This refectory and the vestibule or entrance hall leading to it contain
the most beautiful examples of Early English work to be found in
Cheshire, and boys and girls who live in or near Chester should study
them carefully. In the refectory is the stone pulpit referred to in a
previous chapter, with a staircase and arcade of Early English arches
leading to it. The wall above the arches is pierced with a row of
'quatrefoil' openings, with deeply cut mouldings.
[Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH DOORWAY, CHESTER]
In the hollows of the Early English mouldings we sometimes see an
ornament pointed like a dog's tooth. You will see it in the moulding
round a circular opening over the doorway of the vestibule in
the cloisters of the Cathedral. Another ornament which the
thirteenth-century masons invented and put into their work was the
'cusp', a projection made by the meeting of two curves placed end to
end. If you put two cusps into the head of a pointed arch you will find
that you have made a trefoil-headed arch. The triforium arches in the
choir of the cathedral are all of this description. Quatrefoils are made
by arranging four cusps within a circle.
Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Abbot Simon of Whitchurch
built the Lady Chapel east of the choir. The windows of this chapel are
all lancets, those at the side being arranged in groups of three, while
the east window contains five lights. The Lady Chapel looks very new
now. It has, in fact, been almost entirely rebuilt since Abbot Simon's
day. The mediaeval builders of Cheshire did not select their
building-stone very carefully. You will see from the cloisters how the
red sandstone has weathered and crumbled to ruin.
The walls of Early English buildings were not so thick as those built by
the Normans, and required to be supported on the exterior by buttresses
which projected further from the walls than the flat Norman buttresses.
You will find Early English buttresses at Audlem and Prestbury.
Many houses in Chester are built over crypts or underground cellars,
which were made during the reign of Henry the Third, and consequently
show some of the features we have been describing. The oldest of these
crypts is under a shop in Bridge Street. It is lighted by a triple
lancet window having deep splays. The door of the staircase leading to
it has a trefoiled head, and the vaulted stone roof is groined and
ribbed like the roof of the cloisters of the cathedral. The roofs of
Early English churches were groined in the same way, but with wood
instead of stone.
Many Cheshire churches were, no doubt, rebuilt or repaired in the new
style. At Bruera there is a pointed doorway under a semicircular arch.
Bruera was one of the many churches bestowed on the Abbey of S. Werburgh
by Norman lords. A grant of a manor or a church was often made when a
baron or some member of his family entered the abbey as a monk of the
brotherhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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