RECONSTRUCTED ANGLE OF THE GREAT TOWER, (SOUTH TRANSEPT AND CHOIR.)
The Central Tower. South and East Sides.—The south and east faces are each divided by a central pilaster running up to the top of the parapet, but otherwise the general scheme is not unlike that of the older sides, save that the windows here are set higher in the wall. Each window has two lights, wide and low, with much tracery above them, in which the mullion branches into two sub-arches; and there are dripstones ending in heads. The high weathering on these sides indicates that it was not in the Perpendicular period that the roofs of the church were so unfortunately lowered. At either end of each of these sides a buttress rises to the base of the parapet in three stages, the second of which has on the front a panel with an ogee crocketed hood and is crowned by a gable with a grotesque at each corner, while the third is narrower, but is also panelled. Various gargoyles project from the uppermost string, which on the east side is not broken by the central pilaster. As this string is higher than the corbel-table of the older sides, the tower presents a very curious appearance when seen from the south-west or north-east.[48] The battlements and pinnacles were perhaps first added when the south and east sides were rebuilt, but in places they have been much renewed. The stair-turret is surmounted by a hexagonal stone cap, which is pierced with a spire-light and crowned by a finial; and there is also a wooden polygonal bell-cote at the north-west corner of the tower. At the north-east angle the Perpendicular masonry turns the corner and enfolds the Transitional buttresses, where it stops with a jagged edge. This unfinished work has a considerable projection from the Transitional walling, the intention having been, perhaps, to correct externally the obliquity in the ground plan of Roger’s tower;[49] it is also corbelled away at the bottom, probably to afford freer passage along the parapet walk and to avoid the necessity of a squinch. Originally the tower had perhaps a low pyramidal roof without a parapet, and then came several successive spires. The last of these, which fell in 1660, is said to have been 120 feet high from the top of the tower, and its disappearance has surely done more than anything else to spoil the external effect of the building.[50]
The South Side of the Choir.—Here the three westernmost bays are Perpendicular and the others Decorated. The westernmost window is smaller than the rest, and is of three lights, with the mullions carried up through the head. The next two windows imitate in curvature their Decorated neighbours, and are of four lights, with the central mullion branching out to form two sub-arches, between which a foliated circle, a feature not common in Perpendicular windows, is introduced into the head. In the fourth bay the Decorated arch has been filled with Perpendicular tracery, but the fifth and sixth windows remain in their original beauty as on the north side, save that in the easternmost the small circles have been mutilated and have lost their foliation. The two flying buttresses resemble those on the north side, but from the points where they meet the wall two pilasters run up into the parapet, which is flush with them and is crowned by a plain coping, while beneath it is a string, with gargoyles. Except at this end the wall, as in the clearstorey of the nave, is not buttressed, notwithstanding the size of the windows and their nearness together.
Ronald P. Jones, Photo.]
FLYING BUTTRESSES, SOUTH SIDE OF CHOIR.
The East End.—The rebuilding of the east end of Archbishop Roger’s choir was probably the object of an indulgence of 1284 by Archbishop Wickwaine, a brief of 1285 by Pope Celestine V., two indulgences issued in 1288 and 1300 respectively by Archbishops Romanus and Corbridge, and some credentials issued by the latter in 1302 for a collector of funds. And yet it is hard to fix the date of the work with any exactness. It had apparently not begun in 1286, for a mandate of Archbishop Romanus in that year begins Cancellus Rypon’ ruinosus reparetur; but it may have been completed before the irruption of the Scots in 1318. Two indulgences of Archbishop Melton, one of which is dated 1328, do indeed allude to some “new work” as still unfinished, but this “new work” may have been the repairs necessitated by the violence of the Scots.[51] The east end of the Cathedral, then, recalls that period in our history when Edward I. was wrestling with the Scottish problem, and was also carrying into effect those lessons in representative government which he had learnt from Simon de Montfort.
