“The triforium is almost uniform throughout the whole church. In each sub-bay it consists of two small arches under one large one, with the tympanum solid. Here also the capitals are cushions and perfectly plain.
“Above the triforium is the clerestory, which contains one light to each sub-bay, and surmounting all is the vaulting, which springs from the piers and from grotesquely carved corbels between the triforium arches. The vaulting ribs are ornamented with chevrons on either side of a bold semicircular moulding. So much for the general arrangement of the bays. Some idea of the massiveness of the structures may be gathered when it is known that each group of the clustered pillars separating the bays covers an area of two hundred and twenty-five square feet at its base, while those of the cylindrical columns of the sub-bays are twelve feet square, and the columns themselves have a circumference of over twenty-three feet. There is little room to doubt that the effect obtained by the old builders of Durham was intentional. The masterly way in which great masses of solid masonry, greater than was constructively necessary, are handled, and the reticence and delicacy of the ornament combine to prove this. There is in the whole scheme a delightful union of great power and vigour in the masses, and of tenderness and loving care in the detail.”—(J. E. B.)
At the west end of the nave stands the Font, a modern work in the Norman style carved with medallions depicting scenes from the life of St. Cuthbert. It is covered by a large wooden canopy, dating from 1663 and curiously carved with a mixture of Classic and Gothic ornamentation.
Durham is built in the form of a Latin cross, with transept, and in the centre of the arms rises the tower. At the east end another transept runs—the Chapel of the Nine Altars. At the west end we have the Galilee Chapel.
No one seems to know the origin of the word Galilee. According to Canon Talbot:
“Its name of Galilee has probably some reference to Galilee of the Gentiles, and implies that it was considered less sacred than the rest of the Cathedral. St. Cuthbert had a more than monkish fear of women, and they were not allowed to approach the shrine. A cross let into the pavement of the nave at the far west end curiously marks the far-removed spot nearer than which women might not approach. The prejudices of the good saint were thus perpetuated long after his death. The whole effect is light and graceful, and if the women were not allowed to enter farther than the western extremity of the church, they certainly had a most beautiful place of worship.”
The Galilee Chapel is the most beautiful example of Transitional Norman.
“Entering the chapel by the steps leading from the Norman nave, the visitor is at once impressed with the lightness and delicacy of the work before him, as compared with the massive grandeur of the Norman cathedral behind. Here we have, in fact, one of the latest uses of the round arch influenced by the rapidly developing Early English Gothic. In plan the chapel consists of a nave with double aisles, which perhaps might be more properly called five aisles. These are divided by arcades, each of which is of four bays. These arches and the columns which support them are the chief beauty and characteristic of the chapel. The arches are semicircular, of one order, with three lines of chevrons, one on each face, and one on the soffit between two roll mouldings. The capitals are light and graceful and carved with a volute, and the columns clusters of marble and freestone shafts. The whole seems to have been coloured in fresco, and remains of this are still to be seen. The stone shafts, which alternate with those of marble, do not carry any of the weight of the arch, and are, undoubtedly, an addition, probably in the time of Cardinal Langley, when they must have been added, with a view to improving the appearance. The dimensions of the chapel are forty-seven feet from east to west, and seventy-six feet from north to south. The existing roof and the three Perpendicular windows on the west end are also additions by Cardinal Langley. On the walls above what were once the altars of the Virgin and Our Lady of Pity, remains of fresco painting may be noticed, all that remains of what has evidently been beautiful work. These were only brought to light by the removal of successive coats of whitewash with which they had been covered.”—(J. E. B.)
The two doorways at the end of the north aisle and south aisle of the nave were made by Cardinal Langley, who closed up the great West door, reopened in 1846. This was built by Flambard (1099-1128) and consists of an arch of four orders decorated with chevrons. Grotesque animals also appear in medallions. Langley also made a new roof, for which he raised the walls.
In front of the principal altar stands Langley’s Tomb, erected by himself; but of far more interest is the resting-place of a greater man.
No visitor can look upon the stone slab that marks the grave of the Venerable Bede without awe. Bede, so famed for his learning and piety, was a contemporary of St. Cuthbert and spent his long life chiefly in the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. He died in 735 and was buried at Jarrow. In 1022 his remains were stolen and placed in the same coffin with those of St. Cuthbert. Pudsey removed them into the new Galilee Chapel. “There, in a silver casket gilt with gold, hee laid the bones of Venerable Bede, and erected a costly and magnificent shrine over it,” so the Rites of Durham inform us. When the shrine was destroyed in 1542, the bones were interred beneath the site of the shrine and were left undisturbed until 1831, when they were exhumed, examined, enclosed in a lead-lined coffin and replaced in the tomb.
