Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Wells
by Percy Dearmer · English · Gutenberg #32280 · 314,515 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Wells
Author: Percy Dearmer
Release date: May 7, 2010 [eBook #32280]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Wells Cathedral From St. Andrews Spring.]
THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF
WELLS
A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC
AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE
EPISCOPAL SEE
BY THE
REV. PERCY DEARMER, M.A.
[Illustration: Arms of the See]
WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1899
_First Published October 1898_
_Second Edition revised October 1899_
W.H. WHITE AND CO. LTD.
RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH
GENERAL PREFACE
This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the
great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated
guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to
produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to
be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too
technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist.
To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each
case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the
general sources of information which have been almost invariably found
useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which,
especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally
recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time
to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archaeological
Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series
issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton
and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent
series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John
Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller
detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective
sees.
GLEESON WHITE,
E.F. STRANGE,
_Editors of the Series_
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The writer about cathedrals nowadays is one who, reaping where he has
not sown, and gathering where he has not strawed, is indebted for most
that he says to the patient labours of other and wiser men. Nowhere
does one feel this more than at Wells. The admirable Somerset
Archaeological Society has gone on accumulating information about the
cathedral for more years than the present writer has lived. Professor
Freeman produced twenty-eight years ago, in his "History of the
Cathedral Church of Wells," a little book which has since been a model
for all works of the kind, and of which one can still say that no one
can understand all that is contained in the word "cathedral" unless he
has read it. Yet since that book was written much fresh material has
been discovered, and the theories then held as to the building of the
cathedral have been in great measure disproved. To Canon C.M. Church,
in his "Chapters in the Early History of Wells," and his papers read
before the Somerset Society, we are indebted for most valuable
statements of the new historical discoveries, and to his untiring
kindness I am myself beholden to a greater extent than I can express.
Wells so abounds in interesting detail, that the exigencies of space
have made it necessary to curtail the last chapter, which contains the
history of the diocese; a good deal of interesting matter has thus
been cut from my original MS. of this chapter, and many bishops have
been dismissed more summarily than they deserve. The need of dealing
properly with the cathedral itself must be my apology for the baldness
of this last chapter as it now stands. Those who desire a further
acquaintance with the history of the diocese cannot do better than
consult Mr Hunt's "Bath and Wells," in the excellent Diocesan
Histories series of the Society for the Promotion of Christian
Knowledge.
To many other writers on the Cathedral Church of Wells,
acknowledgments and references will be found scattered throughout the
present volume. I must also express my thanks to Mr Philips, and
Messrs Dawkes & Partridge of Wells, for permission to reproduce their
photographs, and to Mr W. Heywood and Mr H.P. Clifford for their
drawings.
P.D.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--History of the Church 3
CHAPTER II.--Exterior 20
West Front 21
Statuary, Central Doorway, the Tiers 30
Western Towers 44
Central Tower 47
North Porch 47
North Transept 51
Walls, Parapet 52
Chain Gate 52
Chapter-House 54
From the South-East 55
Cloister 58
Library 63
Museum 64
Vicar's Close 66
Bishop's Palace, Great Hall, Barn 67
Deanery, Archdeaconry, etc., St. Cuthbert's 70
CHAPTER III.--Interior 73
Nave, etc. 77
Capitals 79
Glass 84
Bubwith's Chapel 85
Sugar's Chapel 86
Pulpit, Lectern 87
Transepts 89
Capitals 89
Font, Monuments 95
Transepts Chapels--St. Martin, St. Calixtus,
St. David, Holy Cross 98
Clock 105
Inverted Arches 107
Tower, Screen, Organ 110
Choir 113
Misericords, Glass 120
Choir Aisles, Monuments 123
Eastern Transepts, Monuments 124
Procession Path 128
Glass in Choir Aisles and Chapels 130
Lady Chapel, Glass 133
Chapter-House Staircase 134
Chapter-House 137
Undercroft 141
CHAPTER IV.--History of the Diocese and Foundation 147
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Wells Cathedral from St. Andrew's Spring _Frontispiece_
Arms of the See _Title_
The Cathedral from the South-East 2
The Cathedral in the Seventeenth Century 15
South Aisle of Nave 19
West Front--Bishop of Aethelhelm 22
The West Front 23
Ornaments in the West Front 28, 29
West Front--Christina 31
The Central Tower from the South-East 45
The North Porch 49
The Bishop's Eye 53
Doorway, South-East of Cloister 58
East Walk of Cloister 59
The Chain Gate, Entrance to Close, 1824 65
The Bishop's Palace 68
The Nave 75
A Capital--The Fruit-stealer's Punishment 79
A Capital--Toothache 81
Specimens of Capitals 82, 83, 84, 148, 149
View across Nave, showing Sugar's and Bubwith's Chapels 85
Sugar's Chapel--The Lectern and Pulpit 88
Section of North Transept, and Elevation of South Transept 90
Capitals in Transept 92
The South Transept, from North Side of Nave 93
The Font 95
The Annunciation--Husse's Tomb 101
Priest in Surplice--Husse's Tomb 102
The East End in 1823 103
The Inverted Arches 109
Choir, looking West 111
Choir, looking East 115
Procession Path and Lady Chapel 129
Steps Of Chapter-house Vestibule And Passage Over Chain Gate 135
Chapter-House--Doorway 138
Chapter-House--Interior 139
Chapter-House--Vault 141
Chapter-House--Undercroft 142, 143
Section of Chapter-House 145
PLAN 160
[Illustration: Wells From The South-East.]
WELLS CATHEDRAL
CHAPTER I
HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
"The Gothic Cathedral," wrote Froude, an author who held no brief for
the Gothic period, "is perhaps, on the whole, the most magnificent
creation which the mind of man has as yet thrown out." The Cathedral
Church of Wells, wrote Froude's predecessor in the same historical
chair, is "the best example to be found in the whole world of a
secular church, with its subordinate buildings." "There is no other
place," Professor Freeman went on to say, "where you can see so many
of the ancient buildings still standing, and still put to their own
use." And surely there is no place better fitted to be their home than
this beautiful old city of Wells, set in the midst of the fair western
country, the land of Avalon and Camelot, of Athelney and Wedmore.
This unique group of buildings does not, however, take us back earlier
than the close of the Norman period. Of what existed before, we have
but scant evidence. Tradition says that King Ina had, about the year
705, founded at Wells a college of secular priests, and therefore a
church of some sort. And when King Eadward the Elder, taking advantage
of the peace which his father Alfred had secured, fixed, in 909, the
new Somersetshire see by the fountain of St. Andrew at Wells, he seems
to have chosen that little city because there already existed therein
a church, large enough to serve as a cathedral in those times, and
tended already by a body of secular canons. Now that the ancient
church of St. Andrew was raised to this new dignity, it was probably
in the tenth century rebuilt in stone, with plain round-headed
windows, and perhaps a small unbuttressed tower to hold the bells;
for, when Giso became bishop in the next century (1061-1088), he
erected a whole cluster of quasi-conventual buildings, but we are not
told that he found it necessary to rebuild the church, although he
complained that he found it mean and its revenues small. Indeed, the
fact that Giso was buried under an arch in the wall on the north side
of the high altar, as his predecessor Duduc had been buried on the
south side, shows that he had not rebuilt the church.
On Giso's death, John de Villula at once swept away his buildings, and
set up a bishop's house on their site. John, however, made Bath his
cathedral church, and suffered the church of Wells to fall into the
decay from which it was rescued by the first "Maker of Wells," Bishop
Robert of Lewes.
The active episcopate of Robert of Lewes (1136-66) was as important an
era in the history of the church as in that of the chapter. In spite
of the anarchy of Stephen's reign, Robert set steadily to work; and,
while the neighbouring barons were battering each other's castles, the
bishop reared the first great cathedral church of Wells. How much of
the old Saxon building he left we cannot tell; but it was in a ruinous
condition, and he may have pulled it completely down, or he may have
left one part for later builders to deal with. In 1148 his new Norman
church was consecrated, a massive round-arched building, its nave
perhaps as large as the present one, and its choir under the tower
with a small presbytery beyond. This date may be taken as the
beginning of the present cathedral; for all the succeeding
reconstructions followed the lines of Bishop Robert's church. Yet the
Norman work has disappeared almost as completely as the Saxon, and the
font is the only object which can be claimed as undoubtedly
Romanesque. Of distinctly Norman mouldings there are none in the
church, and only a few fragments in other places. Seldom has one of
those strong Norman buildings so utterly vanished from sight. But many
stones dressed in the Norman fashion can still be traced by the expert
in the eastern part of the church (p. 74), having been no doubt used
up again by the later workmen; and there may be masses of undisturbed
masonry hidden in the walls.
Bishop Robert, as we know from one of his charters, did something also
for the order of his church. Mammon had gradually encroached upon the
sacred precincts, and the markets had come to be held in the
"vestibule," and in the church itself; the busy hum of the buyers and
sellers marred the quiet of God's house, and disturbed the people at
their devotions. Strong measures were necessary, and the bishop
ordered the market to be held at some distance from the church, while
at the same time, as an act of grace, he remitted the tolls that were
due to him as lord of the manor. Thus did he lay the foundation of the
liberties of Wells city while securing the sanctity of Wells
Cathedral.
