Highways and Byways in LincolnshireRawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
History
Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire
Rawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
Lincolnshire (England) -- Description and travel
Hugh of Avalon died in London in 1200, and _William de Blois_ (1201) and
_Hugh of Wells_ (1209) went on with the building. The latter particularly
kept to Hugh of Avalon’s plan of intercalating marble shafts with those
of stone. Other characteristics of St. Hugh’s work are the double
arcading in the transept and the little pigeon-hole recesses between
the arcade arches, a trefoil ornament on the pillar belts and on the
buttresses, and the deep-cut base mouldings. He put in the fine Early
English round window in the north transept called the “Dean’s eye,” which
has plate tracery. The five lancet lights, something after the “Five
Sisters” window at York, were a later addition. The end of his work is
easily distinguishable in the east wall of the great transept. He also
built the Galilee porch, which was both a porch and an ecclesiastical
court, and the Chapter house, with its ten pairs of lancet windows, its
arcading and clustered pillars and beautiful central pillar to support
the roof groining. He was succeeded, in 1235, by the famous _Robert
Grosteste_, a really great man and a fine scholar, who had studied both
at Oxford and Paris. He opposed the Pope, who wished to put his nephew
into a canonry, declaring him to be unfit for the post, and stoutly
championed the right of the English Church to be ruled by English and
not Italian prelates. In his time the central tower fell, and he it was
who built up in its place the first stage at least of the magnificent
tower we have now. He also added the richly arcaded upper portion of the
great west front, and its flanking turrets crowned by the figures of the
Swineherd of Stow with his horn, on the north, and Bishop Hugh on the
south. _Henry Lexington_, Dean of Lincoln, succeeded him as Bishop in
1254, and during his short episcopate of four years Henry III. issued a
royal letter for removing the Roman city wall further east to enable the
Dean and Chapter to lengthen the cathedral for the Shrine of St. Hugh
after his canonisation. Then began the building of the ‘Angel Choir,’
which “for the excellence of its sculpture, the richness of its mouldings
and the beauty of its windows, is not surpassed by anything in the
Kingdom” (Sir C. Anderson). Its height was limited by the pitch of the
vaulting of Hugh’s Ritual Choir, just as the height of Grosteste’s tower
arches had been. The Angel Choir was finished by Lexington’s successor
_Richard of Gravesend_, 1258-1279, and inaugurated in the following year
with magnificent ceremony under _Bishop Oliver Sutton_, Edward I. and
Queen Eleanor both being present with their children to see the removal
of St. Hugh’s body from its first resting-place before the altar of the
Chapel of St. John the Baptist in the north-east transept, where it had
been placed in 1200 when King John himself acted as one of the pall
bearers, to its new and beautiful gold shrine in the Angel Choir behind
the high altar.
[Sidenote: JOHN DE WELBOURN]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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