Roberts' Chester Guide [1858]

by Hugh Roberts

The Abbey was so richly endowed by the founder and his successors, that at the dissolution its revenues amounted to no less a sum than £1,073 17s. 7d. per annum.

On the general dissolution of the monasteries, Chester was erected into an independent bishopric, and St. Werburgh’s was converted into a Cathedral Church, which it has ever since remained. It was dedicated to Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary; and a dean and six prebendaries installed in it, Thomas Clarke, the last abbot, being appointed the first dean.

The principal portions of this venerable pile have been erected at different periods from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, although there are some parts which bear indubitable marks of a much earlier origin; the greater part, perhaps, belongs to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, when the richly decorated style of Gothic architecture was at its zenith in this country. The Cathedral, from whatever side it is viewed, presents a massive appearance, and exhibits a pleasing variety of styles, in accordance with the taste of different ages. Mr. Asphitel has said that he found beauties which grew on him more and more at every visit. The Norman remains are extremely fine—there is work of all kinds of great beauty—and there are the most curious and instructive transitions from style to style that perhaps were ever contained in one building.

Its general style may be termed the Norman-Gothic. It has been generally supposed that there are also some remaining specimens of the Saxon; but Mr. Asphitel, in an interesting lecture delivered before the British Archæological Association, stated that he could not, from the most minute research, discover any portion of the Saxon church; he considered it possible there might be some portions in the foundations, but none were visible.

The west front is said to have been the work of Abbot Ripley, who was appointed to the abbacy in 1485. It is now in an unfinished state, and it seems more than probable that there was an intention to form two western towers. The foundation of them was laid with much ceremony by Abbot Birchensaw in 1508, the Mayor being then present; but the project was abandoned, most likely for want of funds: had the original design been executed, says Winkle, it would not have been very imposing. The west entrance is a singular and beautiful composition: the door itself is a Tudor arch, enclosed within a square head; the spandrils are filled with rich and elegant foliations; the hollow moulding on the top is deep and broad, and filled with a row of angels, half-lengths; all this is recessed within another Tudor arch, under another square head, with plain spandrils of ordinary panelling. On each side of the door are four niches, with their usual accompaniments of crocketted canopies, pinnacles, and pendants; and instead of brackets, the statues formerly stood on pedestals, with good bases and capitals. Above this entrance is the great western window of the nave, deeply and richly recessed; it is of eight lights, with elaborate tracery of the kind most common in the latest age of the pointed style. The arch of the window is much depressed, and has above it a flowing crocketted canopy; the gable has no parapet, but is finished off with a simple coping; the flanking-turrets are octagonal, and have belts of panelled tracery and embattled parapets. Leaving the west front, and turning to the south, a rich and deep porch presents itself behind the Consistory Court; the porch is flanked by buttresses, which once had pinnacles. The entrance is under a Tudor arch within a square head, the spandrils richly panelled; over the square head is a broad belt of quatrefoil panelling; above that a hollow moulding, adorned with the Tudor flower; above this are two flat-headed windows of two lights each, with a deep niche between them, resting on a projecting bracket; the statue is of course gone, but the projecting and richly decorated canopy remains, on both sides of which the wall above is adorned with two rows of panelling; the open embattled parapet, which once crowned the whole, has disappeared. The south side of the nave and its aisle is plain, but not without dignity; the windows are all pointed, and of perpendicular character; those of the aisle have straight canopies, with projecting buttresses between, which still have niches, and once had both pinnacles and statues; the aisle has no parapet. The windows of the clerestory are unusually large and lofty, and their canopies are flowing in form, but perfectly plain and without finials; they have no buttresses between them, and the parapet is very shallow and quite plain.

The next feature of the Cathedral is a very singular one, and, indeed, unique—viz., the south wing of the transept. It is no uncommon case to find the two portions of the transept unlike each other in some respects; but in no other instance are they so perfectly dissimilar as at Chester. Here the south wing is nearly as long as the nave, and of equal length with the choir, and considerably broader than either, having, like them, aisles on both sides; while the north, which probably stands on the original foundations, has no aisles, is very short, and only just the breadth of one side of the central tower. The east and west faces of this south portion of the transept are nearly similar. The aisles have no parapet; the windows are pointed, of four lights each, with late decorated tracery and small intervening buttresses. The clerestory has a parapet similar to that of the nave; the windows are pointed, large, and lofty, with perpendicular tracery and two transoms. The south front of this transept, flat at top, is flanked with square embattled turrets and buttresses, and has a large window of the perpendicular age, filling up nearly all the space between them. The south face of the aisles, on each side, have pointed windows and sloping tops, without parapet, but flanked by double buttresses at the external angles, without pinnacles.

