Cathedrals of England, Scotland

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Cathedrals of En_____land, Scotland and . ales Paul Johnson

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1817

Harper & Row, Publishers, New York

Grand R:ipids, Phihdelphi:i, St. Loui�, San Fr:inci\CO London, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo. Toronto

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Tin., book i; dcd1c,11ed to Coimo ,111d C.ah1c CATHFDRAI � OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES.

Copyngln ©

1990 61·

Paul J ohmon

Text origin.1IIY published in 1980 by George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. All rights re,c:rved. Printed in Italy. No p.in of this book may be used or reproduced in am· m.inner whatsoever without written permission except in the· ca�e nf brief quot.nions embodied in critical articles and reviews. For in!or111.1tion address: ! l.irper & Row Publishers, Inc. 10 Ea,t 5 _ird Street Nt"w York, NY 10022. Fir,r U.S. Edition Library of Congress C:it:iloging-in-Publication Data Johmon, P.rnl, 1928Carhedrals of England, Scorland and Wales/Paul Johnson. - 1st U.S. ed. p. cm. "Origin;illy published in 1980 by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd." -T.p. verso ISBN 0-06-0164 36-0

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Church architecture- Grear Britain. !.

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F,wng title p,ige: St. David's Cathedral

Title p,1ge: Sraint>d glass in York Cathedral

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ut let my due feet never fail To walk the studious Cloysters pale, And love the high embowed Roof, With antick Pillars massy-proof, And storied Windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.

JOHN MILTON, fl Penseroso

Contents 1

The Earliest Cathedrals of Britain . 7 2 Cathedrals of the Norman Age . 19 3 The Corning of the Gothic . 47 4 Splendours of the Decorated Style . 79 5 Perpendicular: The True Native Style . 109 6 How the Cathedrals were Built . 133 7 Treasures of the Cathedrals . 149 8 Renaissance, Reformation and Wren . 161 9 The Gothic Revival and Modernism . 173 Map and Gazetteer . 200 Glossary of Technical Terms . 206 Select Bibliography . 208 Acknowledgements . 210 Index . 211

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I The Earliest Cathedrals of Britain

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he cathedrals of North-West Europe are among the noblest of human artifacts, and within this larger collection the British cathedrals form a group of exceptional interest and distinction. For most of the Middle Ages, England was served by seventeen cath­ edrals. Of these, nine were 'secular' cathedrals, that is served by chapters of canons who did not take special vows of poverty. They were Chichester, Exeter, Here­ ford, Lichfield, Lincoln, London, Salisbury, \XI ells and York, collectively known as the Old Foundation. Other Saxon cathedrals were served by chapters of Benedictine monks, a system continued under the Normans, and are

known as Monastic Foundations: Bath (grouped with Wells in a single diocese), Canterbury, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, Winchester and \XI orcester. In ad­ dition there was Carlisle, served by Augustinian regular canons, from the twelfth century. When Henry VIII destroyed the monastic system, he decided to compensate for the loss of ecclesiastical ser­ vices by turning nventy-one of the old monastic churches into cathedrals. We possess his autograph list of the-;e, which included \Xlaltham, Thamc, Dunstable, Newen­ ham, Shrewsbury, Fountains and Leicester. Some of those on the list, such as Osenev , and \X' estmimter 7

CATHEDRALS OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES

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Abbey, became cathedrals for a short time in the sixteenth century. The Benedictine houses of Gloucester and Peterb�rough, and the Augustinian houses of Oxford, Bristol and Carlisle, were added permanently to the ranks of cathedrals, this group of five becoming known as the New Foundation. In the nineteenth and twentieth cen­ turies, twenty new Anglican cathedrals have been created. Five are former monastic or collegiate churches: St Albans, Southwark, Ripon, Southwell and Manches­ ter. Eleven are former parish churches: Birmingham, Blackburn, Chelmsford, Leicester, Portsmouth, St Edmundsbury, Bradford, Sheffield, Newcastle, Wake­ field and Douglas. Four are new: Truro, Guildford, Liverpool, Coventry. To these, for the purposes of this book, I have added Westminster Abbey and Beverley, both of which have served as cathedrals; the two sur­ viving medieval cathedrals of the North, Glasgow and Kirkwall; the four ancient cathedrals of Wales, Bangor, St Davids, Llandaff and St Asaph; the cathedrals of the Epis­ copalian Church of Scotland; and the twenty-seven Roman Catholic cathedrals of England, Wales and Scot­ land - making a grand total of nearly ninety cathedrals. We know very little about the earliest British cathedrals. The ruined church of North Elmham in East Anglia is the only Anglo-Saxon cathedral of which a part is still visible above the surface. The Saxon cathedral of York, the first in England to be built of stone, has not been located; an investigation carried out by Dr Brian Hope-Taylor, during the strengthening process carried out on the present Minster, r966- r97 r, revealed details of its Norman predecessor but concluded that the first cathedral must have been built on a different site. Ac­ cording to Alcuin, this cathedral was about 200 feet long. Offa built a cathedral of similar size at Lichfield, and the 8

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,.,mmr, ,l,:'),iJ ']"'Pl'" l'Jlltllll,r d11, ' .. .,... t ( 'uthhen \ u l tin Ill Dmham ( .1thc·,l r.1I The .1ctu.1 I ,hnnc nl '>t Cu thbert ,, .1 , d Ch:1.pel, built by Robert Losinga him ­ self before 1 095 :1.nd perhaps the oldest building in the 35

