with all the improvements,

of the Romanesque architecture of Caen and Normandy. St. Stephen’s, Caen,

is therefore the link between the architecture of Normandy and that of

England; it is the mother-church of all the cathedrals of our land. More

than this: Lanfranc and Anselm were by birth, not Normans, but Italians;

Lanfranc was born at Pavia, Anselm at Aosta. Paul was a kinsman of

Lanfranc. All three, then, came from the great plain of Lombardy; and it

was through such scholars and theologians as these that the architecture

of Lombardy found its way into Normandy. For the architecture of Normandy

is in character mainly Lombardic. Therefore, just as Canterbury and

Winchester and St. Alban’s are the offspring of St. Stephen’s, Caen; so

St. Stephen’s itself is the child of S. Ambrogio and S. Eustorgio, Milan;

S. Stephen, Verona; S. Sophia, Padua; and other ninth- and tenth-century

churches of Lombardy and the neighbourhood.

[Illustration: RAMRYGE’S CHANTRY.]

But though in origin Winchester, Ely, and St. Alban’s hail from Caen,

they all far surpass their model in vastness of scale. Winchester and

Ely even committed the magnificent extravagance of having a western as

well as an eastern aisle to the transepts; and though St. Alban’s, like

Canterbury, had an aisleless transept, yet it surpassed them all in the

stupendous length of its nave. Still more does it surpass the Caen

church and Lanfranc’s Canterbury. Caen and Canterbury had nine bays in

the nave, two in the choir, and two in each transept; St. Alban’s had

thirteen in the nave, five in the choir, and three in each transept. Caen

and Canterbury had naves 193 feet long, transepts 145 feet long, and a

total length of 290 feet; St. Alban’s a nave 292 feet long (as long as

the whole churches at Caen and Canterbury), transepts 177 feet long, and

a total length of about 430 feet. In the fourteenth century, owing to the

eastward extensions, St. Alban’s became longer still—520 feet inside, 550

feet outside. Winchester is even longer still: 2 yards longer than St.

Alban’s; 3 yards longer than Ely; 4 yards longer than Canterbury.

[Illustration: WEST FRONT.]

I. EARLY NORMAN.—Of the work of Paul of Caen (1077-1093), we have the

central tower and transept practically complete, and large portions

of the nave and sanctuary. The design is strictly conditioned by the

material, Roman brick; in consequence of the employment of which the

architect was driven to rely for his effects, not on ornament or detail,

but on what is nobler far, vastness of scale. It is worth while to

compare the brick transept of St. Alban’s with the contemporary transept

of Winchester, where the design is conditioned by the use of stone.

II. LATE NORMAN.—A fine arcade and doorway have been removed from the

slype to the south wall of the south transept by Lord Grimthorpe. He is

good enough to tell us that the new work which he has interpolated is so

artful that no archæologist in future shall be able to ascertain which

portions are old and which are new.

III. LANCET.—The vast and imposing church completed in the twelfth

century found little favour in Gothic eyes. It was apparently regarded

not only as ugly, but as incapable of being improved into something

better. The only thing was to pull it down. In the end the monks did pull

down and rebuild a large part of it, occupying at least a hundred years

in the work. Fortunately for us, they wearied of their self-imposed task.

They began at the west end of the nave, so as not to interfere with the

monastic services. First, John de Celia (1195-1214) proceeded to rebuild

the west front on a lovely design, and with a wealth of costly marble and

carving. Of this work there remain portions in the north-west and central

porches of the façade.

His successor, William de Trumpington, was more economical, and produced

more work. He completed the porches, and built in the western end of the

nave four bays on the north and five bays on the south side. It can still

be seen how he economised, not only on John de Celia’s design, in the

arch that was to have led into a south-western tower, but on the design

of his own bases, piers and vaulting-shafts; he even renounced the idea

of vaulting his work at all—a very ungothic procedure.

IV. GEOMETRICAL.—His successors went further still; they abandoned all

hope of rebuilding the rest of the nave, and turned their attention to

the eastern limb. Retaining their stalls, as at present, in the crossing

and the three western bays of the nave, they were able to go on with

works to the east without any interruption to the services. The works

dragged on very slowly. For some reason or other this wealthy abbey—with

estates in almost every county of England—never had money to spend on its

church.

[Illustration: THE REREDOS.]

