Part 21

Then the five western bays were built, two bays as sanctuary, three as choir. Owing to the continuation of the high roofs to the extreme east end of the cathedral, there is little of the picturesqueness of the eastern terminations of Wells and Salisbury, but there is spaciousness, dignity and majesty. Here also the canons had not the money—perhaps not the courage—to put up a high vault of stone. Nave, eastern limb, and transept (the vault of which is of the fifteenth century) were all vaulted in wood. The punishment was long in coming, but it came at last. The wooden vault of the choir, the stalls and the organ, were burnt down by a lunatic in 1829; and that of the nave by a plumber in 1840. The finest feature in the choir is the tall transeptal bays, suggested by and built on the foundations of Archbishop Roger’s flanking towers. The whole eastern limb was finished _c._ 1420. Then came the central tower, 1410-1433; the south-west tower, 1433-1447; the north-west tower, 1465-1474; the organ screen, 1475-1505.

In 1472 the completion of the great works commenced _c._ 1230 was near at hand, and a solemn consecration of the rebuilt cathedral was held. The Norman and Transitional cathedral had disappeared; its successor occupied a century and a half in building.

Externally, York Minster, from its vast dimensions and the fine composition of the towers, is exceedingly impressive. One realises its immensity best from the city walls, where it is seen “reflecting every change in the sky, and rising like a mountain above the parochial churches and houses of the city.” The treatment of the north side of the nave and transept is particularly grave and impressive—largely because of the absence of pinnacles. The west front, in spite of overloaded and confused ornament, is of its type the finest in the country; and to my mind the great west window, in the free and fanciful flow of its intersecting ogee arches, surpasses its only rival, the east window of Carlisle. The central tower relies for effect on mass more than height, and thus contrasts strongly with the central towers of Canterbury and Lincoln. Gloucester tower alone seems to be impressive equally from height and bulk. Shorn of its pinnacles, however, York central tower has not fair play. Very beautiful, too, is the play of light and shade in the double plane of tracery in the eastern clerestory. And very characteristic is the east façade; it may be all wrong, with its strong emphasis of horizontal lines and concealment of the gable, but it has distinction; one never confuses the east end of York with that of any other cathedral—one never forgets it. The weakest point in York is what ought to be the source of the greatest beauty, the window-tracery. Much of it, especially in the choir, is ugly in itself; even that of the great east window and of the windows in the transeptal bays is meagre and thin. But what is worse, this poor tracery is repeated with most wearisome iteration all over the flanks of the cathedral. Window after window of the nave, window after window of the choir, are monotonously alike. The imagination of the York people was singularly limited. What a contrast to the glorious series of windows of Exeter, contemporary with those of York nave!

But it is not from its architecture that York holds its paramount place as an exponent of mediæval art, but because its ancient glass is almost all intact. For a detailed account of it the reader should refer to Mr. Benson’s handbook and to that of Dean Purey-Cust. I will conclude by describing it in Mrs. Van Rensselaer’s words, which are as true as they are eloquent. “Most English cathedrals have been entirely reduced to architectural bone and sinew; they lack decorative warmth and glow, life and colour, and the charm that lies in those myriad accessory things which the lingering faith of Rome has preserved in other lands. All the varied tools and trappings, altars, shrines, and symbolic trophies of the rich Catholic ritual have been banished; much of the furniture is gone, the walls are bare of paint, scores of monuments and chantries have been shattered to bits, thousands of sculptured ornaments and figures have been swept away in dust; a painful cleanliness has replaced the time-stains which give tone to many Continental churches even when no actual colouring exists, and a glare of white light or hideous discord of modern hues fills the enormous windows. Columns and walls and floors are as barren at York as elsewhere; and although many tombs remain, without its glass it would seem even colder and emptier than most of its sisters, for it was built at a time when walls of glass had nearly replaced walls of stone. But it has its glass, and this means much more than that it has a richness of decorative effect which no other English church displays. It means that here alone we can really apprehend the effect of a late Gothic church, even from the architectural point of view. At York we can follow the development of the art of glass-painting through a period of fully four centuries. More delicate, clear and exquisite fields of simple colour can never have been wrought than those which fill the Five Sisters with their sea-green purity. The west window, glazed a century later (1338), is a gorgeous mosaic of ruddy and purple hues, shining in the intricate stone pattern which shows black against the light, like a million amethysts and rubies set in ebony lace. The multicoloured eastern window, and its two mates in the minor transept, seem vast and fair enough for the walls of the New Jerusalem. And wherever we look in the lightly constructed eastern limb, it seems, not as though walls had been pierced for windows, but as though radiant translucent screens—fragile, yet vital and well equal to their task—had been used to build a church, and merely bound together with a network of solid stone. For the moment we feel that nothing is so beautiful as glass. After we have seen the glass of York, we never think again that stained glass was merely an adornment of Gothic architecture. The early Gothic architect demanded for his enlarged windows some filling which, as decoration, would take the place of the wide frescoes of former times, and which, from the constructional point of view, would justify to the eye that partial suppression of walls which he knew to be scientifically right. This filling the early glass-painter gave him; and it was so satisfying from the architectural standpoint, and so beautiful from the decorative, that he was ready and eager to carry on his architectural evolution to the farthest possible extreme. He felt that he could attenuate his constructional framework as far as the laws of gravity would permit, since the glazier stood ready to replace really solid wall-spaces by those which looked solid enough, and were more beautiful than any expanses of stone had ever been. No architect could have built as late Gothic architects did, if only white glass had been at his command. None would have made walls which are literally windows, unless strength of colour had come forward to simulate strength of substance. A Perpendicular church was actually meant to look as the choir of York does look—like a great translucent tabernacle merely ribbed and braced with stone.” The very best glass, however, is of later date than that of the cathedral, and the visitor should round off his education in mediæval glass by inspecting the late Perpendicular glass in which the parish churches of York abound. There is a fine collection of fifteenth-century glass in St. Martin’s church, in Coney Street, near the interesting old Guildhall. Indeed, nowhere in England can stained glass be studied to such advantage as at York.

