Part 28

The chapel, used as the Consistory Court, follows with two windows facing south and two east. On the east end of the latter, in front of the windows, our eyes are arrested by the grotesque =Devil Looking over Lincoln=. The sculptured figures near by are pilgrims. Next comes =St. Hugh’s Chapel=, or the Ringers’ Chapel, with one window facing the south.

From the road at the north-east corner we get a good general view of the Cathedral and the Chapter-House. St. Hugh’s transept is hidden, but we can see the end of the western transept with the =Dean’s Eye=--the large quatrefoil encircled by sixteen small circles. The lancet window of five lights in the gable above it is also visible.

The second bay on the north side of the Angel Choir contains the =Fleming Chantry=, on which the two chapels on the south side were modelled. Then we come to the north doorway of the =Angel= =Choir=, corresponding to the more ornate entrance on the south.

We have now completed our survey of the Cathedral and have not yet noticed the =Central Tower=, considered by many critics the finest tower in England. It rises to a height of 271 feet. Two lofty windows adorn each side of the upper story with their crocketed pillars and canopied heads. Octagonal panelled turrets, surmounted by pinnacles, ornament the four corners. Grosseteste’s lattice-work pattern covers the lower part within and without. The tower in its present state dates from 1775, when James Essex built the parapet and advised battlements and pinnacles instead of a spire. The tall spire of timber, coated with lead, that completed the tower of 1311, was blown down in 1547, carrying the parapet with it; and again in 1715 three of the pinnacles were blown down and replaced in 1728. In 1883 the western side was damaged by a storm, but was repaired. Here “Great Tom of Lincoln,” the fourth largest bell in England (5 tons, 8 cwt.), seven feet in diameter, hangs. Too large to ring, the hours are struck on it with a hammer.

The original =Great Tom= hung in the north-west tower.

“It is not known how it was acquired; some say it was a gift, others say it was stolen from the Abbey of Beauchief, Derbyshire, or from Peterborough. The origin of its name, too, has been a subject of dispute. Stukeley considered it possible that it had been consecrated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. Others think it took its name from that of the old bell of Christ Church, Oxford, which bore the curious inscription, _In Thomae laude, resono Bim Bom sine fraude_. It should be remembered that Oxford was in the diocese of Lincoln in olden days, and that several Bishops of Lincoln were chancellors of Oxford. Wherever the first ‘Great Tom’ came from, it was recast in the minster yard by two bell founders from Nottingham and Leicester early in the Seventeenth Century, when the weight was increased from 8,743 pounds to 9,894½ pounds. ‘The bell was cast and hung upp and upon Sonday the xxvij of this month [January, 1611] ronge owte and all safe and well.’ It was tolled until 1802, when it was found that this process shook the tower too much. The following extract from the _Stamford Mercury_ of the 6th August, 1802, is given by North in his ‘Church Bells of Lincolnshire’:--‘Great Tom o’ Lincoln is to be rung no more! The full swing of four tons and a half is found to injure the tower where he hangs. He has therefore been chained and riveted down; so that instead of the full mouthful he has been used to send forth, he is enjoined in future merely to wag his tongue.’ Towards the end of the year 1827 experienced ears detected that something was wrong, and by Christmas it became plainly evident that the bell was cracked. It was finally decided to have it recast in a larger size. For this purpose it was broken to pieces with its own clapper, and sent to London. To provide the extra metal, the six Lady Bells were unfortunately sacrificed. The cathedral thus lost the distinction of being the only one in the kingdom possessed of two rings of bells. ‘Great Tom’ was recast by Thomas Mears at the Whitechapel Bell foundry on the 15th November, 1834. It was taken by road to Lincoln, drawn by eight horses, and raised to its new position in the central tower. Two new quarter bells, cast at the same time, were also hung in this tower. The number of quarter bells was increased in 1880 to four.”--(A. F. K.)

The six “Lady Bells,” referred to above, hung in this central tower (see page 294). When they were removed in 1834 it was seen that four were dated 1593; one, 1633; and one, 1737.

In the Thirteenth Century the =Minster Yard=, as many still call the Cathedral Close, was enclosed by a wall. Several massive gates formed the entrances. Of these the =Exchequer=, a large archway, with a postern on each side and an upper story, remains at the western end. =Pottergate Arch=, at the top of the new road, shows us what an early Fourteenth Century single gate was like. Near it the =Grecian Stairs= lead up to the Close.

SOUTHWELL

DEDICATION: ST. MARY.

CHIEF FEATURE: CHAPTER-HOUSE.

