Percy Dearmer

“ As it is, the brasses are all the reverse of beautiful; and, after a period of lacquered obtrusiveness, they become leprous, and afterwards black. A modern brass, indeed, defaces a wall as much as a modern tablet. Surely some more beautiful form of memorial could be devised. The cathedral is in need of many things, of colour, and hangings, and furniture. Could not those tributes of respect take in the future this more honourable form? Then, when an inscription is necessary, the enamelled tablet, with its endless possibilities of jewel-like colour, might be used in place of brass or marble. ”

“ After all, if every one in the past had been afraid of overtopping the cathedral, Oxford would never have become the "Sweet city of her dreaming spires" that we know The cathedral can hold its own, and so can Tom Tower; for neither makes any pretensions to loftiness. The original hall-tower seems to have stood on the same spot before the space was cleared for the erection of Dean Fell's staircase.
The bells themselves are, with Great Tom, the only relics left of the glorious Abbey of Oseney. ”

“ The colour is strong, and free from the miserable timidity of the work in the Perpendicular windows,—for the whole thing is of course a work of art (and not of commerce) , though an unsuccessful one,—still it fails to harmonise. The window as a whole, however, is saved by the beautiful foliage which forms the background, and by the four slender figures in the tracery. ”

“ He therefore considers it an improvement on the vaulting of the early English and Decorated periods; and, as he thinks the ceiling of Christ Church Cathedral to be the best example of fan-tracery, he comes near to pronouncing it the finest in the world.
It certainly must strike every observer as possessing exceptional beauty. At once rich and light, it yet accords wonderfully with the homely Norman work that it crowns, and gives a happy finish to the most important part of the cathedral. ”

“ The peculiar position of Christ Church, as a cathedral which is three parts college chapel, is apparent to the most casual observer, who, passing by the college porter in the gateway of Tom Tower, finds himself in a great open quadrangle with a fine hall on one side, but no sign of a cathedral anywhere, except a spire which seems so far off that it might very well belong to some other college. He may well be struck by that doubtfulness as to any means of exit, which makes most of the colleges appear to the stranger as if they consisted of one quadrangle only. ”

“ In the west end of the north aisle of the nave is the last remaining relic of the glass which the Dutchman Van Ling painted in Dean Duppa's time. The rest, which filled the aisle, was removed about twenty-five years since, on the ground that it made the church too dark. There are various opinions about this window, which represents Jonah sitting under his gourd, and the town of Nineveh in the distance. We must confess to a great admiration for it; the foliage is fine and rich, and if it is a little over-strong in its green, that only makes it more characteristic of its age. ”

“ By the eighteenth century Oxford had sunk into a state of torpor, from which it began to recover in 1807, when the first honour schools were founded; though from 1783 Dean Cyril Jackson had been doing a great work in the restoration of order and efficiency at the House. Christ Church thus bore an honourable part in the revival of learning, and gradually developed from a rich man's plesaunce into a home of learning: the names of Ruskin, Gladstone, and Pusey are typical of the great men in different walks of life that have belonged to the cathedral college in our own era. ”

“ His scheme for "Cardinal College," as Christ Church was at first called, was one of extreme magnificence; and he began—much to the amusement of Oxford—with the splendid kitchen, still in daily use. Tom Quad gives one some idea of the scale on which he formed his plans: it, however, has never been properly finished, as it is too large and too much inhabited to be fit to receive the cloister for which it was designed. The real cloisters are of much more modest dimensions. Wolsey destroyed one side of them in order to build the college Hall. ”

“ When the king visited Oxford in 1687, he was lodged in the Deanery, and a chapel fitted up for his use. He summoned the fellows of Magdalen, who had refused to admit Bishop Parker as their president, into Christ Church Hall, and said:—"Is this your Church of England loyalty? Get you gone. Know that I, your King, will be obeyed. Go and admit the Bishop of Oxon. Let those who refuse look to it. They shall feel the whole weight of my hand." They refused, and twenty-five of them were expelled. James, by-the-way, touched for the King's Evil in the cathedral about the same time. ”

“ Finally, behind the stalls are some darksome dens, occupied by women, which greatly encumber the choir aisles. The screen [then blocking up the choir] is a cumbrous piece of work contemporary with the stalls, but of better character: it supports, of course, a vast and unsightly organ. The miserable appearance which is thus produced in this really noble chancel is almost indescribable. The whole seems so narrowed and confined; one feels pent in without the least scope for one's energies. ”

“ Cecilia window, executed in 1874-5, a companion to the 'St. Catherine,' executed in 1878, in Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford, in which, moreover, it is enhanced by the soberness of the colouring, which, with the exception of a few touches of stronger hues in the lower panels, is green, and white, and gold, symbolic of the lily of heaven, into which mediæval commentators tortured the meaning of her name. The saint herself stands in the middle, with attendant angels on either side, bearing the palm of martyrdom, who hush their harmony while she plays. ”

“ Homely and simple, as befits the crown of a foundation which is called "The House," it wins an almost human place in the affections of those who live near it; and never was a spell so honestly cast, never a friend that bore so well the test of familiarity. ”

“ In such a home of recollectedness, doubly guarded against the dogging world without, is "rest without languor and recreation without excitement"; in such a place one is "never less alone than when alone"; and the fine sympathy with the needs of workaday humanity, which led mediæval architects to build such sanctuaries as this chapel here, or the Lady Chapel of so many churches, had led men in far earlier ages to find room even within the travelling tabernacle of a wandering tribe for a holy place and a holy of holies. ”

