Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon / A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric

by Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

The South Choir Aisle.—This aisle, in some respects, has been altered more than the other, but the south wall is Archbishop Roger’s work as far as the end of the fourth bay, if not farther. About 14 feet from the west end occurs that ‘straight joint’ in the masonry which shows the separation of this aisle from the Mallory Chapel to have been an afterthought; and a little further east a round-headed doorway, moulded with the edge-roll and retaining a panelled door of some age, opens into the Chapter-house. There was evidently a second and similar doorway a few yards further on, but it has been blocked (doubtless when the cross-wall was built at the back of it between the Chapter-house and vestry), and a square-headed doorway has been made to open into the latter. To the right of this entrance is a square-headed lavatory with a projecting rectangular basin and a hole knocked through into the lobby behind. This lavatory is of course an insertion, probably of the fifteenth century; indeed the whole of this part of the wall has been much repaired with limestone. The aisle is somewhat darkened by the fact that its first four windows look into the Lady-loft. Fortunately the three westernmost are original. They are as usual round-headed and plainly splayed, and their sills descend to the string-course in steps. Archbishop Roger’s vaulting-shafts here are in better preservation than in the other aisle. The original vaulting itself must of course have been taken down when the three westernmost columns of the choir-arcade were rebuilt, but in the reconstruction the old ribs seem to have been used again. The groin-ribs have no room to descend upon the Perpendicular choir-capitals, and end prematurely upon corbels carved into faces.

The westernmost bay of the aisle has been divided into two storeys, the upper of which now contains part of the mechanism of the organ, but is thought to have been once a chantry chapel. This curious chamber is reached through a pointed doorway at the top of the Library staircase in the south transept. Its roof is of course formed by the aisle-vault, which originally extended, doubtless, as far westwards in this aisle as in the other. The space, however, has been shortened by the great thickness of a Perpendicular cross-arch, which, though its southern respond obtrudes into the aisle below, is itself only visible from this chamber. When, therefore, the vaulting here was rebuilt, it had to be adapted to the shortened space, and the groin-ribs, which are very much of Archbishop Roger’s pattern, spring from Perpendicular corbels carved into faces. The wall which separates this bay of the aisle from the choir was said above, quite truly, to be Perpendicular, but on this its southern face the masonry is apparently Archbishop Roger’s. It is of gritstone, and behind the organ-bellows there remains a corbel like those of the cross-arch that props the vaulting in the corresponding bay of the north aisle. The presumption therefore is that the original vaulting was similarly propped here, and that the wall on which this corbel remains was built to block or strengthen the first choir-arch, and has survived the arch itself. To the west of the door a small square window looks into the Mallory Chapel.

In its eastern portion this aisle resembles the other, but the bench-table here is only carried two bays westward, and the panelling only one bay. In the fifth bay from the west the window is shortened to about half the length of the others, and the string-course (which is of Archbishop Roger’s pattern) is correspondingly raised, possibly because a longer window would have come below the springing of the vestry roof (in the period when there was no Lady-loft), or possibly (though this is less likely) to make room for the monument underneath, which, though placed here by Sir Gilbert Scott, who found it in pieces, may have occupied this position before. The monument is that of Moses Fowler, first Dean of Ripon (d. 1608), and the effigy is not a favourable example of English sculpture in the seventeenth century. Of the stained glass, that in the last window on the south side is of some merit. The capitals of the Decorated vaulting-shafts are better executed in this aisle than in the other. Here, as there, the Decorated vaulting begins in the middle of the fourth bay, where the fillet is again found upon the two eastern groins only. At the south-east corner of this aisle are the remains of a piscina—a fragment of a basin resting on a shaft—which probably belonged to one of the many chantries. The staircase at this corner affords the best access to the turret cell described in the last chapter, and to the attic over the choir, where the framing of the roof is a very remarkable specimen of modern joinery.

On account of the alterations that have taken place at different periods in the part of the Cathedral south of the choir, it will be well to examine the crypt under the Chapter-house before examining either the latter itself or the Library.

The Norman Crypt.—A round-headed doorway in the west wall of the Chapter-house admits to a staircase which, roofed with a sloping barrel-vault and descending southwards, turns eastwards, under another round arch, into the crypt. The age of this staircase is uncertain, but its west wall is of course the east wall of Archbishop Roger’s transept, and its barrel-vault is under his buttresses which will be seen in the Library. The crypt is divided by a cross-wall with a round arch in it into two portions, each having the vaulting supported on pillars along the middle; but half of the first and third bays of the western portion has been walled up in modern times for burial-vaults. The width of the crypt is about 18 feet and the total length about 68 feet.

Watson, Ripon, Photo.]

THE NORMAN CRYPT.

This part of the church was assigned by Walbran to Thomas of Bayeux (1070-1100), and by Sir Gilbert Scott to Thurstan (1114-1141); but it is quite possible that both these Archbishops, if not Oda or Oswald before them, may have had a share in its construction. Much of the work at any rate belongs to a Norman church which preceded that of Archbishop Roger.