“The most interesting monument here is the plain altar-slab which marks the burial-place of the great Northumbrian scholar. On the tomb are engraved the well-known words, Hac sunt in fossâ Bedæ Venerabilis ossa (In this grave lie the bones of the Venerable Bede). According to the old legend the monk, who was casting about for a word to complete the scansion of his line between Bedæ and ossa, left a space blank until he could in the morning return to his task with a mind refreshed. However, during the night an unknown hand added the metrically suitable Venerabilis. This, according to the legend, is the origin of the peculiar preface Venerable, always associated with the name of Bede.”—(T.)
There are few monuments and tombs in Durham Cathedral. The most interesting is that of Lord Ralph Neville and his wife, Lady Alice, in the south side of the nave. Unfortunately the effigies of 1367 and 1364 are much mutilated. Near them is the altar-tomb of Lord John Neville (died, 1386), and his wife, the daughter of Lord Henry Percy, the famous “Hotspur.” Their effigies are headless and mutilated, but traces of colour and gilding are to be seen. The carving of the canopies is very beautiful and between each of the niches are two square panels bearing the arms of Neville and Percy.
We now come to the transepts. Each consists of two bays, with an aisle on the eastern side, to which three steps lead. In these at one time altars stood—to St. Nicholas and St. Giles, to St. Gregory and St. Benedict in the north transept; and to St. Faith and St. Thomas the Apostle, to Our Lady of Bolton and Our Lady of Houghhall, in the south transept. A large window ornaments and lights each end.
The one in the north end is supposed to date from 1362. It is composed of six lights, and the head shows late geometrical tracery. The transom crossing the mullions is not visible from the outside. Below it a second set of mullions supports a small gallery which leads to the triforium. This window was repaired in 1512 and filled with glass of the period representing its chief figures—St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory and St. Ambrose. Therefore it became known as The Four Doctors of the Church. Prior Castell, who had charge of the repairs, placed himself here kneeling before the Virgin. The opposite window, in the south end of the transept, is called the Te Deum. It contains six lights and is Perpendicular in style, dating between 1416 and 1446. There are corresponding stairways in the north-west and south-west corners of the transepts.
Now we come to the Tower, supported on four large Norman piers with semicircular arches. We look above about seventy feet and see the first story of the lantern with a gallery. Panels, grotesque heads, corbels, crockets and finials and a string-course ornamented with the Tudor flower give us plenty to study. Then come the windows, each with two lights and divided by a transom, and, last of all, the handsome groined roof with bosses on the ribs.
The Choir is the earliest part of the church. It contains Early Norman, Early English and Early Decorated work. The two later styles occur in the eastern part, and much beautiful detail is to be enjoyed. Where the one leaves off and the other begins affords interesting study.
Carileph’s work is seen in the western bays. Arcades adorn the piers on both sides of the choir. The lower row has six arches and the upper three. All these are carved with foliage, heads and half figures. On each pier of the upper arcade there is an angel under a canopy. The vaulting dates from the Thirteenth Century. It is quadripartite. Square leaves and the dog-tooth decorate the ribs. The bosses at the points of intersection are very fine.
An altar-tomb with the effigy of Bishop Hatfield (1345-1381), beneath the Bishop’s Throne, reminds us of the days when bishops were princes and warriors. Hatfield led eighty archers to the siege of Calais; and during his rule at Durham the battle of Neville’s Cross occurred (see page 236). Such a magnificent bishop had to have a magnificent tomb; and so, according to the custom of the day, he designed one for himself. Here he lies beneath a canopy that once was bright with painting and gilding. His effigy shows his splendid robes.
The Screen, separating the choir from the nave, dates from 1870-1876. The Choir-stalls were made from 1660 to 1672 to replace the originals destroyed by the Scottish prisoners incarcerated in the Cathedral in 1650 after the battle of Dunbar.
Above the high altar rises the splendid Neville Screen, erected about 1380 chiefly at the expense of John, Lord Neville of Raby. It runs along the entire choir, and forms sedilia of four seats on either side. The screen was originally filled with 107 statues. The Virgin stood in the centre, and one side of her was St. Cuthbert, and on the other St. Oswald.
“The prior of the day employed at his own expense seven masons for nearly a year to fix the screen, the execution of which is supposed to have been the fruit of the labours of French artists. The screen originally was much more elaborate than at present, being covered with rich colour and every niche filled with sculptured figures, but even now its present appearance is graceful.”—(T.)
