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
beautiful and richly carved canopied stalls. They are only excelled,
perhaps, by those at Winchester. The carving of the _Miserere_ seats
is much like that at Boston, where humorous scenes are introduced. The
fox in a monk’s cowl, the goose, and the monkey being the chief animals
represented. Here, on a poppy-head in the precentor’s seat, a baboon is
seen stealing the butter churned by two monkeys; he is caught and hanged,
and on the _Miserere_ he is being carried forth for burial. A finely
carved oak pulpit, designed by Gilbert Scott, is at the north-east end of
the stalls. The brass eagle is a seventeenth century copy of an earlier
one. We notice overhead the stone vaulting, springing from Purbeck
shafts; notice, too, the beauty of the mouldings and carved capitals, and
the groups of arches forming the triforium with clerestory window above,
which, however, only show between the ribs of the vaulting; and, then,
the length of it! For now, by taking in two from the Angel Choir, the
chancel has seven bays. It is a very striking view as you look eastwards,
but it has the defect of a rather plain, low vaulting, and west of it the
nave, which is a generation later, is more splendidly arranged, while
east of it the Angel Choir, which is nearly half a century later than the
nave, admittedly surpasses all the rest in delicacy and beauty. The choir
vaulting being low, caused both nave and presbytery to be lower than they
would otherwise have been, so that it has been said that when the tower
fell it was a pity the chancel did not fall with it, all would then have
been built with loftier roofs and with more perfect symmetry.
If we pass down the Ritual Choir eastwards, we enter the presbytery, and
at once see the origin of the name “Angel Choir” in the thirty figures of
angels in the spandrels. It was built to accommodate the enormous number
of pilgrims who flocked to St. Hugh’s shrine, and is, according to G. A.
Freeman, “one of the loveliest of human works; the proportion of the side
elevation and the beauty of the details being simply perfect,” and it
would seem to be uncontested that all throughout, whether in its piers,
its triforium, its aisles, or its carved detail, it shows a delicacy and
finish never surpassed in the whole history of Gothic architecture. One
of its large clerestory windows was filled, in 1900, with excellent glass
by H. Holiday, to mark the seven-hundredth anniversary of St. Hugh’s
death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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