How to Visit the English Cathedrals

by Esther Singleton

Here also is the tomb of Elizabeth Lady Montacute, who gave Christ Church Meadow to the Priory for the support of two priests for her chantry in this Lady-Chapel. Her effigy lies on the top of the tomb, and portraits of her children appear in the panels below. The whole was originally brilliantly coloured.

Four arches divide the Lady-Chapel. Under the easternmost one is a large tomb known as the Watching Chamber.

“Its real nature is still a matter of dispute: some maintaining it to have been used as a chantry chapel for the welfare of those who were buried below; others, that it served as a ‘watching chamber’ to protect the gold and jewels which hung about the shrine of St. Frideswide.

“Most elaborately carved and crocketed, the ‘watching chamber’ is a beautiful example of full-blown Perpendicular workmanship; ‘most lovely English work, both of heart and hand,’ according to Mr. Ruskin. It consists of four stories, the two lower, in stone, forming an altar tomb and canopy, and the two upper in wood. A door from the Latin Chapel leads one up a small and well-worn stone staircase into the interior of the little upper chapel, which is now a rough wooden room. Its extreme roughness suggests that it was once panelled and otherwise adorned, while there are marks at its east end, which may be the site of an altar, or of the feretrum itself.”—(P. D.)

Lastly we come to the Latin-Chapel also called St. Catherine’s, in honour of the patron of students of theology.

“The Decorated vaulting was built when the chapel was enlarged in the Fourteenth Century. The foliage of its bosses is very beautiful; the water-lilies especially of the third boss, so suggestive of Oxford streams, and the roses a little further east, are a happy combination of naturalistic treatment with decorative restraint. It will be noticed that the vaulting does not run true in the third bay, the Decorated work there having been somewhat awkwardly joined to the Early English of the second bay.

“A prominent feature in the Latin-Chapel is the old oak stalling, which a second inspection proves to be patchwork. The returned stalls at the west end probably belonged to the choir of the conventual church, and in that case would have been fitted in here when Dean Duppa ‘adorned’ the choir by destroying the old wood-work. Near to these is some of the work prepared for Cardinal Wolsey’s new chapel. The poppy-heads are good specimens of wood-carving, and contain a monogram I.H.S., a heart in a crown of thorns, a cardinal’s hat, and other devices. The pulpit, with its delicate canopy, an excellent specimen of Seventeenth Century wood-work, was formerly the Vice-Chancellor’s seat in another part of the church, occupied by him during university sermons. It was then used by the Regius Professor of Divinity for his lectures, but since the altar was restored six years ago, the chapel has been no longer used as a lecture-room.”—(P. D.)

Here we find some of the best glass in the Cathedral. At the east end is the famous St. Frideswide window by Burne-Jones; and the three windows on the north are beautiful specimens of the Fourteenth Century, replaced here by Dean Liddell. In the middle of each light is a figure and the rest of the space is covered with the diamond-shaped pieces of glass bearing leaves and flowers, technically called “quarries.” Medallions and borders with various beasts—even monkeys—decorate the spaces in the tracery. The first window depicts St. Catherine, a Virgin and Child, and next a figure, probably St. Frideswide; the second window represents an archbishop and angels; and the third, St. Frideswide with St. Margaret on one side and St. Catherine on the other. It is very interesting to compare these with the Burne-Jones’s St. Frideswide at the east end:

“Though this is one of the first windows that Burne-Jones ever designed it is one of his best. Better suited (as many think) to the purpose of a window, at all events in this enclosed chapel, than the freer method of the other glass, it carries on the best traditions of the craft, in its infinite variety of gem-like colour and complexity of detail; while it attains a degree of perfection in pictorial effect and figure-drawing which was impossible during the great era of mediæval glass-painting. The death of the saint, with its lovely effect of light through the latticed window, for instance, and the picture of her in the pig-sty, would be perfect as finished pictures, and yet do not for an instant outstep the convention which is necessary for their function as part of a window.

“The colour is, in spite (or rather because) of its radiant variety, not so immediately attractive to every one as that of the other Burne-Jones windows; but when one has sat down for five or ten minutes and deciphered the various scenes, its unapproachable beauty becomes apparent, and each succeeding visit deepens the impression of the splendour and poetry of this incomparable work.