Part 3

At the beginning of the fifth year of his work, William of Sens was seriously injured by a fall from the scaffold, and soon after returned to France. An English William was appointed to succeed him. He completed Trinity chapel, Becket’s corona, and the crypt beneath the two. It is usual to attribute to the English William an important part in the design of the eastern chapels and crypt. The facts point the other way. These eastern portions are less English and more French than the western work. There is not a single trace of English influence in the design, except solely the rounding of the abacus and the moulding of the capitals in the crypt. With these two minor exceptions, everything was completed in strict conformity with the French design.

More important even than the architecture is the ancient glass. Canterbury and York are the great treasure-houses of stained-glass: Canterbury for early thirteenth-century glass, York for fourteenth-century glass. The student should take with him to Canterbury Mr. Lewis Day’s work on Stained Glass. Three of the windows in the Trinity chapel illustrate the miracles of St. Thomas. On the north side, in the lower group of the eastern window, is the story of a child (1) who falls into the Medway, (2) the other boys tell his parents, (3) the body is drawn out of the water, _cætera desunt_. In the next group is the story of a boy who was brought to life by a draught of water mixed with the saint’s blood. But the father omitted to pay the offerings promised to the saint. In the central medallion another son lies dead, struck by the sword of St. Thomas, who is seen through the ceiling. In another group a woman is being flagellated by way of penance. Two other windows describe miracles of healing: in a medallion in the lower part of the western window a madman comes up, “_amens accedit_,” beaten with sticks and bound; in the next he is cured, “_sanus recedit_.” In one is the only representation extant of the later shrine; the martyr, in a mauve vestment, appears in a vision to Benedict below. On the shrine is the box, as described by Erasmus, which contained the archbishop’s sudary. In the east window of the corona is portrayed Christ’s Passion; in the two windows of the north aisle are types and antitypes from the Old and New Testaments; among them the three Magi, all asleep in one bed. The circular window in the north-east transept also contains the original glass; and many fragments are seen elsewhere.

III. LANCET.—For this period (1190-1245) there is nothing to show except the north wall of the Cloister, and a lovely doorway in the south-east corner of the Cloister, cruelly hacked about by the vandals who built the cloister-vault.

IV. To the GEOMETRICAL period (1245-1315) belongs the Chapter-house up to the sills of the windows, and the screens north and south of the choir. A fine window with Kentish tracery was inserted in St. Anselm’s chapel.

V. Of CURVILINEAR work (1315-1360) there is no trace except some diaper-work in the choir, which may have adorned the shrine of St. Dunstan, who was buried at the south end of the high altar.

VI. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—At length Canterbury woke up, and removed Lanfranc’s nave and transept, which must have looked shockingly low and mean for the last two hundred years in juxtaposition with the stately choir. The new nave, built between 1379 and 1400, is very fine, but somehow no one seems to be a very ardent admirer of it. Its proportions are not good: Winchester nave is about the same height, but is 70 feet longer; York choir is loftier, and is 25 feet longer. But the gravest fault is in the internal elevation. The architect has recognised the value of tallness of pier-arch; but to get this exceptional height of pier and arch, he has sacrificed not only triforium, but clerestory as well. It is fatal to a Gothic design to minimise the clerestory. The choirs of Gloucester, Norwich, Cirencester, are the types to be followed; not the naves of Southwell or Lichfield.

To this period belong also the Black Prince’s chantry, and the screens and reredos of the Lady chapel, all in the crypt; the upper part of the chapter-house, from which all aspect of antiquity has recently been removed; the cloisters; St. Michael’s, or the Warrior’s chapel, which replaced the eastern apse of Lanfranc’s southern transept, and which has a complicated lierne vault similar in character to that of the north transept of Gloucester cathedral; the tomb and chantry of Henry IV., with fan-vaulting, 1433; the western screen at the entrance of the choir; the south-west tower; Deans’ chapel (Lady chapel), which replaced the eastern apse of Lanfranc’s northern transept (1450), and which has fan-vaulting.