The Neville screen is pierced by two doors that lead directly to the Shrine of St. Cuthbert in the Chapel of the Nine Altars just behind it; for in this chapel repose the bones of the patron saint. Facing the great rose window there is an oblong platform (37 × 23 feet), about six feet higher than the floor. The shrine was placed here in 1104 and remained until 1540, when the body was taken from it and buried beneath this spot.
The Chapel of the Nine Altars was so named because beneath the nine lancet windows formerly stood nine altars to the following saints: (1), St. Andrew and St. Mary Magdalen; (2), St. John the Baptist and St. Margaret; (3), St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Catherine; (4), St. Oswald and St. Lawrence; (5), St. Cuthbert and St. Bede; (6), St. Martin; (7), St. Peter and St. Paul; (8), St. Aidan and St. Helen; (9), St. Michael the Archangel.
“It is approached from the aisles by steps, the floor level being lower than that of the church proper. It is altogether a remarkable and interesting structure. With its lightness and loftiness contrasting grandly with the massive Norman nave and choir, its clustered columns of polished marble alternating with stone, its fine bold sculpture, its splendid vaulted roof and rich arcading, it forms a perfect example of the Early English style. Though regular and symmetrical in general design, the detail shows great variety, and even irregularity, a quality so often present in old work, and so much to its advantage.
“The ‘New Work,’ as it was always called, was commenced in the year 1242. The eastern wall, with its rose and nine lancet windows, is the earliest part of the chapel, the north and south walls being later. The joining and blending of the work with the Norman of Carileph’s choir had evidently been accomplished when the chapel was almost completed. The eastern wall is of three bays, each bay having three lofty lancet windows. The bays are not of equal width, the centre one being regulated by the width of the nave of the church, and narrower than the north and south bays.
“A very beautiful arcade runs completely round the walls. It is of trefoil arches deeply and richly moulded, supported on marble columns carved with foliage. Over the arches is a hood-mould terminating with heads. In the spandrels are a series of deeply sunk and moulded quatrefoils, two of which contain sculpture. The bases of the columns rest on a plinth. Surmounting this arcade is a moulded string from the level of which rise the windows, and above the windows another string-course and a second range of windows. In the centre bay, however, is the large rose window, which is over thirty feet in diameter.
“The division of the chapel into three bays is effected by two main vaulting arches, which spring on the western side from the piers of the east end of the choir, and on the eastern side from responds of clustered shafts alternately of marble and stone, banded at intervals and having richly carved capitals. The arches themselves are deeply moulded and ornamented with dog-tooth ornament and foliage. The vault of the central bay has eight ribs—two springing from each of the clusters just described, and two from each of the choir piers. The vaulting of the remaining bays is quadripartite, but has peculiarities which are worthy of notice, arising from inequality of width. We must not omit to call attention to the exquisite sculpture of the vaulting. The centre has figures of the Four Evangelists, while in the north is a beautifully executed carving of vine and grapes, and in the south, figure subjects. Among the sculptured heads on the wall arcade at the south end, at the western side of the two bays into which the south wall is divided, are two which are portraits of the men to whom we owe the design and execution of the beautiful sculpture of this chapel. One is an elderly man, the other much younger, and both wear linen dust-caps over their heads.”—(J. E. B.)
The rich and varied carving of the capitals of the vaulting-shafts and vaulting-bosses will delight the lover of beautiful sculpture.
The beautiful Early Decorated north window of six lights was originally filled with glass illustrating the history of Joseph. Hence it was called Joseph’s Window. It is a particularly fine example of the tracery of the period.
The two windows in the south end of this transept were once filled with glass representing the life and miracles of St. Cuthbert. They show tracery of the Perpendicular period. Each window is divided by a central mullion and is widely splayed inwards.
The rose window over the lancets of the middle bay consists of an outer circle of twenty-four and an inner circle of twelve radiating lights, the mullions of which are received on a foliated circle in the centre. This is Wyatt’s work, for, as we have seen, he removed the fine Early English window from this place.
The Cloisters and the Chapter-House we find on the south side of the Cathedral. The cloisters were begun in 1388-1406 and completed about 1438. They are much altered and restored. From them various halls of the monks could be entered.
From the eastern alley we pass into the Chapter-House, a restoration of what was considered the finest Norman Chapter-House in England when Wyatt pulled it down.
RIPON
Dedication: St. Peter and St. Wilfrid. Formerly a Collegiate Church served by Augustinian Canons.
Special features: Nave; St. Wilfrid’s Needle; Rood-Screen; East Window; Choir-Stalls.
Ripon did not become a cathedral until 1836. From the Eighth Century until that date it was in the diocese of York, and the Archbishop of York, having his throne in the choir, gave the church great importance.