First, the Norman sanctuary and apses were demolished, except that a

length of Norman wall was retained on either side of the sanctuary. If

this had been removed the tower might have collapsed. The chief feature

of the new sanctuary is the clerestory windows, with tracery of early

type, _c._ 1250.

Soon after, the lower parts of the Saint’s chapel and the ante-chapel

were built; these were not completely finished till _c._ 1315.

There, too, “vaulting ambition had o’erleapt itself”: the monks made

preparations for vaults both within and without the ante-chapel, but in

the end put up an unworthy flat ceiling.

About 1295 they commenced a new Lady chapel. This was not finished till

about 1326. Thus it was built in the last years of the Geometrical

and the early years of the Curvilinear style, and, like Selby choir,

illustrates charmingly the transition from the one to the other.

V. CURVILINEAR.—The monks had now done all they meant to do. The eastern

limb was rebuilt. They meant to do no more in the nave. But their hands

were forced. Five Norman bays collapsed on the south side of the nave in

1323, and the monks had perforce to rebuild them. The design is closely

assimilated to that of the Lancet bays to the west; the clerestory

actually having lancet windows without tracery. To this period belong the

shrines of St. Alban and St. Amphibalus, the Rood-screen, the doorway and

arcade of the cloister.

[Illustration: THE SHRINE.]

VI. PERPENDICULAR.—The great gateway was built _c._ 1380. The nave and

choir were better lighted on the north side by the insertion of windows

in the triforium. The watching-loft was constructed _c._ 1420; the choir

was ceiled, and the great reredos was erected _c._ 1480. To the same

period belong the brass of Abbot de la Mare, _c._ 1390; and the grand

chantries of Abbot Wheathampstead and Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, _c._

1440.

VII. TUDOR.—The grandest chantry of all is that of Abbot Ramryge, _c._

1520.

VIII. In recent times vast sums have been spent in underpinning and

securing the walls and tower: and we have had the amazing west front and

transept-ends designed by Lord Grimthorpe.

The “Annals of an Abbey,” in Froude’s “Short Studies,” should be read.

The Cathedral Church of St. Mary, Salisbury.

[Illustration]

Two English cathedrals surpass all others in external effect: Lincoln and

Salisbury; each of them being at its best as seen from the north-east.

But Lincoln lacks “the quiet tranquillity of the close of Salisbury,

the half-hidden houses, covered with vines and creepers, that nestle

among the trees, the sense of being shut off from the work-a-day world.

If Durham seems the petrified interpretation of the Church militant,

Salisbury is the very type and picture of the Church of the Prince of

Peace. Unworldliness and peace brood over church and close.”

The ancient Norman cathedral stood within the fortifications of Old

Sarum. The site was cramped, and extension was impossible; there was

far too much wind and far too little water; moreover the soldiers

who garrisoned the castle were most objectionable neighbours. So, by

permission of the Pope, Bishop Richard Poore in 1220 commenced a new

cathedral on the present site.

It was a virgin site; and from this fact resulted a cathedral different

from any other that we possess, and as a study in design more important

than any other we possess. In other cathedrals we study the mediæval

architect designing under difficulties; what we see in such a composite

cathedral as Hereford or Chichester or Rochester is not one design,

but a dozen designs trying to blend into one design; sometimes, as

at Canterbury and Rochester, rather ineffectually, sometimes, as at

Hereford, with remarkable success. At Salisbury it is not so: the design

is one design, all sprang from a single brain, except the west front and

possibly the upper part of tower and spire. We have no such homogeneous

design in our mediæval cathedrals. The French were less conservative,

perhaps less penurious; their Gothic architects were iconoclasts; no

French architect could have allowed such frightful solecisms to remain as

disfigure our cathedrals to the purist eye, and endear them to the artist.

Bishop Poore’s architect, Elias de Dereham, one of the canons of the

cathedral, who a little later designed the eastern transept of Durham,

had—what no other of our Gothic architects had—a free hand. Salisbury,

then, tells us what no other cathedral does—what an English architect

thought a cathedral ought to be like, when not hampered by having to

preserve or assimilate pre-existing work or to build on pre-existing

foundations. Canterbury nave is not the best the architect could do: it

is the best he could do subject to the restriction that his nave must be

neither longer nor broader than Lanfranc’s ancient nave. Elias de Dereham

had no such restrictions; the cathedral was to be built in the green

pastures, he could take as much space as he liked.

