Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] / A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Espicopal See

by H. J. L. J. Massé

The Choir Screen was erected in 1820 by Dr Griffiths, to whose memory a tablet has been inserted in the north-west tower pier. Though this screen has its defects, it superseded one by Kent, erected in Bishop Benson's time (1741), of which Bonner, who seems to have appreciated the stucco front applied by the same good bishop to the reredos in the Lady Chapel, says in his "Itinerary" (1796) that it combined the characteristics of the various orders of architecture without any of their good points.

NAVE.
Drawn by F. S. Waller, F.R.I.B.A., from Brown Willis' Survey of Gloucester Cathedral (1727).

To give an idea of the original screen arrangement, Mr Hope's description is here quoted:—

"The quire proper is under the Tower, a not unusual Benedictine arrangement. The original screens at the west end have unfortunately been destroyed, but from plans made by Browne Willis (vide supra, where Mr Waller's drawing of Browne Willis' plan, made in 1727, is given) and Carter, while some remains of them existed, the arrangement can be approximately recovered. I have advisedly used the plural word 'screens' because they were two in number. The first consisted of two stone walls—the one at the west end of the quire, against which the stalls were returned; the other west of it between the first pair of pillars. There was a central door, which was called the quire door. The western wall was broader than the other, and had in the thickness of its southern half an ascending stair to a loft or gallery above, which extended over the whole area between the two walls. This loft was called in Latin the pulpitum, and it must not, as it often has been, be confounded with the pulpit to preach from. It sometimes contained an altar, as apparently here at Gloucester, and on it stood a pair of organs. From it also on the principal feasts the Epistle was read and the Gospel solemnly sung at a great eagle desk. On either side of the pulpitum door was probably an altar.

"The double screen I have just described was built by Abbot Wigmore, who is recorded to have been buried in 1337, 'before the Salutation of the Blessed Mary in the entry of the quire on the south side,' which he himself constructed with the pulpitum on the same place ut nunc cernitur says the 'Chronicle,' and parts of it are worked up in the present screen. The north side of the quire entry, or perhaps the north quire door, was ornamented with images with tabernacles by Abbot Horton."

"The second screen, all traces of which have long disappeared, stood between the second pair of piers—i.e. a bay west of the pulpitum. It was a lofty stone wall, against which stood the altar of the holy cross, or rood-altar, as it was more commonly called, and upon it was a gallery called the rood-loft, from its containing the great rood and its attendant images. The rood usually stood on the parapet or front rail of the loft, but sometimes on a rood-beam crossing the church at some height above the loft. Such an arrangement seems to have existed at Gloucester, for in the sixth course from the top a new stone has been inserted in both pillars exactly on the line where the ends of the rood beam would be fitted into, or rested on corbels, in the pillars."

On either side of the rood altar the screen was pierced by a doorway for processions, and the altar itself was protected by a fence-screen a little farther west.

After showing how the counterpart of these arrangements existed at Durham (vide Arch. Journ. liv. pp. 77-119), and describing the Durham nave altar and rood, Mr Hope points out that at Gloucester, as at Durham, "the eastern of the two doorways between the nave and the cloister was shut off by the screen and reredos of a chapel adjoining it on the west. The monks could therefore freely pass through the cloister door without being interrupted by strangers. This eastern door was not only the ordinary entrance from the cloister, but through it passed the Sunday and other processions that included the circuit of the cloister and buildings opening out of it. The procession always returned into the church by the western cloister door, and, after making a station before the great rood, passed through the rood doors in single files, and entered the quire through the pulpitum or quire door."