FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
In this state the cathedral appears to have remained till 1392, when another fire occurred, which destroyed the north transept. A lack of funds was again felt, and it was not till the lapse of nine or ten years that the restoration was completed. Only about a century later, however, Carlisle shared the fate of the monastic institutions, and was suppressed, and the church shorn of many of its enrichments. The Civil Wars witnessed the worst acts of spoliation, when nearly the whole of the nave, the chapter-house and cloisters were destroyed, the materials being used for guard-house purposes in the city. The reign of the "Puritan patchwork" may then be said to have begun, with plaster partitions here and there in horrifying evidence, the niches emptied of their treasures, and the fine old stained glass removed from the windows—and all, as was declared, in the spirit of "repairing and beautifying." "A great, wild country church," is its description about this time, "and as it appeared outwardly, so it was inwardly, ne'er beautify'd, nor adorn'd one whit." Not till 1853-57 was a general restoration, costing £15,000, inaugurated. Both internally and externally the edifice underwent a total renovation. Old and crumbled portions were pulled down and rebuilt; other parts were fronted anew; missing ornaments were supplied; ugly doorways were blocked up, and one grand entrance made befitting the church. The renaissance was complete as it was judicious. There was just sufficient of the old left to show the original structure, and sufficient of the new imparted to save the venerable fane from crumbling to pieces. Externally, the east is certainly the finest part of the building, with its unrivalled window—58 feet high and 32½ feet wide, of nine lights, gracefully proportioned, the head filled with the most exquisite tracery-work, comprising no fewer than 263 circles. A uniquely ornamented gable, with a row of crosses on either shoulder, and a large cross at the apex, completes a highly finished centre. On either side stands out, in massive relief, a majestic buttress, containing full length statues of St. Peter, St. Paul, St James, and St. John, above which are light and elegant pinnacles. These great buttresses are flanked by the lesser ones of the aisles, tapering upwards with chastely carved spires—the whole forming an eastern front of great beauty and richness. The main entrance by a new doorway in the south transept is a triumph of the sculptor's skill. The great tower, 112 feet high, has been thoroughly renovated, and much of its former ornamentation restored. Of the interior, the nave is in length 39 feet, and in width about 60 feet. The Scots are said to have destroyed 100 feet of it in 1645, but that is quite uncertain. It has never been rebuilt, and has a serious effect on the general proportions, inducing a feeling of want of balance. Up to 1870 the nave was used as the parish church of St. Mary, and it was here—close by the great Norman columns—that Sir Walter Scott was married to Charlotte Carpenter, on December 24th, 1797. The spot might well be indicated by a small memorial brass. The richly-decorated choir, in no respect inferior to that of any other English cathedral, is 134 feet long, 71 feet broad, and 75 feet high. The warm red of the sandstone, the blue roof powdered with golden stars, the great east window filled with stained glass, and the dark oak of the stalls, make up a picture that enforces attention before the architectural details can receive their due admiration.
The Cathedral contains several interesting monuments. Here is the tomb of Archdeacon Paley (1805), author of the "Evidences of Christianity" and "Horæ Paulinæ," both written at Carlisle, and the richly-carved pulpit inscribed to his memory. There are tablets to Robert Anderson (1833), the "Cumberland Bard;" to John Heysham, M.D. (1834), the statistician, and compiler of the "Carlisle Tables of Mortality;" George Moore (1876), the philanthropist; M. L. Watson (1847), the sculptor; Dean Cranmer (1848), Canon Harcourt (1870), and Dean Close (1882). Several military monuments are in evidence. One of the windows commemorates the five children of Archbishop Tait (then Dean), who died between March 6th and April 9th, 1856. Recumbent figures of Bishop Waldegrave (1869), Bishop Harvey Goodwin (1891) and Dean Close are by Acton Adams, Hamo Thorneycroft, R.A., and H. H. Armistead, R.A., respectively. The older altar-tombs and brasses to Bishop Bell, Bishop Everdon, and Prior Stenhouse, should not be overlooked, and attention may be drawn also to the quaint series of fifth-century paintings from the monkish legends of St. Augustine, St. Anthony, and St. Cuthbert, and to the misereres of the stalls.
Scarcely less interesting than Carlisle itself is the immediate neighbourhood of the Border city. And with what sterling picturesqueness does it appeal to us! One does not wonder that Turner and others found some of their masterpieces here. A wondrously historic countryside, too, is all this pleasantly-rolling tableland, mile upon mile to the Liddesdale and Eskdale heights with the Langholm Monument fairly visible as a rule, and sometimes even the famous Repentance Tower opposite Hoddom Kirk. Within twenty miles or so of Carlisle, up through the old Waste and Debateable Lands, or over into the romantic Vale of the Irthing, the dividing-point betwixt Cumberland and Northumberland, the district is full of the most fascinating material for the geographer and the historian. It is impossible to do more than mention a few of its memory-moving names. At Burghby-Sands, Edward I., "the Hammer of the Scots," having offered up his litter before the high altar at Carlisle, vowing to reduce Scotland to the condition of a mere English province, was forced to succumb to a grimmer adversary than lay anywhere beyond the Solway. Bowness-by-the-Sea was the western terminus of the Roman Wall. Arthuret has its name from the "Flower of Kings," one of whose twelve battles is said to have been fought there. Archie Armstrong, jester to King James VI., lies buried in its churchyard. At Longtown, on the Esk, the Jacobite troops forded the river "shouther to shouther," as Lady Nairne's lyric has it, dancing reels on the bank till they had dried themselves. Netherby, the locale of "Young Lochinvar," Lady Heron's song in "Marmion," is in the near neighbourhood. So are Gilnockie or the Hollows, Johnie Armstrong's home, and Gretna Green, that once so popular but now defunct shrine of Venus. All this once bleak and barren bog-land is under generous cultivation now to a large extent, stretching from the Sark to the Esk, and eastward to Canonbie Lea; it was the treacherously Debateable, or No Man's Land of moss-trooping times, the most troubled and unsafe period of Border history. Solway Moss, some seven miles in circumference, is not likely to be forgotten—by Scotsmen, at any rate. It was the disastrous Rout of the Solway which hastened James V.'s death from a broken heart.