CATHEDRAL CITIES AND ABBEY TOWNS
There is always an air of quietude and restfulness about an ordinary
cathedral city. Some of our cathedrals are set in busy places, in
great centres of population, wherein the high towering minster looks
down with a kind of pitying compassion upon the toiling folk and
invites them to seek shelter and peace and the consolations of
religion in her quiet courts. For ages she has watched over the city
and seen generation after generation pass away. Kings and queens have
come to lay their offerings on her altars, and have been borne there
amid all the pomp of stately mourning to lie in the gorgeous tombs
that grace her choir. She has seen it all--times of pillage and alarm,
of robbery and spoliation, of change and disturbance, but she lives
on, ever calling men with her quiet voice to look up in love and faith
and prayer.
But many of our cathedral cities are quite small places which owe
their very life and existence to the stately church which pious hands
have raised centuries ago. There age after age the prayer of faith,
the anthems of praise, and the divine services have been offered.
In the glow of a summer's evening its heavenly architecture stands
out, a mass of wondrous beauty, telling of the skill of the masons and
craftsmen of olden days who put their hearts into their work and
wrought so surely and so well. The greensward of the close, wherein
the rooks caw and guard their nests, speaks of peace and joy that is
not of earth. We walk through the fretted cloisters that once echoed
with the tread of sandalled monks and saw them illuminating and
copying wonderful missals, antiphonaries, and other manuscripts which
we prize so highly now. The deanery is close at hand, a venerable
house of peace and learning; and the canons' houses tell of centuries
of devoted service to God's Church, wherein many a distinguished
scholar, able preacher, and learned writer has lived and sent forth
his burning message to the world, and now lies at peace in the quiet
minster.
The fabric of the cathedrals is often in danger of becoming part and
parcel of vanishing England. Every one has watched with anxiety the
gallant efforts that have been made to save Winchester. The insecure
foundations, based on timbers that had rotted, threatened to bring
down that wondrous pile of masonry. And now Canterbury is in danger.
The Dean and Chapter of Canterbury having recently completed the
reparation of the central tower of the cathedral, now find themselves
confronted with responsibilities which require still heavier
expenditure. It has recently been found that the upper parts of the
two western towers are in a dangerous condition. All the pinnacles of
these towers have had to be partially removed in order to avoid the
risk of dangerous injury from falling stones, and a great part of the
external work of the two towers is in a state of grievous decay.
The Chapter were warned by the architect that they would incur an
anxious responsibility if they did not at once adopt measures to
obviate this danger.
Further, the architect states that there are some fissures and shakes
in the supporting piers of the central tower within the cathedral, and
that some of the stonework shows signs of crushing. He further reports
that there is urgent need of repair to the nave windows, the south
transept roof, the Warriors' Chapel, and several other parts of the
building. The nave pinnacles are reported by him to be in the last
stage of decay, large portions falling frequently, or having to be
removed.
In these modern days we run "tubes" and under-ground railways in close
proximity to the foundations of historic buildings, and thereby
endanger their safety. The grand cathedral of St. Paul, London, was
threatened by a "tube," and only saved by vigorous protest from having
its foundations jarred and shaken by rumbling trains in the bowels of
the earth. Moreover, by sewers and drains the earth is made devoid of
moisture, and therefore is liable to crack and crumble, and to disturb
the foundations of ponderous buildings. St. Paul's still causes
anxiety on this account, and requires all the care and vigilance of
the skilful architect who guards it.
The old Norman builders loved a central tower, which they built low
and squat. Happily they built surely and well, firmly and solidly, as
their successors loved to pile course upon course upon their Norman
towers, to raise a massive superstructure, and often crown them with a
lofty, graceful, but heavy spire. No wonder the early masonry has, at
times, protested against this additional weight, and many mighty
central towers and spires have fallen and brought ruin on the
surrounding stonework. So it happened at Chichester and in several
other noble churches. St. Alban's tower very nearly fell. There the
ingenuity of destroyers and vandals at the Dissolution had dug a hole
and removed the earth from under one of the piers, hoping that it
would collapse. The old tower held on for three hundred years, and
then the mighty mass began to give way, and Sir Gilbert Scott tells
the story of its reparation in 1870, of the triumphs of the skill of
modern builders, and their bravery and resolution in saving the fall
of that great tower. The greatest credit is due to all concerned in
that hazardous and most difficult task. It had very nearly gone. The
story of Peterborough, and of several others, shows that many of these
vast fanes which have borne the storms and frosts of centuries are by
no means too secure, and that the skill of wise architects and the
wealth of the Englishmen of to-day are sorely needed to prevent them
from vanishing. If they fell, new and modern work would scarcely
compensate us for their loss.
