The Cathedral Church of Oxford: A description of its fabric and a brief history of the Episcopal seeDearmer, Percy
History
The Cathedral Church of Oxford: A description of its fabric and a brief history of the Episcopal see
Dearmer, Percy
Christ Church Cathedral (Oxford, England)
After the investigations had been completed, the earth was laid down
again, but stones have been set in the drive to mark the site of the old
foundations. Some charcoal and reddened stone which was found--evidently
a relic of the fire of 1002--is now to be seen in the gallery over the
vestry in the cathedral. In addition to this, the remains of a rough
pavement were exposed in the north apse, and some square stones in the
chord of the central apse, which seem to be part of the old altar. In
addition to the numerous scattered bones that the workmen unearthed,
two complete skeletons were found in the southern apse, and underneath
the stone slabs upon which they lay another skeleton, that of a woman
or a man of short stature, possibly that of Didan himself, or his wife
Saffrida, who are both known to have been buried in the church.
=The Cloister= now forms only three sides of a square, the western part
having been destroyed by Wolsey in order to make room for the hall
staircase. Considerably inferior to those of Magdalen and New College,
it is small and unpretentious: its tracery, of a humdrum Perpendicular
type (mostly restored), and its vaulting, which is peculiar, point to
the latter half of the fifteenth century as the time of its erection. Of
the earlier cloister no trace remains, except the door and windows of
the chapter-house. The north walk was converted into a muniment room,
much to the defacement, one may imagine, of this part of the college;
but it has now been restored, and a good imitation of the fine old lierne
groined roof inserted, though funds have not been provided to finish the
carving of the bosses. Mr. R.J. King points out that the panelling of
the sides of the windows agrees very closely, even to the character of
the cusps, with that introduced into the clerestory of the choir. The
quadrangle of the cloister was the scene of Cranmer's degradation. In
its area are the foundations of the lavatory, which was built about 1490.
Above the arches of the cloister runs a story with latticed windows on
the east and south side, which adds considerably to the picturesqueness
of the whole. Indeed, as one stands on the steps leading to the hall,
the ivy-grown cloister, in spite of its modest proportions, has a beauty
of its own. The latticed windows give it an air of mystery, as if strange
old rooms were concealed by them; and in fact on the south side there
is a curious library of time-worn theological books, which is seldom
entered, and hardly ever used: it belongs to the Regius Professor of
Divinity. The windows on the east side hide nothing more romantic than
a small lumber-room, cut up by the raising of the wooden roof beneath,
and an undergraduate's bed-chamber.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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