Chapter 9

The plan is arranged to facilitate the ingress and egress of large assemblages of people, five doorways being provided in the nave entrance and two in each of the transepts. The galleries over the nave and transept vestibules and the triforium have stairways with entrances on the side porches. Including the clergy entrances, fifteen outside doors are planned. The vestibules and porches connect with each other so that worshippers can pass from one to the other under cover.

The arrangement adopted for the central tower allows a central auditorium about one hundred feet in diameter, unobstructed by columns or piers, with the nave transepts and choir opening into it. The aisles are not decreased by this central enlargement, as they deflect through the four abutting towers.

The different vestry-rooms, library or sacristy and the treasury are grouped conveniently to the choir, with separate entrances for the church officials. The meeting-room for the clergy or chapter and the chapel have entrances independent of the church, or by lowering the screen they can be thrown open into the cathedral. Toilet-rooms, custodian's and a committee-room are located on the transept vestibules, as these entrances would most probably be constantly open.

Elevators are placed in two of the supplemental towers, and stairways in the ones adjoining the choir, landing visitors on the triforium gallery, which encircles the building, and in the two galleries which encircle the central lantern. From the lantern galleries visitors can obtain fine interior views of the building, and comprehend the crucial form of the plan at a glance.

TABULATIONS OF APPROXIMATE DIMENSIONS.

Length. Breadth. Height. Square feet. Ground-floor including walls height to the ridge of roof 400 156 to 230 148 69,000

Lantern or central tower exterior 106 106 400 11,236

Nave interior 125 50 100 6,250

Transepts interior 30 50 100 3,000 for the two

Choir interior 95 50 100 4,750

Central tower interior 88 88 200

Aisles interior 16 40

Chapel and Chapter 52 26

Square feet of auditorium exclusive of aisles, columns and space between columns, triforium and galleries 20,486

Auditorium including everything except choir 48,106

ABBEY OF ABERBROTHWICK: GALLERY OVER ENTRANCE.

ABBEY OF ABERBROTHWICK: THE WESTERN DOORWAY.

The traveller by sea, along the east coast of Scotland, is liable to be reminded with startling emphasis of the demolition to which the ecclesiastical architecture of the country has been subjected. Leaving behind him on his northward course the fragments of the metropolitan Cathedral of St. Andrews, he crosses a wide arm of the sea, and when he again approaches the shore, the objects most prominent against the sky are the still more disastrously shattered remnants of the great Abbey of Aberbrothwick. One lofty fragment presents in its centre a circle, doubtless once filled with richly moulded mullions and stained-glass, but through which the blue sky is now visible. This vacant circle is the only symmetrical form in these lofty masses that at a distance strikes the eye--all else is shapeless and fragmentary. Around these huge unsightly vestiges of ancient magnificence the types of modern comfort and commercial wealth cluster thickly, in the shape of a small but busy manufacturing town, with its mills, tall chimneys and rows of substantial houses.

The ruins, which are interesting only in their details, scarcely present a more inviting general aspect as they are approached. Nearing them from the High Street of the burgh, the first prominent object is a grim, strong, square tower, the sole remaining complete edifice of the great establishment, now used as a butcher's shop. It was not perhaps without design that this formidable building was so placed as to frown over the dwellings of the industrious burghers--it was the prison of the regality of the abbey--the place of punishment or detention through which a judicial power, scarcely inferior to that of the royal courts, was enforced by this potent brotherhood; and thus it served to remind the world without, that the coercive power of the abbot and his chapter was scarcely inferior to their spiritual dignity and their temporal magnificence. Passing onward, the whole scene is found to be a chaos of ruin. Fragments of the church, with those of the cloisters and other monastic edifices, rise in apparently inseparable confusion from the grassy ground; but, with a little observation, the cruciform outline of the church can be traced, and then its disjointed masses reduce themselves into connected details. The dark-red stone of which the building was constructed is friable, and peculiarly apt to crumble under the moist atmosphere and dreary winds of the northeast coast. The mouldings and tracery are thus wofully obliterated, and the facings are so much decayed as to leave the original surface distinguishable only here and there. At comparatively late periods large masses of the ruins have fallen down; and Pennant mentions such an event as having taken place just before he visited the spot. This palpable progress towards the complete extinction of the relics of one of the finest Gothic buildings in Scotland, certainly rendered it not only justifiable but highly praiseworthy that the Exchequer should make some effort for preserving so much of the pile as was preservable. Restoration was not to be expected--the preservation of the existing fragments was all that could be reasonably looked for. It must be confessed, however, that the operations, by means of which this service was accomplished, have given no picturesque aid to the mass of ruins, but have rather introduced a new element of discordance and confusion, in the contrast between the cold, flat, new surfaces of masonry and the rugged, weatherbeaten ruins in which they are embodied.

