Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral: Formerly the Collegiate Church of St. Saviour, Otherwise St. Mary Overie. A Short History and Description of the Fabric, with Some Account of the College and the SeeWorley, George
History
Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral: Formerly the Collegiate Church of St. Saviour, Otherwise St. Mary Overie. A Short History and Description of the Fabric, with Some Account of the College and the See
Worley, George
Southwark Cathedral (London, England)
Two tablets in the same aisle are worth noticing. The first is a
brass, dated 1652, on the pier between the choir and aisle entrance,
in memory of Susanna Barford, who died at the early age of ten years
and thirteen weeks. The inscription quotes her as, "The Non-such of
the world for Piety and Vertue in soe tender years." Below these words
there is an epitaph in rhyming couplets and complimentary terms,
separated from the inscription by a death's head and crossbones, and a
pair of wings supporting an hourglass, on the dexter and sinister
sides respectively. This is the only brass with any approach to
antiquity in the Cathedral, though the matrix of another, evidently
thought more worthy of a private collection, has been detected in one
of the recesses, lately described, in the opposite aisle. The other
memorial is a plain marble slab, scarcely seen in the darkness between
the windows. It commemorates Abraham Newland, the model chief cashier
of the Bank of England, whose strict notions of duty would not allow
him to sleep a single night off the premises during the twenty-five
years of his appointment. He died in 1807, two months after taking his
pension, leaving L60,000, in the funds, to his landlady. This
inexpensive memorial is a token of her gratitude.
The =Organ=.--On the south side of the aisle is the organ-chamber
erected by Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons, after much discussion as to
a suitable place for the new instrument, for which it was eventually
decided to build the chamber over part of the site once occupied by
the Magdalen Church. The old organ used to stand in the gallery at the
west end of the debased nave, and was since removed to the north
transept. When it was finally taken down it was unsaleable as a
musical instrument, and had to go for what it would fetch as so much
wood and metal. Some relics of it have, however, been preserved in the
shape of the large gilded angels which adorned its front. These are
now stored above the tall iron safe in the Harvard chapel. The present
organ and the chamber which contains it were both presented by the
late Mrs. Robert Courage as a memorial to her husband.
The new organ, built by Messrs. Lewis and Co., Limited, is of
peculiarly rich and pleasant tone. It contains more than 4,000 pipes
and consists of four manuals, with a system of interchangeable
composition pedals, the whole embodying the most recent improvements
for altering and combining the stops, and working the instrument to
the best advantage with the least exertion. The action is
electro-pneumatic, and the wind is supplied by a rotary hydraulic
engine.[31]
Imbedded in the pavement at the entrance to this aisle there is an
interesting collection of =Roman tesserae=, which have been carefully
preserved as an evidence of the antiquity of the site.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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