English Cathedrals Illustrated / Second and Revised Edition

by Francis Bond

SOUTH TRANSEPT DOOR.

From each transept projected eastward a two-storied apse (cf. Gloucester), the arches into which remain, and also the very noble arcade which opened into the upper chapel of the apse. It is noteworthy that the aisles are vaulted, as at Kirkstall, in oblong compartments—another mark of late date. The square broach spires of the west front—which, as well as the conical roof of the chapter-house, were restored by Mr. Christian on the authority of old prints—give the church quite a Rhenish appearance. The two big west windows of the towers are modern shams; originally these stages of the towers were, no doubt, solid. The north-west tower has a pointed arcade, and is therefore a little later than its neighbour, which has an intersecting arcade of semicircular arches. Originally the façade was just such a one as that which remains in St. Stephen’s, Caen.

A magnificent string-course of zigzag ornament runs along the nave and round the transepts. In places it has been taken out, reinserted in a different place or copied, when the Perpendicular windows were inserted in the aisle of the nave. In the south transept it takes the unusual form of a segmental arch over the Archbishop’s doorway. The great emphasis given to the horizontal lines of the Norman building is as remarkable here as at Salisbury. There are good examples of the “nebule” corbel-table with a later parapet, and of Norman pinnacles; one of these, over the porch, is hollow, and served as a chimney for the sacristan or sexton, who, it was enacted, “should lie within the church, to be at hand to ring the bells at the right time.” The gables of the transept have very effective zigzag, with interesting differences of treatment; the pinnacles of the transepts seem to have been removed at some time or other to the central tower, for which they are too small. There is a fine view of the whole exterior from the fields and gardens to the south-east.

NORTH PORCH.

IV. This fine Norman church only existed in its entirety for a century. Its eastern limb was less than half the length of the present choir, which was commenced c. 1230 by Archbishop Gray, who built the great transept of York and the west front of Ripon. The plan is practically that of Worcester, (the eastern portion of which was finished c. 1218), but on a humbler scale: viz., an aisled choir for the canons, a tiny eastern transept (such a one was still in existence in the Transitional choir of York), and a long presbytery, the two eastern bays of which were without aisles. Externally this gives a beautiful composition even now. Before its mutilation, the Southwell choir must have been one of the best mediæval designs in Europe. Unfortunately the roofs have been lowered, and in the flattened battlemented eastern gable a most misshapen window now appears. Originally there were no external flying-buttresses (cf. Salisbury); the clerestory wall began to bulge out; the high roofs of the eastern transepts were taken down, and external flying-buttresses were erected (c. 1355). Take these away, in imagination, raise roofs and gables to as sharp a pitch as those of Beverley and Lincoln, and you have a design as noble as it is simple. The alternation of aisled choir and unaisled presbytery with the fine projecting masses of the eastern transepts provides charming contrasts of light and shadow; the base-courses are almost as strong and emphatic as at Salisbury; the sharply chamfered buttresses, with their acute pyramidal caps—a reminiscence of Lincoln nave—are particularly effective. Contrary to Salisbury fashion, the windows are deeply recessed externally. The whole design is vigorous and original.

CHOIR, NORTH SIDE.

The interior of the choir is equally original and interesting. The architect seems to have thought that the vaults of the choir must rise no higher than the eastern arch of the tower. If so, he was mistaken; as may be seen at Norwich, where the choir rises much higher than the nave. His problem then was how to get the appearance without the reality of height in the triforium. The same problem had troubled the Norman builders at Dunstable, Jedburgh, and Oxford; they had solved it by constructing a lofty pier-arcade, and then building the triforium beneath it. The Norman builders at Steyning, and the architects of Southwell and Pershore choirs—which were going up together—solved the difficulty in a different and more effective manner: viz., by inserting the triforium inside the clerestory. This saved the elevation. The pier-arcade was tall, the clerestory was tall, and the whole interior looked tall and not squat.

To interfere with the services as little as possible, the eastern half was built first, as at Rochester and Worcester. When this was finished, the western half was built. If the foliage of the beautiful capitals and corbels and bosses be examined carefully, it will be found to be somewhat stiff and formal in the eastern bays, and to be worked with much more crispness and freedom towards the west (cf. Worcester). The next thing was to pull down the Norman choir, the material of which is found to be largely built up in the western, but not in the eastern bays. In rebuilding the western bays, the first consideration was not to bring down the Norman tower. So the work was not continued from the east, but was started afresh from the tower. The two portions met in the fourth bay; when it was found that, owing to inaccurate setting-out, the arch on the south side of the choir and the string-course on the north side were at a different level to that of the older work to the east. The awkward junction of the arches was masked by a curious medallion. The whole of the work was done late in the Lancet period; as is shown by the frequent use of the triple roll in the bases, and by the fact that the tooth-ornament is worked on a projecting fillet, as in the north transept of Hereford, instead of being set in a hollow. The vault of the aisles and transept is quinquepartite, as in St. Hugh’s aisles and transept at Lincoln; the high vault is quadripartite; and both vaults have the wobbling longitudinal rib of the great transept of Lincoln. At the east end this rib drops down somewhat fortuitously into the middle of a group of lancets. A special local note of this Southwell work is fondness for fillets; they abound everywhere.