Begun in 1220, the whole cathedral, except west front, tower and spire,

was complete in 1266, having cost, it is said, what is equivalent to half

a million of our money. It has, therefore, the distinction among our

cathedrals of having a design which is practically uniform. It is said,

indeed, and with perfect truth, that the homogeneity and uniformity

of the design of Salisbury makes it less interesting than the usual

composite cathedral of England, with its design changing, as in Selby

nave, almost in every bay. When we have seen one bay of Salisbury nave,

we have seen the other nine, and we know that we shall find practically

the same design in the choir. Yet we can afford very well, in England, to

have one great design, the product not of a dozen minds, but of one mind;

a work completed in less than half a century, and not spread out, like

Canterbury, over four centuries, or like Hereford, over seven.

[Illustration: NAVE.]

Again, building on a virgin site, Elias de Dereham did what all great

builders have always wished to do—he made his building symmetrical. It is

the fashion to contrast the symmetry of Greek with the picturesqueness

of Gothic architecture. The comparison may be carried too far. The

Erechtheium is as unsymmetrical and picturesque as any Gothic building.

The great cathedrals of northern France, and Salisbury and Exeter,

are quite classical in their symmetry. But they are not pedantic in

their symmetry. Because nave balances choir, the north transept the

south transept, and the north-east transept the south-east transept,

the builder was not so foolish as to construct on the south a big

porch to balance that on the north side of the nave. Instead of that,

he built to the south an octagonal chapter-house, and this he placed

unsymmetrically—_i.e._, picturesquely—because, so placed, it was more

to the convenience of those who would have to use it. In other words, he

did not purposefully aim at the picturesque and the irregular. Gothic

cathedrals are picturesque, either of accident, as at Canterbury, owing

to the casual collocation of work of different design in the course of

several centuries, or because the different parts of the cathedral, being

intended for different functions, have been designed different in plan,

in dimensions, and in details. The latter is the case with Salisbury.

Two chief types of cathedral plan were at the architect’s disposal:

what we may call the York type, and the Wells type. In the latter,

the cathedral continues at its fullest height from the western doors

to the far east of the sanctuary, then the retro-choir or ante-chapel

(sometimes divided into Saint’s chapel and processional path or

ambulatory) is roofed at a far lower height, and east of them is a Lady

chapel, similarly on a low level. And, of course, as the upper wall of

the east end of the sanctuary requires to be supported, arches have to

be built beneath it opening from the sanctuary into the retro-choir.

The plan is a beautiful one—it is our English equivalent for the French

‘chevet.’ Externally, the different portions of the eastern limb tell

distinctly the purposes for which they are built: standing to the east

of Winchester, or Wells, or Hereford, you say at once, “This building is

the Lady chapel; there is the processional path and probably the shrine

of the local saint, there is the east end of the sanctuary, and the

light from that east window at the early morning services streams down

on the high altar below.” Internally, too, the effect is delightful; the

upper story of the cathedral is of course really greatly curtailed in

length, but the cathedral is not shortened to the eye: the mysterious

vistas through the east arches of the cathedral more than restore the

height lost above; the glimpses of Lady chapel behind ambulatory, and

ambulatory behind Saints’ chapel, as seen from far west in the nave,

make the termination of the Lady chapel, invisible from many points of

view, seem infinitely distant. Of these mysterious distances, shadowy

recesses and changing vistas, there is nothing in Lincoln and York; the

whole eastern limb is seen at a single glance, and, unfortunately, is

foreshortened by the eye. Wells and Salisbury internally look longer

than they are, Lincoln and York much shorter. In mediæval days, however,

the ritualistic divisions of the church were marked off by a series of

screens, each adding apparent length to the interior. So many of these

screens, however, have been swept away by Wyatt, Scott and the like,

or replaced by paltry open-work, as at Lichfield and Durham, that many

of the cathedrals of this type are now mere open barns; all sense of

mystery, all sense of magnitude gone. Externally, York and Lincoln and

Beverley have the best of it. The sweep of a sky-line, five hundred feet

in length, at a height so vast, is sublimely impressive. The cost of an

exterior kept at an unbroken height for such a distance is very great,

but it is worth the cost.

