LADY CHAPEL.
Geometrical Period. Undercroft, Staircase, Chapter house.—When the west front had been peopled with statuary, the undercroft of the chapter-house was built. A similar chapter-house, two stories high, once existed in precisely the same situation i.e.—east of the north transept—at Beverley minster, the exquisite staircase to which still survives. Westminster chapter-house and that of Old St. Paul’s also had undercrofts. These undercrofts probably served as sacristies. The staircase or vestibule to the chapter-house, with simple tracery of cusped circles in its windows, is also of the early Geometrical period: its date is 1286-1320. The work here deserves the closest inspection; it is the best work in Wells cathedral, and unsurpassed by anything in Great Britain. The naturalistic foliage of the capitals and corbels is superb: especially notice the first corbels, representing a monk and a nun treading on serpents. The staircase leads by the chain bridge to the vicars’ close, as well as to the chapter-house. The chapter-house is one of the noblest in England. The long-lobed trefoils in the window tracery indicate that it is a work of the latter half of the Geometrical period (1280-1320); the profusion of ball-flower round and beneath the windows, and the ogee dripstones outside the windows, would seem to indicate that it was not completed till the very end of the period. Canon Church has ascertained that it was not finished before 1320.
FROM SOUTH-EAST.
NAVE.
Curvilinear Period. Lady Chapel, Choir, Central Tower.—But a much more important work remained, which had hitherto been postponed, owing perhaps to the great expense involved in the completion of the west front and the chapter-house. It was to extend the choir eastwards. Many of the great cathedrals had finished their eastward extensions long before. Canterbury choir had been prolonged at the beginning of the twelfth century, and again about 1180. Hereford also was lengthened about 1180. The Angel Choir of Lincoln had been built about 1280. But at Wells, Lichfield and Chester, the extension of the choir was not effected till the Curvilinear period (1315-1360). As at Lichfield, the Wells architect seems first to have built the Lady chapel as a detached building, afterwards joining it up to the Transitional bays of Fitz-Jocelyn’s choir. As every one knows, it is the most beautiful east end we have in England. It may be worth while to try to see how this design was arrived at—a design as exceptional as it is effective. The simplest form of east end in English Gothic is seen at York and Lincoln: it consists merely of a low wall with a big window above it. The next improvement is to build an aisle or processional path behind the east end; at the same time piercing the east wall with one, two, or three arches. This was done at Hereford about 1180; and on a magnificent scale in the Chapels of Nine Altars at Durham and Fountains early in the thirteenth century. But the French apsidal cathedrals—of which we have an example in Westminster—have not only an encircling processional aisle, but also a chevet of chapels radiating out from it; thus providing ever-changing vistas of entrancing beauty. The next step in England also was to provide our rectangular choirs with a chevet as well as with a processional aisle. An early example of this plan is to be seen at Abbey Dore, in Herefordshire, about 1190. It occurs early in the thirteenth century, on a still grander scale, at Salisbury; where one finds not one, but two processional aisles, as well as chapels to the east of them; and, in addition, a Lady chapel projecting still farther to the east, thus producing a design of great complexity and beauty. Nevertheless, at Salisbury, since the chief supporting piers of the retro-choir and the chevet are in a line with those of the choir, there is by no means the same changeful intricacy of vista that affords one ever fresh delight in an apsidal church. At Wells, however, the architect attained all the success of the Continental builder, simply because he built his Lady chapel not rectangular but octagonal. For, to get this octagon, of which only five sides were supported by walls, he had to plant in the retro-choir two piers to support the remaining three sides; and these piers are necessarily out of line with the piers of the choir. He had got the Continental vista. He saw it; but he saw also that it could be improved upon. And he did improve it, by putting up an outer ring of four more piers round the western part of the octagon of the Lady chapel. It was an intuition of genius: it makes the vistas into the retro-choir and Lady chapel a veritable glimpse into fairyland; and provides, here alone in England, a rival to the glorious eastern terminations of Amiens and Le Mans. And that is not all. We saw in the chapter-house the grand effect of the central stalk branching upward and outward in all directions, like some palm tree transmuted into stone. This beautiful effect he transfers to the retro-choir, but multiplied—four palm trees in place of one; for each of the four external piers of the octagon emulates the chapter-house’s central stalk. “It is difficult to determine whether the effect is more striking in the early morning, when the ancient splendours of the stained glass, are reflected on the slender shafts of Purbeck marble and the clustered vault; or at the late winter services, when the darkened figures of saints and prophets in the clerestory combine with the few lights burning in the choristers’ stalls to add something of mystery and solemn gloom to the maze of aisles and chapels, half hidden, half revealed” (Murray). And where did the idea of having an octagonal Lady chapel come from? Possibly it came from Lichfield. If one follows the outline formed by the five walls of Wells Lady chapel and the four outer piers, which complete the octagon, it will be seen that the Wells octagon is of precisely the same elongated form—two long sides and six short ones—as the chapter-house of Lichfield. We may fairly suppose, then, that the Wells architect got the design for his east end by tacking on the elongated octagon of Lichfield chapter-house to the rectangular retro-choir of Salisbury. This Lady chapel is an early work of the Curvilinear period; for it seems to have been complete in 1324. The windows have beautiful reticulated tracery of early type. There is lovely carving in the capitals, bosses, reredos, sedilia and piscina. The Curvilinear foliated capitals here and in the choir should be compared with the somewhat earlier capitals of the chapter-house, with the early Geometrical capitals of the staircase, the Lancet capitals of the west front, and the still earlier ones of porch, nave, and transepts. The ancient glass here and in the Jesse window of the choir is superb in colour.
CHOIR.