According to Bishop Godwin (1616), and the anonymous fifteenth century
MSS., called in Wharton's _Anglia Sacra_ the "Canon of Wells," there
was a blank in the history of the church between Bishop Robert, who
consecrated the Norman building in 1148, and Bishop Jocelin, whose
episcopate lasted from 1206 to 1242. Godwin, who exaggerated a passage
from the "Canon of Wells" (which that writer had produced by
exaggerating a single sentence of a preamble of Jocelin, p. 7),
declared that Jocelin found the church "as ready to fall," and "pulled
down the greatest part of it, to witte, the west ende, and built it
anew from the very foundation." This became the accepted view. But the
documents recently brought to light through the labours of those who
unearthed and deciphered the MSS. in possession of the chapter, have
proved that the energetic Bishop Reginald, so far from letting the
church go into ruin during his episcopate (1174-1191), did in reality
rebuild it himself. Much travelled, conversant with all kinds of
churches and cities in an age of great building operations, he was not
the sort of man to neglect his cathedral. And, as a matter of fact, he
is proved to have begun the present church by a charter recently
found, which is of a date prior to 1180, and therefore belongs to the
early years of his episcopate. In this important document, recognising
his duty to provide "that the honour due to God should not be
tarnished by the squalor of His house," he arranges in full chapter
for a munificent grant in support of the fabric, until the work be
finished[1]. Another charter of Reginald's time, which conveys a
private gift to the church, alludes to "the admirable structure of the
rising church," thus testifying to the successful progress of the
bishop's plan during his own lifetime. The part which he built, there
can be little doubt, included the three western bays of the choir
(which then formed the presbytery), the transepts, north porch, and
the eastern bays of the nave. That is to say, on entering the church
one is looking upon Reginald's work, and not Jocelin's; for, although
the rest of the nave was completed by Jocelin, it was done in
accordance with Reginald's original plan.
It is of great importance to remember this fact, since until recently
the nave, with the other parts just mentioned, was attributed by
Professor Willis, Professor Freeman, and most authorities to Jocelin.
Willis, indeed, bowed to what was then thought to be documentary
evidence against his own judgment; for he declared the work to be of a
style much earlier than that of Jocelin's time (p. 73). Now we know
almost to a certainty that the bulk of the cathedral belongs neither
to the late Norman period of Robert, nor to the Early English of
Jocelin, but to the period just between the two, that of Reginald de
Bohun.
During the episcopate of Reginald's immediate successor Savaric
(1192-1205), something further may have been done to the nave. But
there was small opportunity for church building during this bishop's
wandering and litigious life; and all we know for certain is that,
owing no doubt to the civil war, the intolerable exactions of papal
legates, and the quarrel with Glastonbury, the cathedral church of
Wells had fallen into a state of dilapidation when Jocelin became
bishop in 1206; and that it remained in this condition till King John
was dead: for Jocelin was an exile abroad, the property of the see was
confiscated, and its income paid yearly into the king's purse.
From the year 1218, when the land was again at peace, and a profitable
arrangement had been come to with the monks of Glastonbury, Jocelin
devoted himself to the fabric and chapter of Wells, up to the year of
his death in 1242. Grants of money and of timber, which are extant,
show that by 1220 the work was recommenced, and that it was in
progress in 1225. By 1239 the church was sufficiently advanced to be
dedicated.
Jocelin and his brother Hugh (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln) were
natives of the city they loved so well. They had both lived through
Reginald's episcopate--Jocelin as canon and Hugh as archdeacon of
Wells. After, when they rose to high positions as judges, and became
honourably rich, Hugh, who built much in Lincoln Cathedral, gave
largely of his great wealth to Jocelin for Wells, and Jocelin himself
spent all that he had upon the place where he had been brought up from
infancy.
Thus Jocelin was in a real sense a "maker of Wells." But he was not
the only maker, for he must share the honour with two other master
builders--Robert, whose work is entirely gone, and Reginald, whose
work remains. He did not, as Godwin led us to suppose, pull down and
rebuild the whole church. But he loyally carried on the work of his
predecessor, and he executed the great work which has been always
rightly attributed to him, the present west front; this he joined to
Reginald's unfinished nave by building the three western bays in
strict accordance with the earlier style. The front belongs to the
fully-developed Early English style in which Salisbury is built,
agreeing exactly with the date of the consecration of the church by
Jocelin in 1239,--as was pointed out by Professor Willis, who was
puzzled by the great difference in its style from that of the nave,
which was then thought to belong to the same period. We know that
Jocelin was a frequent visitor to Salisbury while Bishop Poore was
building it; and thus all the lines of evidence combine to support the
unshaken tradition that Jocelin was the author of the west front.
A month before his death in 1242, Jocelin de Wells put forth a charter
for the increased endowment of the cathedral staff; and it was because
of a few chance words in the preamble that he came to be credited with
the construction of the whole. Having found the church in danger of
ruin, runs the passage, by reason of its age _aedificare coepimus et
ampliare--in qua adeo profecimus--quod ipsam consecravimus_. This,
which need mean nothing more than extensive building operations, is
the sole foundation for the tradition that Jocelin pulled down the old
church and built a new one.
The condition of the church at the end of the thirteenth century is
thus described by Professor Freeman[2]:
"By the end of the thirteenth century we may look upon the church of
Wells as at last finished. It still lacked much of that perfection of
outline which now belongs to it, and which the next age was finally to
give to it. Many among that matchless group of surrounding buildings
which give Wells its chief charm, had not yet arisen. The church
itself, with its unfinished towers, must have had a dwarfed and
stunted look from every point. The Lady Chapel had not yet been
reared, with its apse alike to contrast with the great window of the
square presbytery above it, and to group in harmony with the more
lofty chapter-house of its own form. The cloister was still of wood.
The palace was still undefended by wall or moat. The Vicars' Close and
its chain-bridge had not yet been dreamt of. Still, the church, alike
in its fabric and its constitution, may be looked on as having by this
time been brought to perfection ... The nave, recast in forms of art
such as Ina and Eadward, such as Gisa and Robert, had never dreamed
of, with the long range of its arcades and the soaring sweep of its
newly-vaulted roof, stood, perfect from western door to rood-loft,
ever ready, ever open, to welcome worshippers from city and village,
from hill and combe and moor, in every corner of the land which looked
to Saint Andrew's as its mother church. The choir, the stalls of the
canons, the throne of the Bishop, were still confined within the
narrow space of the crossing; but that narrow space itself gave them a
dignity which they lost in later arrangements. For the central
lantern, not yet driven to lean on ungainly props, with the rich
arcades of its upper stages still open to view, still rose, in all the
simple majesty of its four mighty arches, as the noblest of canopies
over the choir below."
"The eastern ending of the presbytery was," Mr Freeman proceeds, "rich
with the best detail of the thirteenth century, as can be learnt from
the fragments built up in the chapel of the Vicars' Close, and lying
about in the undercroft of the chapter-house, which are in the full
Early English style of the west front. The existing choir aisle walls
prove that a procession-path ran behind the high altar, with most
likely a chapel beyond it."
"The thirteenth century," he concludes, "had done its great creative
work, and had left to future ages only to improve and develop
according to the principles which the thirteenth century had laid
down. That is to say, the thirteenth century had done for the local
church of Wells what it did for England, what it did for Europe, and
for the world."
The choir, however, was not so cramped as Mr Freeman thought, for it
included one bay of the nave, as we now know from a notice of the
making of Haselshaw's tomb, which was dug at the entrance to the
choir; and, indeed, the marks where the screen was fixed are still
visible on the piers at this point. From the top of the screen the
great rood looked down the nave, and on each side of the doorway stood
an altar, that on the north dedicated to Our Lady, that on the south
to St. Andrew. The aisles of the choir were also screened off from the
nave, and outside their gates were two more altars--St. Saviour's on
the north, and St. Edmund's on the south. Thus the nave, where men
were ever coming and going, walking and talking, and in laxer times
buying and selling as well, was quite shut off from the more sacred
places. Yet here, too, were altars and shrines, and here came the
processions on Sundays and holidays.
Within the choir the chapter said their offices, the dean and
precentor facing east in their returned stalls, and the other
dignitaries in their allotted places, with the junior canons, vicars,
and those in minor orders below them, and the boys on the lowest forms
of all. Just beyond these stalls was the bishop's throne; and east of
the tower the presbytery stood open, with the tombs of the early
bishops, on either side, under the arches. The rest of the space
enclosed within the screen belonged more especially to the clergy; the
north transept was probably used as a chapter-house, when the
undercroft was yet unfinished, and its western aisle was used as the
chapter library. The chamber leading to the undercroft was the vestry,
and the stout walls of the octagon, when it was finished, protected
the vestments and treasures of the cathedral.
It is worth while to call to mind the kind of service for which the
church was built, with its aisles and chapels and screen. The usual
Sunday procession started from the north door of the presbytery,
preceded by two thurifers with censers, went round behind the
presbytery, the priest in his cope asperging the altars on his way,
then down the south choir aisle, and through the south transept into
the cloister. In the cloister-cemetery, the priest, with his
ministers, said the prayers for the dead, and then rejoined the
procession in the cloister Lady Chapel, where the first station was
made. Thence the procession returned to the great rood in the nave,
and there made the second station, the bidding-prayer being given out
to the people from the rood-screen, after which it re-entered the
choir. But on special occasions the ritual was increased; as, for
instance, at the procession of palms on Palm Sunday, or the Corpus
Christi Day procession, which is thus described by Mr J.D.
Chambers[3]: "The procession, some time before the mass, should
assemble in order at the step of the Choir (_i.e._ in the Presbytery),
a priest in Albe and silk Cope carrying the Corpus Christi in a
tabernacle or feretory under a canopy of silk raised over him and it
on four staves, borne by four clerks in Albes and Tunicles, with
lighted tapers. It should go out of the Choir down the Nave, and out
at the West Door of the Church, round the Church and Cloisters as on
Ascension Day"--_i.e._ round the outside of the whole church,
beginning with the north side and returning round the east end, and
through the cloister to the west door again, and thus back into the
nave. The colours of the vestments at Wells followed in the main the
custom of the neighbouring diocese of Sarum, but with some local
variations, such as are set down in the _Consuetudinary_ which
Archbishop Laud had copied from the late thirteenth-century MS. Indigo
and white were used on St. John's Day and on the Dedication Festival;
in Advent, indigo; at Passiontide, red, and on Palm Sunday, "except
one cope of black for the part of Caiaphas" at the singing of the
Passion; red, too, on Maunday Thursday, but with a banner of white.
