The east end of the Lady-chapel was, it must be remembered, rebuilt by Mr. Cottingham, (§ XVIII.) The gable above the five lancet windows is by no means an exact reproduction of the original, and the work is not too good. The Audley Chantry (§ XIX.) projects very picturesquely on the south side of the Lady-chapel. The side pinnacles were reproduced by Mr. Scott from old drawings; the finials are original, having been preserved in the crypt.
The existing west front of the cathedral is, as has already been said, a composition of Wyatt’s, and is unworthy of notice. The total exterior length of the church, including the buttresses, is 344 ft.
XXVII. On the south side of the Lady-chapel is the entrance to the College of Vicars Choral, (incorporated in 1396,) a very picturesque quadrangle, with an inner cloister. It is for the most part Perpendicular, (circa 1474). A long cloistral walk (109 ft.) leading from the quadrangle of the college to the south-east transept of the cathedral has the oaken beams of its roof very finely carved.
The episcopal palace lies south between the cathedral and the river Wye. It is almost entirely formed out of an ancient Norman hall with pillars of timber, and is consequently of considerable interest. In the Deanery is preserved a small reliquary, of Limoges work, dating from the early part of the thirteenth century. On it is represented the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury: on the lower part the murder, on the upper part the entombment of the saint. It no doubt contained a relic of the Archbishop. Similar reliquaries, with the same subjects, exist in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, and of Sir Philip Egerton.
HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.
PART II.
History of the See, with Short Notices of the principal Bishops.
ARCHBISHOP USHER asserts that Hereford was the place of an episcopal see in the first half of the sixth century, when (A.D. 544) one of its bishops was present at a synod convened by the Archbishop of Caerleon. However this may have been, it is certain that the existing succession of bishops dates from A.D. 676; when Putta, Bishop of Rochester, whose Kentish cathedral had been plundered and desolated by Ethelred of Mercia, was placed at Hereford by Sexwulf, Bishop of Lichfield. Hereford was at this time a place of no great consequence. It lay about one mile distant from the Roman road which ran from Magna Castra (Kenchester) to Wigornia (Worcester); but it was not itself a station, and its later importance arose mainly from its position on a ford of the Wye, which Athelstane fixed as the boundary between the English and Welsh, in the same manner as he made the Tamar the boundary of the English and the Cornish of “West Wales.” Hereford thus became a frontier town; and one of the strongest castles on the marches of Wales rose near the cathedral, on its south side.