Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans: With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the AbbeyPerkins, Thomas, Rev.
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans: With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey
Perkins, Thomas, Rev.
St. Albans Cathedral
#The North Side.# The north clerestory of the nave has eight
round-headed brick windows at the eastern part, followed by lancets
similar to those on the south side. Flat buttresses of brick are built
against the clerestory wall between the round-headed windows. The aisle
windows, most of them rebuilt, are in Decorated style. A length of
eighty feet of the wall towards the western end of the aisle, which had
been built about 1553, when the Chapel of St. Andrew had been destroyed,
was rebuilt and buttresses built against it to counteract the thrust of
the clerestory, which leans outward. In this wall, as on the opposite
side of the church, Lord Grimthorpe inserted windows; and placed a new
sloping roof over the north aisle, covering the triforium arches which
had been glazed as windows in the fifteenth century; this roof is
covered with dark-coloured tiles. We may notice in the north aisle wall
a brick door in the fourth bay from the east; this was cut by Lord
Grimthorpe and leads into the vestry; also a walled-up door in the sixth
bay, which led from the church into the graveyard, and another in the
sixth bay, which formerly led from the north aisle into the chancel of
St. Andrew's Church; this Lord Grimthorpe converted into a cupboard in
the thickness of the wall. The only other thing noteworthy at this part
of the exterior is a small piece of the north aisle wall of St. Andrew's
Church near the footpath.
#The Tower.# There yet remains the magnificent tower. It is 144 feet
high and is not quite square in plan, measuring 47 feet from east to
west, and two feet less from north to south. The walls are about seven
feet thick; in the thickness, however, passages are cut. It has three
stages above the ridges of the roof. The lower stage has plain windows
in each face, lighting the church below; the next stage, or ringing
room, has two pairs of double windows; and the upper or belfry stage,
two double windows of large size, furnished with louvre boards. The
parapet is battlemented, and of course of later work than the tower
itself. The tower is flanked by pilaster buttresses, which merge into
cylindrical turrets in the upper story. For simple dignity the tower
stands unrivalled in this country. It must have been splendidly built to
have stood as it has done so many centuries without accident. Winchester
tower fell not long after its building, Peterborough tower has been
rebuilt in modern days; but Paul of Caen did not scamp his work as the
monks of Peterborough did, and no evil-living king was buried below the
tower, as was the case at Winchester, thus, according to the beliefs of
the time, leading to its downfall. Tewkesbury tower alone can vie with
that of St. Albans, and the seventeenth-century pinnacles on that tower
spoil the general effect, so that the foremost place among central
Norman towers as we see them to-day may safely be claimed for that at
St. Albans. Few more beautiful architectural objects can be seen than
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