Red was also used for Easter, Pentecost, and throughout the Sundays
after Trinity; while for Virgin Martyrs, red was mixed with white.
This mixture of colours was probably effected by the cantors wearing
different coloured copes; thus for confessors saffron _(croceus)_ was
mixed with green, _sicut honestius et magis proprie possunt adaptari
festo_; but St. Julian and some others had all saffron, while a few,
like St. Benedict, had all indigo. White is comparatively little in
evidence, but it was used at Christmas, and for commemorations of the
Blessed Virgin. Black was used for the commemoration of the dead.
To this vision of stately pomp, and changing colour, we must add in
our mind's eye the many chapels with their woven tapestries of flowers
and beasts and birds, their rich ornaments and sacred associations;
the majestic rood upon the screen, and the rich altars that stood
before it; the almost constant succession of services that went on
behind it, where the canons (each with his own book and candle) and
their vicars sat, and the pyx hung over the high altar; the sound of a
little bell from one of the chapels where mass was being said, the
glimmer of a hanging lamp, the gleam of a silver image, the shrines
here and there, with their frequent visitors; and, as years went on,
the subdued light from the gorgeous painted windows (that over the
high altar glowed then from east to west without obstructing organ),
the frescoes on some of the walls, the green and red and gold of the
later monuments; and over all the trail of incense and the sound of
prayer.
After Jocelin's death the works came to a standstill, for the
sufficient reason that the chapter was "overburdened with an
intolerable debt," owing to the enormous expense of the litigation
with Bath Abbey over Bishop Roger's election (p. 153). This, however,
was the last attempt of the rival cathedral of St. Peter; and the
debt, which was at its worst in 1248 (the year after Roger's death),
was bravely met by a contribution of a fifth of the income of each
prebend, as well as by gifts and obits; so that towards the end of
William Bytton's episcopate the debt was nearly cleared, and in 1263
Bytton made over the sequestrations of vacant benefices to the fabric
fund.
In 1248 an earthquake had done much damage, shaking down the _tholus_
(either the vault, or the stone capping) of the central tower, as we
learn from Matthew Paris _(Hist. Angl._ iii. 42). Accordingly, in
1263, preparations were made for further building; and in 1286 we hear
of a chapter meeting, summoned by Dean Thomas Bytton, whereat the
canons bind themselves to give one-tenth of their prebends for five
years, "to the finishing of the works now a long time begun (_jam diu
incepta_), and to repair what needed reparation in the old works."
The reparation here mentioned refers in all probability to the roof
and piers of the transepts and eastern part of nave, damaged by the
fall of the _tholus_. The famous western capitals of the transepts,
with their frequent representations of the miseries of toothache, must
refer to the second William Bytton, who had died in 1274, and whose
tomb became famous for its dental cures (p. 125). No doubt, the
offerings at the shrine of this local saint helped considerably to
swell the funds for the building operations.
The works "now a long time begun" can hardly be anything else than the
chapter-house undercroft, the outer walls of which may have been built
some forty years before. Professor Willis, who had access to the
document, decided, on architectural evidence, that the undercroft must
have been already completed at this time, and his view may be safely
accepted (_Arch. Inst._, "Bristol" vol., p. 28). The passage to the
undercroft would seem to be the first result of the chapter's
undertaking; its ornament is of a more advanced type than that of the
undercroft itself, and one of its carved heads is swollen as by the
toothache, and tied in a handkerchief. There can be little or no doubt
that the "finishing" of the old works included also the building of
the chapter-house staircase, and, when that was finished, the raising
of the chapter-house itself (the _nova structura_ of the old
documents) upon the undercroft. The full Decorated style of the
chapter-house is separated by a considerable interval from the late
Early English of the undercroft, while that of the staircase, which is
geometrical Decorated of a character not very far removed from Early
English, must have been built before the chapter-house itself was
begun.
The self-sacrificing spirit of the chapter was supplemented by the
offerings which flowed in from the growing practice of endowing altars
for requiem services, as well as from the shrine of St. William
Bytton; and the building activity continued for the next fifty years
till the church had been brought, in all save its western towers, to
its final state of perfection. After the staircase to the
chapter-house had been completed, about the year 1292, the walls of
the chapter-house itself were built, probably by Bishop William de
Marchia (1293-1302) who seems to have covered it in with a temporary
roof.
Dean John de Godelee (1306-1333) was the last great builder of the
church of Wells. The power of the bishop in his own church is already
declining, as that of the chapter rises, and it is the dean now who
organises the works. In 1315 the central tower was raised, and by 1321
it was being roofed in. By 1319 the chapter-house was finished;
Godelee, with William Joy, the master-mason, had probably worked out
the old drawings and built the windows and vaulted roof. Next the Lady
Chapel must have been begun, for by 1326 it was finished. Somewhere
about this time the parapet, which adds so much to the external beauty
of the church, was also made.
But the raising of the central tower had, ere this, brought disaster.
In 1321 there was a grant from the clergy of the Deanery of Taunton in
aid of the roofing of the "new _campanile_"; in 1338 a convocation was
summoned because the church of Wells was so _totaliter confracte et
enormiter deformate_ that the instant and united action of its members
was required to save it (_cf._ Willis in _Som. Proc._ 1863). The
adding of the Decorated portion to the tower increased the weight so
much that the four great piers sank into the ground, dragging the
masonry with them and causing rents to appear at the apex of the
arches. The situation was most dangerous: it was met by the careful
repairing of the torn masonry and the construction of those inverted
arches which are so familiar a feature of the church.
Yet the work proceeded very rapidly under a great bishop, who for the
time eclipsed the rising power of the deans. Ralph of Shrewsbury
(1329-63) carried on the work of Dean Godelee, and in the early years
of his episcopate entirely reconstructed the choir. The scheme seems
to have been contemplated as early as 1325; for in that year each
dignitary arranged to pay for his own stall in the refitting of the
choir, because the old stalls had become "ruinous and misshapen." In
any case, it was Ralph who added the three new bays of the presbytery
which are so curiously joined to the old presbytery of Reginald, and
with it form the present eastern limb of the church. He then
constructed the beautiful retro-choir which connects the presbytery
with the Lady Chapel. The vaulting of the choir and the construction
of the great east window would appear to have been undertaken at a
later period of his episcopate; for the ceiling is of a more advanced
style than the lower work, and the tracery of the window is half
Perpendicular. When Bishop Ralph died, in 1363, he was buried in the
place of honour in front of the high altar, as the founder of the
choir which he had finished.
The finishing touches were given to the cathedral when Bishop Harewell
(_ob._ 1386) gave two-thirds of the cost of the south-western or
Harewell Tower, and when the executors of Bishop Bubwith (_ob._ 1424)
finished the companion tower on the north-west.
The other efforts of the fourteenth and fifteenth century builders
were given to those subordinate buildings which are the peculiar glory
of Wells. Even so magnificent a prelate as Beckington did nothing to
the actual fabric of the Cathedral (unless his tomb be so considered),
for the simple reason that there was really nothing for him to do.
Ralph of Shrewsbury had, besides his work in the church, finished the
palace (which Jocelin had begun and Burnell had enriched with the hall
and chapel) by the moat, walls, and gate-house. He had also begun the
Vicars' Close, of which the chapel was built by Bubwith, but the
executors of Beckington recast it in its present form. After
Beckington had employed his energies in erecting the beautiful
gateways with which his name is always associated, Dean Gunthorpe
(_ob._ 1498) built the deanery.
The following interesting eulogy of Bishop Beckington and his church
was written in the form of a Latin dialogue by Chaundler, who was
Chancellor of Wells in 1454:--
"You might more properly call it a city than a town, as you would
yourself understand more clearly than day if you could behold all its
intrinsic splendour and beauty. For that most lovely church which we
see at a distance, dedicated to the most blessed Apostle of the
Almighty God, St. Andrew, contains the episcopal chair of the worthy
Bishop. Adjoining it is the vast palace, adorned with wonderful
splendour, girt on all sides by flowing waters, crowned by a
delectable succession of walls and turrets, in which the most worthy
and learned Bishop Thomas, the first of that name, bears rule. He has
indeed at his own proper pains and charges conferred such a splendour
on this city, as well by strongly fortifying the church with gates and
towers and walls, as by constructing on the grandest scale the palace
in which he resides and the other surrounding buildings, that he
deserves to be called, not the founder merely, but rather the
splendour and ornament of the church."
[Illustration: The Cathedral. (From a Seventeenth Century Print.)]
The Reformation period left the cathedral cold and barren within, but
interfered little with its fabric; the only serious piece of
destruction (p. 57) being that of the magnificent Lady Chapel by the
Cloister, in 1552, by Sir John Gates, "a greate puritan, Episcopacie's
common Enemy." In other respects it was what Freeman calls a period of
systematic picking and stealing; as witness this passage from
Nathaniel Chyles:--"The Great Duke of Somersett, Unkle to Edward the
Sixt (whose title proved very fatall to this place and Bishopwrick)
was not only contented to get most of the mannours Lands and
possessions belonging to this Bishopwrick settled upon him and his
posteritie, but at last even the palace itselfe also." But the palace
and some of the property were recovered after Somerset's execution.
The bishop's palace suffered the ruin of Burnell's magnificent hall
through the prevalent lust for gain. Sir John Harrington writes in
terms of pardonable indignation:--"I speak now only of the spoil made
under this Bishop [Barlow]; scarce were five years past after Bath's
ruins, but as fast went the axes and hammers to work at Wells. The
goodly hall covered with lead ... was uncovered, and now this roof
reaches to the sky. The Chapel of Our Lady, late repaired by
Stillington, a place of reverence and antiquity, was likewise defaced,
and such was their thirst after lead (I would they had drunk it
scalding) that they took the dead bodies of bishops out of their
leaden coffins, and cast abroad the carcases scarce thoroughly
putrified."