C A THEDRALS Or E NGLAND, S c o TLAN D A N D WA L ES

entire precinct. I n short, one can spend a great deal of time examining this group of buildings, and probe deeply into the history of the medieval church - an example of the richness which even one of the smaller cathedrals, not favoured by time and chance, can provide. In fact the smaller cathedrals, especially those of early foundation like Chichester and Rochester, are among the most interesting. Chichester, for instance, although not intrinsically a masterpiece, contrives to look like one. In its exposed setting on the Sussex coast, with the backdrop of the Downs, it is the only significant building for miles around. Its spire tends to dominate its surroundings, as does that of Salisbury, or the spire which it most re­ sembles, Norwich, though it is actually much smaller than either. Indeed, the tower and spire convey a false im­ pression of the church that lies beneath. The original Norman tower, which had a wooden spire, was wrecked by a storm in I 2 1 0 . The tower we see is a thirteenth cen­ tu ry construction, and the spire was added two hundred years later; it telescoped itself in 1 8 6 1 , and was recon­ structed, as a replica, by Sir George Gilbert Scott. Underneath is a sturdy and even primitive Norman building. The old Saxon cathedral was in Selsey, and the see was shifted to Chichester by the Conqueror. Ralph de Luffa, who became bishop in 1 09 1 , built the church, though construction continued throughout the twelfth century, interrupted by two fires, one in I I 1 4 and a much more devastating one in 1 1 8 7 . This left only the shell of the Norman church, but the reconstruction struck to the original design, except at the east end. The eight-bay nave, transepts, crossing and the first three bays of the choir are entirely Norman. The nave is unique, for it has five aisles, rather like some of the later Gothic cathedrals in Spain, or the German ha!lekirch or hallchurch, but

these were not part of Luffa's plan, being formed out of discarded side-chapels in the thirteenth century. What was essential to the original design was the heavy, dark solemnity of the main piers, which give the cathedral in­ terior its special cavernous look. If you stand at the west end the nave piers look more like continuous walling than separate constructions ; they are, in fact, sections of wall­ ing, their ends faced with masonry to form jambs for the arches over them. This brutal and elementary scheme is, however, relieved by two features : the triforium is beautifully designed in pairs of rounded openings within containing arches, and during the reconstruction after the great fire, columns of Purbeck marble were inserted at the corners of the main piers. The result, then, is much less oppressive than it might have been, especially with strong sunlight pouring through the high round arches of the clerestory. All the same, this is unquestionably a Norman church, and any doubts as to the general flavour of the post­ Conquest building are resolved by the presence, in the south aisle of the choir, of two magnificent sculptured panels, carved from Purbeck limestone, which once formed part of the twelfth-century choir-screen (parts of a third panel are in the cathedral library). They depict Christ and his disciples, Martha and Mary, and the raising of Lazarus. They are well preserved apart from the paint and the colou red stones used for the eyes, which are miss­ ing ; but their primitive stiffness, which goes fittingly with the brutality of the nave piers, led to a much earlier dating until it was conclusively established that they belong to the second quarter of the twelfth century. Evidently the rest of the screen perished in the fire of 1 1 8 7 , and this was one feature of the old church the rebuilders could not reproduce.

They did, however, manage to soften, enhance and beautify the harsh lines of the old structure in many ways. At the west end, an elementary transept-front was turned into two squat towers, which add a powerful dignity _to the cathedral without in any way upstaging the central tower and spire. More important, they transformed the east end of the church. Though the first three bays of the choir arc, in essentials, the old Norman design, the retro­ choir behind the high altar screen was rebuilt to house the feretory of St Richard of Chichester, bishop from 1 24 5 - 1 2 5 3, whose shrine was now an object of pilgrim­ age. It is in the Transitional style, that is the point at which Norman, the English version of the Continental Romanesque, began to give way to a form of Gothic. The two bays of the retrochoir have central pillars, with Pur­ beck shafts at the corners, and Purbeck clustered shafts are also effectively used at the triforium level. The arches are both rounded and pointed, but the incisiveness of the mouldings and the quantity and quality of the foliate carving on the capitals mark the beginnings of the Early English style. An arch at the east end leads directly into the Lady Chapel, which begins with the original Norman design, but then leaps into the Decorated of the 1 300s, adding leaf-carvings not much inferior to the famous ones at Southwell, with an elaborate tierceron vault overhead. As for the nave itself, it is further lightened by a splendid perpendicular stone screen. \'vhat we have, then, at Chichester, is essentially a grim piece of Norman muscle­ architecture, softened and embellished by the cosmetic surgery of the later Middle Ages. A cathedral has to be seen in its setting, and this is a rule which applies to Chichester more than to most places. There is the outer setting of the landscape, which makes the spire seem so spectacular ; and there is the inner setting

Oppusi/c ,,boi·e l·.nt1rl' pJnel 0 ot Ch1d1cster s LJ1Jrw. i.s well prt scale. yet Lt co ntains in its bowels the secret of Gothic. .p

CATHEDRALS OF E NGLAND, SCOT LAND AND WALE S

The High Altar oi Durham C.1 thed ral is fr amed by a masterpiece of Lue-Decor ated sculpture, the Neville Saeen, carved in London in the 1 3 70s of Caen stone, and brought to Durham by sea. It once had 1 07 alab.i ,ter statues.

