How to Visit the English Cathedrals

“The east windows of the choir aisles are filled with glass coloured with enamels in accordance with the practice of the Seventeenth Century instead of glass coloured in its manufacture. They date from the reign of Charles II.; and although it is traditionally said that they were presented by Nell Gwynne, it is more probable that they were the offerings of Henry Glenham, Dean of Bristol from 1661 to 1667, and afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph. The arms of Glemham (Or, a chevron gules between three torteaux) are repeated three times in the window of the south aisle and once in that of the north. The subjects (arranged as type and antitype) in the north aisle are—in the centre, the Resurrection; below Jonah delivered from the whale. On the right, above, the Ascension; below, Elijah taken up to heaven. On the left, above, the Agony in the garden; below, Abraham about to offer up his son.”—(R. J. K.)

“The Lady-Chapel (generally called the Elder Lady-Chapel because the altar of the Virgin was removed to the east end of the church after Abbot Knowle had rebuilt the choir) is entered from the north-east corner of the transept. The chapel is Early English, and dates, according to Mr. Godwin, from the time of Abbot John (1196-1215). The chapel is of four bays, the windows in which are triplets with inner arches, of which those at the side are gracefully foliated. The detached vaulting-shafts are of Purbeck marble. The sculpture of the capitals and string-courses is unusually good; and the spandrels of the wall-arcade are filled with grotesque designs which are full of spirit and character, greatly resembling the sculpture in Wells Cathedral, much of which is of the same date. Remember especially—a goat blowing a horn and carrying a hare slung over his back; a ram and an ape playing on musical instruments; and St. Michael with the dragon(?); below is a fox carrying off a foliage. The vaulting of the roof would seem to stamp the English character.”—(R. J. K.)

“Opposite the entrance door on the south side are three ogee arches with niches between. In one of these, the third from the west, was a hearth upon which the sacramental bread was baked. The ornamentation in the spandrels and the finials is curiously interesting work in foliage. The vaulting of the roof would seem to stamp the work as that of Abbot Knowle. It consists of curved ribs, quite detached, large in section, springing from small capitals. The bosses are particularly fine, the foliage being very flowing and free. It is difficult to realise that the mason has here done in stone what many wood-carvers would fail to do in their softer material. The door into the Berkeley Chapel is enriched with a niche overhead, and a moulding below consisting of medlers.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“There are two windows toward the east, the soffetes of which are ornamented with a gigantic ball-flower; and the peculiar foliage on some of the capitals should be remarked. Under each of the windows was an altar, the steps and piscinæ of which remain. The altars were separated by a screen, the marks of which were visible in the old pavement. Between the chapel and the aisle the wall is pierced by the peculiar arch of Abbot Knowle; and under it, in the thickness of the wall, is an altar-tomb much ornamented and containing five shields charged with the coats of the Berkeley, Ferrers and De Quincey families. The tomb in its present state is no doubt that of Thomas, Lord Berkeley (died 1321), whose wives were of those families; but the lower part, with its very fine foliage, is of Early English date, and may possibly have been removed from another part of the church.”—(R. J. K.)

“The lower lights are separated by vine tendrils into oval panels, twenty-one in all. In the lowest tier in the centre is Jesse with David on the right and Solomon on the left hand. To the left of the latter are the prophets Micah, Haggai, Malachi; to the right of David are Jeremiah, Daniel and Amos. In the next tier the central figure is the Virgin and Child with Hezekiah on the left and Ahaz on the right, the four kings, David, Solomon, Hezekiah and Ahaz, representing the descent of the promise. To the left of Hezekiah are the prophets Jonah, Habakkuk, Zechariah; and to the right of Ahaz are Isaiah, Ezekiel and Hosea. Above these two rows of regular panels are three panels, containing four subjects—the central one giving us the Crucifixion, with our Lord in glory in the upper part of the light. In the right hand light is the Virgin Mary, in that on the left is St. John.

“In the head of this window there are now seventeen blazons of arms. In the quatrefoil at the top—the arms of England as used before the time of Edward III., viz., the three lions; in the two trefoils immediately below are Berkeley of Stoke Gifford (L), Berkeley of Berkeley Castle (R).

