English Cathedrals Illustrated: Second and Revised EditionBond, Francis
History
English Cathedrals Illustrated: Second and Revised Edition
Bond, Francis
Cathedrals -- England; Cathedrals -- Wales
VI. Then at the very end of the Geometrical period the Lady chapel was
built; at first detached from the east end of the choir, so as not
to interfere with the services. Being exceedingly lofty and without
aisles, it was possible to have exceptionally lofty windows of the type
of those of the north transept of Hereford. These elongated windows,
the absence of aisles, and the polygonal plan, give the exterior a
curiously German appearance. The window tracery is Geometrical, being
composed of groups of trefoils. But the ogee-dripstones of the windows
show that the work overlaps into the Curvilinear period; indeed, it was
not finished at Bishop Langton’s death in 1321. Under the three eastern
windows are chapels, the central of which contains the monument of Bishop
Selwyn, of New Zealand and Lichfield. But the glory of the Lady chapel
and the cathedral is the magnificent painted glass of the sixteenth
century—similar in character to the beautiful glass of Margaret of
Austria’s church at Brou-en-Bresse, Burgundy. The first window on each
side was inserted recently. The remaining seven windows are also Flemish
glass, of the date 1530 to 1540, bought by Sir Brooke Boothby, in 1803,
from the Cistercian nunnery of Herckenrode, near Liége, for £200. The
second window on the north is particularly interesting, as it contains
portraits of patrons and benefactors of Herckenrode, kneeling at altars,
with their patron saints behind them. The third window also has portraits
of great nobles of the Netherlands. The remaining five windows contain
Scriptural subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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