During the Commonwealth the choir was closed, and Dr Cornelius Burges,
who was appointed "Preacher" at the cathedral, bought the bishop's
palace and deanery for his private property. He, of course, despoiled
the palace, "pulling off not only the Lead thereoff," says Chyles,[4]
"but taking away also the Timber, and making what money he could of
them, and what remained unsold he removed to the Deanery improving
that out of the Ruins of the palace, leaving only bare Walls." At the
Restoration Burges was ejected, after a good deal of litigation, and
Bishop Piers returned to the ruins of his palace. Burges' sermons had
never been popular with the people of Wells, who annoyed him by
walking up and down the cloisters "all sermon time." When the trial
for his ejectment came on he published his "Case," in which he
justified his buying Church lands by alleging that he had lent the
State £3490, and, having a wife and ten children to provide for, he
took such land, etc. as the only means of repayment. Five of the
canons' houses were also obtained from Cromwell's Commissioners by the
Corporation of Wells, one or two of which were pulled down and sold
for old stone.
At the Restoration, the canons were at great expense to restore the
church from the ruinous condition into which it had fallen in Puritan
times, and they were liberally helped in their extremity by the clergy
and laity of the diocese. Says Chyles (_c._ 1680): "Since his
Majestie's and Churche's happy and blessed Restoration, what betweene
the Bishopp, the Deane, and Deane and Chapter, our Church and Quire is
once more in a beautifull and comely habitt (which God continue) such
as neither the Church of Rome has reason to upbraid us with a slovenly
or clownish Service, nor the Puritan and Nonconformist with a gaudy or
Superstitious. The good old Bishopp [W. Piers], who weather'd out that
Storme, and was restored to what was his Owne, gave those silk
Hangings which beautifie the Altar within the Railes." Dean Creyghton
gave the glass in the west window, the organ and the brass lectern,
and Dr Busby, who was treasurer of Wells as well as head-master of
Westminster, gave the silver-gilt alms dish and restored the library,
lengthening it by the addition of the southern part.
Chyles tells us, too, that there was morning and evening prayer in the
"Vicars' Chapell in Close Hall," at six, forenoon and afternoon, in
winter, and seven in summer, in addition to the cathedral services at
the "canonical howers." Before his time there had been only a morning
sermon on Sundays, and, in the afternoon, "the whole Cathedrall" had
been in the habit of going to St. Cuthbert's, returning with the mayor
and his brethren for the cathedral prayers at four; "but since his
Majesty's Restoracion one likewise in the Afternoones here is preached
by the said prebends _in theire turns_. Soe that here the Sermonizing
people may have their Bellyfull of preaching and forbeare crying out,
_They are starved for want of the Word_ and calling our clergy _Dumb
Doggs_."
This time of peace did not last long, for in 1685 the whole of
Somerset was up in Monmouth's rebellion. The duke's followers came to
Wells, turned the cathedral into a stable, tore the lead off the roof
for bullets, pulled down several of the statues, broached a barrel of
beer on the high altar, and would have destroyed the altar itself, had
not Lord Grey, one of their leaders, defended it with his sword. Dr
Conan Doyle's description of the scene in his novel, _Micah Clarke_
(p. 292), is so vivid that it is well worth referring to.
The long and heavy peace which followed was marked by the gradual
pewing up of the choir and presbytery, and the intrusion of
pretentious monuments. Then, in our own times, came the revival,
bringing evil as well as good in its train. In 1842 the restoration of
the nave, transepts, and Lady Chapel was commenced at the instance of
Dean Goodenough, by Mr Benjamin Ferrey. He removed the thick layers of
whitewash which had been ingeniously applied to conceal the sculpture;
and the long rows of marble tablets which had disfigured the aisles
were shifted to the cloisters, whence, it may be hoped, they will one
day make a further journey towards oblivion.
The restoration of the choir by Mr Salvin, which lasted from 1848 to
1854, was unfortunately of a less blameless character. It was the
period of the Great Exhibition, when art reached the lowest depths to
which it has sunk in the history of the world.
We need not dwell upon the result; few restorations are more marked
with the complacent ignorance of that strange time. The old pews and
galleries in the choir, which had hidden the very capitals of the
piers, were indeed removed, but with them the medieval stalls were
destroyed and replaced by work of indescribable imbecility. No real
improvement in the choir of Wells is now possible till every trace of
Dean Jenkyns' restoration is swept away; but, alas! what he destroyed
can never be recovered.
In 1868 the report of Mr Ferrey[5] upon the west front was presented,
and shortly afterwards the work of repair was begun under his
direction. The report showed how extensive was the decay, and how
great the danger of complete ruin unless steps were taken to protect
the old work; and the work of repair was carried out with care and
reverence; though even here irreparable harm was done by the
substitution of the modern "slate pencils" for the old blue lias
shafts. Since then, many small matters have been attended to with
varying success. The Lady Chapel has been decently furnished and the
east end slightly improved. Much still remains to be done; but the
best motto at the present day is _festina lente_, and the safest rule
is to be progressive in all enrichment by removable furniture, and
conservative, very conservative, in all structural alteration. If the
hand of the restorer can now be stayed, the words will still be true
of Wells, which M. Huysmans used of another church:--_Ces siècles
s'ètaient reunis pour apporter aux pieds du Christ l'effort surhumain
de leur art, et les dons de chacun étaient visibles encore._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Somerset Proceedings_, 1888, ii. 5.
[2] _History of the Cathedral_, p. 98.
[3] _Divine Worship in England_, p. 195.
[4] Book ii. c. 2.
[5] _Inst. Arch._ 1870.
[Illustration: South Aisle Of Nave. (See p. 83.)]
CHAPTER II
THE EXTERIOR
"In England," wrote Mr J.H. Parker, in his _Glossary_, "Wells affords
the most perfect example of a cathedral with all its parts and
appurtenances. It was," he continues, after an enumeration of the
parts of the church, "a cathedral proper, and independent of any
monastic foundation, but with a separate house for each of its
officers, either in the Close or in the Liberty adjoining to it. The
bishop's palace was enclosed by a separate moat and fortified, being
on the south side of the cloister, from which it is separated by the
moat; the houses for the dean and for the archdeacon are on the north
side of the Close, with some of the canons' houses; the organist's
house is at the west end, adjoining to the singing-school and the
cloister; the precentor's house is at the east end, near the Lady
Chapel. The vicars-choral have a close of their own adjoining to the
north-east corner of the canons' close, with a bridge across through
the gate-house into the north transept; they were a collegiate body,
with their own chapel, library, and hall." One need only add that all
these sentences can still, with one exception, be read in the present
tense to show that Wells possesses a beauty and interest which gives
it an unique place among cathedral foundations. There is no other
cathedral city in which so many of the old ecclesiastical buildings
remain, or on which the modern world has made so little impression.
The church itself, in Fergusson's opinion perhaps the most beautiful,
though one of the smallest in England, is but one part of a "group of
buildings, which," wrote Professor Freeman, "as far as I know, has no
rival, either in our own island or beyond the sea." The little city to
which these buildings belong is itself worthy of them, almost a part
of them, so quiet and venerable is it, so picturesque in its lovely
setting of green hills.
Were size the main distinction of a church, Wells would sink
comfortably into the second class; even in some of its best features
it has many rivals, but the peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies (to
quote again from Freeman's _History_) "in the union and harmonious
grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither
crowded by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those
buildings which are its natural and necessary complement. Palace,
cloister, Lady Chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one
indivisible whole. The series goes on uninterruptedly along that
unique bridge, which, by a marvel of ingenuity, connects the church
itself with the most perfect of buildings of its own class, the
matchless vicars' close. Scattered around we see here and there an
ancient house, its gable, its windows, or its turret, falling in with
the style and group of greater buildings, and bearing its part in
producing the general harmony of all." Thus, in the first place, the
group of buildings must be looked at as a whole from the north, from
the east, from the south-east; then the superb, unrivalled picture
from the rising ground on the Shepton Mallet road,[1] outside the
city, must be seen, and, when this little journey has been made, the
most hurried visitor must find time at least to peep into the vicars'
close, and walk round the moat of the palace. After some such general
impression has been gained, the study of the exterior of the church
will naturally begin with that part which is a peculiar distinction of
Wells Cathedral--the west front.
The WEST FRONT of Wells has been universally admired. Long ago, old
Fuller wrote--"The west front of Wells is a masterpiece of art indeed,
made of imagery in just proportion, so that we may call them _vera et
spirantia signa_. England affordeth not the like." This verdict is but
repeated by modern writers; the front is "quite unrivalled," says
Fergusson, and comparable only to Rheims and Chartres. Mr Hughes, in
Traill's _Social England_, goes farther and says[2] that "nothing fit
to rank with it was then being done in Northern Europe--for the
monumental porches of France, formerly supposed to be contemporary,
are now recognised as of a later date."
[Illustration: West Front. Bishop Aethelhelm (103). Drawn by H.P.
Clifford.]
But there has been a discordant note in the general chorus of praise.
Professor Freeman, whose admiration for nearly everything in Wells was
so intense, could find little to praise in the west front of the
cathedral.[3] "It is doubtless," he wrote, "the finest display of
sculpture in England; but it is thoroughly bad as a piece of
architecture. I am always glad when I get round the corner, and can
rest my eye on the massive and simple majesty of the nave and
transepts. The west front is bad because it is a sham--because it is
not the real ending of the nave and aisles, but a mere mask, devised,
in order to gain greater room for the display of statues ... The front
is not the natural finish of the nave and aisles; it is a blank wall
built up in a shape which is not the shape which their endings would
naturally assume. It is therefore a sham; it is a sin against the
first law of architectural design, the law that enrichment should be
sought in ornamenting the construction ... not in building up anything
simply for the sake of effect." He then proceeds to criticise the way
in which the windows and doorways "are stowed away as they best may
be," as if they were felt to be mere interruptions to the lines of
sculpture.
[Illustration: The West Front.]
