Photo. G.P. Heisch.
THE SOUTH-WESTERN PORCH.[ToList]
From the remains of a bracket discovered in the ruins of the former arcading, it is obvious that the central space was intended for a statue. We are not left to mere conjecture on this point, but have documentary evidence to confirm it, which shows that the recess held a seated figure of the Blessed Virgin, the patroness of the church.[19] The arch is now vacant, though supplied with a suggestive pedestal; and there is one other detail in which the restorer appears to have departed from his original, viz., in not reproducing the small clusters of foliage that were distributed along the hollows of the mouldings.
The long gargoyles projecting horizontally on either side of the roof, and the floriated cross on the apex, are worth notice. The modern restoration is indicated by a cross (patée) carved on the central buttress on this side of the Cathedral, which marks the stone laid by King Edward VII on 24th July, 1900, when His Majesty was Prince of Wales.
The West Front is chiefly remarkable as presenting a dead wall where we usually expect to find the grand entrance. It is a debated question among antiquaries and architects whether the first Norman church ever had a doorway in this front; and the question has not got beyond conjecture as to the Early English church which superseded it in the thirteenth century. It is certain, however, that a rich and elaborate entrance, deeply recessed, was inserted here in the Perpendicular age (sixteenth century), about the same date that the upper stages of the tower were set up, either for the first time, or in place of an earlier doorway.[20]
The same uncertainty attends the history of the great west window; all traces of the original having disappeared when a window of the Perpendicular style was introduced in agreement with the doorway below. Before the alterations, or mutilations, of the seventeenth century, this window was of six lights transomed, with cinquefoil tracery at the heads of the lower (and probably also of the upper) lights, as inferred from the fragments which survived its mutilation.[21]
In the absence of data as to the Early English façade, the architect for the restoration has been thrown to a large extent upon his own resources. The question of the doorway he has answered in the negative. The window he has given us consists of three lancet lights corresponding with those at the east end, but considerably longer, with an unglazed panel of similar design, on either side, diminishing in height from the central light outwards in harmony with the lines of the roof. The north and south ends of the façade are flanked by stair-turrets, square in their lower portion, rising into octagons, and surmounted by sharply pointed roofs. To relieve the monotony of the horizontalism, a simple arcading has been inserted in the wall spaces above the central window, and above the aisle windows (plain lancets) on the right and left. Independently of the question of precedent, the absence of a doorway in this front is quite intelligible at the present day, when the church wall almost touches the narrow public pavement, and the close street of lofty business houses allows no room for perspective, or even convenient access.
The North Side of the nave corresponds with the south, each bay containing a lancet window in the clerestory. The spaces in the aisle below are similarly lighted, except in one bay towards the east, where Gower's monument in the interior necessitates a shorter window, which is here made a double lancet. At the extreme eastern end of this side of the nave we come to a most interesting relic in the remains of the Norman Doorway (twelfth century), which had been the Prior's entrance from the cloisters. Shut in and completely hidden by brickwork, it was discovered in 1829 in a shocking state of mutilation, but fortunately in situ. It was further mutilated, and bricked up again during the building operations of 1839, to be again revealed when the rubbish of that date was cleared away for the new nave, where the fragments are now carefully preserved in the wall. The archivolt is no more, all that we have being some fragments of the jambs on which it rested, one of which, on the east side (on the returned face), shows two old consecration crosses. In its perfect state this fine specimen of late Norman work is known to have consisted of three orders of shafts (banded) in the jambs, with moulded bases and sculptured capitals, the bold archivolt also displaying three orders.