We will take Wells as a model of a cathedral city which entirely owes
its origin to the noble church and palace built there in early times.
The city is one of the most picturesque in England, situated in the
most delightful country, and possessing the most perfect
ecclesiastical buildings which can be conceived. Jocelyn de Wells, who
lived at the beginning of the thirteenth century (1206-39), has for
many years had the credit of building the main part of this beautiful
house of God. It is hard to have one's beliefs and early traditions
upset, but modern authorities, with much reason, tell us that we are
all wrong, and that another Jocelyn--one Reginald Fitz-Jocelyn
(1171-91)--was the main builder of Wells Cathedral. Old documents
recently discovered decide the question, and, moreover, the style of
architecture is certainly earlier than the fully developed Early
English of Jocelyn de Wells. The latter, and also Bishop Savaricus
(1192-1205), carried out the work, but the whole design and a
considerable part of the building are due to Bishop Reginald
Fitz-Jocelyn. His successors, until the middle of the fifteenth
century, went on perfecting the wondrous shrine, and in the time of
Bishop Beckington Wells was in its full glory. The church, the
outbuildings, the episcopal palace, the deanery, all combined to form
a wonderful architectural triumph, a group of buildings which
represented the highest achievement of English Gothic art.
Since then many things have happened. The cathedral, like all other
ecclesiastical buildings, has passed through three great periods of
iconoclastic violence. It was shorn of some of its glory at the
Reformation, when it was plundered of the treasures which the piety of
many generations had heaped together. Then the beautiful Lady Chapel
in the cloisters was pulled down, and the infamous Duke of Somerset
robbed it of its wealth and meditated further sacrilege. Amongst these
desecrators and despoilers there was a mighty hunger for lead. "I
would that they had found it scalding," exclaimed an old chaplain of
Wells; and to get hold of the lead that covered the roofs--a valuable
commodity--Somerset and his kind did much mischief to many of our
cathedrals and churches. An infamous bishop of York, at this period,
stripped his fine palace that stood on the north of York Minster, "for
the sake of the lead that covered it," and shipped it off to London,
where it was sold for £1000; but of this sum he was cheated by a noble
duke, and therefore gained nothing by his infamy. During the Civil War
it escaped fairly well, but some damage was done, the palace was
despoiled; and at the Restoration of the Monarchy much repair was
needed. Monmouth's rebels wrought havoc. They came to Wells in no
amiable mood, defaced the statues on the west front, did much wanton
mischief, and would have caroused about the altar had not Lord Grey
stood before it with his sword drawn, and thus preserved it from the
insults of the ruffians. Then came the evils of "restoration." A
terrible renewing was begun in 1848, when the old stalls were
destroyed and much damage done. Twenty years later better things were
accomplished, save that the grandeur of the west front was belittled
by a pipey restoration, when Irish limestone, with its harsh hue, was
used to embellish it.
A curiosity at Wells are the quarter jacks over the clock on the
exterior north wall of the cathedral. Local tradition has it that the
clock with its accompanying figures was part of the spoil removed from
Glastonbury Abbey. The ecclesiastical authorities at Wells assert in
contradiction to this that the clock was the work of one Peter
Lightfoot, and was placed in the cathedral in the latter part of the
fourteenth century. A minute is said to exist in the archives of
repairs to the clock and figures in 1418. It is Mr. Roe's opinion that
the defensive armour on the quarter jacks dates from the first half of
the fifteenth century, the plain oviform breastplates and basinets, as
well as the continuation of the tassets round the hips, being very
characteristic features of this period. The halberds in the hands of
the figures are evidently restorations of a later time. It may be
mentioned that in 1907, when the quarter jacks were painted, it was
discovered that though the figures themselves were carved out of solid
blocks of oak hard as iron, the arms were of elm bolted and braced
thereon. Though such instances of combined materials are common enough
among antiquities of medieval times, it may yet be surmised that the
jar caused by incessant striking may in time have necessitated repairs
to the upper limbs. The arms are immovable, as the figures turn on
pivots to strike.