The liturgical demands of the cathedral meant that it had to be designed from the inside outwards. The dynamic force pushing the designer against the frontiers of his technology was the desire for an ever-larger enclosed space in the middle of the church, coupled with a religious and aesthetic urge to let in more light by build­ ing the walls higher and higher. To the early medieval man, the great church was an epitome of his cosmology. It was built in stone, symbolizing eternity ; the pillars of its walls upheld the firmament above, in which God dwelt

and to which he raised his voice and prayers. The act of worship was an upward motion: the higher the ceiling, the closer the liturgical appeals, which filled it with sound, could come to the heavens where God dwelt ; and, equally, the higher the roof, the more detached was the worship from the clayey prison of the earth below. One might say that the medieval cathedral sought height as a symbolic escape. I t was not the timber roof itself which raised problems of height and width : it was the desire to conceal it with a stone ceiling, constituting a firmament, and providing the enclosed space with a satisfying unity of material, texture, colour and, increasingly, decoration - a complete stone cosmos, in fact. Such ceilings could be provided by the primitive device of the barrel-vault and its natural de­ velopment, the groined vault. The barrel-vault was in use even in the backward west throughout the Dark Ages, and the groined vault became fairly common in the eleventh century in smaller Continental churches (es­ pecially in France and the Rhineland), and in the side aisles of larger ones. At Durham the decision was taken to provide a high stone vault throughout, and this forced the architect to devi se a new type of vault, in which a skeleton of ribs was first put up, and then the spaces filled in with a much lighter shell. This had the merit both of cutting down the need for expensive scaffolding and centering-equipment, which was required only for the ribs, and of reducing the enormous weight of stone which the main piers had to carry. The designer was inventing as he went along. He put up the vault, as usual, from east to west, and it is clear that some of the more easterly, and therefore earlier, vaulting proved unsafe and had to be replaced in the thir­ teenth century. The further the vault moved westwards,

C A T H E D R A L '> 0 1- T H F I": 0 R :-. 1 A N A e_, 1-

the more confident and precise the workmanship be­ comes, but the designer knew he was moving i nto unchartered territory. In the barrel vault and its deriv­ atives, the forces created by the weight of the vault move directly downwards and push evenly along the length of the wall. With the rib-vault, the forces move diagonally and outwards, concentrating themselves at the single point where each group of three ribs converges when they meet the wall, and threatening to push it outwards. The designer met this threat by designing a new kind of but­ tress, a half-arch, built on the outer wall of the aisle, which delivered an inward thrust at the point of the wall where the convergent ribs pushed from the inside. This i nvention was the flying buttress. It makes its first appearance at Durham, but it was not visible then, nor is it now, because it is covered by the aisle. The high stone vault involved a further technical inno­ vation. The Romanesque church was essentially a com­ position of verticals, horizontals and curves. The ribbed vault changed this pattern, because the ribs were essen tial arches, and, although the diagonal ribs were semi­ circular, the transverse ribs had to come to a sharp point to reach up to the same height. Thus the pointed arch, in some ways the essence of Gothic, was born of structural necessity. At Durham then, the engineering was moving decis­ ively i n a Gothic direction, and the three i nnovations the ribbed vault, the flying buttress and the pointed arch - mark the historic change from an architecture based on sheer strength to one which man ipulates rival forces : where the muscle can do no more, the intellect takes over. At the same time, Durham was an exercise i n the peculiar conservatism of the English, the desire to conceal change underneath a reassuring habitual skin. The designer,

while changing the bones of the cathedral, and g 1 v 1 11g them a Gothic structure, chose to clothe them in a quite disproportionate amount of Romanesque muscle and flesh. I nside and out, Durham looks, and was plainly in­ tended to look, more Romanesque than any church based on pure Romanesque engineering. I t is by far the most ' Norman' of our cathedrals. I n the spectacular nave, \\0 l1at shouts for attention is not the innovatory vault above but the gigantic piers and columns below. They are grouped i n twos, each of an alternating pillar and compound pier, which form a ' Great Bay' or duplex bay, of exactly the same strength and width as the supports of the crossing. In other words, the designer adapted the supportive for­ mula used to enclose the space of the crossing to develop the high vault of the nave. By the time he was vaulti ng the nave, around I 1 2 0, he had already designed the concealed flying buttress. Nevertheless he retained the origi nal 1 09 3 design which made the columns and piers enormously powerful, just for the hell of it; or, more likely, because that was how he and his patron wanted them to look. The pillars are nearly thirty feet high and over se\·en feet i n diameter; their cross-section covers seventeen times the area of the Gothic piers set up at Canterbury in I I 75, a generation later, though the weight they carry is roughly the same - an index of the greater efficiency of the Gothic design, pound for pound. The:,· look enor­ mous, bigger than they actually arc , and the eye is com­ pelled to return to them again and again, because they ,1re decorated with deep i ncisions in the four striking pat­ terns : diaper, chevron, flute and spiral. Origi nally they were even more noticeable, since thev \\'ere cc nainlv painted and the incisions may even hav� been filled with gleaming brass. 43

