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
The windows in the second, third, and fourth bays differ in size and
shape from each other; that in the second bay has a pointed arch and
no tracery, square abaci and the remains of carved capitals. The angle
shafts and bases are gone. They were all inserted at about the same
time; but that in the third bay has had some poor modern tracery
without cusps added to it, and that in the fourth bay is a more
recent, insertion than the one next to it. In the third and fourth
bays just above the low chamfered base of the wall are three
semicircular markings cut on the wall, but there is nothing to explain
their existence. In the fourth bay close beneath the sill of the
window is a stone built into the wall, upon which a dedication cross
is cut. At the fifth bay the east walk of the cloisters joins the wall
of the aisle; its roof partly hides a window, above which is a square
panel of the fifteenth century. This panel indicates the position of a
window, for the jambs and mullions of its tracery may be seen within
the church. They are rebated for shutters, the old hooks for which
also remain. The south-east angle turret of the presbytery has lately
been rebuilt; so also has that on the north-east angle. They are each
of them octagonal in form, but differ in detail, in imitation of those
they replace.
The large rose window in the gable of the #East End# is of about
the same date as the vaulting over the south transept, since they
possess kindred details. In design it is a simple circle, with seven
others within it of equal diameter. Portions of the coping of an
earlier and lower pointed gable are bedded in the wall. Under the
string beneath the rose window are three windows grouped as a triplet,
with no label moulding. The centre light is higher than the others.
Though each has been much repaired, the early thirteenth-century
detail has been retained. The abaci of the capitals are square. The
windows have no tracery, and are probably quite fifty years earlier in
date than the large rose above them.
The exterior of the small chapel to the south has a square weathered
angle buttress. On its south side is a window of the same date as the
rest of the chapel, and like the triplet in the gable of the
presbytery in character and date. Its east end has been altered since
the chapel was finished. First a small rose window, recently renewed,
of the same date and type as that in the presbytery gable, was
inserted under the earlier narrow window close to the gable point;
then the original east window was removed, and a larger one was put
in, having three lights and a traceried head with cusped work of late
fourteenth-or early fifteenth-century work. The sill of the old window
was lowered to give more length. Most of the window now to be seen is
the result of recent restoration. Parts of the old string-courses
remain in the walling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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