Bristol Cathedral was originally a church of the Regular Canons of the Augustinian Order, who settled at Bristol in 1142. In 1542, like the Augustinian churches of Carlisle and Oxford, it became a cathedral. In 1836 the see was united to that of Gloucester: it has recently resumed its independent status.
I. Late Norman.—The choir and transepts of the cathedral were almost wholly rebuilt in the fourteenth century; but here and there the original work of the founder, Robert Fitzhardinge, survives. This includes (1) the end wall of the south transept, which contains a doorway, afterwards blocked up, when the south aisle of the Norman nave was constructed with a doorway into it from the north-east corner of the cloister. Inside the transept is a Norman cushion-corbel, supporting a later Perpendicular capital. (2) Outside the south transept are flat pilaster buttresses at the angles; the set-off of the ancient parapet; and a plain gable window, set in a rough wall, on which may be seen the weathering of the original steep roof. (3) The coursed masonry below the big window of the north transept. (4) The lower part of the tower-piers; for their Perpendicular mouldings, as in the earlier remodelling of Winchester nave, are such as could be developed out of a Norman compound pier. (5) The corbels in the staircase on the north side of the choir. (6) The gatehouse to the Abbot’s lodgings.
THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.
II. Transitional.—About 1145 innovations began to be made in Anglo-Norman Romanesque. Among other things the pointed arch was introduced; at first chiefly in arches supporting central towers or vaults. In 1155 the founder received a grant of the forfeited estates of Roger de Berkeley; and, owing to this vast accession of wealth, was able to finish his Norman and Transitional work with exceptional richness. (1) In the Vestibule to the Chapter-house, the bays being oblong, pointed arches were used on the short sides of each bay, so that their crowns might rise to the same height as those of the semicircular arches on the longer sides, as the builders thought was demanded by the requirements of vaulting. In the same way, beneath the central towers of Oxford Cathedral and Bolton Priory, pointed arches were built over the narrow transepts; while over the broader nave and choir the semicircular arch was employed. (2) The Chapter-house, as in most monastic establishments, e.g., Gloucester, Canterbury, Oxford, Chester, was oblong; the more beautiful polygonal form being more in favour in cathedrals served by Secular Canons. It was originally 71 by 25 feet. The vast scale of these conventual arrangements, here and elsewhere, is exceedingly striking. The monks of St. Albans thought that their church required a nave 300 feet long; the six canons of Bristol must have been lost in a Chapter-house 71 feet long. The recessed arcades round the walls here and at Worcester are interesting; simple as they are, they are the germs of the beautiful arcades of canopied niches round the Chapter-houses of York and Wells and the Lady Chapel of Ely. Here is preserved a fine piece of archaic sculpture (see Chichester). (3) Exceedingly rich, too, is the lower part of the Great Gateway in College Green; “its courses, however, are nearly double the height of Norman masonry; the hood-moulds of all the arches are perpendicular, and at the crown of each arch are mitred into a perpendicular string-course; which, with the high finish of the ornament, points to the gateway having been wholly rebuilt in Perpendicular times”; in which case, like the eastern bay of the triforium of Rochester, it is an early example of “architectural forgery.” Fitzhardinge’s nave and aisles seem to have been pulled down in the sixteenth century with a view to rebuilding; which, however, was not carried out till 1877.
ELDER LADY CHAPEL.
III. Lancet.—Early in the thirteenth century a beautiful Lady chapel was built, projecting eastward from the north transept, and separated by a few feet from the north wall of the choir. The same position was adopted later for the Lady chapels of Peterborough and Ely. This chapel is the artistic gem of the cathedral; it is surrounded by arcades of the greatest beauty, with sculptured grotesques interspersed among the foliage that remind one of the rich sculptured work in the retro-choir of Worcester, which is possibly a few years earlier. Later on it received the name of the elder Lady chapel; another Lady chapel having been built in the more normal position at the extreme east of the choir.
IV. Fitzhardinge’s cathedral, supplemented by the Lady chapel, seems to have satisfied the Canons very well for the first half of the thirteenth century. But in the Early Geometrical period (1245-1280), preparations were made to improve the lighting of the north transept by the insertion of a big window in its north wall. The tracery of the present window is later; but its inner jambs, mouldings and shafts, and the external sill and string, as well as a great part of the buttresses, seem to have been executed c. 1250. About this date is the fine doorway, with a cleverly-contrived lintel, at the south end of the east walk of the Cloister.