The Cathedrals of Great Britain: Their History and ArchitectureDitchfield, P. H. (Peter Hampson)
History
The Cathedrals of Great Britain: Their History and Architecture
Ditchfield, P. H. (Peter Hampson)
Cathedrals -- Great Britain; Church architecture -- Great Britain
The _Ante-Chapel_, or vestibule, leading to the Lady Chapel, is the
meeting-place of the old and new work, and is ingeniously contrived.
The Norman apse is pierced by a doorway and two Perpendicular windows.
It is separated from the Lady Chapel by an open-work screen, which is
very beautiful, and has a fine lierne vault. This, and the _Lady
Chapel_, are the work of Abbots Hanley and Farley, who presided over
the Abbey during the last half of the fifteenth century. The Lady
Chapel ranks with Ely as the largest in England, and certainly it is a
triumph of Perpendicular architecture. It has lofty Perpendicular
windows, which seem to produce the effect of a wall of glass with
panelled tracery. The head of each panel is much ornamented, and panel
work, with niches, covers the walls. The lierne vault is very fine,
and the bosses carved with beautiful foliage. At one time the walls
were painted, and traces of colour remain. The east window has much
old glass, which is also visible in the heads of the other windows.
There is a very poor modern reredos, which might be removed without
much regret, as it hides a very interesting, though much mutilated,
mass of rich tabernacle work. The altar rails belong to the time of
Laud, who was dean here, and are said to be the first introduced into
churches. Many of the original tiles remain, and bear inscriptions:
_Ave Maria grâ plê, Dñe Jhû Miserere_. There are two side chapels,
with fan-tracery vaulting. In the north chapel is the monument of
Bishop Goldsbrough (1604). There is an upper chapel, or oratory, and
the same arrangement obtains on the south side. This chapel has a
monument of Th. Fitz-williams (1579). The marks on the walls of these
upper oratories show that the love of recording names by visitors in
historic places is not confined to modern times, and dates as far back
as the sixteenth century.
Returning to the entrance, we follow the ambulatory to the south,
which retains its northern features. _St. Philip's Chapel_ is at the
south-east corner, and has been restored in memory of Sir C.
Codrington, Bart. (1864). There are Norman arches, and fourteenth
century tracery inserted in the windows. The spacious chests for copes
are interesting records of the rich ecclesiastical vestments in use in
former times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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