The Western Screen, which separates the nave from the choir, is now more commonly known as the organ-screen: it is a highly elaborate and beautiful piece of work, and the carvings which decorate it are well worthy of examination. In the lower niches there are six crowned figures: one holding a church is believed to be Ethelbert, while it has been assumed that the figure on the extreme right represents Richard II.: probably Henry IV., who, as has been already mentioned, “helped to build a good part of the body of the Church” has a place of honour here, but no certainty on this matter is possible. The thirteen mitred niches which encircle the arch once contained figures of Christ and the twelve Apostles, but these were destroyed by the Puritans. The exact date of this outward screen is uncertain, but it was set up at some time during the fifteenth century. “A little examination,” says Willis, “of its central archway will detect the junction of this new work with the stone enclosure of the choir.” In fact, this archway is considerably higher than that of De Estria which still remains behind it. The apex of this arch reaches but a little above the capitals of the new arch, and the flat space, or tympanum, thus left between the two, is filled with Perpendicular tracery.
The Choir.—“In the year of grace one thousand one hundred and seventy-four, by the just but occult judgment of God, the Church of Christ at Canterbury was consumed by fire, in the forty-fourth year from its dedication, that glorious choir, to wit, which had been so magnificently completed by the care and industry of Prior Conrad” (“Gervase,” translated by Willis). The work of rebuilding was immediately begun by William, the architect of Sens. At the beginning of the fifth year of his work, he was, by a fall from the height of the capitals of the upper vault, “rendered helpless alike to himself and for the work, but no other person than himself was in the least injured. Against the master only was the vengeance of God or spite of the devil directed.” He was succeeded in his charge by one “William by name, English by nation, small in body, but in workmanship of many kinds acute and honest.” Now in the sixth year from the fire, we read that the monks were “seized with a violent longing to prepare the choir, so that they might enter it at the coming Easter. And the master, perceiving their desires, set himself manfully to work, to satisfy the wishes of the convent. He constructed, with all diligence, the wall which encloses the choir and presbytery. He carefully prepared a resting-place for St. Dunstan and St. Elfege. The choir thus hardly completed even with the greatest labour and diligence, the monks were resolved to enter on Easter Eve with the ‘new fire,’” that is, the paschal candle which was lit on Easter Eve and burnt until Ascension Day. The kindling of this light was carried out in a very ceremonious manner as enjoined in Lanfranc’s statutes. A fire was made in the cloister and duly consecrated, and the monks, having lit a taper at this fire carried it on the end of a staff in solemn procession, singing psalms and hymns and burning incense, and lit the paschal candle in the choir with it.
Thus was the new choir completed, in the sixth year after the burning of Conrad’s. This part of the cathedral will be peculiarly interesting to the architectural student, owing to the curious mixture of styles, which enables him to compare the Norman and Early English characteristics side by side. A striking feature in the aspect of the building, as seen from the choir, is the remarkable inward bend with which the walls turn towards one another at the end of the cathedral. The choir itself is peculiar in the matter of length (180 feet—the longest in any English church), and the lowness of the vaulting. The pillars, with their pier-arches and the clerestory wall above are said by Willis to be without doubt the work of William of Sens: but the whole question as to where the French William left off and his English namesake began is extremely uncertain, as there can be no doubt that William of Sens had fully planned out the work which he was destined never to complete, and it is more than probable that his successor worked largely upon his plans. We are on safer ground when we assert that the new choir was altogether different from the building which it replaced. The style was much more ornate and considerably lighter: the characteristics of the work of the Williams are rich mouldings, varied and elaborately carved capitals on the pillars, and the introduction of gracefully slender shafts of Purbeck marble. Gervase, in pointing out the differences between the works before and after the fire, mentions that “the old capitals were plain, the new ones most artistically sculptured. The old arches and everything else either plain or sculptured with an axe and not with a chisel, but in the new work first rate sculpture abounded everywhere. In the old work no marble shafts, in the new innumerable ones. Plain vaults instead of ribbed behind the choir.” “Sculptured with an axe,” reads rather curiously, but Professor Willis points out that “the axe is not quite so rude a weapon in the hands of a mason as it might appear at first sight. The French masons use it to the present day with great dexterity in carving.” The mouldings used by Ernulf were extremely simple, and were decorated with a “peculiar and shallow class of notched ornament,” of which many examples exist in other buildings of the period; while the mouldings of William of Sens “exhibit much variety, but are most remarkable for the profusion of billet-work, zigzag and dogtooth, that are lavished upon them.” The first two methods of ornamentation are Norman, the last an Early English characteristic. This mixture is not confined to the details of decoration but may be observed also in the indiscriminate employment of round and pointed arches. This feature, as Willis remarks, “may have arisen either from the indifference of the artist as to the mixture of forms or else from deliberate contrivance, for as he was compelled, from the nature of his work, to retain round-headed arcades, windows, and arches, in the side-aisles, and yet was accustomed to and desirous of employing pointed arches in his new building, he might discreetly mix some round-headed arches with them, in order to make the contrast less offensive by causing the mixture of forms to pervade the whole composition, as if an intentional principle.”
