Esther Singleton

“ On Sunday evenings, when the nave is filled with worshippers and the bright searching daylight is replaced by the yellow gleam of the little tongues of fire above the great and massive arches, the want of colour is little felt, and the noble and severe beauty of the matchless Norman work in the great nave strikes the beholder. The nave of Gloucester, to be loved and admired as it deserves, and as it appeared to men in the days of the Plantagenet Kings, must be seen in one of the many crowded evening services. ”

“ The entrance is an arch, divided into two arches by a canopied pier, which bears a mutilated statue of the Virgin and Child. Clustered shafts, with capitals, are on each side of the doors, which have remarkably good scrolled iron-work. The chamber itself is very magnificent. It is octagonal and in each bay there are six canopied stalls under a five-light window. The window tracery is superb. Clustered shafts support the vaulted roof. Everywhere we see richly carved stone-work, the finest in any cathedral, the foliage of maple, oak, vine and other trees. ”

“ To all those who take an interest in early stone-cutting, this vault of Norwich is a store of inexhaustible treasure; the bosses, rudely cut as they are, tell their own tales with singular truth and directness. Their sculpture may not display the anatomical knowledge of the work of the Renaissance; yet it has a distinct decorative value that has been seldom equalled in the later decadent period. The fourteen large central bosses on the main longitudinal ribs present in themselves an epitome not only of Bible history, but of the connecting incidents forming the theme of Christian teaching. ”

“ Now we come to the Tower, supported on four large Norman piers with semicircular arches. We look above about seventy feet and see the first story of the lantern with a gallery. Panels, grotesque heads, corbels, crockets and finials and a string-course ornamented with the Tudor flower give us plenty to study. Then come the windows, each with two lights and divided by a transom, and, last of all, the handsome groined roof with bosses on the ribs. ”

“ There he lies; no other memorial of him exists in the world so authentic. There he lies, as he had directed, in full armour, his head resting on his helmet, his feet with the likeness of ‘the spurs he won’ at Cressy, his hands joined as in that last prayer which he had offered up on his deathbed. There you can see his fine face with the Plantagenet features, the flat cheeks and the well-chiselled nose, to be traced perhaps in the effigy of his father in Westminster Abbey, and his grandfather in Gloucester Cathedral. ”

“ The charming way, too, in which the architect has contrived that we should have a vista of another miniature church in the Lady-Chapel—a cathedral within a cathedral—is worthy of all commendation. But, as in Lincoln nave, to the eye every support is alarmingly insufficient for the work it has to do; the piers are too tall and slender, the walls too thin and pierced with too many openings. The triforium is a most unfortunate design: in harmony neither with the arcade below, nor with the clerestory above; its outer arches ugly in themselves and discordant with every other arch in the church ”

“ The eye first rests upon the turf of the garth now tastefully laid out after many years of comparative neglect. Flanking the garth on every side are the exquisite windows of the Cloister—a cloister which no other can surpass. Above the Cloister will be seen on the eastern side the sober, impressive Norman work of the Chapter-house in which so much of our English history has been made. To the south of this is the Library, built close against the walls of the north transept, which tower above, and lead the eye upward to the great tower which, ‘in the middest of the church,’ crowns the whole. ”

“ Not only is there built into a mediæval cathedral the accumulated thought of all the men who had occupied themselves with building during the preceding centuries, but you have the dream and aspiration of the bishop, abbot, or clergy for whom it was designed; the master mason’s skilled construction; the work of the carver, the painter, the glazier, the host of men who, each in his own craft, knew all that had been done before them, and had spent their lives in struggling to surpass the works of their forefathers. ”

“ The first view of the NAVE is rich and striking. Its present length is 140 feet. The view looking east is intercepted by the organ, which is placed above the screen at the entrance to the choir; but the general impression, notwithstanding a want of height, is that of great richness and beauty. The roof especially, springing from slender vaulting shafts, studded with delicately carved and varied bosses, and extending unbroken to the east end of the choir, is exceeded in grace and lightness by no other of the same date in the kingdom and by few on the Continent. ”

“ The wax-works of Westminster Abbey have not been seen by many people, but are deservedly famous. At first, it was customary when a king or any other great personage was to be buried, to place on the coffin his effigy formed of boiled leather. When the art of modelling in cuir bouilli was lost, wax was employed for making the image, and wax, notwithstanding its proverbial pliancy, is a very enduring substance. From the north aisle of the apse we ascend a narrow staircase, passing by the way some of the most beautiful sculpture in the Abbey fronting the chapel of Abbot Islip. ”

“ Seen from the gardens in the side streets close by when the pear-trees are in bloom, or in the full blaze of a hot summer day, or again later in the autumn when the leaves are beginning to turn, or, better still, in snow time, it is always full of beauty. On a bright hot day the pinnacles seem so far off in the haze as to suggest a dream fairyland. On a wet day, after a shower, the tower has the appearance of being so close at hand that it almost seems to speak. Viewed by moonlight, the tower has an unearthly look, which cannot well be described. ”

“ It is difficult to determine whether the effect is more striking at early morning, when the blaze of many-coloured light from all the eastern windows is reflected upon the slender shafts of Purbeck and upon the vaulted roof, or at the late winter services, when the darkened figures of saints and prophets in the clerestory combine with the few lights burning at the choristers’ stalls to add something of mystery and solemn gloom to the maze of half-seen aisles and chapels. ”

“ The chief glory of the exterior of Canterbury Cathedral is the central Angel, or Bell, Tower. This is one of the most perfect structures that Gothic architecture inspired by the loftiest purpose that ever stimulated the work of any art, has produced. ”

