itself as it now stands. The church itself has not been extended
northwards, southwards, eastwards, or westwards, since the days of
Bishop Ralph. Nor, on the other hand, has any part of the church itself
been destroyed. Other buildings have been attached to it, and parts of
the subordinate buildings have perished, but the ground covered by the
church itself is exactly the same now as it was when Ralph was buried
before the high altar. As a church then, as a building set apart for
divine worship, Saint Andrew's was now quite perfect and needed neither
addition nor change. Nave, choir, presbytery, chapels, and the one
necessary adjunct of the Chapter-house, were all finished. But besides
the completion of the ground-plan, there was another great work to be
done before the building could be said to be finished as a work of
architecture. Jocelin had not carried his three towers above the height
of the roofs; they were mere stumps, and the effect must have been
unfinished and unsightly. In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries this defect was supplied. Indeed, as far as the central
tower is concerned, the defect had been supplied already. I have
carried on the history of the changes which affected the ground-plan
as a continuous narrative, but the raising of the central tower and
its consequences belong to the same period. The raising of the tower
seems to have formed part of the general plan of recasting the whole
part of the church east of the crossing, and it may actually have been
the first instalment of the work. I may here perhaps say a few words
on the general subject of central towers. As the principal feature of
churches of the highest class, the central tower is all but confined
to England and Normandy; in other parts of France it is common enough,
but, reversing our English rule, it is common in churches of a smaller
class, but nearly unknown in the great cathedrals and abbeys. I ought
perhaps to say that I am now speaking mainly of Gothic buildings, not
of Romanesque. The truest way of putting the case would perhaps be
that the central tower, the direct representative of the cupola, is
a Romanesque feature, prevalent everywhere in Romanesque times, but
which England and Normandy alone retained in large churches of later
date. The question of central tower or no central tower resolves
itself into this; which is the greater merit in a cathedral or other
great church--the highest amount of internal majesty, or the highest
perfection of external outline? England and Normandy decided for the
external outline; the rest of Western Christendom decided for the
internal effect. A great French church, Amiens, Beauvais, Chartres,
Rheims, Saint Quentin, is carried up to a height in the inside of which
we in England have no notion. But this internal majesty is bought by
the utter sacrifice of external outline. The crossing of the four
limbs of the church cries in vain for its natural crown in the central
lantern. Indeed I am not clear that, if the central tower is left out,
it is not better to leave out the transepts also. Certainly no churches
ever impressed me more than those of Bourges and Alby, which follow
this arrangement. Some of the great churches of France, which are most
glorious within, are absolutely shapeless without. The central tower is
impossible, and it is hard to adapt even western towers to a body of
so great a height, unless their size is something prodigious. On the
other hand, several of our English churches, on whose external outline
the eye rests with the greatest pleasure, are positively depressing
when we go in. Such above all is Lincoln; nothing can surpass the
grouping of its three towers, but the effect of the lowness of the
choir roof is positively crushing. The only church in England which
affects great internal height is that of Westminster, and there, though
a central tower was certainly designed, it seems to have been found
impossible to carry it up. The general look of Westminster Abbey is
therefore much more that of a French than that of an English church. I
know of one church only which thoroughly combines both kinds of merit,
namely, the church of Saint Ouen at Rouen. There are French churches of
greater height; there are English and Norman churches of more perfect
outline. But no other church of equal internal height carries a central
tower; no other church finished with a central tower can boast of the
same internal height. Inferior to Amiens in one point, to Lincoln in
another, I place Saint Ouen's, as a whole, above either.