Victorian Cathedrals.

The following new dioceses have been formed during the present reign: Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Ripon, St. Alban’s, Southwell, Truro, Wakefield. Of these Ripon Minster, St. Alban’s Abbey, and Southwell Minster have been described already. In only one diocese, Truro, has a new cathedral been commenced. The bishops of Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, and Wakefield, are housed in parish churches.

Liverpool Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1880. A fine design for a domical cathedral was prepared by Mr. Emerson in 1885, but the church of St. Peter remains the “provisional cathedral.”

Manchester Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1847. Externally and internally the cathedral is but a magnified parish church. The single western tower, the absence of a central tower, the extraordinary breadth of the interior, the absence of a triforium, the wooden roofs, all stamp it with parochialism. Indeed, the nave and aisles are still the parish church of Manchester, the cathedral proper being confined to the choir and its aisles. Looked at as a parish church and a collegiate church—for from 1426 it was both—it is a magnificent specimen of late English Gothic, dating from 1426 to 1520, when the ambition of architects was to make of their churches “stone-lanterns.” In the same accidental way as Chichester cathedral it has become possessed of picturesque double aisles, by the incorporation on either side of sets of chantries. The south aisle of Dorchester priory church had a similar origin. It has been so thoroughly “renovated” that it is practically a modern church. But it is very impressive. There is no jarring of styles. And the colour effects, externally and internally, are superb. Its woodwork, too—rood-screen, choir-screens, tabernacled stalls, misereres, and roofs—is of great richness and fine design. The whole church in its fortuitous picturesqueness appeals to one much more than the icy regularity of such churches as St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, or Bath Abbey.

Newcastle Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1882. The church is Curvilinear work of the fourteenth century, to which a Perpendicular tower and spire, east window and font were added about 1450. The spire, with its pinnacle supported on converging flying buttresses, is a bold and effective composition. Spires of similar construction occur in the Cross Steeple, Glasgow, and King’s College, Aberdeen, and formerly existed at Linlithgow and Haddington. London has a fine example by Sir Christopher Wren in St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East. There is a fine Jacobean monument, pulpit-shaped, to Henry Maddison, and another to William Hall.

Truro Cathedral.

