Rev. Thomas Perkins

“ All the floors of this upper story are of oak, well polished by the feet of many generations. The furniture of the reading room harmonizes well with the room itself. The windows are placed under widely splayed, obtusely pointed four centred arches. On the sill of one stands a statuette in bronze of Humphrey Chetham and one of the boys of his school, similar to the marble statue already described as standing at the east end of the north choir aisle of the cathedral church. ”

“ And the church itself, destitute of transept and central tower, provided only with a western tower, gives us the idea of a large parish [24] church, rather than of a building associated in our mind with Bishop, Dean, and Canons. There is no cloister-garth with its surrounding walks, the old collegiate buildings are detached from the church and appropriated to secular purposes; so that probably our first feeling is one of disappointment, but this feeling will vanish as soon as we have passed into its interior. The usual way of entrance is by the south porch; this is always open. ”

“ There is a room with a similar timber roof running along the south side of the building parallel to the corridor above the south walk of the cloister. This was once a chapel dedicated to St. Mary, and now, like the dormitory, is filled with bookcases; but an oak altar rail, dating from the middle of the sixteenth century, with double spiral rails, may still be seen here.
At the east end of the south corridor is a door leading into a beautiful room, now used as the reading room; formerly it was the warden's room, and many a man well known in history has sat within its walls. ”

“ The exterior of the Cathedral Church of Manchester is by no means imposing. The traveller who reaches the city by the London and North-Western Railway and alights at the Exchange Station, will see fronting him what appears to be a large parish church with a western tower. ”

“ The tomb bears the following inscription written by the late Dr Vaughan, Dean of Llandaff.
"To the beloved memory of James Fraser, D.D., Bishop of Manchester, 1870-85, a man of singular gifts both of nature and the spirit; brave, true, devout, diligent, in labours unwearied. He won all hearts by opening to them his own, and so administered this great Diocese as to prove yet once more that the people know the voice of a good shepherd and will follow where he leads." ”

“ We go up from the level of the pavement three steps and find ourselves within the porch; on the south and north sides of it, doors open into two rooms used the one as the lecture-room of the Scholae Episcopi (or non-residential Theological College of the Diocese) , the other as a schoolroom for the choir boys. A flight of eleven steps takes us up to a landing measuring about five feet from west to east, and then four more steps bring us to the level of the nave floor, and we enter through what were originally the west doors of the church, into the space below the tower. ”

“ A boy once placed on the foundation of Humphrey Chetham has a successful career assured to him, unless he forfeits his chances by subsequent folly on his own part. The boys who show the greatest intellectual power can be passed on to the Manchester Grammar School, and thence to Owens College, while the feoffees of the hospital have no difficulty in finding good places in the business houses of Manchester for the rest. To have been educated at Chetham's Hospital is a great recommendation to any boy. ”

“ It is a dimly lighted building; this is due chiefly to two causes: first to the fact that it is enormously wide, and the aisle windows are therefore far from the central nave, and secondly to the fact that almost all the windows both of aisles and clerestory are filled with painted glass, in many cases of a deep colour, and rendered still more impervious to light by the incrustation of carbon deposited on their outside by the perpetual smoke of the city. ”

“ THE WEST PORCH.
Ascending the southern flight we find before us the west ends of the two south aisles of the church; the roof of the inner one slopes slightly down from the clerestory wall, and the outer one rises into a very obtuse-angled gable. The west end of the inner or true aisle is original, but the outer aisle was extended two bays westward at the time of the recent restoration. The windows of the church, though all or nearly all of Perpendicular character, are not all alike, as may be seen by examining the illustrations ”

“ The Derby and Ely Chapels on the north side are of rather later date; in the latter the ex-warden, James Stanley II., then Bishop of Ely, was buried. This chapel was built by Sir John Stanley in 1515. In 1518 the eighth warden, George West (1518-1535) is recorded to have built the Lady Chapel, but this work was probably a reconstruction [7] rather than a fresh building; the windows that we see in it now are eighteenth century work, but probably are imitations of those that previously existed in this chapel, and their style indicates a considerably earlier date than 1518. ”

“ In the westernmost of these there is a doorway to give room for which the sill of the window is placed at a higher level than the sills of the other windows. The tracery of these windows differs from the preceding two. From the easternmost of the three bays of the Jesus Chapel formerly projected the Hulme chantry. To the east of the Jesus Chapel stands the octagonal chapter house; three of its sides contain windows of a pattern differing from any of these already mentioned. From within the parapet, which is not battlemented, rises a rather steep pyramidal roof. This is modern. ”

“ We leave the churchyard, cross the street that skirts it to the north, and pass through a small doorway in the wall at the opposite side of the street, and so enter the play-ground of Chetham's Hospital. On our left hand as we make our [68] way to the original building, we pass the modern schoolroom, which stands by itself. This, like many other buildings in Manchester, was designed by A. Waterhouse, R.A. The main building runs east and west, with projecting wings at either end. ”

“ The easternmost window in the nave, in what was once the Ducie Chapel, has five lights, and was erected by C. J. Scholfield in 1888 as a memorial to Major-General Gordon, who was killed at Khartoum in 1888. In the centre light the General is represented with his hand on the head of a native boy; in the other lights we see native women and children [52] expressing their gratitude to him for his work on their behalf; and in the outer lights and above the heads of the human figures are angels. ”

“ He became Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1292 or 1293. Here he obtained a great reputation for saintly life, and after his death miracles were worked at his tomb, persons suffering from toothache resorting to it. He was for some time Treasurer of England under Edward I.
1292 Walter de Langton was appointed rector of Manchester, and also Treasurer of England. In 1296 he was promoted to the Bishopric of Lichfield, to which diocese Manchester then belonged. At Lichfield he distinguished himself as builder of the Lady Chapel and Palace. ”

“ The arcade dividing the outer from the inner aisle [30] on the south side is entirely modern; the chapels which occupied the site of the outer aisle were formerly divided from each other by stone walls, and from the aisle by irregular arches filled with oak screens. All these were removed in 1815, so as to throw the area of the chapels into that of the church; an arcade was then built, but this was removed to make room for the present arcade during the restoration that was begun in 1872. The westernmost chantry, or Chapel of St. ”

“ King Edward the Unconquered, in 923, sent troops to repair its walls and garrison the town.
No picturesque legends about the foundation of the original Church of St. Mary which stood near the site of the present cathedral have come down to us. All we know is, that two wood-built churches are mentioned in Domesday Book as standing either in the town or the parish, one of them dedicated to St. Mary, the other to St. Michael.1 The former was probably a predecessor of the present building, which is dedicated jointly to St. Mary, St. ”

“ He was a liberal benefactor to the church, and in order that there should be a suitable body of clergy to look after the spiritual welfare of the town, he endowed the church as a collegiate institution, obtaining the requisite charter from Henry V. in 1422. ”

“ What I take to be the motto is grav'd upon two plates of brass on each side the arms the half of one brass is broke way but no doubt was the same as the other they are engraved in the old text with these words Vanitas vanitatum Oiā Vanitas that is Vanity of vanity all is vanity. ”

“ The present cathedral staff consists of the Dean, four residentiary Canons, twenty-four honorary Canons, two minor Canons, two Clerks (in orders) , an organist, four singing men, and four singing boys on the foundation, to whom others are added by subscription. ”