Highways and Byways in Cambridge and ElyConybeare, John William Edward
History
Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely
Conybeare, John William Edward
Cambridgeshire (England) -- Description and travel; Isle of Ely (England) -- Description and travel
The walls, then, would have been less ornate, and more truly beautiful
for the absence of profuse ornament, had the Founder's design been
carried out. And we can see that even the exquisite roof was meant to
be yet more lovely than as it now enraptures the eye. If we look at
one of the soaring pilasters and follow up its lines, we shall see
that each of the flutings is prolonged in a rib of the fan vaulting.
No, not quite each. There is one member which has no such
prolongation, but ends meaninglessly at the capital. And this tells us
that the pilasters were designed to carry not a fan but a _liern_
vaulting; so called because it appears to be a mesh of intertwined ivy
(_lierre_) binding the fabric together. And beautiful as a fan roof
is, a liern roof is capable of expressing harmonies of proportion yet
more delicate and soul-satisfying. How subtle and exalted these
harmonies would have been here we shall best learn if we have the good
fortune to gain admission to the range of small side-chapels which
flank the fane on either hand, nestling between the mighty buttresses.
For in these, while the more western have the fan roof, the eastern
and earlier built show liern vaulting of the most delicious character.
These side-chapels were intended each to have an altar, at which the
Priest to whom it was assigned should say his own Mass daily, while
all should meet later before the High Altar to assist at the
Collegiate Mass. They are now used for various subsidiary purposes
connected with the services. One contains the heating apparatus,
another the hydraulic bellows of the organ, while many are mere
lumber-rooms. These last are those abutting on the Choir, which have
no opening into the Nave, such as those adjoining the ante-chapel
possess. Through the gratings we may note some stained glass of an
entirely different character from that in the Chapel windows. It is,
in fact, of the previous (Fifteenth) Century, and thus older than the
Chapel itself. From what earlier building it has been transferred is
uncertain. Tradition, for some unknown reason, assigns it to Ramsey
Abbey; but it seems more reasonable to suppose that it came from the
old church of St. John Zachary hard by, when that was pulled down to
make room for the College, and its fragments, as excavation has shown,
utilised for levelling the site.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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