St. Asaph.
NAVE, LOOKING EAST.
This is the smallest of the Welsh cathedrals, and consists of an aisled nave of five bays, an aisleless transept, a central tower, and a chancel. The chancel was built by Sir G. G. Scott in 1868; the rest between 1284 and 1352. The arcade and clerestory of the nave are exceptional in character. The piers have no capitals; so that the mouldings run uninterruptedly round the arch; they consist simply of chamfers with a wave moulding. These continuous mouldings are not uncommon in late work—e.g., in Antwerp cathedral; but are seldom found in early Gothic, though a thirteenth-century example occurs in the vestibule of Chester chapter house. The clerestory windows are square, but cusped. The central tower is massive and effective. The cathedral is finely situated, on elevated ground, above the beautiful valley of the Clwyd; and may be seen from the London and Holyhead railway. There are good stalls (1471-1495), and an interesting effigy of a bishop (c. 1300).
St. David’s.
Far away in the extreme west of Pembrokeshire, sixteen miles from the nearest railway station, Haverfordwest, is one of the most interesting cathedrals in the British Isles. Dedicated to the great patron saint of Wales, it is as complex in plan as Winchester or St. Alban’s, and abounds in lovely detail of the Transitional and Curvilinear periods.
The earliest work belongs to the episcopate of Peter de Leia (1176-1198), and comprises parts of the presbytery, the western walls of the transept, the western piers of the tower, and the whole of the nave except the outer portion of the west front (Sir G. G. Scott), and the south porch and the exterior of the south aisle (1328-1347). Though built quite late in the twelfth century, when Gothic architecture had got good hold in Ripon, Canterbury, and Wells, St. David’s—partly perhaps from its remote situation—is still sternly Romanesque. The pier-arcade is low, the piers massive and squat; their arches are semicircular, as also the windows of the clerestory; there is a profusion of Norman zigzag ornament. On the other hand, pointed arches appear in the triforium, the bases have the water-holding hollow, and there are all sorts of beautiful varieties of Transitional capitals—from the early cushion-capitals, much subdivided, in the pier-arcade of the choir, to the later foliated capitals, of great beauty and diversity of design, which abound in the nave. The triforium and clerestory, formed into a single member by a containing-arch of zigzag, are a charming anticipation of the design of Southwell choir.
Early in the thirteenth century, c. 1220, the central tower collapsed, as at Winchester, Ely, Lincoln, etc. It fell towards the east, and seems to have broken down the arches of the presbytery. The Transitional piers were retained, more or less altered; but new pointed arches were built, and lancet windows were inserted in the new clerestory and east wall. In the aisles may be seen the low shafts of a Norman vault, and the corbels of a higher Lancet vault; it is uncertain whether either was ever executed. To this period belongs the very remarkable shrine of St. David: a very plain structure, designed for use—for very strange uses. Down below in each side are three openings, allowing three sick people at a time to lie beneath. (Perhaps they lay there all night, waiting for the Saint to come and touch them, as was the case in some shrines of Pagan Greece.) On the side next to the aisle are two large and shallow upright openings, and three small circular openings—the latter, perhaps, as in St. Alban’s shrine, to allow the patient to insert a diseased arm. A parallel to the lower openings may be found in the remains of the shrine now inserted under the effigy of Lord Stourton at Salisbury. When the restoration of the choir was completed (c. 1248), the next task seems to have been to build a processional aisle. The eastern walk of this was built fifteen feet east of the eastern wall of the cathedral, thus leaving a little open courtyard between the back of the east wall and the east walk of the new processional aisle. In the east wall there was a lower range of three tall lancets, which gave much light to the high altar beneath them. The authorities may then have left the little open courtyard to preserve the light of these three windows. But at Winchester and elsewhere the lower lights were sacrificed without demur; and the space between the east wall of the presbytery and the processional aisle, instead of being wasted, was utilised as a saint’s chapel or feretory, where—in the most honoured position in the church, close to the high altar—the shrine of the patron saint of the church was placed: shrines of St. Swithun and St. Birinus at Winchester, that of St. Werburgh at Chester, of St. Ethelreda at Ely, of St. Wulfstan at Worcester, of St. Cuthbert at Durham, of St. Chad at Lichfield. Now the shrine of St. David is artistically rude and uncouth, and occupies a by no means specially honourable position. May one conjecture that the original intention was to open arches in the east wall of the presbytery, and to build a new shrine for St. David, placing it above and behind the high altar, where it would be conspicuous to the very farthest end of the nave,—and that Welsh conservatism refused either to have a new shrine or to change the position of the old one? Before commencing the south walk of the processional aisle, the Lady chapel was erected (1290-1328). Its buttresses are late Gothic.