VII. To the TUDOR period belongs the Angel or Bell Harry Tower (1495-1503), and the buttressing and arches inserted between its piers. Also the Christ Church gateway. The great tower is remarkable for the unbroken verticality of its buttresses; it is as exceptional as it is successful in design.

The _Chapter-house_ is rectangular, for a rectangular building fitted more easily into the east walk of a monastic cloister. Nearly all the monastic chapter-houses are therefore rectangular, but sometimes had apses; the exceptions being the Benedictine chapter-houses of Worcester, Westminster, Evesham, and Belvoir (which last was exceptional also in position, being placed in the very centre of the cloister), and the Cistercian chapter-houses of Morgam and Abbey Dore, sister designs. While the Secular Canons, having as a rule no cloister, preferred a polygonal chapter-house, as at Lincoln, Beverley, Lichfield, Salisbury, Wells, Elgin, Southwell, York, Old St. Paul’s, Hereford, Howden, Manchester, Warwick. So did the Regular Canons at Alnwick, Cockersand, Thornton, Carlisle, Bridlington, and Bolton. This beautiful polygonal form seems not to occur in France.

At the north-west corner of the cloister is the doorway through which Becket passed to the north-west transept, with his murderers in pursuit of him. Near here is a hole in the wall, the Buttery hatch. In the fifteenth century the south walk of the cloister was divided into “studies” for the monks by wooden partitions (at Gloucester they are of stone), and its windows were glazed.

From the cloister we pass to the _West Front_, and commence the tour of the exterior. The south-west tower (with the Deans’ chapel) was completed by Prior Goldstone (1449-1468); the copy of it was put up in 1834: “it was an eyesore that the two towers did not match.” Very bad modern statues adorn the niches.

Later still (1517) is _Christ Church Gateway_, through which one first approaches the cathedral, with doors inserted in 1662. Originally it had two turrets. Outside it is a monument to the dramatist Marlowe.

On the south side is seen the porch; the nave, a beautiful design; and the charming pinnacle of the south-west transept. East of the Warrior’s chapel is the projecting end of Stephen Langton’s tomb. East of this, the two lower rows of windows are those of Conrad’s choir; the upper row that of William of Sens. The middle windows in the S.E. transept were the clerestory windows of Conrad; the windows above them are those of William of Sens. The three upper stages of the tower on the south of this transept are late Norman work; one of the prettiest bits in Canterbury. Farther east we have French design, pure and simple; here, for the first time in English architecture, the flying-buttresses are openly displayed; notice how flat and plain they are; it had not yet occurred to architects to make them decorative. The grand sweep of apse and ambulatory seems to send one straight back to France. Then comes the broken, rocky outline of the _corona_—the great puzzle of Canterbury. North-east of the corona are two groups of ruined Norman pillars and arches discoloured by fire; once they were continuous, forming one very long building, the _Monks’ Infirmary_, of which the west end was originally an open dormitory, open to the roof, and the east end, separated off by a screen, the Chapel; which has a late Geometrical window. A mediæval infirmary of this type is still in use at Chichester. The Canterbury infirmary had a north transept, called the Table Hall or Refectory (now part of the house of the Archdeacon of Maidstone), in which the inmates dined. On the north side of Trinity chapel is seen the _Chantry of Henry IV._; then _St. Andrew’s Tower_ and the barred _Treasury_; the lower part of the latter is late Norman work, largely rebuilt. The south alley of the _Infirmary Cloister_ was built about 1236. Along this one passes to the _Baptistery_, which was originally nothing but a mediæval water-tower; late Norman below, Perpendicular above. Returning towards the Infirmary, we turn to the north up the east alley of the Infirmary Cloister, now called the “_Dark Entry_,” at the north end of which is the _Prior’s Gateway_. On the left are some Norman shafts and arches of beautiful design. It was the Dark Entry that was haunted by Nell Cook of the Ingoldsby Legends. West of the Prior’s gateway are the two columns from the Romano-British church at Reculvers. On the north side of the Prior’s or Green Court are the Brewery and Bakehouse; to the N.W. is the famous Norman staircase, which originally led to a great North Hall; perhaps a Casual Ward—for tramps too found accommodation at the monasteries.