CATH E D RA L S O f E N G LA N D , S C O T L A N D A N D

\VJ A L E S

The high ribbed vault of Durham was not imitated, excep t at Hereford and Gloucester, as the new tech­ nology it unleashed became quickly absorbed in the rather different aesthetic aims of the Gothic style. Dur­ ham, therefore, can claim to be the only English cathedral which gives complete and detailed expression to all the functioning parts of Romanesque architecture at its best. It is true of course that, seen from afar, Durham, with its enormous and high central tower and its two big western towers, does not look like a Romanesque church. The overwhelming profile which gives it such distinction as a piece of stone landscaping suggests the late Middle Ages. It is also true that, in the twelfth century, the towers would have been lower and equipped with stumpy wooden steeples. The upper reaches of the central tower date from 1 460- 1 490 ; the two western towers are Nor­ man only up to the level of the clerestory in the nave, and all three were equipped with battlements and pinnacles as recently as 180 1 . On the other hand, the western towers at least are Nor­ man in conception. They are an integral part of the west­ ern transept with which the Norman builders in England often ended their naves - so that the constructional cross­ section of the nave and aisles can be faintly seen in the dec­ orative scheme of the West Front. Indeed, the clergy of Dur ham were so wedded to the Romanesque that when, in the 1 1 70s, it was decided to add a Lady Chapel to the western end, as a kind of narthex, the result - known as the Galilee Chapel - was a superb exercise in late Nor­ m an, not early Gothic. Its five aisles of columns are slen­ der (like the columns then being built at the east end of Canterbury) but the arches they support, though richly decorated by chevrons, are firmly rounded and unmis­ takably in the Romanesque mode.

The windows of this chapel are later insertions, both Decorated and Perpendicular; and, almost inevitably, there are many other later amendments to the Norman structure, especially in the central transept. But only in the east transept is the entire concept post-Norman. The idea of an east transept is rare (it was tried out at Foun­ tains Abbey, and the assumption is that the Durham tran­ sept was copied from this Cistercian experiment). I ts object was two-fold : to provide east-facing altar-space for the many monks of this rich community - hence its name, the Chapel of the Nine Altars - and to form a sumptuous setting for the shrine of St Cuthbert. Here, the Romanesque unity of the rest of the great church gives place to a dazzling medley of styles. The chapel itself is Early English and dates from the 1240s. Abutting onto it, immediately behind the High Altar, is a magnificent example of late-Decorated sculpture, known as the Neville screen. It was carved in the 1 370s, in London, from Caen stone, and brought to Durham by sea, being then equipped with 1 07 alabaster statues; even without them it is a sensational piece of work. It out-dazzles the meretricious rose-window \V/yatt inset underneath the east gable, but not the late fourteenth-century double window of the north wall which, seen at close quarters, is a hair-raising feat of engineering. What this transept must have looked like at the close of the Middle Ages defies imagination. There is good reason to believe that Durham was the most lavishly decorated of all the great cathedrals, and the Cuthbert shrine was its heart. In 1 593 an old man who had been a monk at Dur­ ham before the Dissolution wrote an account of life in the monastery called The Rites of Durha m . He says that the tomb was of gilded green marble, with 'six very fine­ sounding bells' , and that within the feretory 'were almer-

C A THE DRA L S 0 1 T H F N o 1u1 A N A c 1

ies, varnished and finely painted and gilt over with fine little images, for relics belonging to St Cuthbert to lie in: all the costly reliques and jewels that hung about within the said feretory upon the irons being accounted the most sumptuous and rich jewels in all this land. ' All, of course, was swept away in the 1 53 0s. To make matters worse, in Elizabethan times the cathedral fell into the hands not of one but of two successive image-h:tting deans, who stripped the walls bare. Then, during Crom­ well's war against Scotland, the cathedral was filled with 4, 000 Scots prisoners who burnt all the furniture and woodwork to keep themselves warm. Durham, too, i s built of vulnerable sandstone. The eighteenth-century deans were no better than their Elizabethan predecessors. ln 1 776 a local architect, George Nicholson, was hired by the chapter to clean up the decaying stonework on the exterior. He scraped no less than four inches off the sur­ face and so removed over 1 ,000 tons of masonry, includ­ ing virtually all the original mouldings, at a cost of £30,000. The Dean of the ti me demolished much of the Chapter House and was barely prevented from destroy­ ing the exquisite Galilee Chapel. Surprisingly, however, most of the monastic buildings survive and are generally in good condition. They include an enormous monks' dormitory which now houses in excellent collection of the cathedral's treasures. And, although Durham has lost so much, the impact of its twelfth-century grandeur i s still overwhelming. No other building erected by the Normans conveys so convinc­ ingly the ruthlessness, pride, audacity and burning faith

rh..- < ,.i111t-..- < ·1i.1p..-1 .ll Durh.1111 ,, .1 , .1 dJ..-J 10 the " dt'n ,pnc,, the, urn lJ be ,een tor a hund rt'J mile,,. rt·m1nd, u , th.ll t h e d 10,c,c w .1 , l>ncc one ot d1t l.irge,t .ind m:hc\l 1n I· ngl.ind Tht· lrngth ot the 11.1,·c, 4 S 2 kct on tht' 1ns1Jc, 1, .1\so unu,u,1 1 I c/t The Angel Choir Jt I mi:uln 1, tht· mmt ,umptuou, part uf the h1ghh ,krnratcJ uthcdrJI It wa, built 1n 1 2 5 6- 1 2 8 0 J\ Jn .1ppropn.1tc ,ctun g tor the ,hnnc ut 1\\ !.imou, b1,hup, '>t I !ugh ot l . inwln