“ Frideswide's, a house of Augustinian Canons, but far larger. It was, indeed, one of the finest abbeys in England, its principal cloister being as large as Tom Quad, and its church no less than 352 feet by 100, with double aisles, and twenty-four altars. Gardens and courts, and comely outbuildings, ran along the side of the river; in every corner a busy life went on among the orieled windows and high-pitched roofs, within the fretted cloister, the schools and libraries, the refectory, and the kitchen, whither a conduit brought the water from the river side. ”

“ Round the arcade which contains the belfry windows runs a passage, made just like the clerestory passage of a church. The whole structure is remarkable for its careful and finished work, the very corbels just above the floor being heavily foliated, as if they were intended to be seen from below.
The windows of the spire are interesting for the double plane of tracery which adds to the strength of the spire. The inner tracery resembles that without, with the difference that it has no transom. The transom, by the way, is a rare feature in the Early English period. ”

“ The eastern parts are, as a rule, better preserved than those facing in other directions, though the southern aisle of the choir is also among the least decayed portions. The tower is generally very severely decayed, but the spire less so, though its lights are very much damaged. The reparation of this wide-spread decay is a work requiring much discrimination and judgment. Every stone which retains ancient work in an intelligible state should be carefully preserved, and only such parts renewed as have become shapeless from decay, or the retention of which would tend to future injury. ”

“ The death of the saint, with its lovely effect of light through the latticed window, for instance, and the picture of her in the pig-sty, would be perfect as finished pictures, and yet do not for an instant outstep the convention which is necessary for their function as part of a window. The fact that the subjects are a little crowded is not the artist's fault. ”

“ This mishap did not mark an era in the architecture of the church; for nothing can with certainty be pointed to as the work of the last decade of the twelfth century; nor indeed do we find that any important work was undertaken till, well into the thirteenth century, the spire was added. The monks seem to have patched up the ruined chapter-house as best they could, for it was not till about the middle of the thirteenth century that the present beautiful room was built. About this time the second bay of what is now the Latin Chapel was also added. ”

“ Here the eye wanders among pillars and arches which branch away in so many directions that the grandest churches can scarcely give more thoroughly the idea of infinity. And here one stands on the site of St. Frideswide's first little church, with the very arches that she had built for her, still standing in all their primitive simplicity. These three aisles, and the south aisle on the opposite side of the choir, are indeed eloquent of the unpretentious, lasting work that brave women have done for humanity: the latter has become, through its window, sacred to the memory of St. ”

“ The stalls are of seventeenth century work, and by no means a favourable specimen: those of the dean and canons are marked by canopies. The episcopal throne is meanness itself, and can hardly be distinguished without a most diligent search: on the prayer-books nearest to it, and nowhere else, are inscribed the words 'Christ-church Chapel,' as if to warn the Bishop off the forbidden ground. Nearly the whole area of the choir between the stalls is filled with benches looking west, and in which kneeling is all but [23] impossible. ”

“ The perfect taste of the rich carving on the bosses of the roof will also be noticed. One of them represents our Lady crowned, in the act of giving an apple to the Holy Child.
But the most striking feature of the chapter-house is its east end. An arcade of five arches fills the entire space; of these the three central arches are pierced for windows, deeply recessed, and having a double set of shafts to support their arches, the inner shafts being clustered, and ornamented with dog-tooth moulding. Each light is crossed by a transom, with a later four-centred arch beneath. ”

“ James Ingram, President of Trinity, had, it is true, written in the thirties to prove that the cathedral was Saxon, but, great authority as he was, he wrote at a time when architectural history was in its infancy; and at the restoration of 1869, Sir Gilbert Scott was content to write—"Dr. Ingram evinces great anxiety to prove that traces of his (Ethelred's) work still exist, but I need hardly say there is not a shadow of foundation for such a supposition." ”

“ The South Choir Aisle is of an earlier period than the nave and transept aisles, the walls being, it is thought, of Ethelred's time. A stone bench runs along its south side, adding to its bright and pleasant appearance. The southern windows were rebuilt by Scott in Norman style of a different character to the window containing Bishop King's portrait which has its original capitals and bases. The corbels which carry the vault are carved into heads of men and baboons: the vaulting ribs have been unmistakably fitted on to the earlier Norman work. ”

“ Bishop John Fell finished the quadrangle, and his father, Dean Samuel Fell, built the vaulted staircase of the Hall (1640) , which is one of the instances of the curious survival of Gothic in Oxford, that home of "lost causes," which need never have been lost, and of "impossible ideals," which ought to be made possible. Late as it is, and open to the structural criticism of all Perpendicular work, [48] it is most deservedly admired. The staircase itself must not be laid to Fell's charge ”

“ At least it cannot be true now, as it seems to have been fifty years ago, that many persons, visiting Oxford to explore its antiquities, "actually go away without entering the cathedral church, or that undergraduates any longer pass an academical career, content to be aware possibly that Christ Church has its chapel, like other colleges." ”

“ The room is an oblong, divided into four bays, the vaulting of which springs from clustered shafts, supported on curiously carved corbels. Two of these corbels are in the form of monks' heads, very vividly conceived; they face each other, and are thought, from the vivacity of their expression, to be represented as carrying on a conversation together. ”

“ At the present day the remains are almost invisible; they consist of a portion of a building attached to the mill, a fragment of the foundations of the gateway at the end of the same building, a small portion of the wall near the great gate, a few loose fragments of masonry, and some encaustic tiles. Bishop King's window in the cathedral gives one a vague reminder of its former aspect; and only the bells, which were transferred to Christ Church, remain intact. Thus perished the first cathedral church of the see of Oxford. ”