[Illustration: TRANSEPT]

Cathedrals of the latter type, such as Ely, York, and Southwell, are

quite presentable with a central tower of moderate height, provided that

it is reinforced by more important towers to the west. An exterior of

the former type, that of Wells and Salisbury, demands a very important

central tower. Accordingly, every cathedral of this type has a big

central tower—viz., St. Alban’s, Hereford, Wells; or a spire as well as a

tower—viz., Chichester. (Winchester alone is an exception, an exception

which proves how very much a central tower is needed in such elevations.)

In such exteriors, looked at from the east, hills rise beyond hills, alps

beyond alps, and the eye instinctively looks up to see the highest ranges

aspire into the pyramidal outline of a Matterhorn. And this is what is

given us at Salisbury.

[Illustration: CHOIR.]

It is not, however, what Elias de Dereham, the original architect, meant.

No spire, or even upper tower, says Sir Christopher Wren, was originally

contemplated. The unique slenderness of the piers of the crossing is

certain evidence of that. The diameter of the piers on which the central

tower of Canterbury rests is twelve feet; those at York and Winchester

have a diameter of ten feet; those at Worcester nine feet; those of

Peterborough tower (which collapsed) and of Salisbury, seven feet only.

It is almost terrible to stand between these four thin piers of Salisbury

and think how many hundred tons of stone in tower and spire above they

have been made to bear. They were never meant to bear any such weight,

especially planted as they are, like the whole cathedral, on the insecure

foundation of a spongy bog. Indeed, not merely the tower and spire,

but the whole cathedral, ought never to have been built where they are.

Recklessness is by no means a strong enough word to use of the mediæval

builders’ wanton carelessness about foundations. Peterborough cathedral

was built practically without foundations on waterlogged peat; beneath

the central tower of Carlisle cathedral were two running springs; Wells

is reared on the boggy shores of a ring of pools. At Salisbury continuous

bases had to be built from pier to pier.

[Illustration: RETRO-CHOIR, LOOKING WEST.]

Elias de Dereham’s design, no doubt, was to give us an exterior something

like that of Beverley Minster or Westminster Abbey. The whole elevation

of the cathedral, however, clamoured for a tall tower and spire. The

original design was abandoned, and the foolhardy enterprise was taken in

hand (_c._ 1330) of adding to the existing tower, which only just rose

above the roofs, two more stages, and on these a spire, and that not of

wood, but of stone. To abut this perilous steeple as much as possible,

great flying-buttresses were added, both externally and running through

the clerestory and triforium of the interior of the church. Moreover,

to lessen the weight, the tower-walls were built in thin shells, while

the spire is but nine inches thick. That the builders left their

timber scaffolding in the spire, where it still is, to give its sides

a little additional support, shows that they were alive themselves to

the fragility and insecurity of their work. Later on, in the fifteenth

century, stone girders were put across the piers of the central and

eastern transepts, as at Canterbury and Wells, by way of struts, to keep

the piers from bulging inwardly, though, as a matter of fact, what was

wanted was rather ties to keep them from bulging outwardly.

Externally, however, the madness of this engineering feat does not

trouble one. The addition of the tower and spire gives to the whole

composition that pyramidal outline which always presents such a

satisfactory appearance of stability to the eye—and in architectural

design it is the eye that has to be reckoned with. In Wren’s masterpiece,

St. Paul’s, one has the same central pyramidal outline of all the masses,

but in a still higher degree.

[Illustration: NAVE AND WEST FRONT.]

In both cases, in St. Paul’s and in Salisbury, unity is secured.

Salisbury spire is tall enough, St. Paul’s dome is tall and broad enough,

to impose unity on all the diverging masses of the building. The low

towers of Worcester and Hereford have no such supreme dominance.

Next to the abiding presence of the spire, unity is secured by scoring

strong, horizontal lines round the building, welding its masses into one

composition. Most cathedrals are contented, like Wells, with one strong

horizontal line—a broad parapet. But at Salisbury there is not only a

horizontal parapet, but a horizontal corbel-table as well; and there are

no less than three horizontal strings—one running round the base of the

walls, a second running along beneath the windows, and a third running

round the buttresses; moreover, each of these horizontal lines is scored

far more heavily than anywhere else. Especially remarkable is it to find

the upper flow of the buttresses stopped by a heavy string. Usually, in

Gothic, if a horizontal meets a vertical line, the former gives way;

here, as in Greek architecture, the vertical gives way to the horizontal

line. This architect saw, what few others of his day saw, that you may

make too much of the “aspiring principle” of Gothic; that if you suppress

the horizontal lines, you weaken the unity of the building, by failing to

tie all its parts together.