This latter objection to the doorways had often been made before, only
that the "rabbit-holes on a mountain side" of earlier critics became
"mouse-holes" with Mr Freeman. Mr E.W. Godwin, in a lecture in 1862,
had also found fault with the crowding in of the niches over the
central doorway, which he declared to be in the highest degree clumsy;
with the bald appearance given by the shallowness of the reveals in
the principal windows; and with the way in which "the solid work of
the base suddenly crops up at the very summit of the two central
buttresses, not altogether unlike the dog-kennel of modern Gothic."
Of these criticisms the most serious is Mr Freeman's general charge of
unreality. But why should not a stone screen be erected for the
display of statuary before the west end of a church, just as lawfully
as behind the high altar? And, if a screen may be allowed as an end in
itself, standing simply as a thing of beauty to glorify a building of
which it is not a structural part, then the front of Wells may stand,
like the reredos of Winchester, as the noblest example of its kind. It
has no need to simulate lofty aisles which do not exist, for it
covers, not the aisles, but the faces of the great towers themselves;
and, as a consequence, the portion of really blank wall which
stretches from them to the central gable is so small as to be more
than justified by the cohesion it gives to the whole. The whole effect
is singularly broad, but so is the space it covers within; for this
breadth is legitimately attained by the happy device of planting the
western towers beyond the aisles.
The massive front of Wells stands, therefore, on its own merits as a
west front, and not merely a west end--a great stone screen that, so
far from pretending to be a regular termination of the nave and
aisles, is actually carried, in all its sculptured magnificence, round
the sides of the two towers upon which it so frankly depends. It is a
screen built at a period different from, and, we may now safely
assume, later than, that of the nave, and built for the exhibition of
a noble legend in stone, which has ever since been the glory of a
county famed for its splendid churches.
Taking it then for what it is, and remembering that the lower tiers
were once filled with statuary, can we regret that the doorways
themselves were subordinated to the one grand design of accommodating
this great multitude of silent teachers? The great doorways of French
churches are magnificent in themselves, but that is surely no reason
why we should make it an axiom that a front cannot be fine unless it
have a great doorway. Striking as the effect of these foreign
entrances may be, there is no structural reason why a door should be
of an unwieldy size out of all proportion to the stature of the people
who use it, so that a smaller door has to be cut for ordinary use out
of the real door. It certainly, as even at Amiens, limits the
sculptor's opportunities; and in a country like England, where doors
can only be kept open for a few weeks in the year, great doorways
would be as inappropriate as closed doors are forbidding. As a matter
of fact, the usual entrance to Wells Cathedral in Jocelin's time was
not from the west, but through the cloister and the south porch. And
the central entrance of the west was made impressive, not by its size,
but by the exquisite nature of its carving, and the blue and scarlet
and gold with which it was coloured. It was not insignificant then. It
had the prominence of a jewel. Moreover, in French churches, where the
exterior is sacrificed to the internal effect, there is some wisdom in
concentrating attention upon the doorway. But in English churches--and
in Wells, perhaps, more than any other English church--the exteriors
are perfect in themselves, and the visitor need not be tempted to
hurry to their portals. After all, if the rabbit-holes on a
mountain-side looked as large as quarries, the mountain would not look
like a mountain.
There are, moreover, three faults in the front as it now stands which
cannot be attributed to its maker. In the first place, it is
undoubtedly a little formal, a little square, and this defect is
particularly marked in the photographs which one sees everywhere.
Unfortunately this picture, which is too small to show the detail,
gives no idea whatever of the general external effect of the church.
It gives the impression that Wells Cathedral is a glorified wall,
because the photograph cannot show the other parts upon which the
front depends. The architect, no doubt, intended the towers to be
carried higher or surmounted with spires, and though no trace of any
stone erection has been found on the tops of the present towers, they
may once have been crowned with wooden spires covered with lead or
shingle. One need hardly say how vast a difference such lofty towers
as exist at Laon Cathedral, or spires like those of Lichfield, would
make in the effect of the front. They would also account for the great
size of the buttresses, which seem to have been built with a view to
sustaining a great weight.
A disagreeable impression is also caused by the row of hip-knobs along
the coping of the central gable, and the pinnacle in their midst. This
collection of curiosities was probably added in the seventeenth
century, and the pinnacle may have been taken from one of the denuded
buttresses of the Lady Chapel to replace the gable cross which must
have originally stood here: at all events it is a later addition, as
was proved by an examination of the masonry. It would be an act of
justice to the memory of Jocelin if these trivial excrescences were
removed.
Perhaps one is even more distressed on first seeing the front by a
third fault--the weak and stringy effect of the long, thin, dark,
marble shafts. For this the restorer, Mr Benjamin Ferrey, must bear
the blame. He complained with justice that the original blue lias
shafts, when they were decayed, had been replaced by the ordinary
Doulting stone.[4] But, unhappily, he did not go back to the original
material, but fitted the whole front with a complete set of shafts of
Kilkenny marble, which is at once dark and cold. They absolutely
refuse to blend with the old, warm, grey stone, and stand out, stark
and stiff, like an array of gigantic slate pencils. Mr Ferrey was
possessed with the idea that the blue lias shafts (having only lasted
for a paltry half-dozen centuries) were not durable enough for the
work. He therefore used this marble, which, doubtless, will stand in
increased obtrusiveness when every stone of the cathedral has decayed.
He further was impressed with the strange notion that the hideous
Kilkenny marble is of the same colour as the exquisitely delicate grey
of the blue lias. The result is a sad warning to all restorers not to
be more clever than the original architect.
Let us, then, try to imagine the west front with its empty lowest tier
filled with graceful figures, its gable in its first simplicity and
surmounted by a cross, its towers of Early English form crowned with
lofty spires, its delicate shafts of their original material, and its
ranges of figures "all gorgeous in their freshly-painted hues of blue
and scarlet and purple and gold." Then we shall have some idea of the
front of Wells as Jocelin meant it to be and to remain.
[Illustration: Ornaments In The West Front.]
As for the colour, its effect can be gathered from the traces which
survive. There is ultramarine, gold, and scarlet in the tympanum of
the central doorway, where there are also the marks of metal fittings.
Ferrey found a deep maroon colour on the figures of the Apostles, and
a dark colour painted with stars in the Resurrection tier. One of the
chief glories of the front is the faithful care which is given
throughout to the smaller features. The mouldings (a succession of
rounds and hollows) are most bold and effective; the carving of the
foliage in caps and canopies, tympana, pedestals, and terminals is
singularly beautiful and free. This impression is deepened by a minute
examination; indeed, it is almost a matter of regret that some of the
finest work is at such a height as to be almost impossible to see; for
in all the earlier work at Wells the Lamp of Sacrifice burns brightly.
Mr Ferry pointed out an instance, which may be given here, of the care
with which minor matters were thought out:--In order that the lowest
tier might not look weak and yet might provide a sufficient shadow for
the statues, the backs of the niches are set at a slightly recessed
angle in the centre, and thus an effect of strength is given to the
angular jambs. Indeed, there may be differences of opinion as to the
general design of the west front, but there can be none as to the
supreme excellence of its detail. It is beyond doubt the most rich
example of Early English work to be found anywhere. The crown of its
glories, the justification of its form, did it need justification, are
the frail statues which line it, tier upon tier.
[Illustration: Ornaments In The West Front.]
Vertically the west front is divided into three main parts--the
centre, containing the three lancet windows of the nave and the main
doorway, is surmounted by a gable receding in stages with a pinnacle
at either angle; and the two lateral towers, the lower portion of
which form one continuous screen with the centre, broken only by the
boldly projecting buttresses, of which each division possesses two.
Horizontally the front divides itself naturally into four parts--the
plain base, which is high enough to contain the full height of the
small north and south doorways. One of the stones in this division,
about the level of the eye, and near the middle, which has evidently
been moved from some other place, bears the inscription, _Pur lalme
Johan de Putenie priez et trieze jurs de_ ... Next is an arcade of
niches interspersed with windows, the space above being pierced by
quatrefoils. The third division contains the three lancet windows, the
forms of which are repeated on the north and south, breaking the line
of the two historical tiers of niches which, with the Resurrection
tier, adorn this main division of the front. A bold string course
marks it off firmly and decisively from the fourth and upper division,
in which the three parts of the front become separate, the towers at
each side and the stepped gable, flanked by two graceful Early English
pinnacles, in the middle. The statuary is mainly confined to the
arcading of the second division, to the buttresses of the third, with
its continuous cornice of the Resurrection tier, and to the gable
front of the fourth; but the amount of it is largely increased by the
fact that the work is carried round three sides of the north-western
tower, which only touches the church on one side. The niches on the
sides of the south-western tower are almost empty.
THE STATUARY.--The statuary is not only the finest collection of
medieval sculpture to be found in England; but, separately, the
figures are with few exceptions finer than any others in this country,
while some of them are almost as beautiful as the greatest
masterpieces in Italy or France. It is strange that here, at the
outset of the Gothic period, the chief characteristics of the old
Greek spirit should be so apparent, the same restraint, the same
simplicity, the same exquisite appreciation of light and flowing
drapery: in other things there is difference enough, the form is less
perfect, the action is less free, though there is a deeper sentiment
and a higher power of spiritual expression; but in the essentials of
sublime statuary there is a singular agreement.
And, strange though it seems, it may well be that in these statues one
must look for the first signs of the influence of the Renaissance in
England. Romanesque work has but just died out, and already the old
spirit, destined in time to supplant the architecture which sprung
from it, is at work again. While the statues were being cut at Wells,
Niccola Pisano was reviving sculpture in Italy under the inspiration
of classical examples; and there can be little doubt but that it was
Italian sculptors who produced the statuary at Wells. Some of the
figures on the northern part of the front have been found to be marked
with Arabic numerals (_Somerset Proceedings_ 1888, i. 57, 62), and
these numerals, which did not become common in England till the
sixteenth century, were used in Italy long before, having been
introduced by Bonacci of Pisa (a fellow-citizen of Niccola) in 1202.
