Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 2

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

In 1079 it was again rebuilt by Bishop Walkelyn, a chaplain and relation of the Conqueror, and finished about 1093.

Walkelyn’s Cathedral exceeded in vastness even Abbot Paul’s stupendous work at St. Alban’s. Its nave was of eleven bays, besides two vast western towers. Its transepts each had four bays; its eastern arm four bays, besides the apse, which had a surrounding aisle, and was flanked by two small towers.

Its length, independently of an eastern chapel, was 485 feet; or, including this chapel, 530 feet. The length of its transept was 225 feet (it was double-aisled, that at St. Alban’s being unaisled), dimensions which exceed those of St. Alban’s, and leave those of Lanfranc’s metropolitan church far in the background. The width, too, of the nave and its aisles was greater than that of St. Alban’s.

The architecture of this vast temple was of stern simplicity, though, being carried out in stone, it was much more fully developed than that of St. Alban’s. It was, in fact, a full and typical development of the Early Norman, with every feature complete, though all in their plainest garb.

All which now remains of this date is the transepts and the crypt (Fig. [257]) of the eastern arm, and they may be described as the text-book of Norman in its earlier form. The transepts, as before stated, were doubly aisled, and (as Canterbury, Ely, and at Caen) a gallery crossed the outer bay of each, supported on a massive round pillar, so as to render the upper aisle continuous.

The plan of the piers of the transept, which probably gives us also that of the rest of the church, is very perfect and typical ([Fig. 256]).

Fig. 256. Winchester Cathedral.

Their figure may be generated by the process I have described in my last lecture. Take a block of wall about half as long again as its thickness; cut out from each of its angles the recess of an order; substitute half or three-quarter shafts for the part which supports each order; and the pier proper is complete. It still needs, however, supports for the vaulting of the aisle on the one side, and for the central roof on the other. The former is given by adding to that side a pilaster of equal size with the transverse rib of the vaulting, and substituting for its front portion a demi-shaft; the latter by a similar projection with the addition of two smaller shafts on its flanks. Nothing could be more perfect or more typical than this arrangement. The capitals are everywhere of the cushion type, in its simpler form; the arch-orders square, and without labels. The entire height of the wall being divided into three, the upper, or clerestory, may be said to occupy one-third; the remainder being divided between the great arcade and that of the gallery, or upper aisle, in the proportions of about four and three.