Early English Doorway, Chester
In the hollows of the Early English mouldings we sometimes see an ornament pointed like a dog's tooth. You will see it in the moulding round a circular opening over the doorway of the vestibule in the cloisters of the Cathedral. Another ornament which the thirteenth-century masons invented and put into their work was the 'cusp', a projection made by the meeting of two curves placed end to end. If you put two cusps into the head of a pointed arch you will find that you have made a trefoil-headed arch. The triforium arches in the choir of the cathedral are all of this description. Quatrefoils are made by arranging four cusps within a circle.
Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Abbot Simon of Whitchurch built the Lady Chapel east of the choir. The windows of this chapel are all lancets, those at the side being arranged in groups of three, while the east window contains five lights. The Lady Chapel looks very new now. It has, in fact, been almost entirely rebuilt since Abbot Simon's day. The mediaeval builders of Cheshire did not select their building-stone very carefully. You will see from the cloisters how the red sandstone has weathered and crumbled to ruin.
The walls of Early English buildings were not so thick as those built by the Normans, and required to be supported on the exterior by buttresses which projected further from the walls than the flat Norman buttresses. You will find Early English buttresses at Audlem and Prestbury.
Many houses in Chester are built over crypts or underground cellars, which were made during the reign of Henry the Third, and consequently show some of the features we have been describing. The oldest of these crypts is under a shop in Bridge Street. It is lighted by a triple lancet window having deep splays. The door of the staircase leading to it has a trefoiled head, and the vaulted stone roof is groined and ribbed like the roof of the cloisters of the cathedral. The roofs of Early English churches were groined in the same way, but with wood instead of stone.
Many Cheshire churches were, no doubt, rebuilt or repaired in the new style. At Bruera there is a pointed doorway under a semicircular arch. Bruera was one of the many churches bestowed on the Abbey of S. Werburgh by Norman lords. A grant of a manor or a church was often made when a baron or some member of his family entered the abbey as a monk of the brotherhood.
Their descendants did not always approve of these gifts. In the Chronicle of S. Werburgh, we read that in 1258 Roger de Montalt, Chief Justice of Chester, tried to recover the churches of Bruera, Coddington, and Neston, which the lord of Montalt had given to the abbey in the days of Earl Hugh. Roger entered Neston Church with a body of armed men, and turned out the monks who had been sent from the abbey to perform the services, and gave the living to his nephew Ralph. The Chronicle speaks of the misfortunes that befell Roger as a warning to other would-be robbers of the Church. His eldest son died within fifteen days, and Roger himself 'died in poverty within two years, the common people being ignorant of the place of his burial'.
CHAPTER XIV
GROWTH OF TOWNS IN CHESHIRE
Earl Randle 'the Good' had no son to succeed him, and when he died the earldom passed to his nephew John the Scot, the son of Randle's eldest sister. John married the daughter of Llewellyn the Prince of Wales, so that peace was secured for a time between the Welsh and the earl's subjects. He did not live to enjoy his earldom long, however, and he too died without an heir. His wife was suspected of causing his death by poison.
Henry the Third was at this time King of England. He had looked with anxious eyes upon the growing power of the Earls of Chester. Now that a suitable opportunity presented itself, the king decided to take the earldom into his own hands, his excuse being that he was unwilling that so fair an inheritance should be divided 'among distaffs', meaning the sisters of John the Scot. So he gave them each a portion of land and a husband, and appointed John de Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln, as custodian of Cheshire.