The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Carlisle.

Carlisle Cathedral, though but a torso, is of exceptional interest, both archæologically and artistically. It dates from the early years of the twelfth century. It was originally the church of the Austin or Black Canons, and also the seat of a bishopric. The Augustinian Cathedral was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; and it was re-dedicated to the Holy and undivided Trinity when placed on the New Foundation.

I. LATE NORMAN.—The Augustinian house was founded by Henry I. in 1101, at the instigation of Queen Matilda. The Norman church consisted of an aisled nave of seven bays, a transept with eastern apses, and an aisled choir. The stones show the marks of the hatchet; the masonry is well-bonded—too good to be eleventh-century work. The corbel-tables of aisle and clerestory are particularly strong and vigorous. Norman aisles were usually vaulted; but the aisle-walls of Carlisle are so thin that they can never have supported a vault.

II. LANCET.—The lower parts of the northern and southern faces of the piers of the tower are flat: their shafts being stopped by corbels instead of descending to the ground. This was to allow the stalls of the Canons to be placed close up to the piers. Hence it is clear that in the Norman church the Canons sat, as at Norwich, in the crossing and the western bays of the nave. Like the Benedictine monks of Canterbury, they wanted to get into the choir. And so the Norman choir, being altogether inadequate to contain stalls and sanctuary, as at Canterbury, was pulled down; and a beautiful early Gothic choir of seven bays was built. Of this the vaulted aisles and the pier-arches still remain. The work is late in the Lancet period (1190-1245); for in the south aisle the Lancet windows are developing into plate-tracery, and the charming arcade on the wall is cinquefoiled. The new choir was not only far in advance of its Norman predecessor in length and height; but it was also 12 feet broader. The church could not be broadened to the south, because the cloister would prevent any removal of the wall of the south aisle, when the nave was rebuilt. So the south wall of the choir was rebuilt on the old foundations: the southern row of piers probably also rest on the foundations of the Norman piers. The central aisle of the choir was made much broader than that of the nave, with which, therefore, it is out of line; the same is the case with the north aisle of the choir.

At the same time the eastern apse of the south transept was rebuilt in the style of the day, with the crisply carved foliage of the later years of the Lancet period. The northern transept was to have been rebuilt on a more extensive scale, not being cramped as the south transept was, by monastic buildings adjacent. It was to have had an eastern aisle; but when one pier of the aisle had been built, and part of its eastern wall (a fragment of which, with string-course, survives), the work was suddenly stopped.

III. CURVILINEAR.—But hardly was the new choir completed when, together with belfry and bells, it was destroyed by a great fire, with the exception of the aisles, which were protected by their stone vaults. The Canons, not a whit disheartened, resolved to rebuild the choir, and to rebuild it even longer and loftier than before. To its length they added an eastern bay, just wide enough to provide a processional path at the back of the high altar. They increased its height to 72 feet. But the piers and walls were too thin to bear the additional weight. They increased the thickness of the aisle-walls to 5 feet; the piers they rebuilt. The thirteenth-century arches, however, which were apparently not much damaged by the fire, they managed in some inexplicable way to retain. A modern contractor would take the arches down, and then rebuild them with the old stones. A mediæval builder would be more likely to underpin the arches, take the piers away and then rebuild them without disturbing the arches at all. The old builders revelled in such engineering feats. At Exeter they retained the clerestory wall while constructing new piers and arches below it; at York they transplanted two arches in the transept. The capitals of the new piers are exceedingly rich and interesting; they contain the best mediæval representation we possess of the Seasons; six capitals on the south side from east to west, six on the north side from west to east. The corbels also of the vaulting-shafts have rich naturalistic foliage. With that respect for good earlier work that is characteristic of the Curvilinear period, and so rare at any other time, they carried the cinquefoiled arcading of the aisles round the east wall, introducing, however, the characteristic detail of the period, not to bewilder unfortunate antiquaries of later days.