There are few buildings in which the Norman and the early English are so closely blended, and the transition so gentle. The great western door has the Norman arch, with an approach to the later types in some of its rather peculiar mouldings, while the broad and equally peculiar gallery above it--the only interior portion of the church remaining in a state of preservation--shows the pointed arch, with all the simplicity of the Norman pillar and capital. All the material fragments of the church now remaining are represented in the four accompanying plates, from which as full an idea of the shape and character of the remains may be derived as the visitor could acquire on the spot. It will be seen that over the gallery, at the western end of the nave, there widens the lower arc of a circular window, which must have been of great size. The only portions of the aisle windows still existing are on the south side of the nave. None of the central pillars remain, but their bases have been carefully laid bare: and it is supposed, from the greater size of those at the meeting of the cross, that here there had been a great central tower.

Among the tombs of more modern date, in the grave-yard near the church, there are many which bear sculptural marks of a very remote antiquity; and among the ornaments they present, the primitive form of the cross is conspicuous. During the operations for cleaning out the ruins, which were conducted under the authority of the Exchequer in 1815,[3] some pieces of monumental sculpture were discovered, two of which are curious and remarkable. The one is the mutilated figure of a dignified churchman--probably an abbot. The head, the hands--which appear to have been clasped--and the feet, are broken off and lost; but the fragment thus truncated has much appearance of grace in the folds of the drapery and the disposition of the limbs, while a series of rich ceremonial ornaments appear to have been brought out with great force and minuteness. The other figure, still more mutilated, is simpler in the ordinary details, but has attached to it some adjuncts which have perplexed the learned. The feet appear to have rested on the effigy of a beast, the remains of which indicate it to have represented a lion. It has, from this circumstance, been inferred that the statue was that of William the Lion, the founder of the abbey. The figure has, however, been attired in flowing robes, and a purse hangs from the girdle. But the portions of this fragment which chiefly contributed to rouse curiosity, are some incrustations, which had at first the appearance of the effigies of lizards crawling along the main figure. It was supposed that these reptiles were intended to embody the idea of malevolent spirits, and that the piece of sculpture might have been designed to represent a myth, probably in reference to the machinations of the infernal world. But, upon a closer inspection, it was found that these tiny figures represented pigmy knights in armor, scrambling, as it were, up the massive figure. One appears to be struggling with the drapery below; another has reached the waist; and the fracture, which is across the shoulder, leaves dangling the mailed heels of two others, which must have reached the neck. Is it possible that there can be here any reference to the slaughter of Becket, to whom the abbey was dedicated?

FOOTNOTE:

[3] New Stat. Account, Forfar, p. 80.

HISTORICAL SKETCH.

The historical circumstances connected with the foundation of this monastic institution are remarkable. It was founded and endowed by William the Lion, King of Scots, in the year 1178, and dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket, the martyr of the principle of ecclesiastical supremacy, whose slaughter at the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral occurred in 1170, and who was canonized in 1173. This great establishment, richly endowed, was thus a magnificent piece of homage by the Scottish King to a principle which, especially under the bold and uncompromising guidance of its great advocate, had solely perplexed and baffled his royal neighbor on the English throne, and boded future trouble and humiliation to all thrones and temporal dignities. Much antiquarian speculation has been exerted, but without very obvious success, to fathom the motives for this act of munificence. William had invaded those parts of the north of England which were previously held in a species of feudality by the Kings of Scotland, and was disgracefully defeated at Alnwick, and committed to captivity, just at the time when the English monarch, whose forces accomplished the victory and capture, was enduring his humiliating penance at the tomb of the canonized archbishop. Lord Hailes, who says that "William was personally acquainted with Becket, when there was little probability of his ever becoming a confessor, martyr and saint," endeavoring to discover a motive for the munificence of the Scottish King, continues to say: "Perhaps it was meant as a public declaration that he did not ascribe his disaster at Alnwick to the ill-will of his old friend. He may, perhaps, have been hurried by the torrent of popular prejudices into the belief that his disaster proceeded from the partiality of Becket towards the penitent Henry; and he might imagine that if equal honors were done in Scotland to the new saint as in England he might, on future occasions, observe a neutrality."[4] It is remarkable that several of the early chroniclers allude to this friendship between the Scottish monarch, who was a resolute champion of temporal authority, and the representative of ecclesiastical supremacy....