As we have seen, the appearance of stability was enhanced by the

pyramidal outline which the whole building ultimately assumed. But the

eye instinctively looks downwards also to see that the pyramidal outline

is continued there, it instinctively demands an emphatic spreading base.

It likes to see a rock-like foundation. At Salisbury all below is but

greensward. All the more carefully, therefore, has the builder spread

out and broadened and emphasised his base-courses, till art gives the

appearance of stability which nature has denied.

[Illustration: WEST FRONT]

Stable, therefore, below and above, the exterior of Salisbury has much

of that “monumental appearance”—of what Dr. Johnson called “stability

and indeterminate duration”—which is the noble attribute of a great

architecture, which one desiderates in a building “built not for time,

but for eternity, whose walls will long be washed by the passing waves

of humanity.” Such a building gravity and simplicity befit; its design

should be solid and monumental, sober and restrained; it is not a field

for the frippery of ornament, its best decoration is the stain of time.

Built for eternity, it should suggest infinity—an infinite length which

the eye cannot measure, an infinite height which the eye cannot estimate,

a vastness of area that overpowers the imagination. Bigness counts for

much in the painter’s work and the sculptor’s; it counts for yet more

in architecture. A building in the grand style has to be big, and if it

is a Gothic building it has to look bigger still. Salisbury is really

big: it is 473 feet long, its spire is 404 feet high, its vaulted roof,

81 feet high, is the highest of any English cathedral. But the eye does

not measure in feet. Salisbury spire and Louth spire, acute and slender,

look hundreds of feet above their real height; Oxford and Chichester

spires look lower than they really are. As for length, follow the wall

of Salisbury from east to west. As you pass round cape and headland and

promontory, you forget the point from which you started, or the goal for

which you are bound. How foreshortened in comparison is the long façade

of a Pitti Palace! As for area, in all honesty Mr. Whittington gravely

declared that Salisbury was “a much larger church altogether than

Amiens.” The error was natural. Amiens has fewer parts than Salisbury,

and necessarily seems less. Going round Salisbury we pass no less than

seven façades, at Amiens only three. There are thirty-nine bays in

Amiens; in Salisbury there are sixty. As usual, multiplicity of parts has

produced apparent increase of magnitude.

Much of the impressiveness of this exterior is due, not only to its

grandeur of scale, both real and apparent, but to the lovely hue of

the stone of which it is built, and the astonishing perfection of the

masonry. At first sight, indeed, the appearance of the masonry of

Salisbury is almost uncanny. Salisbury is not mouldered or corroded

with age. “Time prints no wrinkles on its brow.” Its antiquity is that

of a goddess ever young. The masonry, too, is that of a Greek temple;

the precision that of the builders of the Parthenon; the joints fine,

almost invisible; the blocks squared with mathematical precision; pass

round the building from south transept eastward to north transept, and

you will find that the stones in each course preserve their height with

utmost exactness all these hundreds of feet. And so the building has the

feeling of Greece in it. Gothic is a “small-stone” style, with joints

openly displayed. Here, as in a Parthenon, the joints are invisible; the

whole building seems one solid block—a monumental effect indeed. The

crumbling masonry of Ely might belong to the ancient days of Saturn;

Salisbury seems the work of a younger race of gods. Only when we scan its

colour—the lovely colour of the Salisbury stone, that is seen nowhere

else—“a pale, ashy grey, stained below with broad patches of red and

yellow lichens,”—do we realise that this is no temple of yesterday, but

one that has faced the stress of storm for more than six centuries. Her

perpetual juvenility is at once the charm and the disappointment of

Salisbury.

Very noteworthy, also, are the sobriety and restraint and repose of the

whole design: very ungothic, too. At first it passes unnoticed; after

a time it is noticed—and noticed with astonishment—that the beauty of

a design of consummate loveliness is gained in some mysterious way

without the use of ornament. One realises at Salisbury—perhaps for the

first time—that ornament is non-essential even in Gothic design. What

ornament there is is of the slightest—a floriated finial to a buttress, a

trefoiled corbel-table; the design would be little the worse if even this

trifling amount of decoration were omitted.

[Illustration: CLOISTER.]