“Most of the glass in this upper part is original and is supposed by Mr. Winston to date between 1312-1322, as the arms of Gaveston, who was murdered in 1312, are not in the window, while the arms of De Bohun, who was slain in open rebellion in 1322, are clearly here. The glass, then, is of Knowle’s time, and being contemporary with the masonry, affords a rich example of the harmony of form and colour about which one hears so much but which one so seldom sees. It is probable that the tracery of the window may have been designed for Abbot Knowle by the builder of the window at Carlisle, also an Augustinian house. There is a strong resemblance in the two windows, both of which are excellent work.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“The chapter-house is one of the oldest parts of the earlier fabric of the cathedral, and as Britton truly says, ‘in its original state must have been one of the most interesting of the kind in the kingdom and perhaps in Europe.’ In spite of what it has undergone at the hands of architects, restorers and rioters, it is most interesting still, a regular parallelogram in shape, measuring 42 feet in length by 25 in breadth and 25 feet in height, divided into two bays.

“The eastern wall, which dates from 1831, has three windows, and the west wall has also three round-headed arches, the central one being the main door, while the side ones serve as windows, each being subdivided by a small pier. Each of these main openings has a label of cable-moulding. Above this cable-moulding is an arcade of interlacing arches, borne by thirteen tall piers, alternately plain and twisted; and above this is a semicircular space, also filled with rounded-headed intersecting arches, so arranged as to fill the semicircular space. The north and south walls have a plain round-headed arcading below, with a bold round moulding, while above is an elaborate arcading, similar to the lower tier on the west wall, but with much richer capitals. Above this is interlaced lattice-work, and above this in one bay a space covered with zigzag mouldings. The shafts of the arcading on the walls are alternately richly carved or almost plain. The clustered shafts, from which the main arch of the vaulting springs, are peculiarly rich in ornamentation.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“Placed where it is, almost in the centre of the long line of the nave, continued in the choir and Lady-chapel, at the point where the transept line intersects it, it is the chief feature of the massive pile. All else seems to be grouped with a view to the enhancing of the effect of the central position of the tower. The other members of the building seem merely to be steps, by means of which approach can be made to it. It is the grandest and most impressive feature of the outside. No matter from whence one looks at it, the charm is there. 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. The tower is 225 feet high to the top of the pinnacles, and the effect of it is extremely fine. From the main cornice upwards, the whole of the stone-work is open, and composed of what at a distance appears to be delicate tracery, and mullions and crocketed pinnacles.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“Instead of going on with Abbot Morwent’s rebuilding of the nave, the monks now turned their attention to the central tower. The tower was of no use as a lantern, for the lierne vault of the choir had been carried beneath it. So it long remained unaltered. But in the days of Abbot Seabroke (1460-1482), it was rebuilt under the superintendence of a monk named Tully, to be in character with the new exterior of choir and transepts. 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.

“Then—after the tower had been erected—it was decided to rebuild the Lady-chapel. So an immense detached building was constructed to the east of the great window of the presbytery; without aisles, but with little transepts; almost one continuous sheet of glass, and with a superb vault. This Lady-chapel had to be joined up to the presbytery, but the great east window was in the way. However, the difficulty was got over by a series of ingenious shifts and dodges, which must be seen to be appreciated (1457-1499).

“And so ended this great building-period at Gloucester (1330-1499), which turned the course of English architecture; so that the Curvilinear style of 1315 to 1360 did not find its natural development in Flamboyant, as on the Continent, but was switched off to Perpendicular and Tudor design.”—(F. B.)

“The method of joining the Lady-chapel to the choir is best noticed from the outside. It is a piece of exceedingly clever and graceful construction, and there is the minimum of obstruction to the light passing through to the east window, and the maximum of support to the elliptical east window. Viewing the Lady-chapel from the north side, the play of light through the windows on the south side has a very grand effect. Under the east end of the Lady-chapel is a passage which has given rise to much speculation in bygone times. The Lady-chapel, at

the time of its erection, was carried out to the farthest limit of the land possessed by the Abbey. As the east wall of the chapel was actually on the western boundary wall the passage was made to give access from the north to the south of the grounds, without the need of going right round the precincts by the west front.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“existed for more than eight centuries under different forms, in poverty and in wealth, in meanness and in magnificence, in misfortune and success, finally succumbed to the royal will. The day came, and that a drear winter day, when its last Mass was sung, its last censer waved, its last congregation bent in rapt and lowly adoration before the altar there; and, doubtless, as the last tones of that day’s evensong died away in the vaulted roof, there were not wanting those who lingered in the solemn stillness of the old massive pile, and who, as the lights disappeared one by one, felt that there was a void which could never be filled, because their old abbey, with its beautiful services, its frequent means of grace, its hospitality to strangers, and its loving care for God’s poor, had passed away like a morning dream, and was gone for ever.”—(W. H. H.)