Turn we now to our own church of Wells, a church, I need not say,
built on a much smaller scale than any of those of which I have been
speaking. It was of course designed, according to the usual English
custom, for a central tower, though most likely Jocelin did not think
of carrying it up so high as was afterwards done. This was constantly
the case; a tower was carried up to a vast height, in what we cannot
help calling a reckless way, on piers and arches which had been
designed only for a much smaller weight. The natural consequence
followed; the supports began to give way under the vast mass which was
laid upon them, and, to keep the whole from falling, some means or
other of propping, in a way necessarily more or less awkward, had to be
resorted to. In many cases the tower actually fell down, as the spire
of Chichester fell a few years ago. That it fell at that particular
moment seems to have been pure matter of accident. It had always been
dangerous; it might just as well have fallen three or four hundred
years sooner, or it might just as well have lasted three or four
hundred years longer. So at Salisbury, that lovely spire, so graceful
to the sight, is constructively an excrescence which ought never to
have been placed there, which the piers below it were never designed to
support, and which has been kept up to this day only by using various
props and devices from time to time. Our own case at Wells was bad
enough, though not nearly so bad as at Chichester and Salisbury. The
tower was carried up between the years 1318 and 1321,[13] but if any
spire was ever added or designed, it was simply one of wood and lead,
like those which have vanished from all the three towers of Lincoln.
Hence, though the weight which was laid on the piers was much greater
than they were able to bear, it was not so great as at Salisbury and
Chichester, and the danger and destruction has not been so great as
it has been in those two cases. The tower then was raised, and the
usual results followed, results which have been graphically described
by Professor Willis both at Wells and in other places. The increased
height caused the four great piers to sink into the ground. This of
course tore away the masonry of the four limbs of the church from their
connexion with the piers; the new tower, perhaps as yet hardly brought
to perfection, stood, so to speak, on four lame legs, on four supports
which were giving way beneath it, and yawning gaps began to appear
between the tower arches and the main walls of the church. Thus, within
twenty years after its first building, in the years 1337 and 1338,[14]
the tower needed to be strengthened by supports which the first
builders had never thought of, and the damage which had already been
actually done had to be made good. The tower at Wells had to be propped
like the towers at Canterbury and Salisbury. The question at once
follows as to the way in which the propping was done. Any support of
the kind must be more or less unsightly; thrust in as an after-thought,
to remedy a constructive defect, it cannot fail to interfere with the
original design and the original proportions. No one would have put
them there, if he could have helped it; if constructive reasons had
not called for the props, they would have been better away. When we
compare the way in which this needful, though unpleasant, work was
done in the different cases, we shall see a kind of clumsy ingenuity
about the Wells work which may call for a certain measure of praise. At
Salisbury and Canterbury the prop takes the form of a horizontal screen
running across the arches. Such a form is more elegant in itself, and
it interferes less with the general appearance of the building. But it
is more distinctly an excrescence; it forces itself more strongly on
the eye as something stuck in than when the props are worked into the
earlier work in the way that they are at Wells. You all know the low
arches under the lantern with the inverted arches on the top of them,
the great circles in the spandrils, the whole arch turned into a kind
of pattern of gigantic Geometrical tracery. It is very heavy, very
clumsy; till the eye gets thoroughly familiar with it, it seems very
ugly; but it is in every way ingenious. The prop is worked and fitted
into the old work in a way in which it is not in the other cases. I
can even think it possible that people who do not know the history,
and who do not at once see from its details that it is an insertion,
may even mistake it for part of the original design. And, granting
its position at all, granting the peculiar form which it takes, there
is something in the detail or rather lack of detail, something in the
great size of the few mouldings and the absence of capitals and shafts,
which seems to suit the boldness of the general outline. And I am not
sure whether there is not a further propriety in the form chosen. The
lines of the inverted arches roughly suggest a Saint Andrew's cross,
and it may be that we have here, now that the affairs of Wells were
beginning to brighten, a new trophy of success offered to the now
triumphant elder brother.[15]
The object of the inverted arches was strictly to support the tower
by strengthening its piers. Other changes were needed to make good
the damage done by the tearing away of the masonry on each side. This
involved a partial blocking of the clerestory and triforium in the bays
adjoining the tower, so as to make a set of gigantic flying-buttresses
for its support. The pier-arches below them had most likely been quite
shattered; those at least in the nave and transept certainly had been.
