English Cathedrals Illustrated: Second and Revised EditionBond, Francis
History
English Cathedrals Illustrated: Second and Revised Edition
Bond, Francis
Cathedrals -- England; Cathedrals -- Wales
What happened to the nave between 1245 and 1317 is not known. There is
no work in the cathedral of that date. But between 1317 and 1327 Bishop
Cobham commenced the reconstruction of the north side of the nave. It
is therefore Curvilinear work. It is not, however, typical work of the
period. With that tenderness for older design which one sees at Ely,
St. Alban’s, Beverley and Westminster, the architect has suppressed
his individual preferences, and designed his work so as to be a nice
transition from the twelfth-century bays near the west front to the
thirteenth-century bays of the choir; so his piers and his clerestory
are a Curvilinear version of the work immediately to the west of him,
while his triforium is a repeat of that of the choir. But before the new
work on the north side was joined up to the Transitional bays of the
nave money seems to have become scarce at Worcester. Pilgrims had begun
to desert St. Wulfstan for newer if not holier saints. Hitherto St.
Wulfstan had had a monopoly in the West-country. There was not another
saint of equal efficacy till you reached Winchester. But in 1287 Bishop
Cantilupe began to bring the dead to life at Hereford; and in 1327 Edward
II. was buried at Gloucester, and miracles soon followed there also. So
Worcester now had rival miracle-workers on either side. The result was
that it was found impossible to finish the Curvilinear work, although the
pier-arcade was complete all along the north side of the nave, and there
only remained to build two bays of the triforium and clerestory.
[Illustration: NAVE, LOOKING EAST.]
Building operations seem to have halted for some thirty years; and when
they were resumed, _c._ 1360, the completion of the north side and the
rebuilding of the south side of the nave were carried out in a balder
and more economical way. All this Perpendicular work, including the
completion of the new tower, seems to have been completed before the end
of the fourteenth century. About the same time the great transept was
vaulted and panelled, somewhat after the fashion of the Gloucester work.
The transept is a tangle of early Norman, late Norman, Transitional,
Curvilinear, and Perpendicular work. Evidently there are breaks and
lacunæ in the architectural record of Worcester which we have no
materials for filling up. In the fifteenth century the monks seem to have
rebuilt their cloister.
A late and interesting bit of design is to be seen in the chantry of
Prince Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII., who died in Ludlow castle
in 1486. The flat roof, with its fan-vault, skeleton ribs and pendant,
is an anticipation of the vaulting of his father’s chapel in Westminster
Abbey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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