English Cathedrals Illustrated / Second and Revised Edition

by Francis Bond

NAVE, NORTH SIDE.

Wulfstan’s crypt is almost wholly intact, and enables us to restore the plan of the eastern limb. This consisted of an apse surrounded by an ambulatory, and extended as far as the centre of the present eastern transept. On either side of the choir-aisles apsidal chapels projected eastward from the Norman transept. It is possible that this may explain the curious Norman building on the north side of the choir of Ripon. To simplify the vaulting problem, by making the compartments as small as possible, the crypt was divided into more than a hundred compartments. Owing to the curve of the apse many of the compartments are not square; yet the difficulty of vaulting triangles and trapeziums was successfully overcome, even at this early date. When nearly all the other traditions of Roman methods of construction had been lost, the architects of mediæval Christendom still retained in their crypts the traditions of Roman vaulting. Even the Anglo-Saxon crypt of the village church of Wing has stone vaulting. In the ante-room of the library are preserved the north doors of the cathedral (fourteenth century), under one of the hinges of which are authentic fragments of the skin of some poor wretch flayed alive for sacrilege. The slype, the undercroft of the refectory, and the south-east entrance near it, also belong to Wulfstan’s work.

To the early part of the twelfth century belongs the circular chapter-house. Most monastic chapter-houses were constructed in a rectangular form, which best fitted on to the side of a cloister. But the cathedrals of secular canons, when they had chapter-houses, followed the Worcester precedent, except that they were built polygonal instead of circular. Such was the beauty, however, of the new form, that the monastic houses also, in later times, themselves frequently adopted the polygonal form, as at Westminster, Evesham, Belvoir (Benedictine); Margam and Abbey Dore (Cistercian); Alnwick, Cockersand, Thornton, Carlisle, Bridlington, Bolton (Canons Regular). Usually the polygonal chapter-house had a central pier; but it was dispensed with at York and Southwell. The polygonal chapter-house never appears in France; it is one of the most beautiful features in English Gothic.

In the twelfth century, about 1160, some weakness seems to have shown itself in or near the west front, and the two western bays of the nave were rebuilt in the style of the day. In the importance given to the triforium, in the semicircular arches which occur in triforium and clerestory, and in the use of the chevron ornament, the work is still Romanesque. But pointed arches also occur both in triforium and clerestory; while the ground-story, with the exception of the square abacus, is purely Gothic. The clustered piers, the rich vaulting-shafts, and well-moulded arches, together with the square abacus, all remind one of the work at Wells (1171-1191); the foliage of the capitals, however, is less advanced.

At length the turning-point was reached in the fortunes of Worcester. The body of St. Wulfstan, after lying dormant for more than a century, began to work miracles. Pilgrims came in crowds. It was the age of pilgrimages. Even King John came with offerings; and his body was brought here for burial. With the pilgrims came the need for more accommodation in the eastern limb of the church, and from the pilgrims came the money to provide it. Winchester choir was not long enough to provide for the crowds who resorted to the shrine of St. Swithun, the Healer; Rochester had turned a Scotch baker into St. William of Perth, and had to provide eastward extensions; Ely had to rebuild its presbytery to give room to the votaries who came from all East Anglia to venerate St. Ethelreda; Durham erected the Chapel of the Nine Altars to accommodate those who flocked from all northern England to the shrine of St. Cuthbert; Canterbury crypt—spacious as it was—was too strait for the pilgrims who came from all over Christendom to worship the relics of its murdered archbishop; both Lincoln and St. Alban’s were crowded out, and later in the century were to build eastward in honour of St. Hugh and St. Alban. St. Wulfstan, being the newest saint, was for a time exceedingly popular.

CHOIR, LOOKING WEST.

Miracles had commenced at Worcester in 1201; about 1204 the reconstruction of the eastern limb had commenced; and within the next forty years the old Norman choir had disappeared, and the present eastern arm was finished. In plan it is a sort of combination of the earlier eastern extensions at Hereford and Winchester. As at Hereford, a small eastern transept was provided, and a shallow Lady chapel; but the space between the eastern transept and the Lady chapel was three bays each way, as in De Lucy’s work at Winchester. The apsidal chapels of the Norman transept were also pulled down, that of the south transept being replaced by an early Gothic chapel. The efficacy of the saint and the liberality of the pilgrims are shown not only in the scale of the new work, but in the wealth of detail. Especially beautiful was the arcading round the walls. Perhaps the only work to compare with the choir of Worcester is the presbytery of Ely; but in the proportions of its members the Ely elevation has the best of it. The Worcester architect followed the proportions of the two Transitional bays at the far end of the nave; and thus, as compared with Ely, the pier-arcade is too stumpy and the triforium too large. The crypt of Wulfstan’s church, as we have seen, only extended as far as the new eastern transept. To get the work east of the new transept on the same level as the rest, the builders would have had to extend the crypt eastward. Crypts, however, had gone out of fashion with the ritualistic need of them; therefore the builder very sensibly built the eastern part of the choir on the level, not of the western bays of the choir, but of the nave. But he has been credited with æsthetic reasons for the course he adopted. A fine effigy of William de Blois, who commenced this thirteenth-century choir, lies on his tomb in front of the Lady chapel.

What happened to the nave between 1245 and 1317 is not known. There is no work in the cathedral of that date. But between 1317 and 1327 Bishop Cobham commenced the reconstruction of the north side of the nave. It is therefore Curvilinear work. It is not, however, typical work of the period. With that tenderness for older design which one sees at Ely, St. Alban’s, Beverley and Westminster, the architect has suppressed his individual preferences, and designed his work so as to be a nice transition from the twelfth-century bays near the west front to the thirteenth-century bays of the choir; so his piers and his clerestory are a Curvilinear version of the work immediately to the west of him, while his triforium is a repeat of that of the choir. But before the new work on the north side was joined up to the Transitional bays of the nave money seems to have become scarce at Worcester. Pilgrims had begun to desert St. Wulfstan for newer if not holier saints. Hitherto St. Wulfstan had had a monopoly in the West-country. There was not another saint of equal efficacy till you reached Winchester. But in 1287 Bishop Cantilupe began to bring the dead to life at Hereford; and in 1327 Edward II. was buried at Gloucester, and miracles soon followed there also. So Worcester now had rival miracle-workers on either side. The result was that it was found impossible to finish the Curvilinear work, although the pier-arcade was complete all along the north side of the nave, and there only remained to build two bays of the triforium and clerestory.