Ripon monastery was established in the Seventh Century. The monks came from Melrose Abbey on the Tweed and represented the Christianity that was introduced into the north by way of Ireland through St. Columba’s missionaries. Their great abbot was Wilfrid, who became Bishop of Northumbria. In 669 he began a stone monastery, on the site, in all probability, of the earlier one; and this was dedicated in 670 to St. Peter. Wilfrid died in 709 and was buried in his church at Ripon. Miracles took place at his tomb, which drew such large crowds that the monks tried to restrain them. In 948, when Eadred was quelling a rebellion in Northumbria, “was that famed minster burned at Ripon which St. Wilfrid built.”
The next date of interest is the rebuilding of the church by Roger de Pont l’Évêque (1154-1181), the great rival of Thomas à Becket. It was a cruciform edifice; its nave was without aisles. Of this, the two transepts, half of the central tower, and portions of the nave and choir remain. Ripon is, therefore, one of the most important examples extant of the transition from Norman to Early English.
Archbishop Walter de Gray (1216-1255) translated the relics of St. Wilfrid to a new shrine in 1224.
The west front with its two towers was built about this time; and the eastern part of the choir was rebuilt in the Decorated style by Archbishop John Romanus (1286-1296).
The church was used as a refuge and fortress by the people of Ripon when the Scots invaded it in 1317. Many necessary repairs were made under Archbishop de Melton (1317-1340). The central tower fell in 1450 and had to be rebuilt; also the east side of the south transept and the south side of the choir. The present rood-screen and canopied stalls were erected at the end of the Fifteenth Century. Then the nave was rebuilt; but progress was delayed by the outbreak of a plague in 1506. St. Wilfrid’s Shrine was demolished by Henry VIII. In 1593 the central spire was injured by lightning. During the Civil Wars the Parliamentary soldiers shattered the splendid glass of the east window and did other damage. In 1660 the central spire fell and injured some of the canopies of the choir-stalls; and, therefore, in 1664, the western spires were removed for fear that they might fall also. Many repairs were made in 1829. Restorations on a large scale were undertaken by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1862-1870.
The West Front is Early English. It has two square towers and a central gable. String-courses divide the façade into four stages. In the first are three doorways adorned with gables and crosses. The central door, which is larger than the others, consists of five orders and five triple shafts. The two others have three orders and three shafts. Some of the mouldings are filled with the dog-tooth ornament. All three doors open into the nave. Between the gables spouts issue from the heads of animals. Above the doors comes a row of five lancet windows and above them a group of three small lancets placed very high. The towers are ornamented with arcades and lancets, buttresses, parapets and pinnacles. The ten bells hang in the south tower.
The Central Tower is interesting because it is composed of two styles of architecture. On the north and west sides it is Twelfth Century and on the two others Perpendicular. The windows on all sides are round-headed. The dog-tooth ornament appears in the moulding. Ripon, though finely proportioned, is somewhat cold and severe in general appearance. The north transept with its round-headed windows and its interesting doorway, with a rather curious inner arch and capitals of carved foliage, is a good example of the Twelfth Century. The south side of the nave is preferred to the north side by critics. In the south transept we have Archbishop Roger’s work again. The doorway is elaborate. The foliage on the capitals of the columns approaches the Early English style. The lintel is square. The south side of the choir is partly hidden by the Chapter-House with the Lady-Loft above. The buttresses that follow are of the Twelfth Century. The three western bays are Perpendicular; the others, Decorated. The two flying-buttresses are like those on the north side. Gargoyles appear at intervals along the string of the roof. The east end is Decorated. Its chief feature is the splendid window, of which the tracery alone remains.
Entering the west doorway we look upon one of the great naves of the Perpendicular period, ranking next in size after York, Winchester, Chichester and after St. Paul’s in width.
