LINCOLN
Dedication: St. Mary. A Church served by Secular Canons.
Special features: St. Hugh’s Choir; Angel Choir; East Window; Central Tower.
Lincoln Cathedral possesses a commanding site and three splendid towers that form a beautiful picture. Distance lends enchantment to the view at all times of the day and seasons of the year.
“Throughout a vast district around the city, the one great feature of the landscape is the mighty minster, which, almost like that of Laon, crowns the edge of the ridge, rising, with a steepness well-nigh unknown in the streets of English towns, above the lower city and the plain at its feet. Next in importance to the minster is the castle, which, marred as it is by modern changes, still crowns the height as no unworthy yoke-fellow of its ecclesiastical neighbour. The proud polygonal keep of the fortress still groups well with the soaring towers, the sharp-pointed gables, the long continuous line of roof, of the church of Remigius and Saint Hugh.”—(E. A. F.)
Lincoln Cathedral is also a landmark in the history of architecture, for here was developed the first complete and pure form of the third great form of architecture—the architecture of the Pointed Arch.
“The best informed French antiquaries acknowledge that they have nothing like it in France for thirty years afterwards; they thought it was copied from Notre-Dame at Dijon, to which there is a considerable resemblance, but that church was not consecrated till 1230, so that the Dijon architect might have copied from the Lincoln one, but the Lincoln could not have copied from Dijon.”—(J. H. P.)
To the historian, as well as to the student of architecture, Lincoln makes a strong appeal for many visits. Those whose time is limited will be impatient to inspect St. Hugh’s Choir, and the more beautiful Angel Choir beyond it. We must, however, pause a moment to recapitulate its history before we begin our walk through the Cathedral.
“The surface or exterior of Lincoln Cathedral presents at least four perfect specimens of the succeeding styles of the first four orders of Gothic architecture. The greater part of the front may be as old as the time of its founder, Bishop Remigius, at the end of the Eleventh Century; but even here may be traced invasions and intermixtures, up to the Fifteenth Century. The large indented windows are of this latter period, and exhibit a frightful heresy. The western towers carry you to the end of the Twelfth Century; then succeeds a wonderful extent of the Early English, or the pointed arch. The transepts begin with the Thirteenth, and come down to the middle of the Fourteenth Century; and the interior, especially the choir and the side aisles, abounds with the most exquisitely varied specimens of that period. Fruits, flowers, vegetables, insects, capriccios of every description, encircle the arches or shafts, and sparkle upon the capitals of pillars. Even down to the reign of Henry VIII. there are two private chapels, to the left of the smaller south porch, on entrance, which are perfect gems of art.”—(T. F. D.)
In the Seventh Century, Paulinus, Bishop of York, made converts in the Roman hill-town of Lincoln, and several churches were founded. The “bishop’s stool” was at Sidnacester and Dorchester-on-Thames before it was fixed at Lincoln.