For many centuries the Church of St. Mary, Southwell, was under the dominion of York. The clergy had many privileges, held property, lived in their own houses, like country gentlemen, and hunted in the forests which Robin Hood and his merry men had made romantic; for Southwell is not far from legendary Sherwood.

The church became a Cathedral in 1884. It dates in the main from the Twelfth Century, though a few fragments are older. It is supposed that the first Saxon church was destroyed by the Danes; the next is said to have been built by King Edgar in 960; and in the time of Henry I. was rebuilt in the Norman style. Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York (see page 264), rebuilt the nave of Southwell, and was assisted by John Romeyn, subdean (see page 264).

“In the Curvilinear Period (1315-1360) was erected quite the loveliest choir-screen in England; next comes that of Lincoln, evidently by the same hand. Eastern and western sides are entirely different in design; on the western side the artist parts reluctantly with the beautiful geometrical design of the Thirteenth Century; on the eastern side he accepts unreservedly the reign of the ogee arch. Magnificent sedilia and stone stalls of similar character were erected, which only survive in part. Very beautiful, too, is the cusping of the reticulated windows inserted in the north transept chapel. The upper parts of the Chapter-House and the north transept chapel also were remodelled in the Curvilinear Period. For two hundred years and more, the highest and best of Mediæval art found cultivated and wealthy patrons in the canons of Southwell. Norman, Lancet, Geometrical, Curvilinear work are all seen here at their best. Few of our cathedrals, from the point of view either of architectural design or sculptural detail, can be mentioned in the same breath with Southwell. It is one of the greatest delights of Southwell that this lovely minster is little known and almost unvisited: one feels as if one were ‘the first that ever burst into the silent sea’!”--(F. B.)

The general appearance of the Cathedral is Norman.

“The WEST FRONT has been altered in character from its original Norman work. We see a huge Perpendicular window with an embattled parapet over it, an alteration made in the Fifteenth Century. The windows in the lower stages of the towers are modern imitations of Norman work. The towers have seven stages and the sixth is enriched with fine arcading composed of intersecting arches. The present spires are modern imitations of the originals destroyed by fire in 1711. These were immediately restored but removed in 1802, and have now again been replaced. The old Norman doorway is remarkably fine. It has five orders, the zigzag and the filleted edge roll being the chief mouldings.

“Passing to the south side we see the walls of the nave pierced by apparent Norman windows, but these are modern imitations. The most western window in the north side is the only original Norman window; the rest are copied from it, and were erected in 1847. Four Perpendicular windows were inserted in the Fifteenth Century. There is a row of small square windows above which light the triforium, and the clerestory has a curious series of circular windows which are unique in this country. The roof is high-pitched, having been erected in modern times by the architect Christian, and the parapets are Perpendicular in style. The south doorway should be noticed, of Norman workmanship with zigzag string-course over it.”--(P. H. D.)

The Choir is Early English and much resembles that of Lincoln. The dog-tooth is very evident. The windows are lancet. The two flying-buttresses on the south were added in the Decorated period.

The Chapter-House is on the north, and its similarity to that of York will strike every one who has seen the _flos florum_ of the great Minster of the north. It is supposed the same architect (probably John Romeyn) designed both. This is octagonal. The windows are of three lights, with trefoil and circular ones in the heads. The roof is modern.

The North porch is much admired. The inner doorway has a zigzag and beak-head moulding. In the parvise above (very unusual in a porch of this date), the wife of William Clay, a hunted Royalist, was hidden during the Civil War. Here her child was born.

We enter by the west door and gain a view of the =Nave=.

“Looking down the nave (1110-1150) we are impressed by the massive appearance of the interior. The piers are rather short, only 19 feet high, six on each side, with square bases and round capitals. The triforium is large, and above is the clerestory with its unique plain circular windows. The Norman mouldings, zigzag, billet, hatchet, etc., are easily recognized. The present roof was erected in 1881. The Font, erected in 1661, is a poor substitute for the one destroyed by the soldiers of Cromwell. The Pulpit is modern. The second pillar from the east on the south side is called Pike’s Pillar, and retains faint traces of a mural painting of the Annunciation; the nave aisles have some good vaulting. A plain stone bench runs along the walls. This was common in old churches and was the origin of the saying ‘Let the weakest go to the wall,’ where they could sit and rest, as the days of pews were not yet. The only original Norman window which remains is at the west end of the north aisle.”--(P. H. D.)

The =Transepts= are Norman. At the east end of each the original plan included an apsidal chapel. The south transept still retains the arch with its zigzag and cable mouldings that connected it with the transept. The chapel at the east end of the north transept has also gone, but here we find on its site a Late Early English construction, with still later windows (Decorated). In the upper floor the Library is situated.