“Among very late Gothic buildings there are few indeed which are of so good a quality as this nave of Ripon, which, like the late church towers of Somerset, shows that Mediæval art took long to die out in regions remote from London. It is, indeed, the architecture of the days of Agincourt rather than of the eve of the English Renaissance. The pillars are characteristic of the Perpendicular style, their section being a square with a semicircle projecting from each side, and the corners hollowed. Their bases have complex plinths of considerable height and are polygonal, but follow roughly the form of the pillar, and the mouldings, as usual in this style, overhang the plinth. The capitals, with small mouldings and many angles, are of somewhat the same form as the bases. On the westernmost complete pillar of the north arcade are two shields, charged respectively with the arms of Ripon (a horn) and of Pigott of Clotherholme. The arches, instead of being of that depressed form which is so common in late work, are very beautifully proportioned, and their mouldings are bold, numerous and well-cut. There is no triforium; but a passage, at a slightly lower level than in Archbishop Roger’s bays, runs below the great clerestory windows, which were once, no doubt, gorgeous with stained glass. Their arches are moulded, but the splay is left plain. The roof-shafts, which are in clusters of three and have fillets upon them, spring from semi-octagonal corbels, and where each cluster passes the string-course there is an angel holding a shield. A sign of decadence may be found, perhaps, in the way in which the hood-moulds of the windows intersect with these shafts. Though the two sides of the nave are not quite of the same date, they are almost alike, but for some slight differences in the capitals, the arch-mouldings, and the hollows on the pillars; the builders feeling, doubtless, that any marked variation would mar the general perspective—a consideration which, of course, could not bind them in designing the north aisle. The original Perpendicular roof may have resembled that which now covers the transepts. About 1829 Blore put up an almost flat ceiling of deal. The present oaken vault, by Sir Gilbert Scott, was copied from that of the transepts of York Minster, and is adapted to the old roof-shafts, between which have been added angel corbels of wood. As the ribs intersect near their springing, they weave a network over the whole vault, and the carved bosses at the intersections amount to 107. A passing notice is merited by the pulpit, which is Jacobean.”—(C. H.)
The two great tower arches under the west towers are Early English; those of the central tower are round. Their great piers are composed of clusters of engaged shafts. Massive arches also mark the opening of each aisle of the nave into the transept. In the south aisle stands a blue marble Font, and near it an older one, probably of the Twelfth Century. Tradition says that the altar-tomb here is that of an Irish prince who brought home from Palestine a tame lion. On the bas-relief a lion, a kneeling man and two birds are represented, which gives cause for the story. The work is presumably of the Fourteenth Century. Above the font we can see the only Mediæval glass in the Cathedral—fragments of Fourteenth Century work left from the wreckage of the Puritan soldiers. St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Andrew will easily be recognized. There is also a shield bearing the English arms in this window. In the south wall of the nave there is a fine Piscina dating from the Twelfth Century. At this point we shall have to interrupt our walk through the Cathedral to examine St. Wilfrid’s Needle, the popular name for the Saxon Crypt.
“From a trap-door in the pavement below the piscina a flight of twelve steps winds down into a flat-roofed and descending passage 2⅛ feet wide and slightly over 6 feet high, which, running a few feet northwards and bending at right angles round the south-west tower pier, extends eastward for about 10 yards, with a descent of one step near the end, and terminates in a blank wall. There is a square-headed niche at the turn and a round-headed niche at the end, both meant, doubtless, to hold lights. Three feet from the end a round-headed doorway, 2 feet wide and over 6 feet high, opens northwards with a descent of two more steps, into a barrel-vaulted chamber, 11 feet 5 inches long from east to west, 7 feet 7 inches wide and 9 feet 10 inches high. In the north wall of this chamber, and approached by three wide steps, is the celebrated St. Wilfrid’s Needle, a round-headed aperture pierced through into a passage that runs behind. This aperture was connected with one of those superstitions that so often flourished before the Reformation in notable centres of religion, and ability to pass through it, or ‘thread the needle,’ was regarded as a test of female chastity; but it was, of course, in the later middle ages that this superstition arose, and the ‘needle’ (or rather needle’s eye) is evidently only one of the original niches with the back knocked out. Of these niches (which again were doubtless for lights) there are four in the chamber besides the ‘needle,’—one in each wall,—and, like the niche at the end of the passage of entrance, they all have semicircular heads, each cut in a single stone. That in the west wall has a hole or cup at the bottom, probably to hold oil in which a wick might float, while the others (except the ‘needle’) have a sort of funnel at the top, doubtless to catch the soot from lamps.”—(C. H.)
The North Transept is a fine specimen of the transitional from Norman to Early English, and is almost in its original condition. It is 34 feet wide, or 52 feet including the aisle. Here we find a stone pulpit of the Perpendicular period, its five
sides embellished with panelling. At the north wall was probably situated the Markenfield Chantry; for the aisle is still called by this name. Two family tombs remain.
The South Transept is slightly narrower than the north. Parts of it were altered in the Perpendicular period. In the aisle we find the Mallory Chapel, where members of the Studley family are buried. The northern bay is filled by a stone stairway, at the top of which are two doors. One opens into a chamber containing the bellows of the organ and the other into the Lady-Loft, or Library. This stairway was erected by Sir Gilbert Scott to replace an older one.