Princes may be induced, by personal circumstances, to change their views, and in the times when they were not controlled by responsible ministers, they gave effect to their alterations of opinion. It is quite possible that at the time when he founded the Abbey, William was partial to Church ascendency, for his celebrated contest with the ecclesiastical power arose out of subsequent events. This King's disputes with the Church have a somewhat complex shape. The clergy of his own dominions had a spiritual war against the English hierarchy, who asserted a claim to exercise metropolitan authority over them; and it might have been supposed that William, if he sought to humble his own clergy, would have found it politic to favor the pretensions of those of England. But the interests of the two clerical bodies became in the end united. Thus the war which had so long raged in England, passed towards the north, with this difference, that the King of Scots had to encounter not only his own native hierarchy, but the victorious Church of England, just elated by its triumph over Henry. The Chapter of St. Andrews had elected a person to be their bishop, not acceptable to William, who desired to give the chair to his own chaplain. The King seized the temporalities, and prevailed on the other bishops to countenance his favorite. The bishop-elect appealed to Rome. Pope Alexander III issued legatine powers over Scotland to the Archbishop of York, who, along with the Bishop of Durham, after an ineffectual war of minor threats and inflictions, excommunicated the King, and laid the kingdom under interdict. At this point Alexander III died, and the new pope thought it wise to make concessions to an uncompromising adversary in a rude and distant land, who had shown himself possessed of an extent of temporal power sufficient to counteract the power of Rome, even among the ecclesiastics themselves.

It was before this great feud commenced that the Abbey was founded; but during its continuance the institution received, from whatever motives, many tokens of royal favor, as well as precious gifts from the great barons. Among the list of benefactors we find many of those old Norman names, which cease to be associated with Scottish history after the War of Independence. It is a still more striking instance of the community of interest between the two kingdoms anterior to this war, that while we find a Scottish king devoting a great monastic establishment to the memory of an English prelate, we should find an English king conferring special privileges and immunities within his realm on the Scottish brotherhood....

The Abbey was founded for Tyronesian monks, and the parent stock whence it received its first inmates was the old Abbey of Kelso. In the year of the foundation, Reginald, elected "Abbot of the Church of St. Thomas," was, with his convent, released of all subjection and obedience to the abbot and convent of Kelso. The church was completed and consecrated under the abbacy of Ralph de Lamley, in 1233. Aberbrothwick was one of those ecclesiastical institutions immediately connected with the spread of the Roman hierarchy, which gradually sucked up the curious pristine establishment of the Culdees; and the muniments of the Abbey thus afford some traces of the character and history of this religious body, at least towards the period of their extinction. Thus, while the Church of Abernethy, an ancient seat of the Culdees, is granted by King William to his new foundation, Orme of Abernethy, who is also styled Abbot of Abernethy, grants the half of the tithes of the property of himself and his heirs, the other half of which belongs to the Culdees of Abernethy, while some disposals of a strictly ecclesiastical character are made by the same document. Thus we find an abbot who makes disposal for his heirs--a counterpart to those references to the legitimate progeny of churchmen, which frequently puzzle the antiquary in his researches through early Scottish ecclesiastical history.

The Abbot of Aberbrothwick possessed a peculiar privilege, the origin of which is in some measure associated with the Culdees--the custody of the Brecbennach, or consecrated banner of St. Columba. The lands of Forglen, the church of which was dedicated to Adomnan the biographer of Columba, were gifted for the maintenance of the banner. The privilege was conferred on the Abbey by King William, but as it inferred the warlike service of following the banner to the King's host, the actual custody was held by laymen, the Abbey enjoying the pecuniary advantages attached to the privilege, as religious houses drew the temporalities of churches served by vicars.

It will readily be believed that this, one of the richest and most magnificent monastic institutions in Scotland, numbered many eminent men among its abbots, who from time to time connect it with the early history of Scotland. It is even associated with a literature that has survived to the present day, in having been presided over by Gavin Douglas, the translator of Virgil. The two Beatons, Cardinal David and Archbishop James, also successively its abbots, give it a more ambiguous reputation. At the Reformation, the wealth of the Abbey was converted into a temporal lordship, in favor of Lord Claude Hamilton, third son of the Duke of Chatelherault, and the greater part of the temporalities came, in the seventeenth century, into the hands of the Panmure family.

In a tradition immortalized by a fine ballad of Southey's, it is said that the abbots of Aberbrothwick, in their munificent humanity preserved a beacon on that dangerous reef of rock in the German Ocean, which is supposed to have received its name of the "Bell Rock" from the peculiar character of the warning machinery of which the abbot made use:

"The Abbot of Aberbrothwick Had placed that bell on the Inchcape rock, On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung.

"When the rock was hid by the surge's swell, The mariners heard the warning bell; And then they knew the perilous rock, And bless'd the Abbot of Aberbrothwick."