New arches in the style of the fourteenth century were accordingly
inserted, and it is instructive at once to compare the difference of
their details from those of the original work, and to trace the exact
extent of the new masonry. As ever, the mediæval builders wasted
nothing; every stone of the old work which could be kept in its place
or used again they did keep in its place or use again. And though
the details are of exactly the same date and style as those of the
inverted arches, it is worth while to notice the extreme boldness with
which the mouldings are wrought in the great arches, and the extreme
delicacy with which they are wrought in the smaller ones. Altogether it
is plain that the raising of the tower must have been done recklessly
and without due regard to the strength of its supports. It is plain
also that the result of this reckless building has been the lasting
disfigurement of the church by the insertion of props which the eye
wishes away. Still, as the disfigurement had to be made, we must allow
the praise of considerable ingenuity to the way in which it was made.
All that was now lacking to the fabric of the church was the completion
of the western towers. The general effect of these towers is so
exactly alike that no one would guess that nearly fifty years passed
between the building of the two. A minute examination will reveal
certain small differences. The height of the two towers is not exactly
the same, and a niche which is found on one is not repeated on the
other. But these are not differences of style: they are just the
same kind of differences as those which we find at an earlier time
between the different parts of the nave. Still it is strange to find
that a gap of so many years had made absolutely no difference at all
in style strictly so called. But this, at this time at least, is
characteristic of the district. The Perpendicular style was introduced
into Somersetshire very early, and it remained in use for a long time
without any material change. Between the earliest and the latest
examples there undoubtedly is a difference, but it is a difference
much slighter than is usual in other parts of the country. In many
cases there is no perceptible difference of style between buildings
separated by an interval of a good many years. I have therefore
always declined to guess at the dates of Perpendicular buildings in
Somersetshire, when no documentary evidence could be brought forward;
and I think that the case of the western towers of Wells shows that I
have been discreet in so doing. I do not think that any one would have
found out the difference in date between these towers by simply looking
at them, and I think that any one would have been inclined, from simply
looking at them, to place the earlier of the two a good deal later
than its real date. I must confess that, knowing as I do that they
are nearly fifty years apart, I sometimes find it hard to remember
whether it is the northern or the southern tower which is the older.
In fact, the southern one is the older. It was built in the time of
John Harewell, who was Bishop from 1366 to 1386, at the joint cost of
himself and the Chapter, the Chapter paying two-thirds and the Bishop
one.[16] The tower therefore belongs to the very first days of the
Perpendicular style; it must have followed so soon upon the east window
of the choir, that we may count the completion of the western towers
as really parts of the same work as the changes in the eastern part of
the church. The other, the northern tower, was built in the days, and
largely at the cost, of Bishop Bubwith,[17] whose name is well known to
us all by reason of his hospital and his chantry chapel. He has also a
special place in the municipal history of the city, through his gift
of the old Guildhall to the citizens. His episcopate lasted from 1408
to 1424, so that the very considerable difference of date between the
building of the two towers is clearly marked.
Nothing more remains to be spoken of in the fabric of the church
itself, beyond a few insertions in the Perpendicular style--such, for
instance, as the window tracery inserted in the nave and transept.
I do not know the exact date of this not very important change, but
it must have been late in the fourteenth or early in the fifteenth
century. For it is plain that it was made before the reconstruction of
the cloister and the addition of the rooms over it, as these last block
one of the windows inserted in the transept. Now these rooms were built
by Bishop Bubwith,[18] so that the insertion of the tracery was made
before his time, not improbably when the southern tower was carried up.
A more important change, and one which must have happened later, was
the insertion of a fan-tracery vault in the central tower, hiding the
original arcades which remain above it. One hardly sees the reason of
this insertion, as there could be no reason for hanging bells in the
central tower of a church which had two towers at the west end.