Their _chef-d’œuvre_, however, was the east front. On this they lavished all their wealth and all their art. It is a very poem in stone. Its only rival is the contemporary east front of Selby. “The great window,” says Professor Freeman, “is the grandest of its kind in England.” It certainly has no rival, unless it be that of York. The four lateral lights on either side of the Carlisle windows are gathered up into two pointed arches; at York these two arches are ogees; the free swing of the ogee arches contrasting most effectively with the pointed arch which embraces them both. The glass in the tracery represents our Lord sitting in Judgment; the procession of the Blessed to the Palace of Heaven, shown in two silvery quatrefoils; and very realistic representations of Hell and of the General Resurrection. It contains a portrait of John of Gaunt; the window was probably glazed when he was Governor of Carlisle, 1380-84.

So far the Canons spared no expense; everything was of the best. But their resources were taxed too heavily; it was impossible to finish the choir with the magnificence with which it was commenced. Triforium and clerestory are thin and poor; the inner arcade of the latter of the barest character. The piers had been rebuilt and strengthened, apparently to support a vault; but a vault was found too expensive, and was abandoned. Then hammerbeams were constructed for a roof of the type of the magnificent roofs of March Church and Westminster Hall. This in its turn was abandoned, and the present wagon-roof of wood was put up. For similar economical reasons the south transept was rebuilt without the aisle commenced in the thirteenth century.

IV. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—But the misfortunes of the Canons were not over yet. Another fire destroyed the new north transept. This was rebuilt between 1400 and 1419 by Bishop Strickland, who built the forty-six stalls of the choir. Then came the question of the central tower and the nave. The original plan had been that, when the choir was finished, a new central tower and a new nave should be built, both of the same width as the choir. But their troubles had been too much for them. The courage of the Canons gave way. They saw no prospect of ever being able to rebuild the Norman nave; so instead of pulling down the Norman tower and building one as broad as the choir, they left it standing merely adding a new upper story to it. It is, of course, far too small for its position; and while ranging with the nave, is quite lop-sided when seen in connection with the roof of the choir; though the awkwardness is lessened, and even made picturesque, by the addition of a staircase-turret on the north side of the tower. This was about 1401.

V. TUDOR.—Things seem to have improved towards the end of the fifteenth century. Prior Gondebour painted the ceiling of the choir and the backs of the stalls; and to him are due the beautiful screens in the south transept chapel. He also built a grand barn with a magnificent roof of beams nearly two feet thick: much of it is still standing. The refectory also is due to him; it has a pretty pulpit for the reader, as at Beaulieu and Chester. The Gate Tower or Abbey Gate House was rebuilt in 1528.

VI. RENAISSANCE.—Launcelot Salkeld, the last Prior and the first Dean of Carlisle, added the charming Renaissance screen on the north side of the tower.

VII. In the seventeenth century the western bays of the Norman nave were pulled down, during the Civil War, to provide materials for the repair of the city walls and guardhouses.

The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin, Chester.

The cathedral of Chester had originally an establishment of Secular Canons (see Southwell and Wells.) Its patron saint was St. Werburgh, a kinswoman of St. Ethelreda of Ely. In the eleventh century it was refounded as a Benedictine monastery by that great noble Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, who ruled the Welsh Marshes with almost regal sway. Henry VIII. made it the seat of a bishopric, which, though but a part of the ancient Mercian diocese of Lichfield, extended northwards into Yorkshire and Westmorland. Nowadays the diocese and county of Chester are coextensive.