The success of the exterior of Salisbury depends, not on the littlenesses

of architectural design, but on the great leading factors of any really

great style—vastness of scale, yet further enhanced to the eye by

multiplicity of parts; bold handling of the masses, combined nevertheless

into a symmetrical whole: unity, harmony, proportion, shadow-effects.

Beside these elemental factors, sculptured ornament is but “mint and

cummin.”

Straighten out Salisbury cathedral, in imagination, till Lady chapel

and retro-choir and eastern transept and choir and central transept

and nave are all in one long straight line. Then let it resume its

shape, and you will see what is meant by “bold handling of the masses,”

and the difference it makes. Nevertheless, don’t go away with the

idea that the lines of Salisbury cathedral were pulled about in this

way for picturesqueness’ sake—for the sake of effect. The Gothic

architects—_pace_ Peterborough west front—did not design for effect. All

the parts of the building are there either for some constructional or

for some ritualistic reason. A big central tower will not stand without

abutment to the north and south; therefore there has to be a central

transept. The long stretch of clerestory wall—at Salisbury unbuttressed

externally—will be all the better for the support of two transepts and a

lofty porch: they are added. Transepts, moreover, are useful in providing

chapel-room for various great saints of Christendom, as well as for the

local saints of the cathedral. The porch is useful as providing neutral

ground for various functions—half religious, half secular; the porch is

added. And so with the chapter-house. Every one of the appanages which

make a Gothic exterior so picturesque was built, not because it would be

picturesque, but because it would be useful.

And see what pits and abysses of shadow lurk behind each projecting

buttress, and still more in each deep sound that runs inland, like some

Norwegian fiord, between towering precipices on either side. But these

grand shadow-effects—varying from minute to minute as the sun moves

round—varying from day to day as summer treads on spring, autumn on

summer—were not in the designer’s first intent. The projecting masses

had to be there; the play of light and shadow which ensued, he did not

plan; he only welcomed it. He had little control over it; in the windows,

indeed, which were within his control, he made the jambs so shallow that

the windows are externally almost shadowless; almost the whole depth of

the window he gave to the interior, preferring to enrich the interior

of each window with an inner arcade—feeling, doubtless, that he need

do nothing externally to add to the shadow-effects of the projecting

buttresses.

But the life-blood of an architectural design is proportion.

Unfortunately one never notices its presence. Only when a building is

out of proportion does one recognise that such a thing as proportion

exists. And as it is the most subtle, so it is the most important factor

in design—design small or large—Salisbury cathedral, the Pandolphini

Palace, a Chippendale chair, or a Wedgewood vase. Alter the shape of the

vase, and see the difference. In the same way, see if you can lengthen

or shorten Salisbury nave for the better, or the transepts, or the

porch, or the Lady chapel; or if you could heighten the Lady chapel or

retro-choir to advantage; or if you could make the roofs an inch more

acute or more flat. The proportions of this, as of every really great

building, are subtle in the extreme; they interlock in all directions.

Each part—_e.g._, the Lady chapel—is in proportion to the cathedral taken

as a whole; each part is in proportion to contiguous parts; and each

individual bit of each part is in proportion to the rest of it: _e.g._,

in the Lady chapel the length, breadth and height of the walls, the slope

of the roof, the dimensions of the windows, etc., are all in proportion

to the Lady chapel taken as a whole. More than that—the proportions of

the nave, choir, transepts, etc., are those which are suitable to a

church 473 feet long and 404 feet high. If you built a church with a

nave, choir and transepts exactly twice as large as those of Salisbury,

it would not be in proportion, but out of proportion. The same lack of

proportion would ensue if you copied the design of Salisbury in a parish

church of exactly half its dimensions. Salisbury cathedral, like the

Parthenon, cannot be copied with impunity, unless you preserve every

dimension unaltered. Modern designers, not recognising this, have too

often wrought themselves disappointment by unintelligent imitations of

ancient work.

[Illustration: CHAPTER HOUSE.]

To the north and south another charming effect is seen in the gradual

growth of the ornament upward. This, again, is to the credit of Time,

and not of Elias de Dereham. From 1220 to 1330 window-tracery was

ever growing richer day by day, and Salisbury cathedral was ever

growing upward. And so the ornament culminates most rightly, yet most

accidentally, in the higher stories of the transepts, in the tower and

spire.

