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 arch above the ledge has been mutilated to make way for a modern spiral staircase of wood leading to the Library. Half-way up this staircase there remain upon the wall and upon the buttress (if it may now be so called) portions of a string-course which may be taken perhaps as additional evidence for the theory that Archbishop Roger at first intended to demolish the vestry and Chapter-house.[114] It does not, however, match the external string on the other side of the choir, but resembles the internal string in the choir-aisles.

The single window in the south wall is round-headed internally, and is partially splayed on one side and not at all on the other: indeed the wall here appears to have undergone some alteration. In this room this wall is of the same thickness with the corresponding wall of the crypt, which is not the case in the Chapter-house.

East of the above window a square-headed doorway opens into the apsidal chamber enclosed by the corner buttress. This curious little chamber was probably a sacristy or treasury. It has a recess in the west side, and seems to have communicated directly with the graveyard. In the roof is a slab which has a small cross graven upon it, and which may have formed part of an altar.

The projection at the south side of the apse was probably one of the responds of an arch against which the vaulting abutted, as in the crypt. Under the east window the curve of the wall has been flattened, probably to afford a better back for the altar, of which the step remains. On the north side is an aumbry, with a recess adjoining it in the side of the buttress; and on the south side is a smaller aumbry, and a piscina with a projecting basin and a semicircular head, the latter cut apparently in one stone. This again is probably one of the earliest piscinæ in existence. The curve of the apse is wider in this storey than below, which partly accounts for the fact that the adjoining Decorated buttress protrudes here into the room. There is also a difference in the stone used, and in several other particulars, e.g., the two windows here have very little external splay—all of which may or may not indicate a difference in date between the apse in this storey and in the crypt. The hand of Archbishop Roger seems traceable here not only in the external shafts and corbel-table, but also in the trefoiling (externally) of the east window. The two vaulting-corbels at any rate seem to be his, as well as the piscina. The upper part of the apse has lost its semicircular shape and been squared, and some masonry has been thrown across from its wall to the Decorated buttress, the motive having been perhaps to make a better support for the rectangular east end of the Lady-loft. The oak table in this room was probably the Communion-table of the church during the period following the Reformation.

The question now arises how long the vestry and Chapter-house have served their present purpose. Of the arrangements in this storey before the time of Archbishop Roger nothing can be recovered with certainty, but the (presumably Norman) wall between the two parts of the crypt suggests by its thickness that it was intended to support a division of some kind above. After being remodelled in the time of Archbishop Roger, however, this upper storey was evidently open from end to end, and its apsidal termination, containing both piscina and altar-step, indicates that it was a chapel: indeed, as has been well suggested, it was probably the original Lady Chapel. Nevertheless, in an age when every action of life was invested with a religious character, the western part may have been used for capitular purposes even without a dividing wall, and the gritstone benches, so significant of those purposes, are doubtless of considerable age. The statement in the old Records that the trial of 1228[115] was held apud Rypon in Aulâ Capituli is definite enough to show that there was a recognised place for Chapter meetings; nor is it improbable that the reference may be to the present building. Some doubt is thrown upon this conclusion by a proclamation of Archbishop Lee in 1537 sequestrating the Common Fund on the ground that “the Chapter-house is ruinous in walls, roof, and stonework generally, so that it is likely to fall.” These words, it has been thought, can never have been applicable to the present Chapter-house, and it has been suggested therefore that there may have been another which has disappeared. Archbishop Lee’s words, however, are perhaps not irreconcilable with the present building. They may refer to the serious settlement which necessitated the huge Perpendicular buttress at the corner of what is now the vestry. There is, it is true, some difficulty in the fact that it is not the vestry but the Chapter-house which is mentioned, and in the allusion to a dilapidated roof (tectura); but it is conceivable that there was as yet no dividing wall, that the vaulting of what is now the vestry was still standing, that it had been injured by the settlement above-mentioned—in fact that its removal and the erection of the dividing wall took place in the time of Archbishop Lee. His direction for repairs may also account for the presence of limestone in the north wall of the Chapter-house, and for the propping of the vault at the west end of the crypt.[116] As has already been shown, the history of the vestry is bound up with that of the Chapter-house. At what period services ceased to be held at the altar in the apse, it is difficult to say; perhaps on the completion of a Lady Chapel above, perhaps on the erection of the dividing wall,[117] perhaps through the advent of the Reformation. At any rate, it was probably not before this part of the church had ceased to be used for services that it began to be recognised as a robing-room. There is an allusion to a recognised vestry in Leland, and very possibly the present room is meant; if so, it would seem from his account to have been used also as a library. But the fact remains that the church possesses no vestry except what is obviously a disused chapel.

The Lady-chapel or Lady-loft is 23 feet 3 inches wide, and 68 feet long.[118] Its west and north sides, being formed by what was once the exterior of the church, display not only windows and buttresses, but also a string-course with gargoyles. From the west wall projects one of Archbishop Roger’s buttresses, terminating in a slope, between the two blocked windows of the Mallory Chapel, which resemble the aisle windows of the other transept. The window on the right, mutilated by the insertion of the doorway, has lost its shafts, and retains only their capitals. The other window is partly cut off by the south wall, and is now a cupboard.

In the north wall, the first three bays are Archbishop Roger’s, and the windows resemble in their treatment the two just described, and are separated from each other by two buttresses which terminate, like those on the opposite side of the choir, in two slopes one close below the other. There is a third buttress, terminating in a single slope, at the angle formed with the transept. The Decorated window in the fourth bay is treated in the same manner as the rest of those in the eastern portion of the choir-aisles, and the Decorated buttresses which flank it are those which have been followed up from the crypt. The rich string-course or cornice along the top of this and the west wall corresponds with that on the other side of the church. The gargoyles are of course Decorated, and so is the string-course itself, eastwards at any rate of the second gargoyle on the north wall, for here one of the mouldings has a fillet upon it. Whether the rest of the string is Archbishop Roger’s work or not, it is difficult to decide.

The large windows in the south and east walls are surmounted by square labels ending in heads. Above the modern fireplace is the defaced monument of Anthony Higgin, second Dean (d. 1624), the founder of the present library; and further east, under the small lancet window (which is filled with fragments of stained glass), is an arched recess of considerable size, and a trefoiled piscina, each surmounted by a gable moulding with a finial. The piscina probably belonged to the chantry of Our-Lady-in-the-Lady-loft. A large stone bracket, supported by a grotesque figure, projects from the east wall, and the east window is bright with armorial bearings of benefactors of the church. This glass, which is mostly of the eighteenth century, was once in the great window of the choir. The north side of the recess in which the east window is set, is partially splayed outwards to join the last Decorated buttress, which with its neighbour have been cut back in this storey to the plane of the pinnacles above—doubtless when this Lady-loft was added.

The present pinewood ceiling was put up by Sir Gilbert Scott, but most of the carved angle-pieces in the panels came from an older roof of oak.