[Illustration: Quarter Jacks over the Clock on exterior of North Wall
of Wells Cathedral.]
An illustration is given of the palace at Wells, which is one of the
finest examples of thirteenth-century houses existing in England. It
was begun by Jocelyn. The great hall, now in ruins, was built by
Bishop Burnell at the end of the thirteenth century, and was destroyed
by Bishop Barlow in 1552. The chapel is Decorated. The gatehouse, with
its drawbridge, moat, and fortifications, was constructed by Bishop
Ralph, of Shrewsbury, who ruled from 1329 to 1363. The deanery was
built by Dean Gunthorpe in 1475, who was chaplain to Edward IV. On the
north is the beautiful vicar's close, which has forty-two houses,
constructed mainly by Bishop Beckington (1443-64), with a common hall
erected by Bishop Ralph in 1340 and a chapel by Budwith (1407-64), but
altered a century later. You can see the old fireplace, the pulpit
from which one of the brethren read aloud during meals, and an ancient
painting representing Bishop Ralph making his grant to the kneeling
figures, and some additional figures painted in the time of Queen
Elizabeth.
[Illustration: The Gate House, Bishop's Palace, Wells]
When we study the cathedrals of England and try to trace the causes
which led to the destruction of so much that was beautiful, so much of
English art that has vanished, we find that there were three great
eras of iconoclasm. First there were the changes wrought at the time
of the Reformation, when a rapacious king and his greedy ministers set
themselves to wring from the treasures of the Church as much gain and
spoil as they were able. These men were guilty of the most daring acts
of shameless sacrilege, the grossest robbery. With them nothing was
sacred. Buildings consecrated to God, holy vessels used in His
service, all the works of sacred art, the offerings of countless pious
benefactors were deemed as mere profane things to be seized and
polluted by their sacrilegious hands. The land was full of the most
beautiful gems of architectural art, the monastic churches. We can
tell something of their glories from those which were happily spared
and converted into cathderals or parish churches. Ely, Peterborough
the pride of the Fenlands, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, Westminster,
St. Albans, Beverley, and some others proclaim the grandeur of
hundreds of other magnificent structures which have been shorn of
their leaden roofs, used as quarries for building-stone, entirely
removed and obliterated, or left as pitiable ruins which still look
beautiful in their decay. Reading, Tintern, Glastonbury, Fountains,
and a host of others all tell the same story of pitiless iconoclasm.
And what became of the contents of these churches? The contents
usually went with the fabric to the spoliators. The halls of
country-houses were hung with altar-cloths; tables and beds were
quilted with copes; knights and squires drank their claret out of
chalices and watered their horses in marble coffins. From the accounts
of the royal jewels it is evident that a great deal of Church plate
was delivered to the king for his own use, besides which the sum of
£30,360 derived from plate obtained by the spoilers was given to the
proper hand of the king.
The iconoclasts vented their rage in the destruction of stained glass
and beautiful illuminated manuscripts, priceless tomes and costly
treasures of exceeding rarity. Parish churches were plundered
everywhere. Robbery was in the air, and clergy and churchwardens sold
sacred vessels and appropriated the money for parochial purposes
rather than they should be seized by the king. Commissioners were sent
to visit all the cathedral and parish churches and seize the
superfluous ornaments for the king's use. Tithes, lands, farms,
buildings belonging to the church all went the same way, until the
hand of the iconoclast was stayed, as there was little left to steal
or to be destroyed. The next era of iconoclastic zeal was that of the
Civil War and the Cromwellian period. At Rochester the soldiers
profaned the cathedral by using it as a stable and a tippling place,
while saw-pits were made in the sacred building and carpenters plied
their trade. At Chichester the pikes of the Puritans and their wild
savagery reduced the interior to a ruinous desolation. The usual
scenes of mad iconoclasm were enacted--stained glass windows broken,
altars thrown down, lead stripped from the roof, brasses and effigies
defaced and broken. A creature named "Blue Dick" was the wild leader
of this savage crew of spoliators who left little but the bare walls
and a mass of broken fragments strewing the pavement. We need not
record similar scenes which took place almost everywhere.