Only one criticism suggests itself before we leave Salisbury cathedral

as seen from the north-east. Are not the voids in excess—two windows in

the aisles and three in the clerestory, where one would produce a much

more monumental and solid effect? Such single windows, filled with the

opaque grisaille glass of the period, would have subdued the glare of the

interior. But I have not the slightest doubt that the critics of the day

infinitely preferred the uniform good lighting of Salisbury to the “dim,

religious light” of Lincoln and its darksome corners and recesses. In

Salisbury there is not a quiet spot anywhere where you can pray in peace;

the blinding light pursues you everywhere. But good people in those days

liked a cheerful church—full of light, sparkling with stained glass,

brilliant with gilding and paint: religious gloom had not yet become

fashionable; it did not come in till the time of the Puritans. In every

respect except the fenestration, in Salisbury, as in Lincoln Minster,

internal seems to have been subordinated to external effect.

The interior is, indeed, very fine. It could hardly help being fine; a

nave so spacious and so proportioned could under no circumstances be a

failure. It is immensely high, and is long in proportion. The proportion

of height to span (2½ to 1) is better than in most English churches. The

harmony of the design—practically the same from east to west, and from

north to south—is unique in England, and is most impressive. The charming

way, too, in which the architect has contrived that we should have a

vista of another miniature church in the Lady chapel—a cathedral within

a cathedral—is worthy of all commendation. But, as in Lincoln nave, to

the eye every support is alarmingly insufficient for the work it has to

do; the piers are too tall and slender, the walls too thin, and pierced

with too many openings. The triforium is a most unfortunate design: in

harmony neither with the arcade below, nor with the clerestory above;

its outer arches ugly in themselves and discordant with every other arch

in the church; nor could it be expected that its dark marble shafts would

tell against a dark background—black on black. Add to this the dreadfully

new look of everything—partly due to the very perfection of the masonry,

partly because Scott has been here—and the overpowering glare: one almost

feels as if one were in the Crystal Palace. Of the west front it is as

well to say nothing; it would take pages to contain the unkind things

that have been said about it.

The Cathedral Church of St. Mary, Southwell.

[Illustration: FROM NORTH-WEST.]

Southwell Minster, as it is usually but incorrectly styled, was

originally what is called a collegiate church. It is as if, in any parish

church of unusual importance or with an exceptionally large population,

there should be not one rector, as nowadays, but a dozen or so, this

dozen being formed into a corporation, with a dean, precentor, chancellor

and treasurer (the two first officials did not exist at Southwell). All

the cathedrals of the old foundation had from the earliest time such a

collegiate constitution as the above: viz., Chichester, Exeter, Hereford,

Lichfield, Lincoln, London, Salisbury, Wells, and the four Welsh

cathedrals. But all these were also cathedrals: _i.e._, they possessed a

bishop’s chair (_cathedra_); Southwell did not become a cathedral—there

was no bishop of Southwell—till the present reign.

Like the other ecclesiastical colleges—those of cathedrals excepted—that

of Southwell was suppressed by Edward VI.; but under Queen Mary it had

the good fortune to be reconstituted and re-endowed. Its sister church,

Beverley minster, also a college of secular canons—_i.e._, priests not

living under a monastic rule—became and has remained a parish church.

The only collegiate churches remaining with their original constitution

are Windsor, Westminster, Heytesbury, Middleham, and St. Katherine’s

Hospital, London—omitting, of course, the cathedrals of the old

foundation.

Though, however, there was till recently no bishop of Southwell, yet the

church up to the Reformation was practically a cathedral. Just as the

Bishop of Wells had at different times other cathedrals besides that

of Wells—at one time at Bath, at another time at Glastonbury; and as

the bishop of the Mercian diocese had at one time three chairs—viz., at

Lichfield, Chester and Coventry—so the Archbishop of the immense northern

kingdom of Northumbria required and possessed four cathedrals: viz.,

at York, Ripon, Beverley and Southwell. The latter was especially the

cathedral of Nottinghamshire, as it has become once more. The archbishops

had a palace at Southwell, of which the fine hall remains; Archbishop

Sandys is buried in the minster.

I. In the seventh century St. Paulinus is said to have founded a

church at Southwell. But long before his time—in the third century, or

thereabouts—the Romans were at Southwell. There actually survives a

tesselated pavement in the south transept which may well have belonged to

a Romano-British basilica.