English Cathedrals Illustrated / Second and Revised Edition

by Francis Bond

It is not, however, what Elias de Dereham, the original architect, meant. No spire, or even upper tower, says Sir Christopher Wren, was originally contemplated. The unique slenderness of the piers of the crossing is certain evidence of that. The diameter of the piers on which the central tower of Canterbury rests is twelve feet; those at York and Winchester have a diameter of ten feet; those at Worcester nine feet; those of Peterborough tower (which collapsed) and of Salisbury, seven feet only. It is almost terrible to stand between these four thin piers of Salisbury and think how many hundred tons of stone in tower and spire above they have been made to bear. They were never meant to bear any such weight, especially planted as they are, like the whole cathedral, on the insecure foundation of a spongy bog. Indeed, not merely the tower and spire, but the whole cathedral, ought never to have been built where they are. Recklessness is by no means a strong enough word to use of the mediæval builders’ wanton carelessness about foundations. Peterborough cathedral was built practically without foundations on waterlogged peat; beneath the central tower of Carlisle cathedral were two running springs; Wells is reared on the boggy shores of a ring of pools. At Salisbury continuous bases had to be built from pier to pier.

RETRO-CHOIR, LOOKING WEST.

Elias de Dereham’s design, no doubt, was to give us an exterior something like that of Beverley Minster or Westminster Abbey. The whole elevation of the cathedral, however, clamoured for a tall tower and spire. The original design was abandoned, and the foolhardy enterprise was taken in hand (c. 1330) of adding to the existing tower, which only just rose above the roofs, two more stages, and on these a spire, and that not of wood, but of stone. To abut this perilous steeple as much as possible, great flying-buttresses were added, both externally and running through the clerestory and triforium of the interior of the church. Moreover, to lessen the weight, the tower-walls were built in thin shells, while the spire is but nine inches thick. That the builders left their timber scaffolding in the spire, where it still is, to give its sides a little additional support, shows that they were alive themselves to the fragility and insecurity of their work. Later on, in the fifteenth century, stone girders were put across the piers of the central and eastern transepts, as at Canterbury and Wells, by way of struts, to keep the piers from bulging inwardly, though, as a matter of fact, what was wanted was rather ties to keep them from bulging outwardly.

Externally, however, the madness of this engineering feat does not trouble one. The addition of the tower and spire gives to the whole composition that pyramidal outline which always presents such a satisfactory appearance of stability to the eye—and in architectural design it is the eye that has to be reckoned with. In Wren’s masterpiece, St. Paul’s, one has the same central pyramidal outline of all the masses, but in a still higher degree.

NAVE AND WEST FRONT.

In both cases, in St. Paul’s and in Salisbury, unity is secured. Salisbury spire is tall enough, St. Paul’s dome is tall and broad enough, to impose unity on all the diverging masses of the building. The low towers of Worcester and Hereford have no such supreme dominance.

Next to the abiding presence of the spire, unity is secured by scoring strong, horizontal lines round the building, welding its masses into one composition. Most cathedrals are contented, like Wells, with one strong horizontal line—a broad parapet. But at Salisbury there is not only a horizontal parapet, but a horizontal corbel-table as well; and there are no less than three horizontal strings—one running round the base of the walls, a second running along beneath the windows, and a third running round the buttresses; moreover, each of these horizontal lines is scored far more heavily than anywhere else. Especially remarkable is it to find the upper flow of the buttresses stopped by a heavy string. Usually, in Gothic, if a horizontal meets a vertical line, the former gives way; here, as in Greek architecture, the vertical gives way to the horizontal line. This architect saw, what few others of his day saw, that you may make too much of the “aspiring principle” of Gothic; that if you suppress the horizontal lines, you weaken the unity of the building, by failing to tie all its parts together.

As we have seen, the appearance of stability was enhanced by the pyramidal outline which the whole building ultimately assumed. But the eye instinctively looks downwards also to see that the pyramidal outline is continued there, it instinctively demands an emphatic spreading base. It likes to see a rock-like foundation. At Salisbury all below is but greensward. All the more carefully, therefore, has the builder spread out and broadened and emphasised his base-courses, till art gives the appearance of stability which nature has denied.