CRYPT.
VII. To the Tudor period belongs the Angel or Bell Harry Tower (1495-1503), and the buttressing and arches inserted between its piers. Also the Christ Church gateway. The great tower is remarkable for the unbroken verticality of its buttresses; it is as exceptional as it is successful in design.
The Chapter-house is rectangular, for a rectangular building fitted more easily into the east walk of a monastic cloister. Nearly all the monastic chapter-houses are therefore rectangular, but sometimes had apses; the exceptions being the Benedictine chapter-houses of Worcester, Westminster, Evesham, and Belvoir (which last was exceptional also in position, being placed in the very centre of the cloister), and the Cistercian chapter-houses of Morgam and Abbey Dore, sister designs. While the Secular Canons, having as a rule no cloister, preferred a polygonal chapter-house, as at Lincoln, Beverley, Lichfield, Salisbury, Wells, Elgin, Southwell, York, Old St. Paul’s, Hereford, Howden, Manchester, Warwick. So did the Regular Canons at Alnwick, Cockersand, Thornton, Carlisle, Bridlington, and Bolton. This beautiful polygonal form seems not to occur in France.
FROM SOUTH-WEST.
At the north-west corner of the cloister is the doorway through which Becket passed to the north-west transept, with his murderers in pursuit of him. Near here is a hole in the wall, the Buttery hatch. In the fifteenth century the south walk of the cloister was divided into “studies” for the monks by wooden partitions (at Gloucester they are of stone), and its windows were glazed.
From the cloister we pass to the West Front, and commence the tour of the exterior. The south-west tower (with the Deans’ chapel) was completed by Prior Goldstone (1449-1468); the copy of it was put up in 1834: “it was an eyesore that the two towers did not match.” Very bad modern statues adorn the niches.
Later still (1517) is Christ Church Gateway, through which one first approaches the cathedral, with doors inserted in 1662. Originally it had two turrets. Outside it is a monument to the dramatist Marlowe.