“ The ingenuity, too, of these strange flying-buttresses becomes more and more evident; the ‘ungainly props’ are seen to be so worked into the tower they support, that they almost seem like part of the original design of the first builders. One discovers that it is the organ, and not the arches, that really blocks the view, and one marvels that so huge a mass of masonry can look so light as to present, with the great circles in the spandrels where the arches meet, a kind of pattern of gigantic geometrical tracery. ”

“ A very imposing tower it is; fully able, from its massiveness as well as from its height, to gather together the masses of the building—all the more so because the transepts are so short. It succeeds where the central towers of Worcester and Hereford fail; in fact, it is as effective in its way as Salisbury spire. The pinnacles, again, bear witness to the love of these later artists for harmony and unity; each pinnacle, with its two ranges of windows, is a repeat of the two stages of the tower below. ”

“ The triforium was sacrificed and the old Norman piers, recased, were left to carry the lofty Perpendicular arches and exquisitely vaulted roof. The Perpendicular lining and panelling disguise the fact that the interior is really Norman.
“The nave gains a special grandeur by the vaulting shafts rising from the very floor so that the eye follows them upwards tardily, as if they were more lofty than they actually are, to the capitals whence the groined roof springs. The aisle windows have a beauty worthy of careful notice. ”

“ There is no triforium; but a passage, at a slightly lower level than in Archbishop Roger’s bays, runs below the great clerestory windows, which were once, no doubt, gorgeous with stained glass. Their arches are moulded, but the splay is left plain. The roof-shafts, which are in clusters of three and have fillets upon them, spring from semi-octagonal corbels, and where each cluster passes the string-course there is an angel holding a shield. A sign of decadence may be found, perhaps, in the way in which the hood-moulds of the windows intersect with these shafts. ”

“ We now enter Henry VII.’s Chapel, the most perfect example of the Perpendicular style at its best in the country. At the entrance are beautiful bronze doors covered with designs symbolical of the titles of the Royal founder. It is impossible to describe in words the richness and beauty of the interior of this noble chapel. The vault is very beautiful with fan-tracery. The banners of the Knights of the Order of the Bath hang over their stalls. The misereres are wonderfully carved, and are worthy of close examination. ”

“ On entering here the magnitude of the building breaks fully upon the mind, contrasted with the vaults of the cloisters. The eye gazes with wonder at clustered columns of gigantic dimensions with arches springing from them to such an amazing height; and man wandering about their bases shrunk into insignificance in comparison with his own handiwork. The spaciousness and gloom of this vast edifice produce a profound and mysterious awe. We step cautiously and softly about as if fearful of disturbing the hallowed silence of the tomb ”

“ The huge window, which is not splayed, has a deep rear-vault bounded by a massive rib, whose outer edge rests on slender engaged shafts with foliage on their capitals, while the inner edge ends in bunches of foliage. Between this rib and the tracery is another rib springing on the north side from a bunch of foliage and on the south from a grotesque corbel. The inner arch has slender shafts, and so has the moulding next to the tracery, but in the latter case the capitals are plain. ”

“ Every ballflower, every projecting shaft and moulding sparkles for itself and casts its own diminutive shadow upon its fellow, entirely relieving the wall-surface of that flatness which is and must be the fault in every view purporting to suggest its elegance. ”

“ The corbels between the arches, which support the vaulting shafts of the roof, are, perhaps, peculiar to this cathedral, and should be especially noticed. They are wrought into figures, twisted branches and long sprays of foliage, and afford excellent examples of the very best period of naturalism. Every leaf is varied and the character of the different kinds (here for the most part oak and vine) is admirably retained. The second corbel on the south side of the nave exhibits the Virgin treading on an evil spirit, and carrying the Divine Infant. ”

“ Besides the Lady-Chapel and Octagon, he must have designed the singularly beautiful bays of the presbytery between the Octagon and Northwold’s work. The exquisite way in which the main characteristics of the Early English work are adapted to the Decorated style demands our highest admiration. The arrangement of the three western bays on each side is exactly like Northwold’s work, while the additional grace and beauty of ornamentation mark the advance in taste that distinguished the Decorated period. Bishop Hotham undertook the whole expense of rebuilding this portion of the cathedral. ”

“ Hugh’s transept, slender and filled with so many windows that the wall space is nearly taken up by them. On top of each of the two turrets, surmounted by pyramidal roofs, stands an angel. Next comes the Canon’s Vestry and then the western transept with the conspicuous Bishop’s Eye. We pause to admire this beautiful window{309} from the outside and then look above it at the horizontal band of seven elaborately carved quatrefoils. Above this again is a Fourteenth Century window with flowing tracery. Around the gable runs a border of open Gothic tracery. The peak bears a cross. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Passing to the East Front we find that it is square, and, like the West Front, it is almost entirely filled with an enormous window. The great East Window contains nine lights, beautifully divided by mullions and crossed by three transoms. The arch of the head is filled with a great number of small divisions. Over the window is an ogee gable, surmounted by a pinnacle. Panelling forms a kind of background for it. Buttresses, tall and narrow, and containing six tiers of niches, flank the window on either side. Each is finished with a spire. ”

“ Its chief feature is the splendid window, of which the tracery alone remains.
Entering the west doorway we look upon one of the great naves of the Perpendicular period, ranking next in size after York, Winchester, Chichester and after St. Paul’s in width.
“Among very late Gothic buildings there are few indeed which are of so good a quality as this nave of Ripon, which, like the late church towers of Somerset, shows that Mediæval art took long to die out in regions remote from London. It is, indeed, the architecture of the days of Agincourt rather than of the eve of the English Renaissance. ”