George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

June 17.

I turned out early and got a sketch of the great church before breakfast. Its height is very imposing but in its general character it disappointed my rather high expectations. It appears to me to be a kind of late imitation of early work. For instance the triforium and clerestory have almost geometrical tracery differing only in slight points from the best kind of geometrical work. The proportions too are good and the groining very simple. Many of the shafts in the choir are single columns, but the carving of their capitals is very inferior to that I have seen elsewhere. The choir has, too, a triforium which seems to be much earlier than that of the nave, probably early in the thirteenth century. One of the best features is the management of the chapels and aisles round the apse. There are two transepts; the eastern one does not show however in the ground plan. The tower was central at the west end, but has been all modernized and does not now rise above the immense pointed roof of the nave, so that in the distance the church wants distinctness of character and outline, badly. The flying buttresses are very elaborate and are steadied by arches thrown across from pinnacle to pinnacle, so as to keep them from falling laterally; notwithstanding these precautions the church has fallen out so much in some parts as to look very unsafe.

In the market place there is a quaint old town hall standing on open arches and rather elaborate in its details but very late in its date. There was less to interest in S. Quentin than in most places I have visited as yet, so I was very well able to get away at 11 to Tergnier by railway; here we waited for an hour and then started in a slow diligence for Laon through La Fère and Crépy. I could not see any church in the former place, but in the latter—a good sized village—are two, both of first-pointed date and one with a remarkably good chancel having an east window and side windows of two lights with a distinct circular window above, and all adorned with dog-tooth ornaments. The other was remarkable for a very striking western porch. The road was pretty and soon after passing Crépy brought us in sight of the cathedral of Laon crowning its noble hill in right royal style. A drenching storm of rain prevented our seeing much of the beauty of the view as we climbed the steep road that winds round the hill into the town, but in the evening when we walked round the ramparts we found that it was one of most uncommon magnificence—a vast expanse of flat country generally green in its colour, dotted here and there with woods or villages, and bounded in some parts of the horizon with distant hills....

Our first object in the morning was the cathedral. The original idea of the church (which is said to have been built in the extraordinarily short space of two years) was a great nave, choir and transepts, the west front and both the transept fronts being flanked with two towers of nearly equal height and even fairly similar design. Four of these were completed, those on the east side of the transepts having been only carried up to the height of the roof gables. There is a combination of intense simplicity with an intricate and delicate transparent effect in the open pinnacles at the angles which is wonderfully fine. The scale is larger and the whole treatment though similar is finer than that of Senlis, and though it was imitated it was not, I think, rivalled, even in the magnificent steeples at Rheims.

There is a lantern at the intersection of the nave and transepts which, had it been carried up some vast height above the other towers, might possibly have helped to reduce them all to order; but there is no sign of any such intention, and the only reason for it that can be seen is the desire to elevate the groining at the intersection to a great height above the rest of the roof. I have sketched and measured these towers so carefully that I shall say no more about them, save that they are groined just below the summit and that they were evidently intended for some further finish than they now have, probably for spires like those at Senlis.

The interior of Laon is singularly like that of Noyon, having the same double triforium, but being finished at the east with a square end instead of an apse. Going from one church to another differing only in this respect seemed to give the best possible means of ascertaining with some degree of certainty their relative merits; and certainly it seemed to me that, of the two, Noyon was incomparably the superior, and entirely on this account. The east end of Laon is nevertheless fine for a square east end, and has the windows filled with very magnificent old glass of deep colour. The altar is now brought forward one bay so as to leave a passage beneath the east window.

The capitals generally of this church are very finely treated and would afford endless examples of good work in this early style. In studying the church one of the features most to be noticed is the frequent recurrence of carved courses of foliage which everywhere take the place of moulded string courses.

The south transept has double doorways, and above them a very beautiful rose window. This has now become curious because by its side there is the jamb of a middle-pointed window, evidently inserted by some ambitious man who was going on to put in an entirely new window but who was happily stopped here; I say “here” because he was unhappily not stopped in the south transept and so we have to regret the loss of a grand window suitable to the building and the insertion of one which in no way improves it. On the north side of the choir a great alteration was made in the thirteenth century by throwing out the outer walls to the face of the buttresses in order to gain a considerable number of chapels. This was done in very good style indeed and much improves this part of the exterior.

The only apsidal terminations in the whole church are those of two chapels thrown out on the east side of the transepts. They are carried up three stages in height, one of which opens into the transept aisle and the two others form another chapel out of the magnificent triforium.

Round the east end of the cathedral are large remains of old buildings of early date, connected probably with the church (which, by the by, is said to have been built in A.D. 1113 and 1114, dates which seem to me to be at least fifty years too early for such a structure). The main portion of these buildings consists of a long pile opening to a sort of garth or cloister, north-east of the cathedral, with simple pointed arches supported on low circular columns, and showing on the other side the elevation which I have sketched roughly, and which, standing just at the edge of the cliff, looks on a vast expanse of country until the far distance is lost in mist. These buildings are now converted into some Courts of Law, store houses and lumber rooms.