The elegant Rood Screen is of the Fifteenth Century. It contains a central doorway surmounted by a crocketed ogee hood, beneath which is a mutilated carving of The Trinity. Four large niches stand on either side of the door and a row of twenty-four smaller ones runs above these. Cinquefoils and feathered cusps decorate the whole screen, which is twelve feet thick. In the passage through it a door on the right opens into a winding staircase to the loft above and one on the left into a deep pit.
We pass on to the Choir. This is of three styles: the first three bays on the north side are Twelfth Century; the first three on the south side, Perpendicular; and the last three on both sides, Decorated. The triforium windows are filled with glass.
“The great window in the central compartment is one of the finest examples of Geometrical tracery, if not one of the largest windows, in England. It is over 50 feet high, is 25 feet wide, and has seven lights. Of these the three at either end are comprised under a sub-arch, in the head of which are three cinquefoiled circles, while the central light of the seven is surmounted by an arch, not so high as its neighbours, but impaling upon its acute point a huge circle which fills the head of the window and contains six trefoils radiating from its centre. The arch of this superb window is rather acutely pointed and richly moulded, and has two very slender shafts worked on the stones of either jamb, with foliage on their capitals.
“The huge window, which is not splayed, has a deep rear-vault bounded by a massive rib, whose outer edge rests on slender engaged shafts with foliage on their capitals, while the inner edge ends in bunches of foliage. Between this rib and the tracery is another rib springing on the north side from a bunch of foliage and on the south from a grotesque corbel. The inner arch has slender shafts, and so has the moulding next to the tracery, but in the latter case the capitals are plain. Few acts of vandalism are more to be regretted, probably, than the destruction in 1643 of the magnificent Fourteenth Century glass which once occupied this window. The present very poor glass, by Wailes of Newcastle, commemorates the revival of the See of Ripon in 1863.
“Over the window may be seen the mark of one of the earlier roofs. The choir is thought to have received a groined vault of oak after the rebuilding of the east end, but this vault was probably renewed more than once, especially after the accident to the tower about 1450, and the fall of the spire in 1660. Sir Gilbert Scott found a vault of lath and plaster (probably the work of Blore) for which he substituted the present roof, a groined wooden vault, admirable in its lofty pitch and judicious colouring. Its chief feature, however, is the splendid bosses along the ridge, which are survivals from either the Decorated or a subsequent Perpendicular vault. In some of these bosses the figures are five feet long.”—(C. H.)
The Choir-Stalls are splendid specimens of the Fifteenth Century, with very ornate canopies of tabernacle-work bristling with spires and pinnacles.
“There are ribbed vaults under the canopies, and upon the pendants in front are hovering angels. The canopies on the south side were wrecked by the fall of the spire in 1660, and those over the eight easternmost stalls were then reconstructed in the ‘Jacobean’ style with a gallery above, while of the canopies now over the other nine, eight are said to have been brought across from the eastern end of the north range, where more Jacobean canopies were erected in their place. Sir Gilbert Scott removed all this Seventeenth Century work and set up reproductions of the Fifteenth Century design. Thus the eight easternmost canopies on either side are modern. The misereres and arms of the stalls are exquisitely carved.
“The subjects upon the former are as follows, beginning from the archway in the screen:—
“North side:—(1) (Canon in Residence) lion attacked by dogs; (2) dragon attacked by dogs; (3) angel with shield; (4) dragon and birds; (5) hart’s-tongue ferns; (6) conventional flowers; (7) ape attacked by lion; (8) vine; (9) birds pecking fruit; (10) antelopes; (11) fox preaching to goose and cock; (12) fox running off with geese; (13) fox caught by dogs; (14) dragons fighting; (15) fruit and flowers issuing from inverted head; (16) man holding club with oak leaves and acorns; (17) (Mayor’s Stall) griffin catching rabbit.
“South side:—(1) (Dean) angel with book; (2) angel with shield bearing date 1489; (3) lion versus griffin; (4) griffin devouring a human leg; (5) owl; (6) mermaid with mirror and hair-brush; (7) two pigs dancing to bagpipe played by a third; (8) Jonah thrown to the whale; (9) man wheeling another who holds a reed and a bag; (10) fox caught carrying off goose by dog and by woman with distaff; (11) winged animal; (12) hart, gorged and chained; (13) pelican feeding young; (14) Jonah emerging from the whale; (15) Samson carrying the gates; (16) head (modern); (17) (Bishop’s Throne) Caleb and Joshua carrying the grapes and watched by Anakim.