Whatever the motive, this daring mixture renders the study of the architectural features of our cathedral peculiarly interesting. In the triforium we find a semicircular outer arch circumscribing two inner pointed ones. The clerestory arch is pointed, while some of the transverse ribs of the great vault are pointed and some round.
The inward bend of the walls at the end of the choir was necessitated by the fact that the towers of St. Anselm and St. Andrew had survived the great fire of 1174. Naturally the pious builders did not wish to pull down these relics of the former church, so that a certain amount of contraction had to be effected in order that these towers should form part of the new plan. This arrangement also fitted in with the determination to build a chapel of the martyred St. Thomas at the end of the church, on the site of the former Trinity Chapel. For the Trinity Chapel had been much narrower than the new choir, but this contraction enabled the rebuilders to preserve its dimensions.
The Altar, when the choir was at first completed by William, stood entirely alone, and without a reredos; behind it the archbishop’s chair was originally placed, but this was afterwards transferred to the corona. The remarkable height at which the altar was set up is due to the fact that it is placed over the new crypt, which is a good deal higher than the older, or western crypt. Before the Reformation the high altar was richly embellished with all kinds of precious and sacred ornaments and vessels: while beneath it, in a vault, were stored a priceless collection of gold and silver vessels: such of these as escaped the rapacity of Henry VIII. were destroyed by the bigotry of the Puritan zealots: the latter made havoc of the reredos which had been erected behind the high altar, probably during the fourteenth century, and also a “most idolatrous costly glory cloth,” the gift of Archbishop Laud. The reredos was replaced by a Corinthian screen, which was of elaborate design, but must have been strangely out of keeping with its surroundings; it was removed about 1870, to make way for the present reredos which was designed in the style of the screen work in the Lady Chapel in the crypt, but which cannot be commended as an object of beauty. The altar coverings which are now in use were presented to the cathedral by Queen Mary, the wife of William III., when she visited Canterbury. A chalice, given by the Earl of Arundel in 1636, is among the communion-plate. In his account of the building of the new choir, Gervase tells us that “the Master carefully prepared a resting-place for St. Dunstan and St. Elfege—the co-exiles of the monks.” When the choir was ready, “Prior Alan, taking with him nine of the brethren of the Church in whom he could trust, went by night to the tombs of the saints, so that he might not be incommoded by a crowd, and having locked the doors of the church, he commanded the stone-work that inclosed them to be taken down. The monks and the servants of the Church, in obedience to the Prior’s commands, took the structure to pieces, opened the stone coffins of the saints, and bore their relics to the vestiarium. Then, having removed the cloths in which they had been wrapped, and which were half-consumed from age and rottenness, they covered them with other and more handsome palls, and bound them with linen bands. They bore the saints, thus prepared, to their altars, and deposited them in wooden chests, covered within and without with lead: which chests, thus lead-covered, and strongly bound with iron, were inclosed in stone-work that was consolidated with melted lead.” This translation was thus carried out by Prior Alan on the night before the formal re-entry into the choir: the rest of the monks, who had not assisted at the ceremony, were highly incensed by the prior’s action, for they had intended that the translation of the fathers should have been performed with great and devout solemnity. They even went so far as to cite the prior and the trusty monks who had assisted him before the Archbishop, and it was only by the intervention of the latter, and other men of authority, and “after due apology and repentance,” that harmony was restored in the convent.
