English Cathedrals Illustrated / Second and Revised Edition

by Francis Bond

IV. In 1190 a Carthusian monk, Hugh of Avalon, near Grenoble, became bishop. Like Fitz-Jocelyn of Wells, and like the Lichfield builders, he determined not to try to improve the Norman cathedral, but to sweep it away and build an entirely new one. The Wells and Lichfield people succeeded in getting rid altogether of the older building; but Remi’s successors had to leave a considerable amount of Norman work in the western façade and towers. Bishop Hugh commenced work in 1192: first building probably his central apse and eastern transept, and then the walls of his choir, before taking down the short Norman aisleless choir of two bays, outside which in all probability, as at Lichfield, the new walls were erected. It will be noticed that the foliated capitals of the aisle-walls of the choir are earlier in character than those of the pier-arcade. Then he pulled down the old choir, erected the pier-arcade, triforium, and clerestory of the new one, and built the south-east corner of the north transept and the north-east corner of the south transept, where it will be seen that his double arcade along the aisle-wall abruptly ceases. The whole of this work (1192-1200) is very advanced for its date, and is full of originality and eccentricity; the work of an architect (Geoffrey de Noyers) who was more of an artist than an engineer. Externally the design is one characterised by great elegance of proportions. It is remarkable, too, to find the windows grouped at this early date, even in the clerestory. The intermediate buttresses of the aisles are later additions, to resist the thrusts of the quinquepartite vault of the aisles. Internally, it is disappointing. Its proportions are bad, owing to the exceptional lowness of the vault; the vault itself is contorted and ugly; the trefoils and quatrefoils are of all shapes and sizes; the obtuse pier-arches are out of harmony with the acute Lancet windows. Unfortunately, also, the effect of all the piers, except the third piers from the west, has been injured by cutting away the vaulting-shafts, which formerly descended to the floor, but which were stopped by corbels when the stalls were erected.

The north-east transept is quite exceptional. Its northern bay forms an internal tower, formerly divided into stories by wooden floors. The lowest story may have been designed as a return-aisle for processions, as at Winchester, if the triforiums also had floors—there are none now. The upper stories were described in 1641 as “watching chambers”; used, no doubt, by those who remained all night in the cathedral to watch the shrines and treasures, and to guard against fire. It is quite possible that these towers—there was originally a similar tower in the south transept—were intended to be carried up externally; in which case Lincoln would have had a glorious coronal of five towers.

The westward march of the twin towers of the mediæval cathedrals is curious. In the tenth-century churches, such as S. Ambrogio, Milan, and the later cathedral of S. Abbondio, Como, they flanked the choir; so they did at Canterbury, and in the twelfth-century choir of York; so they may have been meant to do at Lincoln. At Exeter they have marched on, and there occupy the ends of the transepts. Finally, they become the twin western towers which form such a characteristic feature of the façades of the mediæval churches of Northern Europe, but not of Lombardy.

FROM SOUTH-WEST.

On the west side of the north-east transept is a unique example of a cathedral dispensary, with triangular recesses in the walls for the drugs. Afterwards a floor was inserted dimway; and to light the darkened lower chambers, windows were cut through the west wall. The shutters of these windows are original, as also the ironwork of the dispensary doorway. The choir ended to the east in a remarkable fashion in a three-sided aisled apse with radiating chapels. This may be due to Hugh’s foreign extraction, or it may be regarded as the legitimate development of such east ends as Gloucester and Tewkesbury. The apsidal termination is shown by incised lines in the pavement of the retro-choir and the south choir aisle. Across the openings of the eastern transepts beams were left from pier to pier, because the fosse of the Roman wall here crossed the choir. The whole choir is full of freaks; the apsidal termination of the choir, the double apses of the eastern transepts, the transeptal towers, the ribbing of the vault, the extraordinary crocketed piers at the entrance of the eastern transepts, the fluted hexagonal shafts, and in the clerestory the miniature arcades and pigeon-holes. The whole design has been claimed as French by M. Corroyer, but M. Viollet-le-Duc’s opinion is decisive on that point: “it is English in its method of construction, in its mouldings, in its ornament, and in execution.” But though English, it is going too far to call it “pure and undefiled Gothic.” The semicircular apses of the eastern transepts are not Gothic; and in Romanesque fashion, the triforium is spanned by transverse stone arches, regardless of the fact that the work they were supposed to do was done in reality by flying-buttresses outside.

ST. HUGH’S ARCADE.

V. The works were probably suspended but for a short time by the death of St. Hugh. He had planned, if not commenced, the apses of the eastern transepts, and left directions that he was to be buried in the north apse of the north-east transept—the chapel of St. John the Baptist. Probably work would be resumed at this point first. This chapel has a curious history. Soon afterwards pilgrims came in crowds to St. Hugh’s tomb, and a larger oblong chapel was built in place of the apse, to accommodate them. In later days this fell into ruin, and in 1769 Essex rebuilt the chapel in its original apsidal form. The work is contemporary with that of the great transept, which also has a string continuing the abaci. After the apsidal chapels were completed there followed the completion of the great transept, the erection of a central tower, and of so much of the western part of the nave as was necessary to give abutment to the tower on the west. It will be noticed that the arcading at the east end of the north aisle of the nave belongs to this period. All this may well have been designed by Geoffrey de Noyers, for the tower was badly built and collapsed in 1239; the west wall of the transept is full of blunders, and the vault of the north transept cuts off the head of the circular window, the Dean’s Eye. But externally the design of this north end is superb. The vaulting, as in the eastern transepts, is sexpartite, with the addition of a new longitudinal rib, which wobbles up and down in a distressing manner. The vault is copied—wobbling included—in Southwell choir. Magnificent contemporary glass remains in the Dean’s Eye and the lancets below it.

VI. The next work was the completion of the first five eastern bays of the nave. Whoever the architect was, or the architects—for there may have been two of them, the arcading of the aisles and the height of the bases differing widely on the north and south sides of the nave—it was not Geoffrey de Noyers, but some one who was both a good artist and a good engineer—so good an engineer that in the interior he sacrificed art to engineering. The piers he set as far apart as possible, and made them as thin as possible; but they are beautifully built, and rest on foundations which are continuous underground from pier to pier. These obtuse arches, however, and attenuated piers are most unsatisfactory to the eye. The nave is practically an improved version of the choir—improved in the vaulting, the buttresses and pinnacles, and in height. To the vault he added intermediate ribs—an early example of their use. The northern exterior of the nave, with its knife-edge buttresses and tall gablets and strong base-courses, is one of the best designs in all Gothic; it is of almost Greek severity. The height of the nave he raised from 74 to 82 feet. A Frenchman would have given a nave so broad (42 feet) a height of 120 feet. However, he was thinking—as all the Lincoln architects were always thinking—of how it would look outside, how it would affect the sky-line of the cathedral to have a nave far higher than the choir. Never was an English cathedral built so much for external effect as Lincoln; in every part of it the exterior is finer than the interior.