“Most of these misereres have exquisite conventional flowers (especially roses) cut upon them in addition to the figure-subjects. The desks in front of the stalls have rich finials, and their panelled fronts form the backs of a lower tier of seats, the arms of which are supported each on a square shaft set diamondwise. In front of these lower seats the desks again have carved finials and panelled fronts and on those parallel with the Rood-Screen the tracery is distinctly Flamboyant. The finial before the stall of the Canon in Residence has a griffin attached to it and that in front of the Dean’s stall a lion. Before both these stalls the ends of the two tiers of desks are richly carved. The Bishop’s throne and Mayor’s stall have each a canopied niche on the exterior toward the east, and two small apertures in the east side to enable the occupant to see the altar, and in front of these two stalls the ends of the two tiers of desks are again richly carved. The Mayor’s stall is wider than the others, and attached to the finial in front is a grotesque ape, beneath which the supporting shaft is of open work. The end of this desk displays a shield charged with two keys in saltire, for the see of York.
“The Bishop’s throne was originally occupied by the Archbishops of York. The Jacobean canopy, which succeeded that of the Fifteenth Century, comprised the space of two stalls, as did also the modern structure by which it was itself succeeded and which is now in the Consistory Court. The present canopy resembles those of the other stalls but is higher and more elaborate. Upon the back of the throne inside is a small mitre. The finial in front consists of an elephant carrying a man in his trunk, and bearing on his back a castle filled with armed soldiery, and in front of the elephant is a centaur (renewed), the shaft under which is again of open-work. The end of this desk displays a large mitre above a shield charged with the three stars of St. Wilfrid and supported by two angels, between whom is a scroll with the date of 1494.”
The altar stands against the east wall of the presbytery. The Reredos is a restoration of the original Decorated one. The Sedilia and a Piscina are placed on the south side.
Sir Gilbert Scott considered them Late Decorated work, but they have rather the appearance of Late Perpendicular.
Some historians think that the shrine of St. Wilfrid stood in the east end of the north-choir-aisle. The remains were kept in a superb coffer, which was carried in processions.
Passing down the south-choir-aisle from the east we first come to the vestry; then to the Chapter-House; and then to the Mallory Chapel. A round-headed door in the west wall of the Chapter-House opens upon a stairway that leads into another Crypt that belonged to Norman times.
The Chapter-House is of the Twelfth Century. Above it is a Lady-Chapel, called here the Lady-Loft. It is unusual to find a Lady-Chapel on the south side of the Choir and on an upper floor. It dates from about the middle of the Fifteenth Century. It is now used as a Library.
YORK MINSTER
Dedication: St. Peter. Served by Secular Canons.
Special features: West Front; Choir; Chapter-House; Windows.
York, “the King of Cathedrals,” is one of the noblest and best examples of Gothic architecture. In form and proportion, in detail of ornament, in exterior and interior, the famous Minster takes rank with the greatest ecclesiastical buildings. Not only is it enormous—a forest of architecture—but it contains, perhaps, more ancient stained glass than any other building in the world.
“Other English cathedrals are more finely placed, several are richer in ornament, one or two have a more delicately varied outline. None are so stately and so magnificent; and there is hardly a church in Europe that appears so vast as the Minster, viewed from the north.
“The low-pitched roof of the Minster, the solidity of the central tower, the simple and tranquil front of the north transept, give the building an air of masculine and stately repose, and of perfect finish seldom to be found in foreign churches; while the apparent uniformity of style, though the architecture is of three different periods, frees it from the picturesque inconsequence of many English cathedrals. Yet neither inside nor outside does the Minster appear to be the expression of the spiritual aspirations of a people. It represents rather a secular magnificence, the temporal power of a Church that has played a great part in the history of the nation. The archbishops of York have been forced by circumstances to be militant prelates, contending with Canterbury for precedence, leading armies against the Scotch, sometimes even heading rebellions against the king; and in their cathedral they have expressed their ambition and their pride.”—(A. C.-B.)
The visitor who has a short time to visit York Minster will study the west front, the choir, the Chapter-House, and the windows.
“If the beauty in the form of our flos florum is due to its architecture, very much of its beauty in colour depends on the glowing and mellowed tints with which its windows are filled. But it is a large subject to enter upon, for as regards quantity there are no less than one hundred and three windows in the Minster, most of them entirely, and the remainder, only excepting the tracery, filled with real old Mediæval glass. Some of the windows, too, are of great size. The east window, which is entirely filled with old glass, consists of nine lights and measures seventy-eight feet in height, thirty-one feet two inches in width. The two choir transept windows, that in the north transept to St. William, and the south to St. Cuthbert, measure seventy-three feet by sixteen feet. They have both been restored, the latter very recently, but by far the greater part of them is old glass. On each side of the choir, the aisles contain nine windows measuring fourteen feet nine inches by twelve feet, only the tracery lights of which are modern; the same number of windows fill the clerestory above, the greater portions of which are ancient.
