EXETER CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT.
Externally, the Cathedral is of the grimiest and sootiest aspect—black but comely. Not even the blackest corners of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London show a deeper hue than the west front of St. Peter’s at Exeter. The battered, time-worn army of effigies—kings, saints, crusaders, bishops—that range along the screen in mutilated array under the great west window of Bishop Grandison’s, are black too, and so are the obscene gargoyles that gibber and glare with stony eyes down upon you from the ridges and string-courses of the transepts, where they abide ever in an enduring crepuscule. The sonorous note of the Great Peter bell, sounding from the south transept tower, is in admirable keeping with the black-browed gravity of the close.
But within the Cathedral it is quite another matter. Few of our great minsters are so graceful, so airy and well lighted, as the interior of Exeter Cathedral. The great windows of the aisles shed a flood of light upon the clustered columns of warm-coloured stone that bear aloft the elaborately carved vaulting of the nave, and the clerestory windows, high up in the walls, illuminate the springing of the arches and the carven corbels of the vaulting shafts. Exeter Cathedral windows are the triumph of Geometrical Decorated work. North and south, those windows run the length of the building in pairs, each pair of different design.
One of the quaintest of Exeter’s many churches is that of Saint Mary Steps, by the site of the old West Gate, with its clock face and three ancient figures nodding the hours and striking the quarters upon bells. The central figure represents Henry VIII., but is traditionally known as Matty the Miller.
“Every hour on Westgate tower
Matty still nods his head.”
XXXI.
We passed down the steep High Street of Exeter, crowded with ruddy-towered churches, and bordered, as to its farther end, with the low-lying slums of Exe Island. Across Exe Bridge is the suburb of St. Thomas, and we explored its one long street to its end, where it joins the Dunsford Road, from whose rise this prospect of Exeter is taken. Then we retraced our steps some distance, and set out for Teignmouth, coming in rather over a mile to Alphington, a pretty village, with tall and slim church tower looking straight down the road, making, with its red sandstone, a striking contrast with the vivid green of the rich foliage around, and the dazzling whiteness of the “cob” cottages, whose whitewash seems ever fresh. We glanced inside the church, but a christening was in progress, and we fled, pursued by the ear-piercing yells of the unhappy infant.