“The first impression of the nave changes all earlier thoughts of the age of the building. It is unmistakably Norman, grand beyond expression, but cold, severe and deathly white. The stained glass (mostly modern) of the Norman and Decorated windows fails to supply the evident lack of colour.

“There was a time when lines of blue and scarlet and gold relieved the white vaulted roof, when altars agleam with colour and pale flickering lights gave light and brightness to the chill whiteness of this vast and mighty colonnade. 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.

“Save that the altars with their wealth of colour and light are gone, and the lines of colouring and the glint of gold of the Norman wooden ceiling no longer are visible on the stone-vaulted roof above and the south aisle Norman windows are replaced with exquisite Decorated work of the time of the second Edward, there is no great structural change since the day at the close of the Eleventh Century when Abbot Fulda from Shrewsbury preached his famous sermon to the Gloucester folk, the sermon in which he foretold the death of the imperious and cruel Rufus in words so plain, so unmistakable, that Abbot Serlo of Gloucester, who loved the great wicked King, in spite of his many sins, was alarmed and at once sent to warn his master, but in vain. Rufus disregarded the Gloucester note of alarm, and a few hours later the news of the King of England’s bloody death, in the leafy glades of the New Forest, rang through Normandy and England.

“Yes, it is the same nave, only colder and whiter, on which Anselm, the saintly archbishop, and Rufus gazed; the same avenue of massy pillars—then scarcely finished—through which Maud the Empress often went to her prayers with her chivalrous half-brother, Earl Robert. Beauclerc, her father, too, and some grey-haired survivors of Hastings must have looked on these huge columns crowned with their round arches which excite our wonder to-day. They were a curious fancy of the architect of Serlo; or was it not probably a design of a yet older artist of Edward the Confessor? These enormous round shafts, which are the peculiar feature of the nave of our storied abbey, have only once been repeated, probably by the same architect, in the neighbouring abbey of Tewkesbury, a few years later. There is nothing like them on either side of the silver streak of sea. The Tewkesbury copies are slightly smaller; otherwise they are exact reproductions of Gloucester.”—(S.)

“The unique features here are the great height of the massive circular columns, fourteen in number, and the consequently dwarfed triforium or gallery running over the main arches. There are traces to be seen of the original Norman clerestory under the Perpendicular windows, and, judging from this, the height of the clerestory, as originally constructed, must have been but little less than that of the piers in the nave.

“This Norman clerestory was altered at the same time that the roof of the nave was vaulted—viz. in 1242, in the time of Henry Foliot. This work was done by the monks themselves, who thought, as Professor Willis suggests, that they could do it better than common workmen. Their work is made of a light and porous kind of stone, treated with plaster on the under-side, and it was rendered necessary by the previous roof, which was of wood, having been destroyed by fire in 1190. Of this fire the piers certainly show the traces to this day, all having become reddened and slightly calcined. To make the new clerestory the whole of the original Norman work over the arcade of the triforium was removed, with the exception of the jambs of the side-lights (which extended beyond the arches of the triforium) and the wall between them.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“The painting may be thus generally described. The hollow of the abacus of the capitals was red, the lower member of the same, green; the whole of the bell red, the leaves alternately green and yellow, with the stalks, running down, of the same colours, into the red bell of the capital. The vertical mouldings between the marble shafts were red and blue alternately; the lower shafts green and blue, with red in the hollows, and the foliage on these also is green and yellow. Some of the horizontal mouldings are partly coloured also. The bosses in the groining are yellow and green, as in the capitals. All the colouring, which was very rich, was effected with water colours; in one instance only has any gold been discerned, and that was upon one of the bosses in the roof.”—(F. S. W.)

“Looking upwards, the visitor will note the beauty of the vaulting and the bosses placed at the intersection of the ribs. These bosses at the east end of the choir chiefly represent a choir of angels playing on various kinds of musical instruments, and a figure of Our Lord in the attitude of blessing. All the roof was originally probably painted and decorated, but the existing colour and gilding is recent work, having been done by Clayton & Bell. At first sight the groining of the roof looks most complicated, but, if analysed and dotted down on paper, it will be seen to be in reality a simple geometrical pattern. The bosses will repay careful examination with a glass.

