Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester / A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See

by Philip Walsingham Sergeant

The West Front, the work of Bishop Edingdon, has been roughly handled by its critics, though Britton calls it a fine specimen of Perpendicular architecture. The original Norman work demolished by Edingdon was, as excavations have proved, forty feet in advance of the present façade. To judge by accounts of the destroyed portions, the west front in its earlier state must have been far more imposing than it is at present, for not only is it now commonplace in mass, but even the detail has no particular charm to atone for the change. The whole of this work appears so thoroughly Perpendicular in character that it has been questioned whether at such an early date as that to which it is assigned the style can have been so far developed. Woodward, indeed, though attributing to Edingdon the walls and the principal part of the west end, declares the tracery, the fronts of the porches, and much of the panelling to be later; but a comparison of Winchester with another church undoubtedly built by this bishop, at his native town of Edingdon, in Wiltshire, supports the tradition which credits him with its erection. Besides this evidence, we have additional proof in the fact that he left by his will certain property to be devoted to the completion of the nave. Late though his work may appear at first sight, yet when it is closely examined and compared with Wykeham's work the difference is very apparent.

The whole western façade with its three bays is wanting in greatness, and its effect may be said to be that of a large parish church rather than a cathedral. Not only do we miss the western towers which are so often the most striking feature of an English west front, but the screen which masks the lower storey lacks the richness which distinguishes a somewhat similar feature at Exeter. The curiously poor appearance, notwithstanding its huge size, of the great west window is perhaps chiefly responsible for the want of dignity in the whole; nor is there, to redeem this, any delicate fancy in the tracery. The "merest stone grating" Willis terms the window, and though from so warm a panegyrist of the church this seems a severe criticism, no one can traverse his opinion.

By way of further proof that the west front was Edingdon's work, Willis points out that, while in Wykeham's panels the masonry itself is carefully finished, and the same stones used for the ground of the panel and its mouldings, in Edingdon's work the monials and tracery alone exhibit good masonry, the panels being filled with rough ashlar. By other tests, too technical to quote here, the same critic makes it clear that the west front, with two compartments of the nave on the north and one to the south, must be attributed to Edingdon, though he probably did not finish the gable and turrets, which seem to be the work of Wykeham. The present state shows a gable rising in the centre, flanked by octagonal pinnacle turrets. On the apex of this gable is a canopied finial containing a niche wherein now stands a figure of William of Wykeham, the original statue, which was supposed to represent S. Swithun, having been removed to the feretory when the west front was restored in 1860 at a cost of £3000. The triangle of the gable is filled with tracery, the lower part of the central panels in which serve as a smaller square-headed six-light window above the parapet which crosses at the head of the great nine-light window. Buttresses assist in supporting the two towers, and lesser ones project to hide the sides of the porch, which, pierced by three doorways and crowned by a parapet, extends along the whole lower storey, across the nave and both aisles. Above the screen the pitched roofs of aisles may be seen. The bays containing the side windows, of four lights each, accord in style with the large central one, having also wall tracery in panels over the comparatively small surface of unpierced wall. The screen itself has three deeply-recessed portals with pointed arches, and a large canopied empty niche on each side of the main entrance.

The central doorway is divided by a clustered shaft, where from spring two cinquefoil arches. The recessed portal has a groined roof, with an arcade of cusped arches on the main west wall, broken by the doorways which give admission to the nave. A pierced balcony of simple design crowns the whole of the screen and forms a gallery which is said to have been used for bestowing episcopal benedictions to the people outside the cathedral on festival days.

The excavations which brought to light the old foundations of the original west front showed "a wall of 128 feet from north to south, and 12 feet thick, with returns at each end of the same thickness 60 feet in length. At their eastern ends the walls again turn in at right angles and meet the present side aisles at 17 feet from each corner. Within the parallelogram thus partially traced two other walls run from east to west at a distance of 36 feet from each other." In a garden adjoining the west end of the cathedral at the time when these observations were made, part of the south-west angle of the walls still remained. Indications of the western towers were apparent; and Willis suggests that they were probably either unfinished, or in a threatening condition, so that Edingdon demolished them; even as at Gloucester the western towers of the cathedral were removed, and the façade was replaced by a perpendicular west front at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

The original west front may very probably have been similar to that of Lincoln Cathedral, "unornamental," says a writer in Architecture, "save for some interlacing arches and dwarf blind arcades, and with no windows to reflect the setting sun, or to light the cavernous interior."

The two westernmost bays of the North side are due to Edingdon, and we get here well contrasted the work of Edingdon and of Wykeham. In Willis's plan the difference can be clearly seen. The two windows to the right are heavier, lower, and broader, and display much deeper exterior mouldings, with "a most cavernous and gloomy appearance," while the window on the left hand is much narrower and lighter. The left-hand buttress is like the others on the north side of the church, whereas the other three are different from it and from one another, that on the extreme right, together with its pinnacle, being apparently just as Edingdon left it. The pinnacles and upper set-off of the two centre buttresses in the figure were added by Wykeham to Edingdon's underwork. The mouldings of Wykeham's windows are more elaborate than those of Edingdon's, where the tracery is similar to that of the west window. Of the bays on the north side the nine next to Edingdon's two, together with the three beyond the northern transept, are Wykeham's work, as are the three bays beyond the transept on the southern side and the extension of the Lady Chapel. Edingdon claims, beside what has been already mentioned, one bay on the south, next the west front. De Lucy's work consists of the three easterly bays on either side, and part of the Lady Chapel exterior. The rest of the bays are Norman, and the prevailing note is simplicity, not to say rudeness. The South side of the nave is almost devoid of decoration, the bays being merely divided by flat buttresses which do not reach below the bottoms of the aisle windows. The eleven windows in the clerestory above are all alike, divided only by flat buttresses. Aisle and clerestory both show a plain parapet and corbels. The bold buttresses on the north side, with their panelled and crocketted pinnacles, save it from the monotony of the south side, which, however, was once greatly concealed by cloisters and convent buildings, and is even now far more enclosed than the northern side.

The low Central Tower, the coping of which is only 35 feet above the ridge of the transept roof, is Norman, though, as explained before, of later date than the transepts. It is of a simple square form, 150 feet high by 50 wide, and is divided by a string course into two storeys, the lower of which is plain with small round-headed windows; the larger upper storey has on each side three narrow round-headed windows, which form a kind of arcade round the upper part of the tower, surmounted by a zig-zag string course. At the angles are engaged shafts. The massive manner in which the tower was rebuilt in the eleventh century can be better appreciated from within, when we come to the piers which support it. The building has been said to prove that the Normans of the period were "still bad masons and imperfectly acquainted with the principles of construction," the masses of masonry employed showing an enormous waste of both labour and materials. But the architects at any rate gained their end, since the tower has stood to the present day. The strength of the original Norman work, indeed, is so great that for all the 250 feet of nave no flying-buttresses were required to support the later vaulting.