Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Manchester: A Short History and Description of the Church and of the Collegiate Buildings now known as Chetham's Hospital — John Shaqi
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Manchester: A Short History and Description of the Church and of the Collegiate Buildings now known as Chetham's HospitalPerkins, Thomas, Rev.
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Manchester: A Short History and Description of the Church and of the Collegiate Buildings now known as Chetham's Hospital
Perkins, Thomas, Rev.
Manchester Cathedral (England)
The reader should follow on the plan the general description just
given, and while doing so he will notice that the church is not quite
regularly built, but tapers slightly towards the east. The enclosed
choir, presbytery, and sanctuary taper still more, so that the east
end is between three and four feet narrower than the west end. But this
enclosed space is symmetrically placed in the church. The plan shows the
very great width of the church in proportion to its length. The interior
width of the nave and its double aisles is 114 feet, while its length is
only 85 feet; the whole interior length of the church, omitting the tower
at the west and the Lady Chapel at the east, is 172 feet. This shows
that the choir is about the same length as the nave, and that the total
length of nave and choir is only about one and a half times the width.
[Illustration: THE TOWER ARCH.]
Having now taken a cursory glance round the church, we will go once more
over the same ground, examining it more in detail. We will suppose that
the outer doors of the =West Porch= are open, and we can pass through
them from the street. We go up from the level of the pavement three
steps and find ourselves within the porch; on the south and north sides
of it, doors open into two rooms used the one as the lecture-room of the
Scholae Episcopi (or non-residential Theological College of the Diocese),
the other as a schoolroom for the choir boys. A flight of eleven steps
takes us up to a landing measuring about five feet from west to east,
and then four more steps bring us to the level of the nave floor, and we
enter through what were originally the west doors of the church, into
the space below the tower. The ceiling of this is of fan tracery, and
its side walls are panelled in five tiers. Passing under the tower arch
and looking back, we notice that the tower arch with the walls on either
side of it are original. =The Baptistery= is a modern addition. The font
formerly stood in the outer aisle on the north side. The =South Porch=
is also new. It is divided into two bays, each covered with a vault
formed of eight ribs crossing each other at the centre, and decorated
by two lierne ribs in each of the four quarters. The arcade dividing
the outer from the inner aisle on the south side is entirely modern;
the chapels which occupied the site of the outer aisle were formerly
divided from each other by stone walls, and from the aisle by irregular
arches filled with oak screens. All these were removed in 1815, so as
to throw the area of the chapels into that of the church; an arcade was
then built, but this was removed to make room for the present arcade
during the restoration that was begun in 1872. The westernmost chantry,
or =Chapel of St. George=, was founded by W. Galley in 1508. The next,
the chapel of =St. Nicholas=, or the Trafford Chantry, is said to have
been founded long ere the present church was built in 1186 by Robert de
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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