English Cathedrals Illustrated / Second and Revised Edition

by Francis Bond

The first seat of the diocese was on the coast at Selsea; it was transferred to Chichester by Stigand in 1082, when other Norman prelates removed to fortified towns such as Lincoln, Exeter, and Norwich. In the south aisle of the choir are two Saxon slabs representing the meeting of Christ with Mary and Martha and the raising of Lazarus. The figures are the tall, emaciated, but dignified figures of archaic Byzantine art; their stature carefully proportionate to their importance; the slabs may well have come from Selsea. Stigand was followed by Gosfried, who for some unknown sin sought and obtained absolution from the Pope. The original document in lead may be seen in the library. “We, representing St. Peter, the chief of the Apostles, to whom God gave the power of binding and loosing, absolve thee, Bishop Godfrey, so far as thy accusation requests and the right of remission belongs to us. God the Redeemer be thy salvation and graciously forgive thee all thy sins. Amen. On the seventh of the Calends of April, on the festival of St. Firmin, bishop and martyr, died Godfrey, bishop of Chichester; it was then the fifth day of the moon.”

I. Norman.—Godfrey was succeeded in 1091 by Ralph, whose stone coffin, marked “Radulphus” may be seen in the Lady chapel. Godfrey built the present Norman cathedral, or at any rate enough of it to allow a consecration in 1108. Before his death in 1123, or soon after, the whole cathedral must have been complete except the west front, where only the two lower stories of the south-west tower are Norman. The voluted capital of eleventh-century Norman work—an attempt at Ionic—which appears also on the east side of Ely transept—occurs in the triforium of the choir. The work in the four eastern bays of the nave is a little later; the four western bays, in which the triforium is treated differently, were possibly not built till after the fire in 1114. The Norman Church had the same ground-plan as that of Norwich, commenced c. 1096, and Gloucester, commenced c. 1089. It had an aisled nave, aisleless transept with eastern apses, aisled choir, apse and ambulatory, and a chevet of three radiating chapels, of which the side chapels were semicircular, the central or eastern chapel oblong, as at Canterbury and Rochester. Externally, on the south wall of the choir, in the second bay from the east, may be seen traces of the curve of the wall of the ancient apse, and also a triforium window which originally was in the centre of one of the narrowed bays of the apse, but has now ceased to be central. In the chamber above the library the curve of the wall of the apse of the north transept is well seen. The piers, as in most eleventh-century work, are monstrously and unnecessarily heavy, and the arches constricted. It is rather a monotonous interior, with the same design from choir to west end. It is a pity that they did not give us a different and improved design in the nave, as was done at Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Matters have been made worse by the removal of a superb Perpendicular stone rood-screen, crowned, as at Exeter, by a Renaissance organ. The removal of this has impaired the general effect of the interior, much lessening the apparent length of the cathedral. As usual, only the aisles and apses of the Norman cathedral were vaulted; the aisles here, as at Southwell, are vaulted in oblong compartments. It was dedicated to St. Peter, and served by secular Canons, of whom in 1520 there were thirty-one. In the triforium of the choir were semicircular transverse arches, precisely as in the choir of Durham.

PRESBYTERY.

II. Late Transitional and Early Lancet, from the fire of 1186 to the consecration of 1199, when the cathedral was re-dedicated to the Holy Trinity. About 1180 some work was going on in the western part of the Lady chapel, but in a great fire in 1186 the roofs and fittings of the whole cathedral were burnt, and the clerestories were no doubt damaged by falling timbers. The destruction, however, was by no means so great as at Canterbury in the fire of 1182, and no such drastic process of rebuilding was necessary. Bishop Siegfried confined himself to four objects: (1) To fireproof the cathedral by covering it with a stone vault, provided with the necessary buttresses and flying-buttresses. And as the clerestory which had to support the vault was much damaged, its inner arcade had to be rebuilt. (2) To replace the apse and ambulatory and chevet by a rectangular retro-choir with square eastern chapels. (3) To replace the transeptal apses by similar chapels. (4) To get rid of some of the rough and heavy appearance of the ground-story of the whole church. He did not touch the triforium.

Siegfried probably commenced with the choir, which was most wanted. The masonry of the ground-story had probably been calcined by the roof-timbers blazing on the floor; the inner face of this was cased with good Caen stone. As at Canterbury, great use was made of Purbeck marble, in which were built angle-shafts and capitals to the piers, hood-moulds for the pier-arches, string-courses below and above the triforium, and arcading to the clerestory. In front of each pier a triple vaulting-shaft was run up, with a marble capital, supporting the new quadripartite vault. Externally, the clerestory wall was supported by flying-buttresses of heavy archaic type, similar to those of the choirs of Canterbury and Boxgrove. Later on, the same treatment was extended by Siegfried and his successors to the nave and transepts.

His next step was to remove the Norman apse and to build an aisled retro-choir of two bays. This is the architectural gem of the cathedral. The idea of it probably came from Hereford, where the retro-choir is a few years earlier. At Hereford, however, the retro-choir projects picturesquely, and forms an eastern transept. The central piers of the Chichester retro-choir are remarkably beautiful. They consist of a central column surrounded by four shafts very widely detached; column and shafts are of Purbeck marble. The capitals are Corinthianesque; their height is proportioned to the diameters of the column and shafts. This beautiful capital was reproduced a few years later by St. Hugh at Lincoln, and the pier at Boxgrove. The triforium is of quite exceptional beauty, as indeed is the whole design. Semicircular arches occur in the pier-arcade and triforium, and some of the abaci are square; otherwise the design is pure Gothic. Here, as at Abbey Dore, St. Thomas’, Portsmouth, Boxgrove, and Wells, we see the transition from the Transition to the “pure and undefiled Gothic” of St. Hugh’s choir at Lincoln. In these beautiful churches the ancient Romanesque style breathed its last.

The aisles of the new retro-choir were continued on either side of the first bay of the Norman Lady chapel, whose three bays had probably been remodelled before the fire in Transitional fashion. The capitals of the Lady chapel are of exceptional interest and importance, as showing experimental foliation which had not yet settled down into the conventional leafage of early Gothic. The apse also of the south transept was replaced by a square chapel; and that of the north transept by a double chapel, now used as a library, in the vaulting of which the Norman zigzag occurs.

III. A little later in the Lancet period was built (1199-1245) the lovely south porch, with small, exquisite mouldings, and charming foliated capitals and corbels. The difference between early Transitional, late Transitional, and Lancet foliation may be well seen by examining successively the capitals of the Lady chapel, the triforium of the retro-choir, and the south porch. The north porch is almost equally fine. The vaulting-ribs, square in section, show that the two porches both belong to the very first years of the thirteenth century. Rather later, the sacristy was built on to the south porch, with a massive vault supported by foliated corbels.