The =Tower= is Norman, built in 1150. A cable moulding runs around the four large arches. It contains a peal of bells.

“A stone screen of rich Decorated work separates the transept from the choir, over which is now the organ (a modern instrument). The screen is richly ornamented, and a noble specimen of the work of the period. There are three arches opening to the space beneath the tower, separated by slight piers of clustered shafts, the capitals carved with foliage of a Late Decorated character. The walls of the screen support the old rood-loft, access to which is gained by two staircases.

“Entering the Choir we see on each side of the doorway three prebendal stalls with _misereres_, on which are carved some foliage. The Bishop’s Stall was once occupied by Cardinal Wolsey. The choir was built by Archbishop Grey in Early English style (1230-1250). There are six arches, with piers of eight clustered shafts. The dogtooth moulding is conspicuous in the arches and on the vaulting of the roof. It will be noticed that the triforium and clerestory are blended together. The east window consists of two rows of lancets, the lower ones containing old glass brought from Paris in 1815, where it was formerly in the Chapel of the Knights Templar. The Baptism of Our Lord; Raising of Lazarus (Francis I. is to be seen in a crimson cap); Christ entering Jerusalem (Luther is near Our Lord, Louis XI. and the Duke of Orleans); the Mocking of Our Lord (the figure of Dante appears).

“The Sedilia were erected in 1350 and are good Decorated

work. They have the unusual number of five seats on the same level. The arches are ogee-shaped and are richly carved. The sculptured figures are remarkable, and represent the Creation and the Redemption. Beginning at the east we see the Father holding the world (two groups uncertain), Joseph’s Dream, the Nativity and Flight into Egypt.

“The Lectern belonged to the monks of Newstead Abbey, who threw it into the lake to hide it from the commissioners of Henry VIII. Its date is about 1500.”--(P. H. D.)

Entering a beautiful doorway in the north-choir-aisle we pass through a vestibule into the =Chapter-House=.

“The transition between the Early English work of the choir and the Decorated style of the Chapter-House is very gradual. The doorway, with its two arches and shafts of Purbeck marble, is remarkably fine. There is a small cloister court, with a stone-covered well. In the vestibule we see the walls covered with beautiful arcading of lancet arches of an Early English character. The capitals are beautifully carved with foliage. There is a curious boss of sculpture representing a secular priest shaking the regular monk by the hair, which figuratively depicts the supremacy of the former in the church of Southwell.

“The Chapter-House (1285-1300) is described by Ruskin as ‘the gem of English architecture,’ and all architects agree in singing the praises of this noble building. It much resembles that of York, but is smaller and perhaps more beautiful. It is octagonal, has no central pillar, and is remarkable for its fine sculpture. The historian of Southwell says: ‘The foliage everywhere is most beautiful: the oak, the vine, the maple, the white-thorn, the rose, with a vast variety of other plants, are sculptured with exquisite freedom and delicacy; and no two capitals, or bosses or spandrels are found alike. Everywhere we meet, in ever-changing and ever-charming variety, with some fresh object of interest and admiration. Figures are introduced amid the foliage, heads with branches issuing out of their mouths, birds and lizard-like monsters. In the capitals a man reclines beneath a tree, puffing lustily at a horn, or a goat is gnawing the leaves, or a bird pecking the berries, or a pair of pigs are grunting up the acorns, or a brace of hounds just grabbing a hare. All this is the work of no mere chiseller of stone, but of a consummate artist; than whom it may be doubted whether any sculptor of any age or country ever produced anything more life-like and exquisitely graceful.’ The entrance doorway is remarkably fine and is worthy of close study. The main arch is divided into two by a slender shaft, and over them is a quatrefoiled circle of beautiful design. The leaf ornament is largely used, both in the smaller arches and in the main arch. Filleted rounds and hollows are the other mouldings used.”--(P. H. D.)

PETERBOROUGH

DEDICATION: ST. PETER. CHURCH OF A BENEDICTINE MONASTERY.

SPECIAL FEATURES: THE WEST FRONT; THE NEW BUILDING.

The great fenland monastery of St. Peter, the holy house of Medeshampstead, attracting houses around it, grew into a borough, and finally into a city--Peterborough. The village was first called Medeshampstead--homestead in the meadows. For centuries the settlement had no interests outside the monastery. In the Seventh Century Penda, King of Mercia, and his family were converted to Christianity, and it was his son Penda who founded the monastery here in 654. The first monastery was destroyed by the Danes in 870. It lay in ruins for a hundred years. With the religious revival under Duncan and King Edgar, the holy house of Medeshampstead was rebuilt by Bishop Ethelwold, of Winchester, and henceforth known as the Burgh.

