English Cathedrals Illustrated / Second and Revised Edition

by Francis Bond

NAVE.

I. First, the Norman choir, of three bays with apse and ambulatory, was pulled down, a broader and longer rectangular choir taking its place. The outer wall of the new choir was built outside that of the old one, so that the latter probably was retained in use for some time, as in Selby choir, while the new works were going on around it. This is borne out by the fact that, contrary to custom, the new work was not commenced at the east, but at the west, for the detail is earlier to the west than to the east. The date 1200 is usually assigned to it. But the entrance arch of the north choir aisle has the Norman diamond pattern; the square alternates with the rounded abacus; the piers are heavy, the arches low, the mouldings large and vigorous, and the foliated capitals at the east end of both aisles are so archaic in character that it seems decidedly to have been commenced in the latter years of the Transitional period, c. 1080: it compares with the work at Wells, Chichester Lady chapel, Boxgrove Priory, St. Thomas’, Portsmouth, and Abbey Dore. Of this work only the piers and arches of the three western bays, and the sacristy and treasury, survive.

II. Some twenty or thirty years later the south transept was commenced, and a little later the north transept. The builders of the choir had planned it for an aisleless transept. When, therefore, the transepts were built with eastern aisles, the easternmost windows of the choir aisles looked into the transept aisles, and no longer into the open air. As the transepts have no triforium above their aisles, we may conjecture that neither had the choir.

III. About the same date as the north transept, a chapter-house and vestibule were built on the north side of the choir, as at Beverley, Lincoln, and York. This had not been contemplated by the builders of the choir; consequently the doorway of the vestibule had to be placed where before was a Lancet window. The vestibule is a bold and vigorous piece of design, with a good vault and a remarkable range of thirteen arcaded seats on its western side. The chapter-house is unique in plan, being an octagon with two long and six short sides: this plan was transplanted to the Lady chapel of Wells. The doorway has bold tooth-ornament; the wall is surrounded by a trefoiled arcade. There is much beautiful glass by Kempe.

IV. About 1250, soon after Westminster choir, the nave was commenced. Its remarkable clerestory windows—spherical triangles enclosing cusped circles—occur in the Westminster triforium, and, rather later, in the clerestory of Hereford north transept. The spherical triangles fit perfectly into the wall-arches of the vaulting, and, as Mr. Fergusson says, “give a stability and propriety to the whole arrangement which has never been surpassed.” The result, however, is to diminish the height of the clerestory, with the inevitable result that the aspiringness that one expects in an Early Gothic elevation is lost; the nave, instead of looking taller, looks lower than it really is. As at Westminster and Beverley, the ground-story occupies one-half of the total height; but in these the triforium occupies about one-sixth only, the clerestory one-third. At Lichfield the triforium and clerestory occupy each one-fourth. Mr. Fergusson makes the striking suggestion that the defect might have been remedied to some extent by glazing the triforium, as in Amiens choir, thus practically bringing the clerestory down to the pier-arches. The vault, too, is most satisfactory—not simple to bareness, like that of Amiens and so many French cathedrals, nor over-elaborated, like those of Winchester and Norwich. The whole design, indeed, of the nave is one of the loveliest in Christendom. It derives great impressiveness, too, from the fact that the vault ranges the whole length of the cathedral in almost undiminished height; and from the fact that the church is not cut up, as at Canterbury, into two distinct buildings. Indeed, small as the cathedral is, the vista from west to east is one of the longest of all the English cathedrals. And its termination in the beautiful polygon of the Lady chapel, so unusual to English eyes, and so beautiful, glimmering in the distance “like some great casket of jewels at the end of the long dusk perspective,” makes an impression never forgotten. By this one remembers the interior of Lichfield, as its exterior by that glorious triple coronal of spires. Nave, transept, and choir are all of the same length. The same scheme of proportions was adopted a little later at York. The axis of the choir is not in a line with that of the nave, but swings to the north five feet.

V. Next the west front was built, c. 1275, except the central gable and the spires. It is a sort of open-air reredos; but marks a great improvement in design on those of Lincoln, Wells, and Salisbury.

LADY CHAPEL.

VI. Then at the very end of the Geometrical period the Lady chapel was built; at first detached from the east end of the choir, so as not to interfere with the services. Being exceedingly lofty and without aisles, it was possible to have exceptionally lofty windows of the type of those of the north transept of Hereford. These elongated windows, the absence of aisles, and the polygonal plan, give the exterior a curiously German appearance. The window tracery is Geometrical, being composed of groups of trefoils. But the ogee-dripstones of the windows show that the work overlaps into the Curvilinear period; indeed, it was not finished at Bishop Langton’s death in 1321. Under the three eastern windows are chapels, the central of which contains the monument of Bishop Selwyn, of New Zealand and Lichfield. But the glory of the Lady chapel and the cathedral is the magnificent painted glass of the sixteenth century—similar in character to the beautiful glass of Margaret of Austria’s church at Brou-en-Bresse, Burgundy. The first window on each side was inserted recently. The remaining seven windows are also Flemish glass, of the date 1530 to 1540, bought by Sir Brooke Boothby, in 1803, from the Cistercian nunnery of Herckenrode, near Liége, for £200. The second window on the north is particularly interesting, as it contains portraits of patrons and benefactors of Herckenrode, kneeling at altars, with their patron saints behind them. The third window also has portraits of great nobles of the Netherlands. The remaining five windows contain Scriptural subjects.

VII. The next step, c. 1325, was to build another bay to the choir, thus joining it up to the Lady chapel. In this bay was placed a new shrine of St. Chad. But even this was not enough for the canons. They were seized with the mania for floods of light and acres of stained glass which raged like an epidemic through the fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They pulled down all the choir except the piers and arches of the three westernmost bays—they would have removed these also but for fear of bringing down the central tower—built new piers and arches in the eastern bays, and a new clerestory along the whole length of the choir with huge windows of flowing tracery, two only of which are left. At the same time they replaced all the lancets of the aisles by big Curvilinear windows. The jambs of the clerestory windows they enriched with bands of quatrefoils; one of the windows of the south aisle of the choir, opposite to which the tomb of Bishop Langton formerly stood, and beneath which good Bishop Hacket’s tomb is now placed, has big crumpled leaves running up the jambs. The junction of the early Lancet piers and capitals with those of the fourteenth century is well seen in the vaulting and in the third pier from the central tower. Between the bays were placed statued niches, as in the contemporary church of St. Mary’s, Beverley, from which rose the vaulting-shaft. The whole design should be compared with the presbyteries of Wells and Chester, which were in course of “restoration” at the same time and in the same ruthless fashion. In the choir aisles is a delightful arcade of bowing ogee arches.