How to Visit the English CathedralsSingleton, Esther
History
How to Visit the English Cathedrals
Singleton, Esther
Cathedrals -- England
“They entered the church of St. Andrew on the day on which the Lord
hung on the cross for sinners. Armed knights on their horses,
coursing around the altars, dragged away with impious hands some
who fled for refuge thither, the gold and silver and other precious
things being with violence carried off thence. The buildings were
turned into horses’ stables, and everywhere filled with the dung of
animals and the defilement of dead bodies.”
In 1343 the central tower was completed by Bishop Hamo de Hythe, who
hung in its wooden spire four bells, named Dunstan, Paulinus, Ythamar
and Lanfranc. Bishop Hamo is said to have reconstructed in alabaster and
marble the shrines of Paulinus and Ythamar. To the middle of the
Fourteenth Century belongs also the beautiful doorway leading into the
Chapter-House and Library.
In the Fifteenth Century, the clerestory and vaulting of the
north-choir-aisle were finished and Perpendicular windows were placed in
the nave aisles. The great west window was inserted about 1470, and the
whole of the Norman clerestory was taken off and a new clerestory and a
new wooden roof were put up. The northern pinnacle of the west gable was
also rebuilt. About 1490, the Lady-Chapel was erected in the corner
between the south transept and the nave.
In 1540 the Cathedral surrendered to the King; and became known as the
Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1558 the body
of Cardinal Pole rested here one night on its way to Canterbury. An
eyewitness speaks of
“the funeral pompe which trulie was great and answerable both to
his birth and calling, with store of burning torches and mourning
weedes. At what time his coffin, being brought into the church, was
covered with a cloth of black velvet, with a great cross of white
satten over all the length and bredth of the same, in the midst of
which cross his Cardinal’s hat was placed.”
The church suffered from the Puritans in 1642.
Samuel Pepys speaks of repairs in 1661. More were made in 1742-43. In
1749, the steeple was rebuilt. A new organ was acquired in 1791; and at
the close of the Eighteenth Century the upper part of Gundulf’s tower
was taken down.
Throughout the Nineteenth Century repairs and restorations were
constantly made. The glass chiefly consists of memorials to heroes of
the wars of the Nineteenth Century.
The best approach is from the High Street through the =College Gate=,
which marks the entrance to the Precincts, or Green Church Haw. This is
also known as Chertseys, or Cemetery Gate, which lovers of Dickens
remember as Jasper’s Gateway; for Cloisterham of _Edwin Drood_ is
Rochester. The =Deanery Gate= dating from the reign of Edward III. was
formerly the Sacristy Gate. The =Priors’ Gate= dates from the Fourteenth
Century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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