The tradition represents a rover, in the recklessness of prosperity and sunshine, cutting the bell-rope, and afterwards returning in foul weather to be shipwrecked on the rock from which he had impiously removed the warning beacon. No evidence of the existence of the bell is found in the records of the Abbey; and on the subject of its wanton removal, the sagacious engineer of the Northern Lights say, "It in no measure accords with the respect and veneration entertained by seamen of all classes for landmarks; more especially as there seems to be no difficulty in accounting for the disappearance of such an apparatus, unprotected, as it must have been, from the raging element of the sea."[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Annals, 1178.

[5] Stevenson on the Bell Rock Light-house, 69.

DESIGN FOR A STORE. MESSRS. WAIT & CUTTER, ARCHITECTS, BOSTON, MASS.

BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS.

Recommendations by the Boston Society of Architects, in regard to practice in obtaining estimates from contractors:

1. Drawings, when offered for final or competitive estimates, should be sufficient in number and character to represent the proposed works clearly; should be at a scale of not less than one-eighth of an inch to the foot, and be rendered in ink or some permanent process.

2. Proper details should be furnished for work that is not otherwise sufficiently described for estimate.

3. Specifications should be in ink. They should be definite where not sufficiently defined and explained by drawings, and every distinctive class of work to be included in contract should be mentioned and placed under its appropriate heading.

4. Contractors should be notified, at time of estimate, if they are to be restricted in the employment of their subcontractors.

5. Sub-bids received by architects should be held as confidential communications until all the estimates in a given class of work have been submitted.

The principal contractor should add to his bids all these subestimates while in the architect's office, and should sign a tender in which the names of these above-mentioned subcontractors should be enumerated.

6. A subcontractor should not (without his free consent) be placed under a general contractor, and no general contractor should be compelled to accept (without his free consent) the estimate of any subcontractor.

7. Should a contractor decline to assume in his contract the estimate for any work not included in his original estimate, he should not thereby be denied the contract upon the portions of the work covered by his original estimate.

8. Estimates should not be binding more than thirty days after received.

9. Unless previous notification has been given to the contrary in the specification or otherwise, the lowest invited bidder is entitled to the contract. If radical changes are made, the whole competition should be reopened.

10. After bids have been received, and before the award, bidders should not be allowed to amend their estimates.

[_The editors cannot pay attention to demands of correspondents who forget to give their names and addresses as guaranty of good faith; nor do they hold themselves responsible for opinions expressed by their correspondents._]

BARYE'S ADMIRER.

NEW YORK, N.Y., December 28, 1889.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT:--

_Dear Sirs,_--I have just seen a letter from "Anglo-American" in your issue of December 14, in which he calls for the name of the English artist who said concerning the French sculptor, Barye: "Had he been born in Great Britain, we would have had a group by Barye in every square in London."

Théophile Silvestre reports this remark as if uttered in his presence. He says (1856) that the speaker was Mr. Herbert, an artist of distinction. Probably this was Arthur J. Herbert. Your correspondent takes the remark perhaps too literally, when it merely meant to express admiration through a slight exaggeration. Mr. Herbert would have been content to see a few squares only decorated with groups by an English equivalent of Barye, had one existed.

As to the assertion by "Anglo-American" that Alfred Stevens was "an artist not inferior to Barye" it will be shared by few who have studied the works of the great French sculptor of animals and men.

"Anglo-American" is right in saying that my short paper in _Harper's Weekly_ errs in giving two bronze groups after Barye to Mount Vernon Square, Baltimore, instead of four. Were I a resident of that city, I could hardly have known this better, and how the error got there puzzles me. Certainly had I been permitted to see a proof of that paper the mistake would have been corrected, unimportant as it is, so far as Barye is concerned. I must compliment your correspondent on the quickness of eye that detected the slip and regret that the proof-reader of _Harper's Weekly_ did not know his Baltimore to the same degree. But he is himself in error when he speaks of the "_Life and Works of Antoine Louis Barye_," written by me and published by the Barye Monument Association as a catalogue. The catalogue is quite another thing from the _édition deluxe_, which is the only edition of the "_Life_."

CHARLES DE KAY.

EVAPORATION OF WATER IN TRAPS.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT:--

_Dear Sirs,_--In a late issue of your journal an advocate of Trap-venting, says of ordinary S-traps "If the traps are filled even once in two months they will keep their seals intact."

Most persons now agree that S-traps which are back-vented in the ordinary manner require refilling by hand as often as once a fortnight. It is, therefore, clear that the system of back-venting is a very dangerous one. Its original object was to afford security. It is now found (and strangely enough, even by its advocates) that it totally fails in this respect and that it requires an amount of attention which experience and common-sense show us it will never receive.