That they are found here before the middle of the century is a fairly
conclusive proof that the workers were Italians, and very likely from
Pisa itself. Jocelin, indeed, was English, but he had been in exile
from 1208 to 1213, when he had ample opportunity of studying the work
of the Italian artists. Pleasant as it would be to our national pride,
we can hardly believe that Englishmen produced what seems to be the
earliest example of such magnificent and varied sculpture in
north-western Europe. At Jocelin's death, in 1242, when the work had
been going on for some thirty years, Niccola Pisano was in his prime,
Cimabue was two years old, and forty years had yet to elapse before
the rival sculpture of Amiens Cathedral was executed.
[Illustration: West Front: Christina (185). Drawn by H.P. Clifford.]
Mr Ruskin, whose admiration of the work at Amiens is so intense, has
given almost as high praise to the sculpture at Wells, and has
presented sets of photographs of the statuary to various art schools.
The verdict of enthusiastic approval is, in fact, unanimous. Flaxman,
to his credit, in spite of his classicalism, was one of the first to
draw attention to the work. Whoever was the general designer of the
whole arrangement, he deserves as great praise as the sculptors
themselves. There must have been several sculptors, both because no
one man could have carved three hundred and fifty subjects (of which
one hundred and fifty-two are life-size or colossal), and because a
certain number of the figures in the fourth and fifth tiers are of
obviously inferior design. But one master-mind must have conceived and
directed the work. The height and lightness which is given to the
gable by the tall row of the Apostles, the solemn prominence of the
figure of our Lord above, the rich cornice-like effect of the small
Resurrection tier, the difference in height between the fourth and
fifth tiers, the concentration of the three lower tiers, the breadth
which the seated figures give to the face of the buttresses, the
arrangement of the statues and groups round the buttresses, which
makes it impossible for them all to be seen at once, all show that one
mind was busy, carefully subordinating the parts to the whole.
It may well have been Jocelin himself who planned the subject-matter
of the statuary with such admirable breadth and balance of mind. It is
easy to produce sermons in stones, easy to sermonise in very many
ways; but Jocelin did not preach. He just tried to embody the
Christian spirit at work in the world: God made manifest in man, the
great truth of the Incarnation; and this he did in what we should call
the most modern manner, though in truth it is medieval as well as
modern. He did not conceive of Christianity as confined within the
covers of the Bible, but he took all history, as he knew it, the
patient education of man in the Old Testament, the fulfilment of man's
aspirations and God's purpose in the New, from the birth of our Lord
to the founding of the Church, and the continuation of this church up
to his own time, with especial regard to the heroes, saints and rulers
of the Church of England. He made a "kalendar for unlearned men,"
which is both a _Biblia Pauperum_ and _Annales Angliae_, because the
annals of England were to him a new Bible. "Slowly the Bible of the
race is writ," a modern writer has said, "each age, each kindred, adds
a word to it." That was the spirit of Jocelin's design; only that,
through the pomp of mighty kings and fair women and honoured bishops,
he looked to the naked truth of the judgment time, when mitres and
crowns would remain but as signs of an awful responsibility, and the
divine justice, so tried, so obscured on earth, would be vindicated
before the angels who are quick to do God's will, and the twelve plain
men who turned the mighty currents of the world. Such was the spirit
of a man who lived in the days of St. Francis and St. Louis, Stephen
Langton and Roger Bacon.
Before commencing a detailed description of the statuary, one must
refer to Professor Cockerell, R.A., whose enthusiastic love of the
work led him to construct a theory which he published in 1851, as an
_Iconography of the West Front_. There can be little doubt that he was
right in his general idea; there can be equally little doubt that he
was wrong in nearly every application of it. Everyone now, for
instance, takes it for granted that the south side of the front is
mainly "spiritual," devoted to ecclesiastics, while the north is
"temporal"; and that the whole of the fourth and fifth tiers do
represent certain leading historical figures. But when we read
Cockerell's reasons for identifying these figures we recoil in dismay.
His knowledge of history is superficial, of costume he knows practically
nothing; his drawings are as inaccurate as his imagination is fertile,
and he states as obvious facts the wildest conjectures. Further
reference will be found to his book in our description of the fourth
and fifth tiers. It was at least an honest labour of love, and
Cockerell deserves the honour, as he had to endure the disadvantages,
of being the first in the field.
The CENTRAL DOORWAY may be taken before the lowest tier. Its soffit
contains an evident addition, as if the architect felt that it needed
emphasising by some enrichment. In the first of its four
deeply-wrought mouldings a series of niches, five on each side, with
small delicately-carved figures, has been inserted, evidently after
the arch was made; they are cut from a different stone (white lias),
and are skilfully fitted and grooved into the back of the large sunk
moulding. They add considerably to the effect of the arch, although
all the heads of the figures have been destroyed. It is characteristic
of Cockerell's random method of conjecture, that he declared these
figures to be representations of the Ten Commandments.
1. The tympanum under the arch and above the double opening of the
doorway contains a quatrefoil, in which is a noble sculpture of the
Madonna and Child. The head of the Mother and the upper half of the
Child are gone, but the drapery that remains is of quite perfect grace
and dignity. A serpent is under the feet of the Madonna, who is
sitting on a throne; angels censing are on either side without the
quatrefoil. A good deal of the old colour which once gave this central
group a peculiar brilliancy can still be traced on this protected
sculpture; the background was ultramarine, the mouldings red and gold.
The figures were also gilded in part, and there are marks on the wall
to show that a metal nimbus was once attached to it.
2. In a canopy above the arch is another sculpture of equal beauty,
though, owing to its more exposed position, the treatment is a little
broader. It represents the coronation of Our Lady; both the heads and
all the hands are gone. The two figures are both seated on one long
bench, and our Lord leans forward to place the crown upon his Mother's
head.
THE TIERS.
In order to avoid any possible mistake I have taken each tier from
right to left, specifying the gaps, windows, and buttresses, to
facilitate identification, and commencing with the lowest tier. I have
also numbered the figures afresh, because of the confusion which has
hitherto caused great waste of time to every one who has attempted to
identify them. Cockerell's numbers are the only ones that are at all
accurate (and he omits the two figures on the extreme south of the
fourth and fifth tiers); but, as he recommenced his enumeration with
each series, they are not much use for purposes of identification.
There are mistakes and omissions in the enumeration of the
photographs, there are mistakes in the album in the cathedral library,
the photographs in the South Kensington Museum are hopelessly muddled,
and even the descriptions of the restorer, Mr Ferrey, are so arranged
that it takes days to identify them, while some of them elude one's
efforts altogether. I have, therefore, numbered the statues and groups
in a continuous order from bottom to top, so that comparison with
photographs will in the future be easy. In the case of work most of
which can only be seen from a distance, the study of photographs is
absolutely necessary for a full appreciation of their beauty, more
especially as in very many cases the photographs reveal the form which
the accidents of discoloration have partly concealed. Mr Phillips of
10 Market Place has an almost complete set of admirable photographs,
which he was enabled to take when the scaffolding was up for the
restoration of 1870-73: it is these which Mr Ruskin has so much
admired.
As there are so many statues, some of inferior interest and beauty, I
have ventured to put an asterisk (*) to those which I think no one
should fail to see; and, in almost every case, I have but echoed the
general verdict.
THE LOWEST TIER.--This tier contains sixty-two niches, forty-three of
which are empty, so fatally convenient has their position been for the
iconoclast. Of those which remain nearly all are on the north side of
the tower, so that at first sight the tier seems to be quite empty.
The loss here has been the greater because the figures were of the
finest kind, as well as the most easily seen: those remaining are
certainly of the most exquisite loveliness. Cockerell's theory that
this tier represents the heralds of the gospel, prophets and
missionaries, has nothing to support it.
It seems to me not unlikely that the tier was devoted to some of the
most popular saints in the calendar; the position, so near the
passer-by, would have suited this arrangement, and the front must have
been singularly deficient in saints if it were otherwise. The figures
which remain, a group of deacons, a group of bearded figures holding
books, and of women bearing religious attributes, might well stand for
saints.
3. _South Tower._ Male figure, much decayed, held by metal clamps.
4. Male figure, much decayed, held by metal clamps.
_Rest of figures missing along west front up to_--
5. _North Tower._ Male figure, much decayed, holds book.
6. A similar figure.
_Missing._
7. _North Buttress._ Male figure, which held some drapery in front.
8. _North Buttress._ Male figure, holding a vessel in right hand
covered with a cloth, the end of which was in left hand. [Cockerell
calls this St. Augustine, erroneously supposing this cloth to be the
pallium.]
9. Beautiful female figure,* drapery resembling a chasuble; hands
gone.
10. Female figure with flowing hair; hands gone.
11. Female figure, wimple round head, in left hand holds a vessel,
right hand is on the edge of the vessel, the fingers dipping in.
12. Female figure,* hood over head, holds in right hand the foot of a
chalice, and with her left the fold of her dress in front.
13. Tall male figure, bearded, holding closed book; in good
preservation.
14. Male figure, bearded; hands gone.
15. _Buttress._ Male figure, bearded, with flowing hair; hands gone.
16. _Buttress._ Male figure, bearded, holding open book in left hand;
upper part moulding away.
17. Deacon* in dalmatic, alb, amice, holding open book in left hand,
right hand gone; drapery is wonderfully fine. (This and the remaining
figures are tonsured and shaven.)
18. Deacon,* a beautiful figure, (apparently in dalmatic), amice; left
hand gone.
19. Deacon, in girded alb, ends of girdle hanging down, wears the
folded chasuble (very rare in art) over left shoulder, maniple; holds
book with both hands.
_Missing._
20. _Buttress._ Deacon, in girded alb, amice, stole over left
shoulder, book in left hand. Besides ends of girdle, end of a stole is
visible on left side, as if a crossed stole had first been carved and
this end forgotten.
