The illustrations on pages 2 and 7 show Nash’s design of 1793, which seems to have received the sanction of the Society of Antiquaries. The figures that appear in the first are Bishop Jones, Professor Freeman, the authors of the best history of St. David’s, Dean Allen, and Sir G. G. Scott. This execrable composition was a hopeless conglomeration of Norman, Decorated, and Perpendicular, with a couple of heavy-arched buttresses, which were apparently standing as recently as 1887.[8] The rebuilding of the West Front was undertaken at a cost of about £4,000 as a memorial to Bishop Thirlwall, who first seriously began to restore the church in 1864, and his statue stands over the west door. The material is Caerfai stone from the neighbouring quarries of Caerbwdy, and suffers from its newness in appearance. In fact the design and the purple stone combine to give the whole front a very heavy appearance, which only years of exposure to the sea air will partially remedy.
Photo. J. Valentine.
THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST.
CHAPTER III
THE INTERIOR—THE NAVE
At the South Porch, by which the visitor usually enters, the ogee-headed holy-water stoup should be noticed, and a general view be made of the church, as it is most unusual and has a character all its own. The majority of the work is that of Bishop Peter de Leiâ (1176-1198), and is therefore Transitional in character; that is to say, it is at the point of fusion between Norman and Early English. The pointed arch of the latter is not yet adopted, but the round (more or less) arch is still employed, probably in some degree to avoid the greater height otherwise entailed, but the details verge on the purity of the most refined Early English. De Leiâ evidently intended sexpartite groining to form an internal ceiling, but an earthquake and the fall of the tower doubtless instilled caution—even if funds were forthcoming—and the project was never carried out. The exceedingly rich ceiling, however, of Irish oak does not make one regret this circumstance, for its very bizarrerie and semi-arabesque character, coming so closely in contact with the great Norman arches, combine to make the interior of St. David’s one of unusual beauty. The more so, by contrast, on entering from the almost bald exterior.
“Possibly the circumstances which conduced to the lack of external ornament may have led its designers to counterbalance this deficiency by a superabundance of internal decoration. Certain it is that very few structures of the same size equal this cathedral in richness and elaborateness of execution lavished upon this portion of the interior. In fact, much of the solemnity of a Romanesque nave is lost, an effect which is
ELEVATION OF A BAY OF THE NAVE, N. SIDE.