Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely

by John William Edward Conybeare

On this reredos Christ appears in glory, as the ascended High Priest of His Church, interceding for His people. Beneath on the retable is inscribed in Greek the words: "Able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him." The chapel is intended to be used for private meditation and for services connected with missionary work. We leave it with the sense that the highest message the minster has to give is still remembered among us.

From the Octagon we may pass into the Choir, where gates of brass open through the richly carved screen of oak. This screen is a really beautiful creation of the nineteenth century, while the tabernacled oaken stalls within are mediæval, dating from 1337, and are yet more beautiful, forming as they do part of Alan of Walsingham's great restoration. For over four centuries these stalls stood where Alan placed them, under the Octagon, separated from the nave by a massive Norman screen of stone. About 1770 they were moved by the architect Essex to the eastern end of the Choir. The stalls having been thus removed, Essex saw no reason for preserving the Norman screen, so he had it destroyed. Had the venerable structure still stretched across the nave we should feel it purposeless, and it would undoubtedly have been inconvenient: so we ought perhaps to admit that Essex really conferred on the cathedral a boon by his drastic act on which a less daring and more conservative architect would not have ventured. Still we send a sigh of regret after the ancient work, that had stood through so many centuries only to be pulled down as an encumbrance, and carted away at last as rubbish.

The stalls after their removal eastward were painted to look like mahogany (!) in accordance with eighteenth century standards of beauty. They were left in this far eastern position for about eighty years, when they were shifted half-way back again, into their present place, under the supervision of Sir Gilbert Scott, the architect employed to direct the restoration then in progress. Their upper panels have been filled with Bible scenes carved in high relief in wood; mostly the work of a Flemish artist of the nineteenth century. On the south are scenes from the Old Testament, on the north from the Gospels. They repay a careful study, being beautiful and original in design. Twenty-five in number on either side, arranged chronologically, they face each other, answering in several instances as type and antitype; the Deluge corresponds with the Baptism, Jacob's Deception of Isaac with the Betrayal; the Lifting up of the Brazen Serpent with the Crucifixion, the Ascent of Elijah with the Ascension. Whether this is intentional or accidental we leave to be decided by those who, familiar with Bible incidents, are wishful to exercise their ingenuity and their power of discernment, in discovering further and less obvious correspondence.

The stall seats are on hinges, and are known as "Miserere" (i.e. mercy) seats. They were thus named from being so contrived that when turned back they gave a merciful support to the monks, who could thus sit after a fashion, instead of having to stand, during the lengthy nocturnal services in which they were engaged; but if the occupant of the stall abused this relief by permitting himself to be overcome with sleep, he and his seat fell forward together with a crash, to his great discomfiture. When turned back the quaint carvings usual under such seats may be seen, the work of the fourteenth century carvers. The subjects represented are strangely varied; scriptural, legendary, grotesque, according to the taste and fancy of the carver, and no two are alike. We find here Noah's Ark, a pelican feeding her young, a nun at prayer, monkeys and dragons, a woman beating a fox for robbing her hen-roost, a fox attired as a bishop, a monkey extracting a man's tooth, a king and a monk fighting, St. Martin sharing his coat with a beggar. The upper canopied work of these stalls is of delicate beauty, little damaged by all it has undergone, whether of neglect or of change, during the six centuries and a half of its existence.

But while admiring these choir stalls, we are almost inclined to grudge their presence, for they obstruct the view of the stone arches against which they stand. We are still beholding the work of the great Alan; after the tower fell he and his workmen built these three bays, with the triforium and clerestory arches above; and we feel how perfectly brain, heart, and hand must have worked together in harmony to produce so exquisite a result. It was Bishop Hotham who provided the funds for most of this work.

Passing on up two steps beyond these three bays we come to arches somewhat different; while we observe a corresponding change in the character of the liern vaulting overhead. We are now in the presence of Early English masonry, wrought a century before under Bishop Northwold, and perhaps yet lovelier than the Decorated work which was her daughter. Arch beyond arch, six in number, extends this Presbytery, as it is called, ending in an east window of three lower lancet lights, with an upper tier of five smaller lancets. The Northwold Presbytery does not merge imperceptibly into Alan's Choir; for the transition is marked on either hand by a semicircular shaft of stone that soars aloft, the only remnant left to us of the eastern limb of the original Norman church. These venerable piers therefore deserve our special notice, though they might not attract it if we were ignorant of their story. They themselves stand as raised by their builders, but Bishop Northwold gave them new capitals of Purbeck marble harmonising with the work he was erecting eastward.

Next let us study the modern reredos or altar screen, all of white stone and marble, having as its background the three lancet windows of the east end, filled with not unworthy modern glass, against which it stands out with grace and dignity; a space of thirty feet intervening. The reredos consists of five spandrels surmounted by gables, and is made of alabaster, lavishly gilt and bejewelled, inlaid with mosaic. On the highest gable stands a figure representing Christ in Glory, His hand held forth to bless His people. Immediately below comes the Annunciation, carved in low relief in a trefoil-shaped medallion. Below again is a statuette of our Lord, with Moses and Elijah on either hand, and beneath these, under a canopy of alabaster, is the Last Supper. In a line with this, still in the same high relief, is sculptured our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, His washing of the Disciples' feet, His agony in Gethsemane, His bearing of the cross. Immediately over these Gospel scenes, under the shadow of a marble canopy, we have the heads of the four great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, on one side, balanced on the other by the four Latin doctors of the Church, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Gregory. Within the four side spandrels are carved the heads of Mary Magdalene, of Mary the mother of James, of St. John the Evangelist, and St. John the Baptist; on the points of the gables above are the four Evangelists, while between them, and flanking them, stand on spiral pillarets delicate figures emblematical of faith, hope, and charity, of justice, prudence, and fortitude—those graces and virtues which made the saints here represented to be such.

On the retable at the foot of the reredos, stand two massive candlesticks of silver gilt. These were procured for the cathedral in 1660, on the restoration of the Chapter and the return of Bishop Wren after his imprisonment of eighteen years. During the Commonwealth the cathedral staff had dwindled down to one canon and one verger. It is recorded that the first requisites purchased by the Chapter on being reinstated were these very candlesticks—plus a wheelbarrow and a broom.

And now we shall do well to make an appreciable physical effort, in order to get a view of two bosses of special interest in the vaulting overhead. It is somewhat neck-racking work, and a glass is absolutely necessary if we are to carry away any definite impression of the sculptures in question. On one of these bosses the coronation of the Virgin is carved most gracefully and reverently; on the other is St. Etheldreda, crowned and gorgeously robed, seated with a crozier in her right hand, as Abbess. Both are richly coloured, and have escaped, through being inaccessible, the injury done to the other images in the cathedral. For more than 600 years they have looked down on the tomb of Bishop Northwold, the builder of this noble Presbytery, erected, we must remember, to do honour to the shrine of the Foundress.

This Presbytery of wondrous beauty, enriched by the best that could be wrought by human hands, alike in the past and in our own days, may well recall to us Keble's lines: