Bell's Cathedrals: St. David's

by Philip A. Robson

The Chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr, north of the north transept, and the buildings above form one of the many unique points of St. David’s. On reference to the ground-plan it will be seen that this remarkable building is placed at an unexpected angle, the reason for which is not apparent and remains unexplained.

The year of the fall of the tower—1220—was also that in which the body of St. Thomas, the martyred primate of Canterbury, was translated from the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral to the choir. St. David’s, in common with many other great churches, determined to dedicate a chapel to his memory. In 1329 this chapel was probably remodelled, when Sir R. Symonds gave his manor of St. Dogmell to secure two chaplains to celebrate daily mass for his soul and his wife’s at the altar of St. Thomas. It has the only original completed Decorated vaulting in the building (except the south porch), and two stages were added above, making the building taller than the transept and giving the remarkable external effect seen from the north-east. The chapel has served as a chapter-house, library, and vestry, and on its south side has a very beautiful double piscina, in character purely Early English. The trefoiled heads are characteristically moulded and the spandrils richly carved, one with stiff-leaved foliage, another with a bird and foliage, and the third represents a fight between a man and a devil which is trying to devour another man. This piscina is interesting, apart from its beauty, as showing that the Early English architects could work purely in that style when they desired, and that in all probability their use of Transitional detail was prompted by their artistic sense and desire to make their work harmonise with their predecessors’. The vaulting rises from octagonal shafts with round flowered caps, and the bosses at the crossing of the ribs are elaborate. One contains the head of our Lord, and another a similar subject, but the Head censed by angels.

The storey above was the original Chapter House, later the Grammar School, now the Library. This position is, we think, unique for a chapter-house. It is very plain and has a mediæval recessed closet; also a fine Decorated fireplace (and in it a most unworthy stove), which is obviously the work of Gower, as it is almost precisely similar to one in the residential part of his palace over the river. There are also some Early English bracket capitals, one foliated and the other with the nail-head, probably to carry lights. On the cill of the north window is a fragment from the old organ-case, showing how well it was worthy of being, at any rate, attributed to Grinling Gibbons.

The room above this (third stage) was used as the Treasury, but is not of any great interest.

Scott did away with an unsightly temporary wooden stair leading to the chapter-house from the transept, and re-used the original entrance from the north choir aisle; but we do not consider the present arrangement very satisfactory, as it still has a temporary appearance.

The Throne (Bishop Morgan, 1496-1505) stands on the south side of the choir, and is a peculiar structure, rendered the more puzzling by being a blend of Decorated and Perpendicular, judging by the detail. If the Decorated parts, however, are not of that period, they are copied from similar work on the parclose screen. There are three seats, the centre being the Bishop’s, and the others probably for the Canonici Collaterales. Above are innumerable crocketed canopies, pinnacles, pediments, &c., terminating in a kind of open spire. The total height is little short of thirty feet.

At the time of the restoration of the tower all the woodwork in the immediate vicinity had necessarily to be removed, and under Scott’s direction was extensively repaired, “the greatest care being taken to preserve the ancient work as nearly untouched as possible.”

The Sedilia are of a pleasing Perpendicular design, with a cornice in oak of a peculiar white colour, which leads one to suppose that they were once coloured. The canopy work and coved cornice are better in detail and general design than those of the stalls. The buttresses which divide the seats are pierced with tracery, and are surmounted with crocketed pinnacles.

The oaken stalls—like almost all the woodwork in the choir—belong to the Perpendicular period, and were erected during the episcopate of Bishop Tully (1460-1480). They have plain arms, but the return stalls and those of the Chancellor and Treasurer are decorated with grotesque heads. The misereres are also conceived in a serio-humorous vein, some, indeed, being very unusual, the monks being represented as suffering from mal de mer and crapula. One carving exhibits a cowled fox offering the wafer to a goose with a human head, which Freeman thinks may have some bearing on the religious controversy of the time.[34] He also regards the cowled fox as “the carver’s version of the proverb ‘Cucullus non facit monachum.’ ”