The “Annals of an Abbey,” in Froude’s “Short Studies,” should be read.
The Cathedral Church of St. Mary, Salisbury.
Two English cathedrals surpass all others in external effect: Lincoln and Salisbury; each of them being at its best as seen from the north-east. But Lincoln lacks “the quiet tranquillity of the close of Salisbury, the half-hidden houses, covered with vines and creepers, that nestle among the trees, the sense of being shut off from the work-a-day world. If Durham seems the petrified interpretation of the Church militant, Salisbury is the very type and picture of the Church of the Prince of Peace. Unworldliness and peace brood over church and close.”
The ancient Norman cathedral stood within the fortifications of Old Sarum. The site was cramped, and extension was impossible; there was far too much wind and far too little water; moreover the soldiers who garrisoned the castle were most objectionable neighbours. So, by permission of the Pope, Bishop Richard Poore in 1220 commenced a new cathedral on the present site.
It was a virgin site; and from this fact resulted a cathedral different from any other that we possess, and as a study in design more important than any other we possess. In other cathedrals we study the mediæval architect designing under difficulties; what we see in such a composite cathedral as Hereford or Chichester or Rochester is not one design, but a dozen designs trying to blend into one design; sometimes, as at Canterbury and Rochester, rather ineffectually, sometimes, as at Hereford, with remarkable success. At Salisbury it is not so: the design is one design, all sprang from a single brain, except the west front and possibly the upper part of tower and spire. We have no such homogeneous design in our mediæval cathedrals. The French were less conservative, perhaps less penurious; their Gothic architects were iconoclasts; no French architect could have allowed such frightful solecisms to remain as disfigure our cathedrals to the purist eye, and endear them to the artist.
Bishop Poore’s architect, Elias de Dereham, one of the canons of the cathedral, who a little later designed the eastern transept of Durham, had—what no other of our Gothic architects had—a free hand. Salisbury, then, tells us what no other cathedral does—what an English architect thought a cathedral ought to be like, when not hampered by having to preserve or assimilate pre-existing work or to build on pre-existing foundations. Canterbury nave is not the best the architect could do: it is the best he could do subject to the restriction that his nave must be neither longer nor broader than Lanfranc’s ancient nave. Elias de Dereham had no such restrictions; the cathedral was to be built in the green pastures, he could take as much space as he liked.