If we proceed to the west doors, we have before us a vista of exceptional beauty. The apparent length of the interior is greatly increased by the screen thrown across it, which, however, is not so solid and lofty as to block up the vista entirely, as at Canterbury and York, nor so exiguous as the metal screens at Lichfield and Ely.

Passing under the new organ screen, we come to the most ancient work to be found in the cathedral—viz., genuine early Norman work of the eleventh century. It is to be compared with that of the south transepts of St. Albans and Hereford. Below, in the east wall, is an arch, which once led into an apse. Above is a balustraded arcade, quite of the St. Albans and Hereford type. Above, there must have been small clerestory windows, such as those built up in the opposite wall. The whole transept must have been low and humble, and is invaluable as showing us what eleventh-century work was really like, and of enabling us to realise the vast progress that had taken place in design, in masonry, and in carving by the time that Durham, Romsey, and Peterborough were built. This early transept was of one bay only. Notice how small the stones are, the gaping joints, and the irregularity of the courses.

_North-West Tower._—Bearing in mind the character of this masonry, pass out into the north aisle of the nave, and proceed to the Norman tower at the end of it. The work here is clumsy and massive, but far superior to that of the north transept, _c._ 1120. The north wall of the nave (now covered with mosaics) is also Norman. Other traces of the Norman cathedral will be found in the north aisle of the choir, to which we retrace our steps. On the right will be seen a great circular capital upside down, which has been used as a foundation for the north-east pier of the tower. A few feet farther is one of the original circular bases, proving that the Norman choir had vast circular piers like those of Gloucester, Durham, and St. John’s, Chester. Two bays farther east will be found in the pavement a semicircular band of dark marble. This marks foundations that have been found of the apsidal ending of this aisle; one of the stones of this Norman apse remains in the pavement. Moreover, it has been found that the central aisle of the choir, at the end of the second bay from the tower, ended in a semicircular range of columns, like St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield. From these indications we can restore the plan of the original Norman cathedral with some certainty. It had a nave and aisles of the same dimensions as the present ones; unaisled transepts, each of a single bay, and an eastern apse to each transept; perhaps a low central tower; a choir of two bays, ending in a semicircular range of columns and arches, and surrounded to the east by a semicircular ambulatory or processional path. On either side were aisles, three and a half bays long, each terminating in an eastern apse. So that the Norman cathedral had five eastern apses, and resembled in plan Gloucester and Norwich, except that the chapels of the choir-aisles of Chester point, not north-east and south-east, but due east.

_Norman Cloisters._—Returning to the north aisle of the nave we pass through the doorway at the east end of the aisle into the cloister. This doorway, as seen from the cloister, is, from its ornamentation, of later date than the north transept, and may also be about 1120. The south wall of the cloister is now seen to be Norman; Norman abbots are buried in the recesses. Passing along the cloister westwards, we have in front another Norman door, and a very late Norman passage. Passing along the west walk of the cloister, a doorway on the left leads into a large Norman undercroft, with two aisles roofed with massive unribbed vaulting. Above, as the division in the vaulting shows, were a large and a small hall. These buildings on the west of the cloisters may have been originally the cellars, refectory and dormitory of the lay brethren, as at Fountains and Kirkstall; and afterwards the cellar and halls of the Abbot’s house. To the south, above the late Norman passage, is the Episcopal chapel, also Norman, with good Jacobean work.

_Vestry._—We now return through the north transept to the north aisle of the choir. The next work done in the cathedral is to be found in the vestry to the left. The Norman apse of the north transept was pulled down; the arch in the west wall is nearly all that is left of it; and a new chapel was built here in the Transitional period, between 1145 and 1190, to which period the vaulting belongs. Later on, the east end of it was remodelled, and the western arch built up. Part of the foundation of the original Norman apse may be seen in the pavement near the door.