Chester: North
Sir Brooke Boothby in Belgium in 1802, for £200, now valued at £15,000. What remained was used to fill other windows in the Cathedral. On the south side of the Lady-Chapel are three “Mortuary Chapels,” with groined roofs. In the central one lies the effigy of Bishop Selwyn (buried outside), Bishop of New Zealand, who organized the church in that far-away country. This accounts for the frescoes showing the Maoris. The two end windows are also old glass supposed to have come from the Low Countries. One is a symbolic picture of Baptism; the other, the legendary Death of the Virgin.
We have yet to examine the Sacristy of the Chapter-House. The sacristy is on the south side (Early English). Its upper floor was the Chapel of St. Chad, which, as we have seen, was entered from the minstrels’ gallery ([see page 211]). The restored chapel was re-dedicated on St. Chad’s Day (March 2), 1897.
“The Chapel of St. Chad, first Bishop of Lichfield, and, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, patron of our Cathedral Church, was destroyed in all probability when the rest of the Cathedral was laid in ruins in 1643, the siege beginning on St. Chad’s Day, March 2nd of that year. Little was left: the four walls remained in a broken condition, with the vaulting-shafts and caps for the springers of the stone groining, and the wall-ribs, to mark its original lines; also the very beautiful Early English windows—twelve lancets in groups of three—which, singularly enough, were little injured. Externally these are very plain, but internally they are full of interest, and there is nothing better of the kind in the Cathedral. The site of the old altar is clearly marked; indeed, a small portion of it has been preserved. The piscina also still remains. The aumbry remains in which antiquarians suppose that St. Chad’s relics were preserved.”—(L.)
The Chapter-House and the vestibule leading to it were built about the middle of the Thirteenth Century (Early English). The vestibule contains beautiful arcading; the capitals of the pillars are finely carved. The entrance door into the Chapter-House is very handsome, with deeply cut mouldings, and capitals of the grouped shafts richly carved with leaves. Dog-tooth and trefoils are also used as ornamentation. The Chapter-House is octagonal. The central pillar, composed of clustered shafts with richly carved capitals of foliage, carries the eye upward, where the ribs spread out beautifully over the roof and bosses mark their intersection. The windows are Early English, of two lights. Below them runs a fine arcading.