How to Visit the English Cathedrals

by Esther Singleton

Dedication: St. Peter: Formerly the Church of a Benedictine Abbey.

Special features: Central Tower; Choir; Lady-Chapel; East Window; Cloisters.

Gloucester presents a fine view from all points of approach.

“As a rule, visitors see it first from the south side, and the south-west general view is one of the best, equalled, but not surpassed, by that from the north-west. The north view from the Great Western Railway, with the school playing-fields in the foreground, makes a striking picture, but it is more sombre than the picture formed by the south front. Viewed from the north-west corner of the cloister-garth, the pile is seen perhaps at its best. From this point it is easy to study so much the varied architecture of the whole, and with little effort to transport the mind back for a space of four hundred years. The eye first rests upon the turf of the garth now tastefully laid out after many years of comparative neglect. Flanking the garth on every side are the exquisite windows of the Cloister—a cloister which no other can surpass. Above the Cloister will be seen on the eastern side the sober, impressive Norman work of the Chapter-house in which so much of our English history has been made. To the south of this is the Library, built close against the walls of the north transept, which tower above, and lead the eye upward to the great tower which, ‘in the middest of the church,’ crowns the whole.

“Placed where it is, almost in the centre of the long line of the nave, continued in the choir and Lady-chapel, at the point where the transept line intersects it, it is the chief feature of the massive pile. All else seems to be grouped with a view to the enhancing of the effect of the central position of the tower. The other members of the building seem merely to be steps, by means of which approach can be made to it. It is the grandest and most impressive feature of the outside. No matter from whence one looks at it, the charm is there. Seen from the gardens in the side streets close by when the pear-trees are in bloom, or in the full blaze of a hot summer day, or again later in the autumn when the leaves are beginning to turn, or, better still, in snow time, it is always full of beauty. On a bright hot day the pinnacles seem so far off in the haze as to suggest a dream fairyland. On a wet day, after a shower, the tower has the appearance of being so close at hand that it almost seems to speak. Viewed by moonlight, the tower has an unearthly look, which cannot well be described. The tower is 225 feet high to the top of the pinnacles, and the effect of it is extremely fine. From the main cornice upwards, the whole of the stone-work is open, and composed of what at a distance appears to be delicate tracery, and mullions and crocketed pinnacles.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

In it hang the venerable bells that escaped the king’s commissioners at the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1553.

Gloucester is notable for its examples of the Transition from Decorated to Perpendicular, which probably originated in this Cathedral.

The abbey of Gloucester was founded by Osric, viceroy of King Edward, in 681. It was dedicated to St. Peter. Osric’s sister, Kyneburga, who died in 710, was the first Abbess of this double foundation for monks and nuns. Osric and Kyneburga were buried in the Abbey church in front of the altar of St. Petronilla. In 823, secular priests were placed here by the King of Mercia; and in 1022 they were expelled by Canute for Benedictine monks. When the monastery was burned to the ground, Aldred, Bishop of Worcester, re-established the monks in 1058, and began the building of a new church also to St. Peter,—“a little further from the place where it had first stood, and nearer to the side of the city.”

The monastery failed to flourish; Aldred was translated to York in 1060; and when Serlo, who had been William the Conqueror’s chaplain, succeeded to Wilstan, or Wulstan, Aldred’s successor, he had under him only two monks and eight novices. After fifteen years of energetic rule (1072-1103), Serlo rebuilt the Cathedral.

In August, 1089, an earthquake damaged the then existing building. Eleven years later (1100), in the last year of the reign of William Rufus, “the church,” as Florence of Worcester wrote, “which Abbot Serlo, of revered memory, had built from the foundations at Gloucester, was dedicated (on Sunday, July 15th) with great pomp by Samson, Bishop of Worcester; Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester; Gerard, Bishop of Hereford; and Herveas, Bishop of Bangor.” It is thought that part of the church was finished for the dedication, such as the presbytery, choir, the transepts, the Abbot’s cloister, the chapter-house, and the greater part of the nave.