Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Chichester (1901): A Short History & Description of Its Fabric with an Account of the Diocese and SeeCorlette, Hubert C. (Hubert Christian)
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Chichester (1901): A Short History & Description of Its Fabric with an Account of the Diocese and See
Corlette, Hubert C. (Hubert Christian)
Chichester Cathedral
It has been supposed by some that a chapter-house once existed within
the paradise close by the west angle of the transept. The south end of
the transept rises on the north side of the cloister garth. At the
south-west angle a great part of the twelfth-century masonry in the
broad flat buttresses remains. The south-east angle and buttresses are
quite different. They are perhaps part of the work done during the
thirteenth century, though it is possible that they were introduced
when Langton inserted the large south window of the transept. This
window has been very much restored since the seventeenth century, when
it was almost knocked in pieces. Wooden props served instead of
mullions for many years to hold up the tracery above. The repair that
has been effected retains the old design. Above each angle of the
transept is a turret, octagonal in form. Neither of them is complete.
They were only required in the fifteenth century as a means of access
to the roofs at the parapet level from the staircases in the angle
buttresses. The gable of the transept rises above the parapet just
described, but it is not in the same vertical plane as the face of the
wall below. The top of this gable was for many years in a very wrecked
condition. The design of the tracery in the rose window is in two
orders, based upon equilateral triangles filled in with cusps.
Close to the ground on the south-west corner buttress are two
string-courses. The lower of these is a billet-moulded course cut,
like those to be seen on the south-west tower. Its presence here, and
at this level, shows that this was the original level of the sills of
all the old Norman windows on the outside walls until about the close
of the twelfth century.
On the east side of this part of the transept, at the clerestory
level, are two round-headed windows. Both originally were all of
twelfth-century workmanship. But now the southern one has abaci,
capitals, angle-shafts, and base, which are thirteenth-century work,
and the early label-mould has been changed. The other window shows
partly what was once probably the character of both of them. But the
greater part of this window was restored when the central tower and
spire were rebuilt after 1861. Between the windows is a buttress that
was introduced when the vault was added. The south-east angle on this
side retains part of the twelfth-century flat buttressing. There are
on this wall and the turret different types of masonry, which
represent five distinct periods of building, from the twelfth to the
nineteenth century. But the junction between the work of two of these
periods, being a weak part, shows by the crack down the wall from the
parapet that some movement has taken place here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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