Truro cathedral, consecrated in 1887, is the first entirely new cathedral designed in England since St. Paul’s. The nave, towers, spires, chapter-house, and cloister are still to build. In dimensions it ranks with Norwich and Wells; in plan it is as complex as any of the greater of our cathedrals. It is intended to have three towers and spires, a south porch, western porches, an aisled nave of nine bays, a central transept with eastern and western aisles and baptistery, a choir, sanctuary, and eastern processional aisle, a square east end, and an unaisled eastern transept, projecting slightly beyond the aisles. Below the choir is a crypt, appropriated to vestries. The crypt is supposed to be in the massive style of the latter years of the twelfth century. The choir is supposed to have been commenced in the early years of the thirteenth century; but since, as in the transepts of Salisbury, the aisle windows are lancets, while those of the clerestory have early plate-tracery, the upper part of the choir is supposed not to have been finished before the middle of the century. So again, in the half-century or so which is supposed to elapse between the commencement and the completion of the cathedral, the design is supposed to have been altered here and there as it passed through different hands; hence the rose-windows, which are unusually plentiful, are all different; the transept ends are differently treated; the arches of the choir are narrow, those of the nave are wide; the latter has coupled bays, the choir has not; the quadripartite vault of the choir becomes more complex in the nave, just as it does at Lincoln. And just as the Lincoln architect dropped down fortuitous chapels at the west end of the nave, so Mr. Pearson purposely forgot to leave room for a baptistery, and tacked it on, in a carefully casual manner, to the south transept. The cloister, too, is to be three-sided and lop-sided, as at Chichester. Internally, the cathedral is picturesquely beautiful, and admirably adapted for the ritual of the Church of England as it was in the thirteenth century. The south side of the choir has the remarkable peculiarity of having three aisles; so has that of Oxford cathedral. But it got its three aisles in a different way from Oxford. Mr. Pearson was instructed to leave standing a piece of genuine mediæval work, late and good—viz., the south aisle of the old church of St. Mary’s. The cathedral was placed to the north of it, just so far off as to barely admit the buttresses supporting the flying-buttresses of the choir vault. These buttresses Mr. Pearson pierced with arches, and, roofing over the space from buttress to buttress, got a narrow intermediate aisle between the choir-aisle to the north and St. Mary’s aisle to the south. Thus on the south side of the choir there are three ranges of piers and three ranges of arches, and the changing vistas and perspectives and mysterious distances are delightful. In this instance the architect was mediæval in spirit as well as in the letter.

Wakefield Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1888. Like Manchester cathedral, the church is thoroughly parochial in appearance, inside and outside. But, archæologically, it is of exceptional interest. It is one of those numerous churches, every stone of the exterior of which is of late Gothic date, but which internally in their arcades reveal the existence of much earlier building epochs. Like many others, though now a vast parallelogram, it was once a cruciform church in plan; and though now it has a western tower, its tower once stood above the crossing. Once its nave was aisleless; then it had narrow aisles; later on, these narrow aisles were replaced by broad ones. The piers and arches of the first aisles were low; afterwards they were heightened or rebuilt. Originally it had no clerestory; this was not added till the fifteenth century. When the central tower fell, the new tower was built ten feet west of the nave, so as not to interfere with the services. When it was finished, it was joined up to the nave by the addition of a new westernmost bay. The Norman chancel and its successor were short, and had neither aisles nor clerestory; the present chancel, the third, is long, having absorbed the space originally covered by the central tower; and it has a clerestory and aisles, and these have absorbed the transepts. Finally, the font, choir-screen, and sounding-board are Jacobean. Wakefield cathedral is a typical embodiment of the history of the Church of England, with a personal identity undestroyed by its many transformations, like the boy’s knife which had a new blade and a new handle, but was still the same old knife.

The Welsh Cathedrals.

Bangor.

The work at Bangor falls into four periods.

I. Originally the cathedral was a small Norman church, probably without aisles, with nave, transept, choir of one bay, and apse. Of this building nothing is visible except a buttress and window on the south side of the choir. It seems to have received great damage in 1247.

II. Between 1267 and 1305 the cathedral was practically rebuilt by Bishop Anian. The Norman apse was demolished, and the choir was extended two bays farther to the east, and ended square. The transepts also were lengthened half a bay each. A chapel was added to the north of the choir; and aisles, either now or not much later, to the nave.

III. In 1402 the cathedral was burnt by Owen Glendower. Between 1500 and 1532 Bishops Dene and Skevynton rebuilt the eastern part of the presbytery, the nave arcade and the clerestory above it, the two windows on the south side of the choir—set high because the lower part of the wall was blocked with the stall-work—the western tower, and the stump of a central tower.

IV. In the restoration of 1866 many fragments of Anian’s cathedral were found in the walls, and were used up by Sir G. G. Scott in rebuilding the transept after what he imagined to be Anian’s design. The choir-chapel was also rebuilt as organ-chamber, library and chapter-house. The aisles also, and the central tower, were almost wholly rebuilt.

Llandaff.

Llandaff, though practically but a suburb of the busy town of Cardiff, still remains picturesquely environed by woods and meadows and hills and the Taff. Externally it adds one more to the endless varieties of English cathedral architecture. No central tower is here, and the position of transepts is inadequately occupied by the chapter-house on the southern side. One unbroken roof, as at Dorchester abbey church, extends for the whole length of the cathedral, the Lady chapel excepted. Its west front, indeed, is cathedral-like, now that a south-west tower and spire, in French Gothic, has been added. Internally, the absence of a triforium gives it a parochial appearance. Indeed, both externally and internally, it has the appearance rather of a magnified parish church than the seat of one of the most ancient bishoprics in the country. Nevertheless, as at Wakefield, and Dorchester, it is quite possible that, though now it is a vast oblong, 200 feet by 70 feet, it was originally a Norman cruciform church. But whether it had originally a central tower, or towers flanking the choir, somewhat after the fashion of those of the old cathedral of Como or those of Exeter, it is impossible to ascertain. The architectural record of Llandaff is incomplete, and the evolution of the ground-plan is a puzzle not to be disentangled. Of Norman work there are two sets. One is to be found in the presbytery: it consists of the east wall and its arch, and of fragments of an arch and window in the south wall. This seems to be the work of Bishop Urban, _c._ 1120. The nave was probably not completed till late in the twelfth century; the only visible remains are the north and south doorways (Transitional).

