GABLE CROSS LYING
IN BISHOP
VAUGHAN’S CHAPEL.
([See p. 67.])
APPENDIX II
EXTRACTS FROM SIR G. G. SCOTT’S REPORT TO THE DEAN AND CHAPTER, 1869
By reference to my first Report, addressed to the Dean and Chapter in 1862, it will be seen that, while the entire building was reported to be in a state of the most severe dilapidation, and some portions actually in ruins, the greatest immediate danger was to be apprehended from the tower, the crushed condition of two of whose sustaining piers rendered its fall an event by no means improbable—a catastrophe which would probably involve the destruction of a large portion of the church.
Before, therefore, embarking upon any other works of restoration, it was determined to take immediate measures for the removal of this great danger, and, while the first contract united with this the restoration of the choir, the actual work in the first instance undertaken, excepting only some necessary works of drainage, was limited to this “article of a standing or a falling church.”
At the risk of being tedious, I will repeat here a detailed description of these most dangerous and difficult operations, which I wrote immediately after their completion, in a private Report to the Bishop:—
“I do not hesitate to tell you that the operations thus in the main completed, have caused me the greatest anxiety; for, although it has been my lot to apply the same process to five other central towers, and though I have, in each instance, undertaken it not without much trepidation, I have never met with a case so serious, and involving so great an amount of apparent and actual danger, as that of your Cathedral; for not only is the tower far larger and of vastly greater weight than any other on which I have been called to operate, but its two western piers were more alarmingly shattered than anything I have witnessed elsewhere. I take the liberty of quoting the following passage from my first Report, as showing what were my impressions on this point after my original survey, and they have been more than verified by the result:—
“ ‘The present condition of the tower is in the highest degree alarming, and till it is restored to a state of security, it is quite useless to think of any extensive reparation of other parts of the building.
“ ‘The western piers consist each of two portions, the parts towards the nave belonging to De Leiâ’s work of the twelfth century, and those towards the transepts having been added after the catastrophe of 1220. Of these, the older or western portions are literally, at least so far as they are open to examination, shattered to fragments, and the same process has extended itself in a less degree into the later or eastern parts of each pier; in fact, the only security which the tower has from actually falling, is the buttressing it sustains from the walls of the transepts and the nave, though the latter have themselves severely suffered under the undue pressure thus brought upon them.
“ ‘The arch facing the nave is very much injured, and the wall which it sustains, up to the commencement of the later stages, is utterly disintegrated, so much so as to render it dangerous very closely to investigate the defects; and the same state of disintegration extends itself some feet into the north and south walls, but especially the former, which is at this point crushed throughout its whole thickness.