21. _Buttress._ Deacon,* stole worn over left shoulder, maniple, but
no amice and no girdle; wears instead of alb a surplice with full
sleeves--an unusual combination.
SECOND TIER.--The next tier (22-53) consists of thirty-two
quatrefoils, some of which are now empty. The rest contain half-length
figures of angels, holding crowns, mitres, scrolls, or drapery in
their hands.
THIRD TIER.--This, which we may call the Bible Tier, consists of
forty-eight quatrefoils, ranged close above the quatrefoils of the
second tier, and broken in the centre by the larger sculpture of the
Coronation of the Virgin (2). The subjects are all from the Bible,
those on the south from the Old Testament, dealing with the first
things, while those on the north and on the north and east sides of
the northern tower are from the New Testament, and represent the life
and mission of our Lord. The iconoclasts seem to have concentrated
their attention on those earlier New Testament groups, which would
contain the figure of our Lady, and they have made the Crucifixion
almost unrecognisable. The figures are about two feet high.
_Empty._
54. The Death of Jacob.
55. Isaac blessing Jacob, who leans over him.
56. Meeting of Isaac and Rebecca, probably.
57. Noah sacrificing on Ararat. Very fine.
58. The Ark. A curious structure, raised pyramidally in four tiers,
with open arcades, in which birds and beasts are seen. Below is the
Flood.
59. Noah building the Ark.* He is in workman's dress, and wears a cap;
he is working at a bench, beneath which are his tools. Behind is the
ark, and an "Early English" tree.
60. God decreeing the Deluge.* In great wrath Jehovah approaches a man
who sits pensively on a hill-side: from behind the man's head springs
a demon. The figure of Jehovah is admirably expressed.
_Empty._
61. Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, who is bound on a bundle of
wood. Cockerell called this the Sacrifice of Cain, which certainly
suits its position better.
62. Adam delves and Eve spins. Fine.
_Empty._
63. Jehovah in the Garden. A draped figure, addressing two figures
naked and ashamed.
64. The Temptation. The serpent's body is coiled round the tree near
Adam, and his head hovers above with an apple in the mouth. Adam is
already eating the fruit.
65. God placing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
66. The Creation of Eve.
67. The Creation of Adam. The figure of the Almighty in each of these
three is magnificent, especially in the last.
_Empty._
OVER CENTRAL DOORWAY. 2. Coronation of the Virgin (p. 34).
_Here follow eighteen New Testament subjects._
68. St. John the Evangelist*; he is winged. A book rests on the back
of an eagle. The idea of inspiration could not be more finely
expressed.
_Empty._ (Perhaps the Annunciation was here.)
_Empty._ (Perhaps the Visitation.)
69. The Nativity. Mutilated.
_Empty._
_Empty._
_Empty._
_Empty._
_Empty._
_Empty._
70. Christ among the Doctors: the Holy Child is a very small figure on
a pedestal. A most expressive group.
71. St. John Baptist, clothed in camels' hair, in the wilderness. (An
angel appearing from the clouds, broken off since 1862. The fragment
is now in No. 72).
72. Figures in critical attitudes. Perhaps the Sermon on the Mount.
_Empty._
73. Christ in the Wilderness, probably.
74. Figures in intent attitudes. Perhaps the Mission of the Apostles.
75. Five figures seated at a table. Perhaps the Anointing of Christ's
feet.
76. Figure on a Mount surrounded by many figures. Perhaps the Feeding
of the Five Thousand. NORTH SIDE OF TOWER.
77. Christ, sitting, with other figures. Perhaps the Feeding of the
Four Thousand.
78. The Transfiguration.* A fine composition, two of the Apostles
crouching in the foreground.
79. The Entry into Jerusalem. Under the city gate two men strew
clothes and branches: from the walls and tower many people are
looking.
80. The Betrayal. Chief priest with mitred head-dress in centre:
winged devil holds up the train of right figure. On left a figure
holds open a money-box.
81. The Last Supper.* The Virgin kneels to receive the Communion from
her Son: St. John's head rests on His bosom. The drapery is very fine.
Underneath are a bottle and a basket.
_Empty._
82. Christ before Pilate.
83. Christ bearing the Cross. Mutilated.
84. The Elevation of the Cross. Much mutilated.
85. The Deposition. Much mutilated.
_Empty._
86. The Resurrection. An angel on either side, guards below.
87. Pentecost: the Birthday of Holy Church. A dignified group of
figures.
FOURTH AND FIFTH TIERS.--The fourth and fifth tiers contained at least
120 figures (about a dozen of which are gone), varying in height from
7 ft. 10 in. to 8 ft. 1 in., a few running as high as 8 ft. 10 in.
They no doubt represent the kings, bishops, and heroes of English
history from Egbert to Henry II. Cockerell was probably right in his
general interpretation of the series, but it is easy to prove that he
is wrong in many of the names he gives. It is not so easy to suggest
any better, and therefore his names have stuck to the figures, since
people naturally like to know them by something more interesting than
a number. I shall therefore adopt his nomenclature, with the admission
that equally good grounds could be given in almost every case for some
other theory. Besides Mr Ferrey's account (_Inst. Brit. Arch._, 1870),
quoted in inverted commas, Cockerell's descriptions, inaccurate as
they are, have been consulted, and also Mr Planché's criticism of
Cockerell.
The word _Buttress_ means that the figure (generally a sitting one) is
on the west face of the buttress in question. Bishops ("Bp."), unless
otherwise stated, wear the usual vestments--mitre, chasuble, dalmatic,
tunicle, stole, maniple, alb, and apparelled amice. Kings ("K.") and
Queens ("Q.") wear crowns. A favourite attitude is described as
"holding cord"; this cord being the lace or cord of the mantle, which
crossed the chest and prevented that garment from falling off the
shoulders. The mantle seems to have had an uncomfortable tendency to
slip down, and thus it became a habit constantly to pull the cord
forward, whence the frequency of this attitude. This cord was wrongly
described by Cockerell as a necklace, with which it has, of course, no
connection. The word "trampling" refers to another common feature in
these tiers; kings are generally represented as trampling on a small
figure under their feet, to signify their success over their enemies.
The figures of the fifth tier are rather taller than those of the
fourth. The first twenty figures on our list, those of the fourth tier
up to King Ina, may represent the twenty bishops of the diocese from
Athelm to Jocelin, in direct order, since the corresponding series of
the fifth tier contains figures which cannot be those of bishops. I
have, however, kept to Cockerell's names to avoid confusion.
FOURTH TIER.--88. _South Tower_--_Buttress_--Sitting Bp.; much
decayed, supported by metal clamps.
89. Bp. Savaric. Much defaced, head grotesquely so.
90. Bp. Robert. Much defaced, head grotesquely.
_Missing._
91. _Buttress._ Bp. Reginald de Bohun, sitting; somewhat decayed.
92. Bp. Ethelweard, good drapery, well--preserved; no hair or beard.
93. Sighelm, good drapery, well-preserved; ring of curly hair and
beard.
94. Alfry, in hood; large curly beard.
95. Etheleage, monastic dress, cowl and scapular; large curly beard.
96. Bp. Asser. Short and stout figure, in attitude of benediction.
97. Bp. Heahmund. Short and stout figure, in attitude of benediction.
98. _Buttress._ Bp. Wolfhelm. Fine seated figure, in attitude of
benediction.
99. Bp. Ealhstan. Stout common-place figure; rather mutilated.
100. Bp. Wilbert. Stout common-place figure; rather mutilated.
101. Bp. Denefrith. Stout common-place figure; better preserved.
102. Bp. Ethelnod. Stout common-place figure; better preserved.
103. _Buttress._ Bp. Aethelhelm, first Bishop of Wells* (reproduced on
p. 22). Noble figure, sitting in attitude of benediction.
104. Bp. Herewald, in attitude of benediction.
105. Bp. Forthere, head bent slightly forward.
106. Bp. Ealdhelm. A fine figure. _Central Window (South)._
107. K. Ina, looking over right shoulder, hand gone. (These central
figures, Ina and Ethelburga, are supposed to be of later date than the
rest.) _Central Window._
108. Q. Ethelburga. Wears the long kirtle with girdle, from which are
hung an ink-bottle and aulmoniere. _Central Window (North)._
109. K. Egbert, trampling, bearded; cloak falls in a graceful sweep
from right to left.
110. K. Ethelwulf, bearded. A very short figure, but raised on high
stone (crouching figure?) higher than the others.
111. K. Ethelbald; decayed.
112. _Buttress._ K. Edgar, sitting, flat cap on head.
113. K. Ethelbert, smooth face, trampling; apparently holds fragment
of sceptre in right hand, cord of mantle with left.
114. K. Ethelred I., smooth face, trampling, gracefully draped cloak,
holds fragment of sceptre apparently in right, and something
indistinct in left hand.
115. K. Edwy, left arm raised, holding cloak, which is over right
shoulder.
116. K. Edward the Martyr, bearded, holding cup (his usual symbol) in
left hand, trampling. This is one of the most likely ascriptions.
117. _Buttress._ K. Edmund, sitting, right arm uplifted, left resting
on knee. Fast decaying.
118. K. Ethelred the Unready, bearded, short figure, trampling, but
the trampled figure leans easily on its elbow.
119. K. Cnut, bearded, short figure, trampling, but the trampled
figure is apparently still struggling.
120. Q. Osburga,* in long supertunic, with ample sleeves, falling in
folds over the feet. The tight sleeve of her kirtle appears on left
arm, which holds cord of mantle. Head and neck in the wimple which was
not in thirteenth century distinctive of nun's dress. Book in right
hand.
121. Q. Emma, in flowing supertunic with ample sleeves, and wimple;
hands gone.
122. Harold I., no head covering, trampling; hands touching girdle.
123. Harthacnut, like II old, but hands and part of face gone.
124. _Buttress._ K. Edred, sitting, right hand on knee, left raised to
cord, drapery crossed.
