THE CATHEDRAL
[Original]
AT the east end of the choir aisle of the Cathedral there is a portion of the wall which is possibly the oldest piece of masonry in Oxford, for it is thought to be a part of the original Church of St. Frideswyde, on whose site the Cathedral Church of Christ (to give its full title) now stands. Even so it is not possible to speak with historical certainty of the saint or of the date of her Church, which was built for her by her father, so the legend says, when she took the veil; though the year 740 may be provisionally accepted as the last year of her life. St. Frideswyde's was a conventual Church, with a Priory attached, and both were burnt down in 1002, but rebuilt by Ethelred. How much of his handiwork survives in the present structure it is not easy to determine; but the Norman builders of the twelfth century effected, at any rate, such a transformation that no suggestion of Saxon architecture is obtruded. Their work went on for some twenty years, under the supervision of the then Prior, Robert of Cricklade, and the Church was consecrated anew in 1180. The main features of the interior—the massive pillars and arches—are substantially the same to-day as the builders left them then.
The Priory was surrendered to Henry VIII. in 1522, who made it over to Wolsey. That cardinal, in his zeal for the new College, which he now proceeded to found, shewed little respect for the old Church. He practically demolished its west end to make room for his building operations. The truncated Church was used as a chapel for his students, until the new and magnificent one which he had planned should be completed. That edifice was never built. Wolsey was disgraced, and the king took over St. Frideswyde's, to be the Cathedral Church of his newly created diocese of Oxford.
From this date, then, 1546, it is a Cathedral, but a College chapel also; for Henry was content that the one building should serve the two purposes. The Cathedral was restored in the seventeenth century and again in the nineteenth, with considerable alterations. It is hardly worth while here to enumerate these in their entirety; but when one sees in old engravings the beautiful east window, put up in the fourteenth century, which was removed at the time of Sir Gilbert Scott's restoration, it is impossible not to regret a change which appears to be quite unjustifiable. At the same time it may be readily admitted that the east end, designed on Norman lines, which the architect substituted, has considerable beauty, and harmonises with the general tone of the building. Regret is unavailing, and it is perhaps wiser to console oneself with the reflection that at any rate things might have been worse.