How to Visit the English CathedralsSingleton, Esther
History
How to Visit the English Cathedrals
Singleton, Esther
Cathedrals -- England
“In the aisles, each bay has two lancet windows, except the
easternmost bay on the south side, which has only one. In the jambs
are slender Purbeck shafts, twice banded. Just beneath these
windows, an arcade of trefoiled arches runs along the whole length
of the nave, being continued on the screen walls to the western
chapels. The arches are deep, with bold mouldings, and are
supported by clustered columns. There are five arches in each bay,
but they are not placed in the same manner on both sides of the
nave. On the south, the arches are arranged in groups of five, with
blank spaces of wall between, in front of which pass the
vaulting-shafts. On the north, the arcade is continuous, and is so
arranged that each cluster of shafts supporting the vault passes in
front of an arch. The work on the south side is more elaborate;
tooth ornament is used, a string-course runs along at the height of
the capitals, and foliaged bosses are found in the lower corners of
the spandrels. In addition to the clustered vaulting-shafts already
mentioned, there is a single vaulting-shaft in the centre of each
bay, between the windows, rising from a corbel above the
wall-arcade. On the north side these corbels merely have plain
mouldings, but on the south side they are foliated. The arrangement
of the vaulting-ribs is different in the north and south aisles;
and in the latter it will be noticed that some of the bosses have
figure-subjects, besides the foliage met with on the north side.
The _Agnus Dei_ carved on the boss in the fourth bay from the west
should be noticed. To such minor differences, continually found in
the corresponding parts of a Gothic edifice, the style undoubtedly
owes a peculiar charm.”--(A. F. K.)
The great =West Window= was inserted, as we have seen, in Bishop
Grosseteste’s time (1235-1253). Its tracery, however, dates from the
end of the Fourteenth Century and is Early Perpendicular. The upper
lights are filled with fragments of Fourteenth Century glass; but the
glass in the lower lights is modern. The cinquefoil above, of the same
date, contains modern glass also. The central figure represents
Remigius, with his bishop’s staff in one hand and the church in the
other. The rest of the glass in the nave is also modern.
Under the last arch on the north side of the nave we come to a slab
supposed to mark the original burial-place of Remigius. This slab was
discovered in the cloisters and is supposed to date from the time of
that worthy prelate.
The neighbouring =Pulpit= is probably of the Eighteenth Century. On the
other side of the nave stands the black basalt Norman =Font=, reminding us
of the font in Winchester. Around the sides of the square basin a row of
grotesque monsters is carved in low relief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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