A spire said to have been even higher than this of St. Paul’s was erected in the fourteenth century over the central tower at Lincoln. The two western towers also had spires which were taken down to save the cost of repair within this century. This group of three great leaded spires crowning the Hill-city must have been one of the most wonderful the whole world over. The central tower as it now stands is 270 feet high 54 feet on the face; it was finished in 1311. “The spire of timber covered with lead reaching a height of 524 feet which once surmounted it was destroyed by a tempest in 1548.”[6]
The plates in Dugdale’s Monasticon engraved by Hollar and others surprise us by the number of leaded spires to the cathedrals not one of which has survived storm and flames or the crueller hatred of beauty which the modern mind has developed. There are those of the two west towers of Durham, western spires at Canterbury, Peterborough, and Ely, all three at Lincoln, and four smaller pinnacles at Norwich. Two square pyramids shown to the west tower of Southwell, were probably the original covering of the twelfth century. These are now “restored” and they look as false as the word.
The great central spires at Rochester and at Hereford and the central and two western spires at Ripon are shown of lead, as is also that of the beautiful isolated belfry at Salisbury, which was destroyed “to improve the view of the cathedral.” Of three of these large central spires shown in Dugdale, Rochester and Hereford rise from square towers with “broaches”: the first is of a curious and yet happy form, with recessed faces, and the other is an octagon of which the cardinal faces are wider than the alternate sides. The great spire of Ripon rose within the stone parapet of the tower, apparently at first twelve-sided with gables, and the spire itself twenty-four, each pair making a slight reentering angle—a beautiful composition it must have been of light and delicate shadow on the silver white of the old lead. This fair colour is of great importance; several of the old spires which remain to us are as white as if whitewashed. Modern ones, like the grimy thing at Lynn, would be improved by being whitewashed. The old, that at Minster in Kent for instance, tell as bright high lights in a general view of the landscape such as that you obtain from Richborough.
The finest of the English spires now existing constructed of timber and sheeted with lead is that of Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, the highest, oldest, and most perfect. The stone tower with octagon projections at the angles, is 25 feet square and 65 high, standing free from the church to which it is attached by one angle only. The flèche itself is 85 feet from the eaves to the top of an enormous relic “pommel” some four feet in diameter, which is thus 150 feet in the air. The four octagonal projections carry large pinnacles 25 feet high, which at a little height disengage themselves wholly from the great flèche, but with consummate art all lean their axes inwards towards it as much as two feet. The wooden framing, carefully measured by Mr. Austin,[7] shows that this grouping of the lines was as much done from set purpose as the inclination of the lines in the Parthenon of which we hear so much. Each face of the leading has the rolls arranged in a double row of herringbone, and the faces of the pinnacles have the leading slanting in one direction only. Altogether it is a most interesting and most beautiful work of the thirteenth century.
Fig. 11.—Spire, Barnstaple.
The [drawing] here given is of the fine old steeple at Barnstaple, which was saved from destruction by the good advice of Sir Gilbert Scott—and lack of funds! It is a delightfully careless and cheerful looking object, like that at Chesterfield, warped and nodding, which outrages the precise sensibilities of the townspeople; it was erected in 1389, as appears from the accounts and was repaired and altered in the seventeenth century (as shown by a date and initials, “1636 W. T.”), at which time the spire lights were opened out. The external bells are unusual in England. There are two other spires of village churches in the neighbourhood at Braunton and Swymbridge. The spires at Chesterfield, Godalming, Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, Wrighton in Northumberland, and Harrow (1481), are among the finest that remain. Of the destroyed church at Reculver the west towers, which are retained as landmarks, had lead spires. In some spires in Norfolk, about Cromer, two or three feet of the leading is omitted, thus forming an open band through which the timbering and a bell hung here may be seen. In some of the spires the lead is laid in vertical strips, as at Minster in Thanet, and a [sketch] given from a church in Hertfordshire shows the lower part in a way arcaded by an ingenious arrangement of the rolls. At great Baddow Church, Essex, vertical rolls run up about two-thirds of the spire, and the rest is plain. Generally, however, the lead work is arranged in herring-bone with careful irregularity and change so as to get a texture in the surface so different to the dead and dreary accuracy we should attain to. Low square spires at Ottery St. Mary are good examples of lead texture for those who see some beauty in the jointing of the armour of a tortoise.
Fig. 12.
The construction of the wood framing of the greater of these spires is a forest of intricate interlacing timbers, the best authority for which is the article Flèche in Viollet-le-Duc, or Burges’ drawing of Amiens in his volume of careful studies of the Gothic art of France.