[Illustration: House in which Bishop Hooper was imprisoned, Westgate
Street, Gloucester]
The last and grievous rule of iconoclasm set in with the restorers,
who worked their will upon the fabric of our cathedrals and churches
and did so much to obliterate all the fragments of good architectural
work which the Cromwellian soldiers and the spoliators at the time of
the Reformation had left. The memory of Wyatt and his imitators is not
revered when we see the results of their work on our ecclesiastical
fabrics, and we need not wonder that so much of English art has
vanished.
The cathedral of Bristol suffered from other causes. The darkest spot
in the history of the city is the story of the Reform riots of 1831,
sometimes called "the Bristol Revolution," when the dregs of the
population pillaged and plundered, burnt the bishop's palace, and were
guilty of the most atrocious vandalism.
[Illustration: The "Stone House," Rye, Sussex]
The city of Bath, once the rival of Wells--the contention between the
monks of St. Peter and the canons of St. Andrews at Wells being hot
and fierce--has many attractions. Its minster, rebuilt by Bishop
Oliver King of Wells (1495-1503), and restored in the seventeenth
century, and also in modern times, is not a very interesting building,
though it lacks not some striking features, and certainly contains
some fine tombs and monuments of the fashionable folk who flocked to
Bath in the days of its splendour. The city itself abounds in
interest. It is a gem of Georgian art, with a complete homogeneous
architectural character of its own which makes it singular and unique.
It is full of memories of the great folks who thronged its streets,
attended the Bath and Pump Room, and listened to sermons in the
Octagon. It tells of the autocracy of Beau Nash, of Goldsmith,
Sheridan, David Garrick, of the "First Gentleman of Europe," and many
others who made Bath famous. And now it is likely that this unique
little city with its memories and its charming architectural features
is to be mutilated for purely commercial reasons. Every one knows Bath
Street with its colonnaded loggias on each side terminated with a
crescent at each end, and leading to the Cross Bath in the centre of
the eastern crescent. That the original founders of Bath Street
regarded it as an important architectural feature of the city is
evident from the inscription in abbreviated Latin which was engraved
on the first stone of the street when laid:--
PRO
VRBIS DIG: ET AMP:
HÆC PON: CVRAV:
SC:
DELEGATI
A: D: MDCCXCI.
I: HORTON, PRAET:
T: BALDWIN, ARCHITECTO.
which may be read to the effect that "for the dignity and enlargement
(of the city) the delegates I. Horton, Mayor, and T. Baldwin,
architect, laid this (stone) A.D. 1791."
It is actually proposed by the new proprietors of the Grand Pump Hotel
to entirely destroy the beauty of this street by removing the
colonnaded loggia on one side of this street and constructing a new
side to the hotel two or three storeys higher, and thus to change the
whole character of the street and practically destroy it. It is a sad
pity, and we should have hoped that the city Council would have
resisted very strongly the proposal that the proprietors of the hotel
have made to their body. But we hear that the Council is lukewarm in
its opposition to the scheme, and has indeed officially approved it.
It is astonishing what city and borough councils will do, and this
Bath Council has "the discredit of having, for purely commercial
reasons, made the first move towards the destruction architecturally
of the peculiar charm of their unique and beautiful city."[42]
[42] _The Builder_, March 6, 1909.
Evesham is entirely a monastic town. It sprang up under the sheltering
walls of the famous abbey--
A pretty burgh and such as Fancy loves
For bygone grandeurs.
This abbey shared the fate of many others which we have mentioned. The
Dean of Gloucester thus muses over the "Vanished Abbey":--
"The stranger who knows nothing of its story would surely smile if
he were told that beneath the grass and daisies round him were
hidden the vast foundation storeys of one of the mightiest of our
proud mediæval abbeys; that on the spot where he was standing were
once grouped a forest of tall columns bearing up lofty fretted
roofs; that all around once were altars all agleam with colour and
with gold; that besides the many altars were once grouped in that
sacred spot chauntries and tombs, many of them marvels of grace
and beauty, placed there in the memory of men great in the service
of Church and State--of men whose names were household words in
the England of our fathers; that close to him were once stately
cloisters, great monastic buildings, including refectories,
dormitories, chapter-house, chapels, infirmary, granaries,
kitchens--all the varied piles of buildings which used to make up
the hive of a great monastery."
