VIEW LOOKING N. IN ANTE-CHAPEL TO LADY CHAPEL.
This chapel is roofed with a neat Perpendicular vault and lit with a poor Perpendicular window, and a couple of depressed arches (i.e., with their springing below the capitals) open into the Lady Chapel. An enormous buttress, however, is an unsightly necessity to prevent the wall above these arches falling eastwards. Our view (page 67) is taken from the east, looking west, and shows one of these arches and, on the south side, the fine Decorated tomb of Bishop Martyn. The composition was that of a five-foiled arch, with open foliations between crocketed pinnacles rising from octagonal attached shafts with floriated capitals, all beneath a lofty straight-sided canopy. The detail seems to point to Bishop Gower as the author. The canopy blocks an Early Decorated window and cuts through a string, but its finial was evidently utilised as a corbel by Bishop Vaughan for his vaulted roof, traces of which are clearly discernible in the view at the south-west corner.
SEDILIA AND TOMB, S. SIDE OF LADY CHAPEL.
The sedilia, of three seats, is a fine design by Gower, the finials of the crocketed ogee arches forming bosses in the cornice as in some of his other designs.
The cross lying on the ground is one which once stood on the east end of the presbytery, probably designed by Sir G. Scott from an old example.
Nearly opposite is a recess for a tomb which seems to have been similar to that of Bishop Martyn. This was wrongly supposed to be that of Bishop Houghton, who founded and was buried in his own chapel of St. Mary’s College, not St. Mary’s Chapel, hence confusion. Archdeacon Yardley conjectures with plausibility that Gower erected these two tombs to his immediate predecessors, Martyn and Beck[66] (1280-1328). Externally, and to some extent even now internally, the Lady Chapel has assumed the appearance of a Perpendicular building, but as a matter of fact it is, in the main, a blend of Early English and Early Decorated.
THE NORTH CHAPEL AISLE.
The North Chapel Aisle.—At the east end of this aisle stood the altar to St. Nicholas, and in the south-east corner is a trefoil-headed piscina with a quatrefoil drain. The changes which took place in the Early Decorated period in this aisle are not so extensive as those of the same date in its sister, where the whole of the southern and eastern walls were rebuilt, but the result is even more of a patchwork in appearance. The walls were raised, windows inserted and preparations made for vaulting, but, nevertheless, the round Early English vaulting shafts (c. 1248) appear below the octagonal ones of the Decorated period. On reference to the plan it will be noticed that the Lady Chapel is not on the central axis of the choir, and that between it and the north aisle is a space, which, we cannot but think, was occasioned by the timidity which we find throughout the cathedral in dealing with vaults. The north wall of the Lady Chapel was thus moved inwards to reduce the span and obtain—as they undoubtedly did, from whatever cause—a much better proportioned building. The monuments in both aisles are much decayed owing to their long exposure to the weather. East of the screen opening to Bishop Vaughan’s Chapel is a small piece of a Decorated tomb canopy, but the chapel arch has cut through the remainder. “Its existence seems to prove that the ‘waste place’ now occupied by the chapel must have been closed at the sides by walls; although there must surely have been some door or entrance, however narrow.”[67] Just beneath[68] this crocketed fragment of a canopy is a small stone with a finely-conceived representation of a crucifixion in relief with the figures of SS. Mary and John, obviously placed here for preservation; and low down under this is an altar-tomb with a panelled arcade, which once bore the figure of a priest in eucharistic vestments, and above the panelling the inscription, “Orate pro Anima Johannis [Hiot] nuper Archi....” which indicates that it was the monument of John Hiot, Archdeacon of St. David’s, who died in 1419.