stretched as far as the Thames Valley. The site of the cath­ edral on its h ill - which also supplies it with the superb pale yellow oolite limestone of which it is built - dom­ inates both the old town immediately below, and the new town at its feet, and Lincoln is the only En glish cathedral which can be seen broadside on from afar. Unlike Dur­ ham, Lincoln Cathedral dominates not only its immedi­ ate surroundings but a vast stretch of countryside, for its hill rises from a plain, rather as the great mass of Chartres emerges from the wheatlands of the Beauce. The cath­ edral is long, 4 8 2 feet on the inside, but the prevailing im­ pression is of height, for the masterly central tower was carried up to 2 7 1 feet in the early fourteenth century, and this was surmounted, until it fell down in a sixteenth cen-

tury gale, by an enormous spire, which brought the total height to 5 24 feet, the tallest in Europe, and enabled the cathedral to be seen from as far away as East Anglia. Lincoln is stylistically more of a piece than most English cathedrals. The reason is that on 1 5 April 1 1 S 5 an e,1rthquakc brought the entire church down, with the exception of the West Front. A succession of masterful bishops, including the saintly Hugh of A\' ,1lon ( 1 1 8 6- 1 200) and R obert Grosseteste ( 1 2 3 5 - 1 2 5 3 ) , rebuilt the cathed ral in the Early English manner, add 1 11 g a retrochoir, or the Angel Choir as it is called, in the Dec­ orated style in about 1 2 8 0 . Though St Hugh, who inspired the progr;1111me, was a Frenchnun, and the designer, Geoffrey de Noiers, had a I·rcnch name, the 55

CATHEDRALS OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES

work is very English throughout and represents the first major native essay in Gothic. The derivativeness and am­ bivalence which marked Canterbury choir is gone. Bourges, its strict contemporary in France, is totally dif­ ferent. At Lincoln, English Gothic took over, and the architectural primacy, held by France from the I 1 40s to the I I S os was wrested back again. Yet Lincoln begins with a characteristically English­ inspired muddle. The earthquake left the Norman West Front standing. It was decided to keep its porches and two west towers, but to push the towers high into the sky and to build out in front of the porches a vast screen, I 75 feet wide, with a high gable and corner turrets. It is covered in great bands of arcading, but the actual door­ ways are deeply recessed, as at Peterborough, providing an impressive effect of depth and chiaroscuro. The towers do not grow naturally out of the screen - therein lies the muddle - but the front as a whole is unquestionably sen­ sational, especially as a backdrop for a full-scale pro­ cessional entry on a great saint's day. It proclaims itself loudly as a curtain-raiser to prodigious events within. I mmediately inside the West Front there is a powerful perspective view of the whole Gothic tunnel of the cath­ edral, with the spiky shape of the great organ silhouetted against the far-distant, but enormous, east window. When the sun is rising in the east, this is one of the really overwhelming shock-views of English architecture. French critics argue that English cathedral naves are too low, sometimes not much over sixty feet, and that Lin­ coln, which is eighty feet, looks lower than it actually is, because the piers of the main arcades are widely spaced and the columns from which the vault springs are carried down only to the top of the clustered pillars, thus missing an important vertical opportunity. The answer is that

English medieval architects preferred to emphasize the length of the nave, thus suiting the quality of the English light, which is not so much intense as lingering. In the prolonged dawns and sunsets of England, the tunnel effect was the one to aim for, and at Lincoln it succeeds brilliantly. Needless to say, this tunnel effect could not be obtained by a French-style chevet east end; it is the square English end, with its vast central window, which makes it possible. At the crossing, there is an exciting contrast to the tun­ nel, for the vault under the central tower suddenly opens up to a height of I 3 0 feet and one is in a vertical universe. On either side, the eye travels t9 immense and gorgeous windows : the Dean's Eye to the north, the Bishop's Eye to the south. Then one passes through an elaborate four­ teenth-century screen, by thirteenth-century carved doorways to right and left, into the glittering eastern arm of the church. Here, the vault is eight feet lower than in the nave, and the tunnel effect is resumed, but in both directions. One advantage of the tunnel-type vista is that it makes the details of the vaulting and the upper storeys of the bays more comprehensible simply because they are nearer to the eye; and at Lincoln, being Early English Gothic, the details are very important. Stone vaults, which were difficult and expensive to erect, were put into cathedrals for the same primary reason that they were added to castles - they were the best protection against fire. But the collateral reason that they constituted a fir­ mament was also a weighty one, and became predomi­ nant as the craft of stone vaulting developed more complex and audacious forms. There is a contemporary description of the vault of the choir in The Metrical Lzfe of St Hugh : 'The vault, ' the poet says, ' may be compared to a bird stretching out her broad wings to fly - planted on