“The famous window of the north transept, the Five Sisters, consists of five lights, each measuring fifty-three feet six inches by five feet one inch, and is entirely of old glass. There are six windows in the north and six in the south aisles of the nave, with only a little modern glass in the tracery. The superb Flamboyant window at the west end of the centre aisle measures fifty-six feet three inches by twenty-five feet four inches, and consists, I believe, entirely of old glass, except the faces of the figures. The clerestory windows are studded with ancient shields, but a great part of the glass is, I fancy, modern; those of the vestibule, eight in number, measuring thirty-two feet by eighteen, are of old glass, including the tracery lights. The east window has been clumsily restored by Willement. In the side windows of the transept there is some old glass, and the great rose window over the south entrance still retains much of the old glass; while far overhead in the tower there are some really fine bold designs of late, but genuine, design and execution. Altogether, according to actual measurements, there are 25,531 superficial feet of Mediæval glass in the Minster, i.e., more than half an acre—a possession, we should think, unequalled by any church in England, if not in Christendom.”—(P.-C.)
York, or, to use its older name, Eboracum, had been an important British settlement long before the Romans made it the principal seat of their power in the north between the years 70 and 80 A.D. It continued to be a Roman court until the Emperor Honorius left Britain in 409. Hadrian lived here; Severus and Constantine Chlorus died here; and here Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor. Many churches in the vicinity were dedicated to the latter’s mother, St. Helena, the legendary discoverer of the True Cross.
York was therefore the great military post and the great ecclesiastical seat in the north of England.
The question of precedence between York and Canterbury arose as early as the days of St. Augustine. Gregory the Great instructed the latter to appoint twelve bishops, one of whom was to be the Bishop of York, who was to ordain other bishops in the north of England. He was to be subordinate to Augustine; but subsequently precedence should be determined by priority of consecration. This occasioned dissensions for centuries, culminating in the murder of Thomas à Becket (see page 2), which Roger de Pont l’Évêque is said to have instigated. It was this Archbishop of York who, refusing to take a lower seat at the Council of Westminster in 1176, sat himself in the lap of Becket’s successor only to be pulled off and soundly beaten. The question was not finally settled until the time of John of Thorsby (1352-1373), when Innocent VI. determined that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be styled Primate of All England and the Archbishop of York, Primate of England.
The first archbishop was Paulinus, Bishop of Rochester (see page 33), who accompanied Ethelburga, daughter of the King of Kent, when she went to Northumbria to marry King Edwin. Edwin embraced Christianity and was baptised in 627, by Paulinus, in a temporary wooden church on the site of the present glorious York Minster. Immediately afterwards Edwin began to build a stone church in this same place, which he dedicated to St. Peter. This church was repaired by the next archbishop—the great Wilfrid—about 669.
When Thomas of Bayeux, the first Norman archbishop, arrived in 1070, he found the Cathedral in ruins, owing to the Danish invasion and to the wars of the Conqueror; and, if William of Malmsbury may be believed, Thomas began the church from its foundations and also finished it.
Roger de Pont l’Évêque (1154-1181) rebuilt the choir.
About this time York acquired its patron saint, William Fitzherbert, great-grandson of the Conqueror, who became Bishop of York in 1143. Expelled from office in 1147, he was restored in 1153. On his return he performed a miracle and died almost immediately afterwards, so suddenly, in fact, that he was thought to have been poisoned out of the holy chalice. The monks buried him in the Cathedral. His tomb attracted pilgrims because of the marvellous cures. St. William was canonised in 1284; and in that year his relics were translated from the nave to the choir. Edward I. and Queen Eleanor were present and gave jewels to the shrine, which was placed at the eastern end of the nave under a huge canopy. St. William’s head was preserved in a silver reliquary.
There is now no Norman work visible in York Minster except in the crypt and in parts of the nave and tower. In 1200, however, the nave, choir, towers, and transepts were Norman. About 1230 it was decided to rebuild the transepts on a big scale. Walter de Grey (1216-1265) began the south transept (Early English); and he lies there under an arch, in a splendid tomb. John Romeyn, treasurer of York, built the north transept and also an Early English tower to replace the Early Norman tower. His son, John Romeyn, also archbishop from 1286 to 1296, began the new nave.
John of Thorsby (1352-1373) began the present choir in 1361. The work was started at the extreme east end. Thorsby was a Yorkshireman, who