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 curiously-shaped _Chapels_--the _Jesus_ and _St. Luke's_--with
their Norman arcading are next seen. In the former there is some mural
painting much restored--a facsimile of the ancient picture--and over
the chapel is a museum. The latter is a parish church for the
precincts. The windows are sham Norman, having been inserted in the
last century. There is a mutilated font of fifteenth century, carved
with Crucifixion and Seven Sacraments. Above it is the treasury. Here
is a curious oil painting accidentally discovered by Professor Willis,
which was part of a reredos, converted into a table after the Puritan
outbreak. It is sometimes attributed to an Italian artist of 1370, but
there is no reason to suppose that it was not the production of
genuine English art of that period. Even Dean Stanley attributes the
Eleanor bronze to an Italian, Torel, and Professor Freeman calls De
Noyer of Lincoln a "crazy Frenchman," and others ascribe the Exeter
chancel-screen to French workmen. This error of attributing pure
English work to foreign artists has caused a very unjust depreciation
of the skill and genius of our native craftsmen. The subjects of these
paintings are the last scenes of our Lord's life. Other mural
paintings are:--On ceiling of sacrist's room of late thirteenth
century--subjects: Virgin, SS. Catherine, Margaret, Andrew, Peter,
Paul, and Richard of Chichester. On south wall of south aisle--SS.
Wulstan, Edward the Confessor, and others.
The Lady Chapel has been destroyed, as we have said, by Dean Gardiner
in Elizabeth's reign, but happily the doorway remains, the only part
of the Cathedral of Early English workmanship. The profusion of the
dog-tooth ornament is evident. The doorway is formed of a double arch,
with clustered shafts, and was built, together with the Lady Chapel,
about the middle of the thirteenth century by Bishop Walter de
Suffield. Stone was brought from Caen and Barnack for the purpose. The
destruction of these Lady Chapels was a sign of the decay in the
worship of the Virgin, which was so extensively followed in mediæval
times.
There is another chapel on the south; that of St. Mary-the-Less, now
used as the consistory court, built by one Bauchun in the fourteenth
century. An ecclesiastical lawyer, Seckington, added the groined roof
in the fifteenth century. The altar has been displaced by a doorway.
The sculptured bosses represent the legendary history of the Virgin.
We enter the _South Transept_ by a Tudor doorway, over which is some
rich open screen work of fifteenth-century design, under the original
Norman arch. This transept, built by Herbert, is fine Norman work,
with good arcading, the vault being added by Bishop Nykke. This
transept has the oldest coloured glass in the Cathedral, a copy of
Raphael's Ascension, erected by Dean Lloyd in 1790. Here we see the
following _Monuments_:--
Bishop Bathurst (d. 1837), by Chantrey; and memorial tablets to East
Anglian heroes who fell in China and Afghanistan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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