its fi rm columns, i t soars to the clouds. ' The poet also drew attention to the columns of dark­ green P u rbeck m a rble clustering around the great piers, wh ich he compares to 'a bevy of m aidens gathering for a dance'. The u se of Purbec k , which was shipped from Dorset, came in with Gothic and became an important element in p ro di gy architecture. Its deep brown o r sage­ green hues contrasted well with the shades of limestone and added a note of solid pol ychrome to the painted stone. Purbeck was fi rst used in the Canterbu ry choir, but sparin g l y ; at Lincoln it becomes a salient featu re of the decorative scheme. P urbeck is not, s trictly speaking, m a rble but limest one combined with petrified shells of molluscs, which a llow it to take polish and bring out its ela borate figuring. I t is no good for the outside of a cath­ edral but m a kes excellent small columns fo r inside, its blocks usually lying in beds six to eight feet lon g . At Li n -

coi n , two o r more lengths are used for t h e m ai n shafts, with annu lets to mask the joim. I n the choir, Purbeck takes over, for there is a multitude of small shafts, which in the arcadi n g of the aisles are arrayed i n double, ,1 lter­ nating ranks, the fro n t sh afts in Purbeck, the rear o n es in Linco l n limestone. Both have el aborate leaf cap i ta l s , deeply-i ncised mouldings, carved fi gures i n the sp,rn drels and interlocki n g arches . In the cho i r at Lincol n , i n deed , the Gothic carver fi rst begins to fl ex h is m uscles a n d d ic­ tate the main lines of the decorative scheme. Yet the choir at Lincoln is i tself only an antechamber to or preparation for the retrocho i r (or Angel Choir) . This was built 1 2 5 6- 1 2 8 0 to replace the old fl t .1 1 \\ e l l , ( .1tl1t·d1 . i i 1 , t h t·

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Ripon \\'l's! Front, built around 1 2 20, is the s t ro n gest leature of the c.nhedral. replacing the old, endlessly repeated l\orm.in arc.1ding w ith the new ie.1 ture ot the brlv English stvle, l ancet w indow s , Their deep setti n g and t h e strong corn er-tu rrets o f the towers p rO\·ide powerful shadowing.

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l iam of Sens's work at Canterbur y , b u t derived from Cis­ tercian i m portation rather than d i rectly fro m Sens i tself. D rastic nineteenth-century restoration has blur red the h istorical evidence, yet i t i s clear that Gothic was reaching up i n to E u rope, b y 1 1 7 5 , quite i ndependently of the Can­ terbury Revo l u tion . B y the time the West F ront was b u i lt, around 1 2 2 0, Fren c h i n fl uence had tapered off and the E a rl y English manner was maturing. At Ripon, the designer cont rived to produce a definite, i f restrained, masterpiece, which even Pevsner, so critical of the west fronts of Salisbury and \X'clls, ack nowledges as noble. U n l i k e Salisbury , it has two defi n i te towers (intended to carry steep les, w h i ch were taken down at the R estoration) rath er than fou r tur­ rets ; and as a collapsed N o rman c rossing tower was replaced by a weak fou rteen th-century successor (as at

\X'i nchestcr), the fro nt remains the chief feat u re of the chur ch , and h as the power to carry the ro le. U nl i k e \X'ell s , i t is n o t a d isplay- cabinet fo r sculptu re. \X'h:u i t does, i n effect, i s t o replace t h e old N o rm an arcad i ng, endlessly repeated, with the new and s a l i e nt featu re of the Early English style, the lancet window. This i ngen ious and novel i dea makes i t , as i t were, a symphony of l ancets, which are repeated "'i t h variations o n the three upper floors of the to wers and both l e,·cls o f thL· g,1b le between them. Four corner-tu rrets of the to,vcrs .1ct as huttressc.'> to provide depth, and the l ancets themselves arc deep -set so that the wh ole front is fu l l of shadows ,md is seen to l i ve as one m arches across it from nort h to south. The design is very English, but in no way p rovinc i a l ; o n the cont rary , i t t·c stifics to the pcrvas i ,·ene:-,s of t he fi r-.t d i stincti\'e style of n at i onal .1rc h itecture to establish itscli in B ri t.1 i n .

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C A TH I: DRA L S OJ E NGLAND, SCOT LAND AND WA LES

Ely ha� a long, low silhouette, broken by towers and pinn.1cles, and i s visible for many miles around, thrusting out oi the marshy plam. It w:is built as a pilgrimage­ cathedral. to hold the remains oi St Ethelreda (known as St Au drev ), the most popuLu wom.111-s.1int m B ri tain.

enormous cost by Edward 1's treasurer, Walter Langton, was despoiled in the 1 5 30s . Then, in 1 64 3, the royalists occupied its walled and battlemented close against a besieging army led by Lord B rooke. The Parliamentary commander was shot dead by a deaf-mute from the p ara­ pet of the central steeple, and in consequence Brooke's artillery bombarded the outside of the building for the next three days, and his infantry ransacked the interior after the surrender. We do not really know what the church looked like in detail before the Civil War disaster. Let us, therefore, take what good things remain and be grateful. From afar, there is no question that Lichfield is a stunning sight. The spire triad, which might have erupted so magnificently at Wells, say, or Ripon, is here seen in its real ity. Moreover, it is combined with a West Front which resembles the type of virtuoso display of statuary we find so often in France, and notably at Amiens and Rheims. It is said that the doors are too small ; that the