“Viewed from the door in the screen, the choir looks in very truth a piece of Perpendicular work, as the Norman substructure is then for the most part concealed. A closer examination, however, will prove that the Norman work is all there—that it has been veiled over with tracery from the floor level to the vaulting with open screen-work, fixed on to the Norman masonry, which was pared down to receive it.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“The choir on which you are now looking is very long—not too long, however, for its great height—for the fretted roof, a delicate mosaic of tender colours set in pale gold, soars high above the vaulting of the nave. The proportions are simply admirable. From the lofty traceried roof down to the elaborately tiled floor, the walls are covered with richly carved panelled work, broken here and there with delicate screens of stone. The eastern end, hard by the high altar, is the home of several shrines. There is happily no lack of colour in this part of our cathedral. The western end is furnished with sixty richly-carved canopied stalls of dark oak, mostly the handiwork of the Fourteenth Century. The curiously and elaborately fretted work of the roof we have already spoken of as a rich mosaic of gold and colours. The floor, if one dare breathe a criticism in this charmed building, is too bright and glistening, but it is in its way varied and beautiful. The carving of the reredos, a work of our own day, is, to the writer’s mind, open to criticism, but is still very fair, telling in every detail of loving work and true reverence.”—(S.)

“Though it awakens our recollection of a feeble-minded king, and his barbarously brutal murder, it also compels our admiration at the beauty of the work. It has been restored, renovated or re-edified, but in spite of that, appeals to us from the wealth of very highly ornate tabernacle work, the richness, and at the same time the lightness and elegance of the whole. The details too are well worth careful examination. It may be, judging from the expression of the face, that there has been some attempt at portraiture, but repair and restoration have practically made it impossible to settle what would otherwise be an interesting question. The superb canopy has suffered much at the hands of restorers—e.g. in 1737, 1789, 1798 and in 1876.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“It occupies the space over the ground floors of the aisles or ambulatory of the choir, and originally extended of a like width round the east end of the Norman Church, but at the time when the Fourteenth-Century work of the present choir was executed, the whole of the east end of the old Norman choir, with the corresponding part of the triforium, was removed in order to make room for the existing large window, the small east chapel being allowed to remain.”—(F. S. W.)

“The first chapel in the triforium contains two brackets with rich canopies, and there is a very well preserved double piscina. Ball-flowers in two rows will be found in the mouldings of the east window. Remains of two canopies in the jambs of the windows are also to be traced.

“The massive Norman piers should be carefully studied, as the way in which the later casing work has been applied can be more easily seen in the triforium than elsewhere.

“The picture on the west side of this part of the triforium was discovered in 1718, against the then eastern end of the nave, underneath the panelled wainscot at the back of the seats occupied by the clergy when the nave was used for service.”—(H. J. L. J. M.)

“It is worthy of remark that the tracery, heads and cusps, as seen from the inside of this window, are not repeated on the outside, a plain transom only crossing the lights. This peculiarity is repeated in the great west

window and in many other windows in the cathedral.”—(F. S. W.)

“The whole of this, the loveliest choir in England, is lit by a mighty wall of jewelled glass behind the great golden reredos.

“This vast east window which floods the choir of Gloucester, beautiful as a dream with its soft, silvery light faintly coloured with jewelled shafts of the richest blue and red, and here and there a vein of pale gold—this vast window could not have been seen out of England, or, at least, one of the grey and misty northern countries, where gleams of light or shafts of sunshine are exceedingly precious. In south or central Europe the effect of such a mighty window would be simply dazzling to the eye, would be painful from its excess of light.

“This great east window is the largest painted window in England—the largest, the writer believes, in Europe. Its stonework exceeds in size the magnificent east window of York, which stands next to it. The respective measurements are Gloucester, seventy-two feet high by thirty-eight wide; York, seventy-eight by thirty-three feet. The lower parts of the centre compartments at Gloucester are not completely glazed, owing to the opening into the Lady-chapel. The glass of Gloucester is, on the whole, light-coloured, the designers being evidently anxious that the beautiful stone panels and screen-work should be seen in all their exquisite details. The glass has suffered marvellously little from the ravages of weather and the fanaticism of revolutionary times; the busy restorer, too, has dealt gently with it. There are forty-nine figures, and of these thirty-seven are pronounced by our lynx-eyed experts to be absolutely genuine. Of the eighteen armorial shields in the lower lights thirteen are certainly the identical shields inserted by the survivors of Cressy. The whole of the gorgeous canopy-work has been untouched. The subject of the paintings is the Coronation of the Virgin and the figures consist of winged angels, apostles, saints, kings and abbots. The coats-of-arms are those borne by King Edward III., the Black Prince, and their knightly companions, such as the Lords of Berkeley, Arundel, Pembroke, Warwick, Northampton, Talbot and others who took part in the famous campaign in which occurred the battle of Cressy, and who in some degree were connected with Gloucestershire. The window was, in fact, a memorial of the great English victory, and may fairly be termed the Cressy window.”—(S.)