Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of SarumWhite, Gleeson
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum
White, Gleeson
Salisbury Cathedral
Of this Mr. Francis Douce, in his volume "The Dance of Death," says it
was "undoubtedly a portion of the Macaber Dance, as there was close to
it another compartment belonging to the same subject. This painting
was made about the year 1460, and from the remaining specimen its
destruction is greatly to be regretted, as judging from the dress of
the young gallant the dresses of the time would be correctly
exhibited."
There were other wall paintings, including a large St. Christopher
with the Christ Child on his shoulder, and an Annunciation, said to
have been a fine work. An interesting memorial of the chapel as it
stood in the middle of the seventeenth century, is to be found in an
MS. pocket-book, still preserved in the British Museum (Harl. MS.
939), which belonged to a Captain Symons, of the Royalist Army. When
he visited Salisbury in 1644 he made many notes and sketches of the
armorial bearings in this chantry.
=The Beauchamp Chapel.=--The interior view here reproduced from
"Gough's Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain" although not very
clear is curiously interesting, conveying as it does trustworthy
evidence of the building so wantonly swept away.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE DEMOLISHED BEAUCHAMP CHAPEL.]
Of the Beauchamp Chapel, on the south side of the Lady Chapel, there
appears to be no exterior view extant, but from sketches of its
interior, and descriptions, it must have been a fine specimen of its
period, and worthy of its designer, the builder of St. George's
Chapel, Windsor. It was larger and more elaborate in detail than the
Hungerford chantry, but like it in plan, and similarly lighted by one
large east window, and three in the side wall. The remains of its
founder, Bishop Beauchamp, reposed in a plain tomb in the centre. In
the wall on the north side were exquisite canopies above the tombs of
the father and mother of the bishop. An altar tomb of Sir John Cheyne,
now in the nave, stood formerly at the south-west corner (see page
48). There was a custom that on Christmas Day and all holy days the
wives of the mayor and aldermen and gentry of the city, came to
prayers in the Beauchamp chapel in the evening with flambeaux and
torches, excepting on Innocents' Day, when they went to their own
parish churches. In an interesting Guide to the Cathedral, now in the
British Museum, annotated in the last century by some visitor, we
find an entry concerning this chapel, "The ceiling is of Irish oak,
and never known to have spiders or cobwebs in it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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