“On the exterior the choir of the Cathedral of Lincoln is thoroughly English or Norman, if you will; one can perceive all the Norman influence; arches acutely pointed, blank windows in the clerestory, reminding one of the basilica covered with a wooden roof; a low triforium; each bay of the aisles divided into two by a small buttress; shafts banded. In the interior vaults which have not at all the same construction as the French vaults of the end of the Twelfth Century; arch-mouldings, slender and deeply undercut; the abacus round; the tooth-ornament; which do not at all resemble the ornaments which we find at Paris, Sens, St. Denis, etc.”
The Choir-Stalls, dating from the Fourteenth Century, are among the finest in England. Pugin considered them quite the best.
“The stalls are in two rows, the upper of 62 seats, and the lower of 46; the former number has now been increased by six and the latter by two. The upper stalls have elaborate trefoiled canopies, surmounted by an intricate maze of buttresses and pinnacles, rising to a height of 24 feet 6 inches above the choir floor. The niches above the canopies have recently been filled with statues of saints in the Anglican Calendar. The stalls in both rows are provided with hinged seats or misereres, intended to serve as supports in the long services during which the occupants of the stalls were required to stand. These seats, as well as the elbow-rests and finials, are richly carved with those grotesque subjects in which the Mediæval artist so greatly delighted. The carver has given full scope to a most fertile imagination. Scriptural subjects do certainly occur on some of the misereres in the upper row, but others are of a playful character. The fox is seen preaching to birds and beasts, and then running riot among them; monkeys are at play, or occupied in the more serious business of hanging one of their number and burying him afterwards; we also find men fighting with wild animals; the labours of husbandry; kings, knights, ladies, dragons, griffins, lions, hogs, and wyverns. Whether there is a hidden meaning in any of these quaint subjects, it is perhaps difficult now to say, but the preaching fox is certainly suggestive.”—(A. F. K.)
At the east end of the stalls on the south side rises the Bishop’s Throne with tall Gothic canopy. It was designed by James Essex in 1778, and carved by Lumby. Opposite is Sir Gilbert Scott’s Pulpit of carved oak (1863-1864).
The brass chandelier of sixteen lights, suspended from the vault, is dated 1698; and the brass eagle lectern, 1667.
The stone Reredos is a mixture of work of the Thirteenth Century and that of James Essex in the Eighteenth Century. James Pink carved the central canopy in 1769 after designs by Essex.
The Eastern Transept was also the work of St. Hugh. He joined the ends by means of an apse, which extended to the second bay of the Angel Choir. Some historians say that he was buried in the northern of the four chapels that he built along the apse.
St. Hugh died in London in 1200. When his body arrived in Lincoln it was met by King John and carried on the shoulders of archbishops and bishops to the Choir that he had erected. He was buried on November 24; and, according to an old ballad:
“A’ the bells o’ merrie Lincoln
Without men’s hands were rung,
And a’ the books o’ merrie Lincoln
Were read without man’s tongue;
And ne’er was such a burial
Sin’ Adam’s days begun.”
Pilgrims came in such numbers to his shrine that it was deemed necessary to make his tomb more important, and the apse was removed for the famous Angel Choir, which, like the Choir of St. Hugh, marks a new period in the history of architecture.