It would seem that it was determined subsequently to rebuild not the whole eight bays of the nave and choir, but only the interior of them. The walls of the low Norman aisles, with their doorways and windows, were left untouched. But a new set of piers and arches carrying a clerestory were put up in place of the Norman work. It is possible that the nave was not given a triforium, because there still survived low unvaulted Norman aisles on either side of it. All this is excellent Lancet work, done between 1193 and 1229. To this period also belongs the fine west front and the vaulted vestibule to the chapter-house.

Between 1244 and 1265 a little southern transept was built to serve as a chapter-house. Below, it is square, but nevertheless has a central stalk like the octagonal chapter-houses at Salisbury and Westminster. The upper story is octagonal, and has a steep octagonal roof.

Then it was determined to have a large eastern Lady chapel. Not to interfere with the services, this was probably built completely detached from the cathedral, as at Lichfield and elsewhere. When it was finished the Norman apse would be pulled down, and the Lady chapel joined on to the presbytery. Two chapels also were built, one on each side of the westernmost bay of the new Lady chapel. This work was probably done _c._ 1280.

The next step was to continue the northern of these chapels eastward, so as to provide the presbytery with a northern aisle of two bays, and to pierce the north wall of the presbytery with a couple of arches. No doubt they would have liked a couple of arches in the southern wall; but unfortunately the bay of the aisle on the other side of it had been vaulted, and so only one arch was inserted, leaving as much wall as possible to support the vault. Under this arch the sedilia were placed.

Soon afterwards the outer wall of the south aisle of the presbytery was rebuilt. But the presbytery was very dark, having no windows to the east, and being much blocked on the south side by the sedilia and by the mass of Norman walling which it had been necessary to retain. So it received a clerestory and very large aisle-windows. Nor were the nave and choir well lighted. In the clerestory and west front they had only lancet windows; and, if the low Norman aisles still remained, they could contain but very diminutive windows. There was nothing for it but to rebuild the whole of the eight bays of each aisle. This rebuilding probably went on between 1315 and 1360, for the windows have ogee dripstones and ogee patterns in the tracery. When the aisles had been rebuilt the whole cathedral had been reconstructed, with the exception of two Norman doorways and two or three Norman arches in the presbytery. To us it may seem a topsy-turvy mode of procedure to first rebuild the inside—the pier-arcade and clerestory—of a church, and the outside walls afterwards; but it is the mode of procedure adopted in scores of parish churches, even the humblest. One constantly finds the aisles, as at Wakefield, of later date than the pier-arcade, and that pier-arcade a rebuilding of something older.

After this great reconstruction, first of the interior, then of the exterior, there remained only to complete the west front. The south-west tower seems to have become ruinous or to have collapsed, and the materials of it helped to build a new north-west tower erected at the cost of Jasper Tudor, uncle of Henry VII. Then came the Reformation; and the south-west tower was not rebuilt till the present century. Since 1843 nave, choir, and presbytery have been almost wholly rebuilt.

St. Asaph.

This is the smallest of the Welsh cathedrals, and consists of an aisled nave of five bays, an aisleless transept, a central tower, and a chancel. The chancel was built by Sir G. G. Scott in 1868; the rest between 1284 and 1352. The arcade and clerestory of the nave are exceptional in character. The piers have no capitals; so that the mouldings run uninterruptedly round the arch; they consist simply of chamfers with a wave moulding. These continuous mouldings are not uncommon in late work—_e.g._, in Antwerp cathedral; but are seldom found in early Gothic, though a thirteenth-century example occurs in the vestibule of Chester chapter house. The clerestory windows are square, but cusped. The central tower is massive and effective. The cathedral is finely situated, on elevated ground, above the beautiful valley of the Clwyd; and may be seen from the London and Holyhead railway. There are good stalls (1471-1495), and an interesting effigy of a bishop (_c._ 1300).

St. David’s.

Far away in the extreme west of Pembrokeshire, sixteen miles from the nearest railway station, Haverfordwest, is one of the most interesting cathedrals in the British Isles. Dedicated to the great patron saint of Wales, it is as complex in plan as Winchester or St. Alban’s, and abounds in lovely detail of the Transitional and Curvilinear periods.