The foundations of the old Saxon church still remain under the east wall of the south transept. It is related that when King Edgar visited the monastery and saw some old deeds he wept for joy on reading the privileges of the place and granted a new charter renewing and confirming these. The church seems to have been, even in those days, dedicated to St. Peter. The Abbey flourished for a time; then it was plundered by Hereward, the Saxon leader, and suffered also from fire while the monks were carousing. In the time of Henry I. a great fire destroyed the whole building. The picturesque imagination of the period attributed it to a servant, who, trying unsuccessfully to light a fire in the bakehouse, lost his temper and called upon Satan for aid, crying “_Veni, Diabole, et insuffla ignem._”

John de Sais, who was then Abbot (1114-1125), began the building of a new minster, the one that we now see. As usual the work was begun at the east end. The choir was finished with an apse. A small apse also terminated each choir-aisle. The whole church was in progress of building for eighty years. This was all Norman work of course.

The western transept, dating from the close of the Twelfth and beginning of the Thirteenth Century, shows a change.

“The Norman style was giving place to the lighter and more elegant architecture of the Early English period, the round arch was beginning to be superseded by the pointed arch, and the massive ornamentation which marks the earlier style was displaced by the conventional foliage that soon came to be very generally employed. Most wisely, however, the Peterborough builders made their work at the west end of the nave intentionally uniform with what was already built. Very numerous indications of this can be seen by careful observers. The bases of the western pillars, the change in the depth of the mouldings, characteristic changes in the capitals in the triforium range, and especially the grand arches below the transept towers, which are pointed but enriched with ornamentation of pronounced Norman character, all point to the later date of this western transept.

“At the west wall of the church all trace of Norman work disappears. The arcade near the ground, the large round arch above the door, the great west window and its adjacent arches (not, of course, including the late tracery), are all of distinct Early English character. The whole of this wall may be held to be an integral part of the west front, and not of the transept which it bounds.

“When we come to the most distinctive feature of the cathedral, the glorious west front, we find we have no help whatever from the chronicles. Nowhere is there the smallest reference to its building. Other works raised by the Abbots of the period are named, but the noble western portico is never once mentioned.”--(W. D. S.)

According to Matthew Paris the church was dedicated in 1238 by the Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste.

In the Thirteenth Century many changes were made. The bell-tower was built, and bells from London, called _Les Londreis_, were hung in it. The Lady-Chapel (now destroyed) was built in 1272 at the east of the north transept (as at Ely).

In the Fourteenth Century the great round east and west arches of the central tower were changed into pointed ones, perhaps because the tower at Ely had fallen in 1321 and the monks wanted to strengthen theirs. Then they began to change all the triforium windows in the nave and choir from Norman to Decorated. Next, the central porch was added to the west front. During the Perpendicular period all the Norman windows that had not been altered were now filled with Perpendicular tracery; the great west window was also brought up to date, the battlements were added to the corner turrets, and the New Building tacked on to the East End of the choir.

A popular story related that Henry VIII. spared the church because his queen, Katherine of Aragon, was buried there. At any rate, he made Peterborough a cathedral in 1541, when he suppressed the monasteries.

The great historical event in connection with Peterborough was the burial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587.

Cromwell’s soldiers made sad havoc. Dean Patrick informs us that

“The next day after their arrival, early in the morning they break open the church doors, pull down the organs of which there were two pair.

“Then the soldiers enter the quire, and their first business was to tear in pieces all the common prayer-books that could be found. Next they break down all the seats, stalls and wainscot that was behind them, being adorned with several historical passages out of the Old Testament.

“Now behind the communion-table there stood a curious piece of stone-work, admired much by strangers and travellers: a stately skreen it was, well wrought, painted and gilt, which rose up as high almost as the roof of the church, in a row of three lofty spires, with other lesser spires growing out of them. This now had no imagery work upon it, or anything else that might justly give offence, and yet because it bore the name of the high altar, was pulled down with ropes, lay’d low and level with the ground.

“Over this place, in the roof of the church, in a large oval yet to be seen, was the picture of Our Saviour seated on a throne; one hand erected and holding a globe in the other, attended with the four Evangelists and saints on each side, with crowns in their hands, intended, I suppose, for a representation of Our Saviour’s coming to judgment. This was defaced and spoilt by the discharge of muskets.

“Then they rob and rifle the tombs and violate the monuments of the dead....

“When they had thus demolished the chief monuments, at length the very gravestones and marbles on the floor did not escape their sacrilegious hands. For where there was anything on them of sculptures or inscriptions in brass, these they force and tear off.

“Having thus done their work on the floor below, they are now at leisure to look up at the windows above.