Thus, after about two hundred years from the beginning of the present
building in the days of Jocelin, we may look on the cathedral church of
Saint Andrew as at last finished. It was finished, in a sense, before
the end of the thirteenth century, when everything had been built which
was needed for its ecclesiastical completeness. But it was in the
course of the fifteenth century that it finally assumed the shape with
which we are all familiar, and which has from that time remained almost
unchanged. Now then we have reached the point at which we can estimate
the place which fairly belongs to the church of Wells among the other
churches of England and of Christendom. As it seems to me, that
position, as I began by saying, is a special and remarkable one. I need
not say that, in point of size and splendour, the church of Wells has
no claim to a place in the first rank of European, or even of English,
churches. Setting aside the Welsh churches, and the churches which have
become cathedral without being originally meant for that rank, Wells is
one of the very smallest of English episcopal churches. It is hardly
fair to compare it with Carlisle, which is a mere fragment, or with
Hereford, which has lost its western tower, and with it a part of its
nave. But it is, in point of scale, with Carlisle, Hereford, Lichfield,
and Rochester, or again with non-cathedral churches like Southwell,
Beverley, and Tewkesbury, that Wells must fairly be compared, not
with churches like Canterbury and York, or even like Salisbury and
Gloucester. And among churches of its own class it certainly ranks very
high. It has one accidental advantage in having been much less damaged
by mere destroyers than any of them, except perhaps Beverley. But this
is not all. I think that those under whose hands the church of Wells
gradually grew up showed a wiser discretion, and a greater skill in
adapting their changes and additions to what they found existing, than
was shown in most of the other cases. Let us take the two ends of the
church, the two parts to which a church owes so much of its external
character, the east end and the west front. Now the west front of Wells
is a thing which it is the fashion to rave about. It is the finest part
of the church; the finest thing in Somersetshire; the finest thing in
England; for aught I know, the finest thing in the world. I am perverse
enough to think differently, and to look on the west front as the one
part of the church of Wells which is thoroughly bad in principle. It
is doubtless the finest display of sculpture in England; but it is
thoroughly bad as a piece of architecture. I am always glad when I
get round the corner, and can rest my eye on the massive and simple
majesty of the nave and transepts. The west front is bad, because it is
a sham--because it is not the real ending of the nave and aisles, but
a mere mask, devised in order to gain greater room for the display of
statues. The architecture, in short, is sacrificed to the sculpture. A
real honest west front, if it have two towers, will be made by the real
gable of the nave flanked by a tower at the end of each aisle. So it is
at York; so it is at Abbeville; so it is at Llandaff. Or a front may,
like those of Winchester, Gloucester, and Bath, have no towers at all,
but may simply consist of the endings of the nave and aisles, set off
with turrets and pinnacles. Or a front may be, like that one glorious
and unequalled front at Peterborough, built up in front of and across
the endings of the nave and aisles, but without at all professing to
be itself their finish. All these forms are honest; but I deny the
honesty of such fronts as those at Wells, Salisbury, and Lincoln.[19]
In all these cases the front is not the natural finish of the nave
and aisles; it is a blank wall built up in a shape which is not the
shape which their endings would naturally assume. It is therefore a
sham; it is a sin against the first law of architectural design, the
law that enrichment should be sought in ornamenting the construction,
in giving a pleasing form, and such enrichment as may be thought good,
to those features which the construction makes absolutely necessary,
not in building up anything simply for the sake of effect. The main
features in a front should be the windows and doorways. There must be
some windows and some doorways; it is the business of the architect to
make these necessary features the main sources of ornament. Now in the
Wells front the windows and doorways are made nothing of; they could
not be altogether got rid of, but they seem to have been felt as mere
interruptions to the lines of sculpture. They are therefore stowed
away as they best may be, and they do not form, as they should, the
main features of the front. Look, for instance, at Llandaff; the front
suffers much from the incongruity of the two towers built at different
times: but look at the ending of the nave itself; that perfect
composition of lancets, inside and out, is, as it should be, the main
feature; at Wells the west window is made nothing of; it is simply cut
through the sculpture. The small size of doorways is a common fault of
English as opposed to foreign churches; but at Wells they reach the
extreme point of insignificance in those narrow mouse-holes at the end
of the aisles, through one of which we are commonly driven to creep,
while the west doorway remains shut. But even the west doorway itself
is a very small mouthful, I will not say after Laon or Rheims, but
after York; nay even at Lichfield and Salisbury the doorways have a
little more of dignity than they have at Wells. In a really good design
the architectural features ought to be the first thing; sculpture or
any other source of ornament should be secondary. At Wells the rule
is reversed; a sham wall is built up and loaded with statues, and the
windows and doorways are left to shift for themselves.