statues are all Victorian ; that the great Geometrical D ec­ orated west window, under its m atching gable, is a fake ; and, with more justice, that the two corner turrets of the front merge awkwardly into the p innacle-structure at the base of the two west steeples. Nevertheless, the front has an unforgettable impact when seen at a distance of between r no and 200 feet. It can be taken head-on, with the central steeple making a ghostly and sinister appearance between its two lower sis­ ters ; or, to the north-west and south-west, there are mag­ nificent stonescapes formed by the spiky trio and the abundant flying buttresses of the nave. The north-east approach is also of great interest ; for here, in the fore­ ground, is the best-designed of all Lichfield's features, the Lady Chapel , which has the same internal height as the choir and forms an apsidal end to the whole eastern arm. With its m assive buttresses, and its very narrow, trefoil­ headed windows, it pulls the eye decisively upwards to the pinnacle of the crossing-spire and its two shadows peering over the roof of the north transept. There are many permutations of these vistas. As for the interior, it benefi ts from two salient features. The first is an exceptionally well-designed bay, which has all the confidence of the early Decorated clustered pillars - well carved and spaced, and not much inferior to those of Wells or Exeter - plus an ingenious cinquefoil motif in the spandrels, divided by the vault-shafting, which relates neatly to the triple trefoils in the triangular clerestory windows. These light up the nave adequately , but leave ample space for a full-scale Decorated triforium level, reminiscent of Lincoln. Thus the bay is well-balanced, and the lowish nave is adequately heightened by the springing shafts which are carried right down to the p avement.

S P L E N D O U RS O F THE- l) F \\ ,

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CATH EDRALS OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES

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this baffling juxtaposition, and the light-systems, es­ pecially in late afternoon, defy description. At this point the monks decided that their church was complete, as if in acknowledgement that it was impossible to draw fresh sensations from this particular line of aesthetic enquiry. The Perpendicular sty le had exhausted itself. By this time, however, it had transformed the face of English architecture, and most notably in some of the ancient strongholds of the Romanesque. Perhaps the place where it had the first and biggest impact, soon after the completion of the Gloucester choir, was at Winches­ ter. This ancient cathedral-abbey was even more conser­ vative than Gloucester, and when it embraced Perpendicular it did so in a conservative fashion, as we shall see. It had never been a seat of an archbishop, but it was one of the most ancient religious foundations in the country, the capital of Wessex and Saxon England, and an administrative rival to London throughout the Norman period. It was sanctified by the bones of its great ninth­ century bishop, St Swithun, and throughout the Middle Ages the diocese, which stretched up to the London south bank and encompassed much of the most densely populated part of the south, was by far the richest in England. The princely prelates who ruled it in the later Middle Ages built and endowed some of England's noblest foundations, including Winchester College, and New College and Magdalen College in Oxford. Winchester itself is an archaeological and historical site of unrivalled interest, for in the 1 960s an intensive cam­ paign uncovered most of the secrets of the two successive Saxon minsters, which lay alongside the present Norman foundation. Yet visitors are often disappointed with the cathedral itself. It lies in a hollow, and there are no dra­ matic views from afar. Its tower, a late-Norman replace-

P E R P END I C U LA R : THE T R U E N AT l \' F STY L F

ment after the original tower fell in 1 1 oo (in outrage, the monks claimed at having to shelter the body of that scourge of the church, \X!illiam Rufus) is low J.nd undis­ tinguished. The building is immensely long, at 5 56 feet the second longest in Europe (St Peter's in Rome is 694 feet) ; but its size fails to register on the exterior, and there is no striking feature, no special angle or vista or striking perspective to j olt and arrest the eye. The interior, however, is a different matter. There are two ways to investigate this church. The first, and to my mind the more logical and rewarding, is to start with the transepts. These constitute the most im­ portant remaining element of the vast Norrn :m church which was built between 1 09 7 and 1 09 8 . It carries us straight back to the early Norman period, for it is possible to distinguish between the masonry used in the repairs carried out immediately after the 1 1 00 collapse, which is well-jointed and sophisticated, and earlier, rougher stone hewn when the Conqueror was still on the throne. There are some very early Norman bifora, and the triforium double arches exhibit, for the first time, the emergence of a primitive inner order, the initial step on the long road to Gothic. Much of the wall-surface is exactly as it was when first built, and no part of any English cathedral gives one such a tangible sensation of being in a grand and august, but primitive, Romanesque cathedral. Even before 1 1 oo Winchester had attained much of its present size, and this included, by Norman standards, a large eastern arm. The incentive to rebuild in Gothic, therefore, was lacking ; and when, between 1 1 8 9 and 1 2 3 8 , two successive bishops, Godfrey de Lucy and Peter des Roches, created a new setting for the shrine of St Swithun and the cathedral's enormom relic-collectio n , all they did was to add on a single-storey extension, •.v ith

F,n fr/r Thl· l\ .1n· .ll \\ md1ntn ,, .1' b11 l l 1.rntly relashmncJ 1 11 the 1 4 th ct'ntun h, one o l l- ngl.rnd ", gre.1 tc,t .1rchttcct,, \\ dli.1m ol \\ ' \'11!()rJ. I l e tr.rn,tmmcJ thl· Norn1.111 p ier, into l'crpl·ml 1cu!Jr L iu,tcrcJ pdl.u,. cnlHgcJ the clcrc,t,>n \\ inJow, .111 J .1 Jded .1 tremendou, new , .iult.

