How to Visit the English Cathedrals

by Esther Singleton

of the church. Some architects consider it the finest piece of architecture at Wells.

“The entrance is doubly recessed and has the zigzag ornament among its mouldings, an indication, if not of its early construction, at least of lingering Norman traditions among its builders. These mouldings deserve the most careful attention. The outer or dripstone, is formed of a very beautiful combination of Early English foliage. Square panels on either side of the arch contain figures of mystic animals, one of which is a cockatrice. The gable above has a blind arcade, in the centre of which a small triplet gives light to a parvise chamber. From the buttress at the angles rise slender spire-capped pinnacles. The buttresses themselves are flat and narrow.

“The interior of the porch is divided into two bays, and its walls are lined with a double arcade, the upper row of arches being more deeply recessed than the tower. The vault springs from a central group of triple shafts. The sculptures of the capitals on the east side possibly represent the death of King Edmund the Martyr (A.D. 870),—bound to a tree as a mark for the Danish arrows and afterwards beheaded. The figures are well designed, and full of life and character. The double doorway leading into the nave displays, like the exterior arch, the Norman zigzag.”—(R. J. K.)

On entering the Nave the visitor is at once struck by the noble proportions, the impression of great length, the broad horizontal band of the triforium, and the wealth of spirited and varied carving of the capitals and corbels; but the most striking feature of all is the great inverted, or double, arch that struts across the central piers forming a St. Andrew’s Cross, by which name it is generally known, and giving a grotesque (we are almost tempted to say Chinese) appearance.

“Undoubtedly the first thing that the stranger notices in Wells Cathedral, and the last that he is likely to forget, is the curious contrivance by which the central tower is supported. Of the three pairs of arches (the upper arch resting inverted upon the lower) which stretch across the nave and each of the transepts, that in the nave is seen at once, and lends a unique character to the whole church. At first these arches give one something of a shock, so unnecessarily frank are they, so excessively sturdy, so very English, we may think. They carry their burden as a great-limbed labourer will carry a child in a crowd, to the great advantage of the burden and the natural dissatisfaction of the crowd. In fact, they seem to block up the view, and to deform what they do not hide.

“That is the first impression, but it does not last for long. Familiarity breeds respect for this simple, strong device, which arrested the fall of the tower in the Fourteenth Century, and has kept its walls ever since in perfect security, so that the great structure has stood like a rock upon the watery soil of Wells for nearly seven centuries, with its rents and breaks just as they were when the damage was first repaired. The ingenuity, too, of these strange flying-buttresses becomes more and more evident; the ‘ungainly props’ are seen to be so worked into the tower they support, that they almost seem like part of the original design of the first builders. One discovers that it is the organ, and not the arches, that really blocks the view, and one marvels that so huge a mass of masonry can look so light as to present, with the great circles in the spandrels where the arches meet, a kind of pattern of gigantic geometrical tracery. Indeed I think no one who has been in Wells a week could wish to see the inverted arches removed.

“To appreciate the work fully, it should be looked at from some spot, such as the north-east corner of the north transept, whence the three great pairs of arches can be seen together. The effect from here is very fine, especially when the nave is lighted up and strong shadows are cast. The extreme boldness of the mouldings, the absence of shafts and capitals and of all ornament, give them a primitive vigour, and their great intermingling curves, which contrast so magnificently with the little shafts of the piers beyond, seem more like a part of some great mountain cavern than a mere device of architectural utility.”—(P. D.)

The general effect of the Nave is that of length rather than height, largely due to the continuous arcade of the triforium which leads the eye irresistibly eastwards, and the comparatively restricted height of the Cathedral has been increased by bold vaulting, and by the way the lantern arches fit into the vault. A little study will show the visitor the separation between the late Twelfth Century work of Reginald de Bohun, or Fitz-Jocelyn, and the Thirteenth Century work of Jocelin. These differences lie in the masonry and the carved heads and the capitals.

The heads of a king and bishop, projecting from the south side between the fourth and fifth piers, mark the point of change eastward: the masonry of piers, walls and aisle walls is in small courses of stone; westward, the blocks are larger, eastward, small human heads project at the angles of the pier-arches and westward there are none; eastward, the tympana of the triforium arcade are filled with carvings of grotesque animals and small heads at the corners, and westward, the tympana are filled with foliage and ornamented with larger heads. There are also other differences.

“Certainly it is an unusual instance of an architect deliberately setting himself to complete the works of an earlier period in faithful accordance with the original plan; and we may well be grateful to him for his modesty.