It was commenced by Bishop Egwin, of Worcester, in 702 A.D., but the
era of its great prosperity set in after the battle of Evesham when
Simon de Montford was slain, and his body buried in the monastic
church. There was his shrine to which was great pilgrimage, crowds
flocking to lay their offerings there; and riches poured into the
treasury of the monks, who made great additions to their house, and
reared noble buildings. Little is left of its former grandeur. You can
discover part of the piers of the great central tower, the cloister
arch of Decorated work of great beauty erected in 1317, and the abbey
fishponds. The bell tower is one of the glories of Evesham. It was
built by the last abbot, Abbot Lichfield, and was not quite completed
before the destruction of the great abbey church adjacent to it. It is
a grand specimen of Perpendicular architecture.
[Illustration: Fifteenth-century House, Market Place, Evesham]
At the corner of the Market Place there is a picturesque old house
with gable and carved barge-boards and timber-framed arch, and we see
the old Norman gateway named Abbot Reginald's Gateway, after the name
of its builder, who also erected part of the wall enclosing the
monastic buildings. A timber-framed structure now stretches across the
arcade, but a recent restoration has exposed the Norman columns which
support the arch. The Church House, always an interesting building in
old towns and villages, wherein church ales and semi-ecclesiastical
functions took place, has been restored. Passing under the arch we see
the two churches in one churchyard--All Saints and St. Laurence. The
former has some Norman work at the inner door of the porch, but its
main construction is Decorated and Perpendicular. Its most
interesting feature is the Lichfield Chapel, erected by the last
abbot, whose initials and the arms of the abbey appear on escutcheons
on the roof. The fan-tracery roof is especially noticeable, and the
good modern glass. The church of St. Laurence is entirely
Perpendicular, and the chantry of Abbot Lichneld, with its fan-tracery
vaulting, is a gem of English architecture.
[Illustration: Fifteenth-century House, Market Place, Evesham]
[Illustration: Fifteenth-century House in Cowl Street, Evesham]
Amongst the remains of the abbey buildings may be seen the Almonry,
the residence of the almoner, formerly used as a gaol. An interesting
stone lantern of fifteenth-century work is preserved here. Another
abbey gateway is near at hand, but little evidence remains of its
former Gothic work. Part of the old wall built by Abbot William de
Chyryton early in the fourteenth century remains. In the town there is
a much-modernized town hall, and near it the old-fashioned Booth Hall,
a half-timbered building, now used as shops and cottages, where
formerly courts were held, including the court of pie-powder, the
usual accompaniment of every fair. Bridge Street is one of the most
attractive streets in the borough, with its quaint old house, and the
famous inn, "The Crown." The old house in Cowl Street was formerly the
White Hart Inn, which tells a curious Elizabethan story about "the
Fool and the Ice," an incident supposed to be referred to by
Shakespeare in _Troilus and Cressida_ (Act iii. sc. 3): "The fool
slides o'er the ice that you should break." The Queen Anne house in
the High Street, with its wrought-iron railings and brackets, called
Dresden House and Almswood, one of the oldest dwelling-houses in the
town, are worthy of notice by the students of domestic architecture.
[Illustration: Half-timber House, Alcester, Warwick]
[Illustration: Half-timber House at Alcester]
There is much in the neighbourhood of Evesham which is worthy of note,
many old-fashioned villages and country towns, manor-houses, churches,
and inns which are refreshing to the eyes of those who have seen so
much destruction, so much of the England that is vanishing. The old
abbey tithe-barn at Littleton of the fourteenth century, Wickhamford
Manor, the home of Penelope Washington, whose tomb is in the adjoining
church, the picturesque village of Cropthorne, Winchcombe and its
houses, Sudeley Castle, the timbered houses at Norton and Harvington,
Broadway and Campden, abounding with beautiful houses, and the old
town of Alcester, of which some views are given--all these contain
many objects of antiquarian and artistic interest, and can easily be
reached from Evesham. In that old town we have seen much to interest,
and the historian will delight to fight over again the battle of
Evesham and study the records of the siege of the town in the Civil
War.