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CAT H EDRA L S O F E N G LA ND, SCOT LAN D AN D WA L ES

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three equal aisles, and a Lady C hapel. The latter was later remodelled ( 1 486- 1 49 2), but the retrochoir is one of those splendid Early English vaulted chambers which make one thank God for the twelfth-century relic-cult. They rarely receive adequate attention from the visitor, and at Winchester the room is so cluttered with tomb­ furniture (admirable in itself), that the strong, logical lines of clustered pillar and simple quadripartite vault find it hard, as it were, to make their voices h eard over the necrological din - but they are worth listening to. Winchester then seems to have slumbered through the rest of the thirteenth century and the early decades of the fourteenth. It was awoken by the Gloucester Revolution, and two magnifico-bishops, William of Eddington ( 1 3 4 5 - 1 366) and the incomparable William of Wykeham ( 1 3 67- 1 404), proceeded to modernize the vast twelve­ bay nave. At this point, the visitor should leave the church and approach it again from the west. Eddington began at the West Front, which is his, plus the first two nave bays. The front illustrates the continuing difficulty English architects found in designing elevations. As we have seen, the most primitive type of English Roman­ esque front was a mere cross-section of the nave and aisles. They had worked hard to get away from this feeble pseudo-solution by experimenting with arcades, towers, srnlpture-galleries and the piano nobile, and in the thir­ teenth century had largely succeeded. But now, Edding­ ton's architect, equipped by the Gloucester discoveries with a revolutionary new vernacular, fell at the first fence and produced a mere cross-section again. It is true that one weakness of Perpendirnlar is that its great windows look dull from the outside; and the enormous west win­ dow h ere takes away from the designer, in one stroke, the whole centre of his operating area. He might have bal-

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anccd i t with two tall towers, as ,lt York ; but th .n \\'o uld have meant transform ing the �vhok exterior, ,rnd build i ng a new cross ing-to\\'e r. It is evident th,u he had no such wide mandate and \\'as limited by h i s patron to d esigning a minor feature in harmony with the cathed ral\ consen·a­ tive exterior. So he resorted to an obvious pinnaclc- p l us­ buttress formula. Inside the western end of the chur c h , however, the great building co m es to magisterial artistic life. \\'e are now e ffectiwly in the hands of \'?ykeh;1111 's favourite ar­ chitect, \'villiam of \'v'ynford. Wykeham kne,Y what he was doing ; he was th e most experienced and successful English organizer of building-schemes in the whole of the Middle Ages, and as Prior of \'v' ells he Jud become thoroughly fam iliar with West Country d evelopments, even though he was abo ut the King's bu siness most of the time. \'v'ynford was a great architect ; some m:1int.1in that his claims arc higher even than those of H enry Y cvelc himself: but he, too, had a l i mited mand:1te. \X'v k eham may have been inhibited by the fact that th� nave­ rebu ilding scheme was already under w ,1y by the time he took ov er; or by th e sh eer weight of trad ition which invests this venerable church. At all e vents he must have told \Vynford not to te;1r down and rebu ild the Norman nave, but to give it a Perpendicular face-lift. I n a sense, th en, the work at \v' inchester was simibr to tl1;1t at Glouc­ ester two or th ree decades before. \X'ynfo rd bcg;m bv t.1k­ ing off the n ave roof :rn d d ismantling the 111.1in �valling down to the ;1islc roof. H is next step was w cut b,i ck the masonry of the Norman c ompound - piers ,md whittle th e m d o wn into Perpen dicubr clustered pillar:-. . Al­ tho ugh thev s till retain a ce rtain stoc k i rn..·,s, \\'hich remi�ds us -of th eir o rigin, the veniol Perpend icular e ffect is cunningly created by a new s y -;rem o f mouldings

l.n !cit \\ 1 1 1 - hc\lc·t Kncdo,. 1n\l.1llcd unJl't l\r,llllp h,,. t'\ t' ,it r 1 �- r p , , llll th( the· l{dur111.l!rt1n. 1, , nc "! the I.ht m.1\lcrp1l'c l', ut I n�lr,h mcd1n .d ,nd p rnrc The l.1, , '1nh halt ­ roofed when d1r .1bbr, ,, .1 s d,srnh-cd 111 1 1 i\l .ind Elizabeth I rc,c uc·J It from ut ter rum. Left The burh· spire of O:d ord C.11hedral ti.H es from the 1 1 th century and " the earlie.st sur\'iYor of l:n�lish cathed ral s tone spire, . .is wt·II as a lullowcd part o! the O ,. iord skvlim•. It bt·ars lmle arch itectur.d rclat1011., h1p 10 lhc inte11or ot the church.

ders, and it is hard to believe they were placed there to edify, inspire fear or love of God, or advance the cause of religion in any way whatever. \'vas not their function to delight or amuse ? In the age of the Venues, E rasmus was already mocking the indulgence-cult and other ,1spccts of mechanical religion, and the Renaissance \\'as switching the focus of attention from eternity to man 's place in the universe. There is no ocular trace of the Ren aissance here but its spirit hovers over the values of th