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

In the vaulting (which by-the-way has had to be propped at some period by two rude pointed limestone arches at the west end) the chamfered groin-ribs seem to have been added later for strength, probably when the storey above was remodelled; but the vaulting itself, with its square pillars, its plain round arches from pillar to pillar and from pillar to walls, and without ribs upon the groins (such having been its original condition, apparently), seems pure Norman work.[104] The traces of painted decoration remaining upon both pillars and vaulting are probably original. Along the walls the arches spring, not from corbels, but from short strings of the same pattern with the impost-moulding on the pillars—a pattern not of very early character. The north and south walls must, perhaps, be as old at least as the vaulting which rests against them; nor does the former wall seem quite on the same plane with the portion of Archbishop Roger’s choir foundations visible outside (between the present choir and the apse), he having perhaps built his wall against this one. The large limestone buttress against this wall, and another buttress which rises from the east wall but is hidden by the vaulting, were added in the Decorated period, and can be followed up through the two storeys above. They terminate in the pinnacles of the flying buttresses that span the choir-aisle. The south wall may perhaps be definitely placed somewhat early in the Norman period, since the windows are splayed both internally and externally.[105] Of equal age, probably, is the cross-wall (which, to judge from the mass of masonry that spans the present passage of communication between the two parts of the crypt, is very thick) since allowance is made for its thickness in the spacing of the windows.[106] It is at least as old as the vaulting, whose bays are arranged to suit it; and moreover the half-pillar against its eastern side has never been a whole pillar, as the capital plainly shows. This last remark applies also to the half-pillar against the extreme west wall, which therefore may perhaps be taken as marking the westward limit of the crypt at the time when the vaulting was constructed; while the east wall (excluding the apse) probably marks the contemporary eastward limit—if, that is to say, the eastern portion of the vaulting has not undergone alteration. That eastern portion is clearly planned for an apse or chancel of some kind. The arch that rises eastward from the last pillar is stopped half-way in its course by a cross-arch opening into the apse, and the two last groin-ribs are carried from the pillar to the abutments of the cross-arch, being obliged by this contraction of span to form the only pointed arches in the whole vaulting. Such an arrangement—a ‘nave’ terminating in an apse, and at the same time divided by a row of pillars along the middle—is somewhat unusual. The present apse is of uncertain date. Part of it may be Norman. Its window indeed is of early Norman type: yet its wall seems of softer stone than the rest of the crypt,[107] and the string which runs along the east wall of the latter and round the responds of the cross-arch is there broken off: moreover, the cross-arch itself is clearly not of the same date or construction with the two ribs of the apse-roof, which ribs may possibly be of the same date as the groin-ribs; and lastly, it will be remembered that the shafts on the exterior had something of the appearance of Archbishop Roger’s work. The floor of the apse is raised on two steps, but there is no trace of an altar.

It will be noticed that at the south-east corner there is no apsidal chamber to correspond to that in the storey above. There is, however, an unsavoury hole from which have been extracted a number of skulls. Indeed, this crypt formerly contained huge piles of bones, which had probably been brought here by the sixteenth century builders from the foundations of their new nave-aisles,[108] and which were removed in 1865 to a pit in the graveyard. Among the stone relics which have found a resting-place here, the most interesting are a sarcophagus, the head of a cross of Saxon character, and a group of coffin-lids near the north wall. Most of these last are perhaps of the thirteenth century.[109] At the west end of the crypt is preserved Blore’s reredos.

The Chapter-house is 22 feet wide from wall to wall and 35 feet long, but it was evidently once open to the vestry, and the dividing wall, which with its bench-table is of limestone, was erected in the Decorated or in the Perpendicular period. In both rooms, as also in the storey above, the original floor was perhaps of stone or tiles, but if so, it has been covered or superseded by wooden planking.

The Chapter-house is marked as such by the stone benches which are carried in two tiers along the north and south walls. On the north side the upper tier is interrupted by the piers of an arcading of plainly chamfered round arches, the central bay of which contains a fine mediæval cupboard with iron scroll-work. The doorway into the choir is very curiously treated on this side. It is surmounted first by a lintel, the stones above which are wedges forming a ‘flat arch,’ and then by a round arch so high as to run up behind the westernmost arch of the arcading. The very fine vaulting, although some have ascribed it to the Early English period, belongs more probably to the time of Archbishop Roger. Unlike that over the choir-aisles and the Markenfield chapel, however, it has all its arches rounded, and is without wall-ribs. It springs from five-sided corbels which, like the corbels of the old nave, are finished off with scrolls, and which on the north side are placed against the piers of the arcading; and in the middle of the room it is supported on two cylindrical and monolithic pillars. The bases and capitals of these are circular, and the former are almost pure Early English, the plinth having a round moulding at the bottom, and the base proper consisting of two round mouldings separated by a hollow, with one or two beads or fillets. The capitals are less advanced in style, as the part just above the bell is not moulded and the abacus retains the square edge. All the eight ribs that rise from each pillar resemble the groin-ribs in the crypt.

THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.

The arcade against the north wall is continued in the vestry, and it has been thought that it is Norman, and that its arches were once open.[110] But had this ever been the case the piers would surely have been narrower, and would have had capitals. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the arcade is Norman at all: for if it were, its bays might be expected to agree in span and number with the (presumably Norman) bays of the crypt, whereas there are five bays there and only four here occupying the same total length. Secondly, the set-off on which its piers stand is probably Archbishop Roger’s work, as will appear later; and the piers themselves seem to be of the same construction with the wall behind them, which again is almost certainly his. Moreover, it is significant that the arches agree in span with those of his choir, and that their piers are back to back with his vaulting-shafts in the choir-aisle. Lastly, these piers correspond in width with his buttresses on the north side of the choir. In fact it is difficult to resist the conclusion that they are Archbishop Roger’s south choir buttresses in disguise,[111] and that the arches between them were thrown across merely to form a straight boundary for the vaulting, and to carry a ledge which (when there was no storey above) might support the external roof. The piers indeed are carried up, with a ‘straight joint’ on either side, above the springing of the arches, and the latter are constructed as if they had been let into the piers as an after-thought.[112]

As the bays of this arcade, to which the vaulting is adapted, do not agree with those of the crypt, it follows that the two cylindrical pillars here do not stand exactly over the pillars below—which strengthens the presumption that the vaulting there is of earlier date, and that its groin-ribs were added later for strength: nor does the dividing wall here stand exactly over the cross-wall below, so that the strain on the crypt roof must be considerable.

The two round windows are very widely splayed, and the uppermost part of their rim has a different curvature from the rest, as if they had once been straight-sided and round-headed. In their present form they are of uncertain date. The most conspicuous instance of the employment of this rare type of window—viz., the nave of Southwell Cathedral—is pure Norman, but the received opinion ascribes these Ripon examples to the time of Archbishop Roger, and it will be observed that their position harmonizes with the bays of the vaulting, which is presumably his, but has no relation externally to the spacing of the windows of the crypt, which, moreover, have an external splay. The third window was once circular like the rest, for a portion of the rim may still be traced; but as it would otherwise have been bisected by the cross-wall, the later builders have blocked half of it and squared the rest, splaying it at the same time like a squint. The date of the south wall itself is doubtful. It is thinner here than in either the vestry or the crypt.