The south face of the choir, with its aisle, is in nearly all respects similar to the south portion of the transept; but the aisle is lengthened out beyond the choir, and becomes the side aisle of the Lady Chapel, and has an octangular turret near the east end, with embattled parapet, and beyond it a plain, heavy, clumsy buttress; the sloping parapet of the east face of this aisle meets at the top the flat plain parapet of the most eastern compartment of the Lady Chapel, which projects beyond the aisle to that extent. The windows of the Lady Chapel are all pointed, and of good perpendicular character; the projecting portion has double buttresses at the external angles, and the eastern face has a low gable point. This chapel is very little higher than the side aisles of the choir, the east face of which is seen over it, with a large lofty pointed window, with perpendicular tracery and several transoms, flanked with octagonal turrets engaged, and terminated with something like domes of Elizabethan architecture. The parapet of this east face of the choir is flat. The north side of the Lady Chapel is similar to the south; the choir and its aisles exhibit features of an early English character on this side, but the Chapter-room, which is a small building, of an oblong form, and also of early English architecture, conceals a considerable portion. Over its vestibule and the arched passage leading into the east walk of the cloister, is seen the large window in the north front of the transept; the arch is much depressed, the tracery very common and plain, and it has two transoms; the walls of this wing of the transept are very plain, flat at top, and no parapet. The whole north side of the nave can be seen only from the cloister-yard. The south walk of the cloister is gone, and in the wall of the aisle, below the windows, are still seen several enriched semicircular arches resting on short cylindrical columns, evidently belonging to the original church of Hugh Lupus. The windows of the aisle are Tudor arched, with the ordinary tracery of this period; but, owing to the cloister once existing beneath, are necessarily curtailed of half their due length: there is a thin, flat buttress between each; the aisle has no parapet. The clerestory is lofty, and the windows pointed, and not so much depressed as those in the aisle beneath: they are not so lofty as those in the south side, nor have they any canopies. There is a thin buttress between each, without pinnacles, and the parapet is quite plain, but not so shallow as that on the south side.

The central tower is perhaps the best external feature of this Cathedral, it is indeed only of one story above the roof ridge, but it is loftier than such towers usually are; in each face of it are two pointed windows, divided down the middle with a single mullion, with a quatrefoil at the top, and all of them having flowing crocketted canopies with finials. At each of the four angles of the tower is an octagonal turret engaged, all of which, like the tower itself, are terminated with an embattled parapet.

On entering the interior, through the west doorway into the nave, “some disappointment and regret,” says the same authority, “cannot but be felt: here is no vaulted roof, but a flat ceiling of wood, resting on brackets of the same material, slightly arched, which gives the nave the appearance of having less elevation than it really possesses; for the naves of many much more magnificent cathedrals are not so lofty as this by several feet, but by being vaulted, their apparent height is increased.” The stone vaulting appears to have been actually commenced, and was probably interrupted by the dissolution: it is to be regretted that the work was not completed, as it would have given to the nave a much more imposing effect. The north wall of the nave, to the height of the windows, is Norman work, and contains, on the side of the cloisters, six tombs, where, as it appears from an old MS. written on the back of an old charter, now in the British Museum, the early Norman Abbots are interred. Under a wide arch sunk in the south wall, which, from the ornaments attached to the pillar near it, appears part of the original building, is a coffin-shaped stone, with a cross fleury on the lid, over the remains of some abbot. Nearly opposite to this is an altar tomb, the sides of which are ornamented with Gothic niches, with trefoil heads, and with quatrefoils set alternately, the quatrefoils being also alternately filled with roses and leopards’ heads; the lid slides, and discloses the lead coffin, a part of which has been cut away; on the lid is a plain coffin-shaped stone. It is highly probable that this tomb contains the remains of one of the later abbots.