You may perhaps be surprised, perhaps even a little indignant, at the
freedom of my criticism on a work which you have doubtless all learned
to look on with traditional admiration. But there is nothing like
truth, and I think that, if you go and fairly examine for yourselves,
you will see that the censures which I have made on our west front rest
on good grounds. Those censures are pretty well summed up in the one
charge of unreality. But, if we can get over that charge, there is much
to be said for the design on the score of boldness and originality. You
know that the towers, instead of standing, as usual, at the ends of the
aisles, stand beyond them, an arrangement which I have seen nowhere
else except in the metropolitan church of Rouen.[20] Now in a church of
the comparatively small size of Wells the effect of this arrangement
is undoubtedly to sacrifice height to width, and thereby to take away
from the truest dignity of the front. Still it is not to be denied
that even the width has a dignity of its own, and the arrangement
was well planned with regard to the special object in view, that of
gaining the greatest possible space for the display of sculpture.
And after all, though the west front of Wells is a sham, it is by no
means so contemptible a sham as the west fronts of either Salisbury or
Lincoln. The form given to the front, if unreal, is at least stately.
At Salisbury the form given to the front is equally unreal, and it is
indescribably mean; as no western towers were intended, one cannot
conceive why the natural endings of the nave and aisles were not
left, as at Winchester, Gloucester, and Bath, and in our great parish
churches of Yatton and Crewkerne. The Wells front again is at least a
whole; the Lincoln front is a mass of incongruous pieces. Large parts
of two earlier fronts are left to disturb the harmony of the design,
and a blank wall is actually carried in front of two of the noblest
towers in the world, as if of set purpose to destroy their effect. The
Wells front, after all, unreal as it is, has more connexion with the
main building than that of Beverley, where a front, poorly imitated
from that of York, is built up against the church, with a gable which
has no reference whatever to the real gable of the nave.[21] At Wells,
again the later builders seem to have had more feeling than usual
for the harmony of the front. Wells has not suffered like Southwell,
where a huge Perpendicular window was cut through the noble Romanesque
front, and a sham wall with a flat battlement carried up above it. The
towers were carried up in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in a
way which harmonizes very well with the general design of the front,
though there is no kind of adaptation to its details. And here comes
the question which I believe everybody asks at a first sight of Wells
Cathedral. As I once heard it clearly and tersely put, "Well, that is
a fine piece of work, but what are those pieces without their tops?"
Every one, I suppose, feels the unfinished look of the towers; the eye
craves for something or other more than there is, be it pinnacles,
spires, or anything else. Now I once very carefully examined the tops
of the towers in company with Mr. Parker, and we could see no signs
that there ever had been, or had been designed to be, any stone-work
more than there is now. But any sort of finish that any one chooses
to imagine may have been added, or designed to be added, in wood. I
suspect that people seldom take in how many of our great churches
had their towers finished with spires of wood covered with lead or
shingle. Spires of this sort were either destroyed by accident or
taken away in wantonness at Old Saint Paul's, Lincoln, Ely, Hereford,
Exeter, Southwell, and a crowd of other churches. A single one of two
still remains at Ottery Saint Mary. On the Continent they are far more
common, and they sometimes furnish beautiful examples of work in lead.
Among the English examples, the towers of Lincoln supply the example
which is most instructive for our own case. The spires are gone, but
the angle turrets are still finished with pinnacles of wood covered
with lead. Whether such an arrangement as this ever actually existed at
Wells I do not know, but there can be no doubt that a finish of this
kind, spires of wood sheeted with lead, with pinnacles of the same
materials at the angles, would be the true means of getting rid of the
flat and imperfect look of which every one complains.