125. Q. Edgitha, mantle falls round over left foot.
126. Edmund Ironside.* Knight in surcoat over chain armour, hauberk
but no helmet; right arm and left hand gone, but head turned to left
and attitude is that of drawing or sheathing his sword.
127. Harold. Knight, hauberk and surcoat of mail, cylindrical helmet,
shield on left side; delapidated.
128. _North Side of Tower. Buttress._ Edward the Confessor, in cap;
sitting in attitude of judgment (Planché), left hand resting on right
ankle, this leg being crossed over left knee.
129. Prince Richard.* Crowned figure of great beauty, bearded, head
slightly bent to left with a melancholy expression; hands gone.
130. Robert Curthouse,* bearded, the right hand draws aside part of
the surcoat, exposing right leg in curious hose; left leg covered by
surcoat.
131. K. Rufus,* bearded, right hand holds cord of mantle, left holds
border of mantle across his body.
132. Q. Matilda, flowing hair, holds mantle in left hand.
133. Emperor Henry, crowned, holds cord of mantle, with right hand
fingering end of his girdle.
134. K. Stephen, right hand holds cord of mantle, left on girdle.
135. K. Henry II., end of cloak thrown over shoulder, holds the fold
with both hands; in good preservation.
136. _Buttress._ K. William the Conqueror, sitting in menacing
attitude, elbows projecting, and hands upon knees.
137. Prince Henry. A dignified figure; hands gone.
138. Prince Geoffrey. Beautiful figure, head gone, holds cord of
mantle, loose sleeves, and good drapery. (Ferrey is wrong in calling
this a female figure.)
139. Q. Maude the Good, flowing hair, left hand on girdle of
supertunic, dress fastened at neck with "a beautiful jewel" (Ferrey).
140. Adelais. Graceful figure, with flowing hair.
141. _Buttress._ K. Henry I., sitting in defiant attitude, right arm
akimbo, left knee raised, foot on pedestal.
_Missing._
_Missing._
_Missing._
142. K. John.* A beautiful figure.
143. Henry III., no crown, standing, but right knee raised to suit the
weathering of aisle roof.
FIFTH TIER.--144. _South Tower. Buttress on the south side._ Sitting
Bp., supported by metal clamps.
145. Bp. J. de Villula; hands gone, much decayed, clamped.
146. Bp. Gisa; hands gone.
147. Bp. Duduc*; right hand gone, book in left.
148. _Buttress._ Bp. Lyfing; decayed.
149. Bp. Merewit; hands gone.
150. Bp. Brihtwine; hands gone.
151. Aethelwine. Fine figure with long wavy beard spreading at end,
hood and mantle, aulmoniere at girdle.
152. Burwold, tall bearded figure in hood, satchel (?) hanging from
girdle.
153. Bp. Aelfwine.* Beautiful figure in cowl, curly hair and beard,
finely draped habit with loose sleeves.
154. Bp. Sigegar, book in left hand.
155. _Buttress._ Bp. Brithelm, head turned to right; decayed.
156. Bp. Cyneward.
157. Bp. Wulfhelm. A fine figure.
158. Bp. Elfege. A fine figure.
159. Edfleda, flowing hair, in supertunic or surcoat with long and
wide sleeves, head covered with veil, which hangs behind, no wimple.
Nothing conventual to suggest Edfleda.
160. _Buttress._ K. Edward the Elder. Fine figure, right hand on
knees, left on cord of mantle.
_Missing._
161. Edgitha. Very tall figure, right hand on cord, left holds end of
veil.
_Missing._
_Central Window (South)._
162. Q. Edgiva, kirtle only, with crown and veil, no wimple.
_Central Window._
163. Ethilda. Wears supertunic over her kirtle, veil and wimple.
_Central Window (North)._
164. Hugh. A sword hangs from his girdle on left side.
165. Elgiva.
166. Q. Edgiva; hands gone.
167. _Buttress._ K. Ethelstan, defiant attitude, right foot on stool,
wears brooch.
168. K. Charles the Simple. A squat figure with very big head,
trampling.
169. Otho, close-fitting tunic, over which is mantle with handsome
fastening.
_Missing._
170. Guthrum. Knight in surcoat, mail hauberk and chausses, shield on
left side.
171. _Buttress._ K. Alfred, seated; both hands gone, front decayed,
and clamped.
172. Earl of Mercia.* Knight in helmet with cross-slit, holding right
hand up and shield upon left arm; the surcoat turned over below the
waist shows a suit of mail. Well preserved.
173. St. Neot (more probably St. Decuman, as St. Neot was not
beheaded). Bp. holding with both hands the upper part of his head,
which has been cut off across the brows.
174. Ethelfleda,* the Lady of the Mercians. A striking and beautiful
figure with flowing hair, long veil hanging below the waist,
supertunic held by brooch, but without sleeves, the tight sleeves of
her kirtle being visible to the shoulders.
175. Ethelward. Woman with flowing hair, veil; hands gone.
176. Grimbald. Priest; hands gone.
177. St. Elfege, Archb.; hands gone; a noble figure.
178. _Buttress._ St. Dunstan, upper part decayed.
179. Turketul. Short figure, trampling, in very pointed cloak, big
head in cap.
180. John Scotus.* A beautiful figure, with exquisitively fine drapery
that looks as thin as gauze.
_Missing._
181. _North Side of Tower.--Buttress._ Robert, Archbishop of
Canterbury, standing, holding book in right hand, left hand gone; no
mitre.
182. Q. Elgiva, drapery falls from left shoulder, is folded over right
arm; book in left hand.
183. Q. Edgitha. Tall, gaunt figure; veil falls in long folds to knee,
right arm close to side, left hand holds cord.
184. Q. Edburga, circlet round head, brooch on her breast, holds
drapery in right hand.
_Missing._
_Missing._
185. Christina, Abbess of Romsey.* Beautiful female figure, holding
box in left hand: "her dress is peculiar": one end of veil is caught
over right shoulder, the other falls down in front on right side (p.
31).
186. Wulston of Winchester, bearded, "with distended ears"; right hand
gone.
187. _Buttress._ Archb. Aldred of York, sitting; "mitre modern," it is
conical in shape.
188. Edgar Atheling. Knight, spurred, in surcoat only, with sword
girded outside, no mail, but close-fitting cap and fillet on head: the
fillet was used for the large cylindrical helmet to rest on. He
carries what may be a palmer's hat (Cockerell points out that Edgar
went on a pilgrimage); but Planché says it must be a small Saxon
buckler, as pilgrims did not carry swords. It certainly looks like a
hat.
189. Robert the Saxon. Knight in hauberk, without mail, but feet
spurred, cap on head, shield and sword.
190. Falk of Anjou. Knight in hauberk and chausses of mail, hood of
hauberk enclosing whole head except a portion of the face: on head is
the thick fillet. He covers his body with a shield. His surcoat is
deeply jagged.
191. Robert of Normandy. Knight, in hauberk and complete suit of mail,
in good preservation, shield with boss on it held down: he wears
cyclindrical helmet, his eyes and nose being visible through the slit.
192. _Buttress._ B. Roger of Salisbury, sitting, without mitre.
_Missing._
_Missing._
193. Female figure, holding drapery with right arm, left hand on side.
194. St. Nicholas, the patron saint of baptism, stands in water up to
knees, holding a child in each arm. This ascription is approved by
Planché. (He is commonly called by children "the pancake man," the
conventional water suggesting round cakes).
195. Female figure, in good preservation, but clamped in a sloping
position, drapery good.
THE RESURRECTION TIER.--The sixth tier (195-283) consists of a series
of small canopies which run continuously under the cornice that
finishes the main division of the front. Above and around, the
spandrels are filled with beautiful foliage most boldly undercut. Each
of the eighty-eight canopies (of which thirty are on the north side)
contains a figure, or group of figures, representing the Resurrection
of the dead. In spite of a rather defective anatomy, these figures are
singularly impressive, "startling in significance, pathos, and
expression," are Cockerell's words. They are naked--crowns, mitres,
and tonsures alone remaining to distinguish their office. They awaken
by degrees, heave up the lids of their tombs, and draw themselves up
slowly, as if scarcely yet awake. Some sit in a strange dreamy posture
with folded arms, some seem expectant, others are in attitudes of
fear, hope, defiance, and despair. There are none of the grotesque
accessories which are too common in ancient representations of this
subject, but the awful feeling of a great awakening shivers along this
range of naked, grey, stone figures. It is probably the earliest
representation of the subject in art; it is certainly the most
profound and spiritual.
THE ANGELS' TIER.--This is immediately above the Resurrection Tier,
and occupies the lower part of the gable only. The angelic figures
stand in nine low niches with well-moulded trefoil heads that rested
on blue lias shafts; the two niches on the returns of the buttresses
also contain angels, which are represented as blowing trumpets. In all
probability the nine figures symbolise the nine orders of the heavenly
hierarchy, and I have ventured to give the names which the attributes
and position suggest to my mind as the most likely. Mr Ferrey's
account is quoted in inverted commas: it must be remembered that he
had the advantage of a close inspection from the scaffolding.
284. Thrones. "Angel holding an open book," two wings, long robe,
facing to his right.
285. Cherubim. "Seraph," with four wings, "apparently holding a
banner," decayed.
286. Seraphim. "Seraph," with four wings, "entirely feathered, with
bare legs and feet," face gone.
287. Dominations. "Angel wearing a helmet," in vigorous attitude, two
wings, "too dilapidated to make out what its attributes are."
288. (_Central Figure_). Powers. "Beautifully robed, holding a
sceptre," two wings: the dress is very ample and majestic.
289. Virtues. "Robed in a short tunic, with an ornamental border, the
legs are encased in armour," wears "a jewelled cap," two wings.
290. Principalities. "A Seraph, entirely feathered, holding a vessel
shaped like a bowl," with flames issuing out of it, the legs and feet
being also enveloped in "wavy lines of flames: probably the avenging
angel"; four wings.
291. Archangels. "Apparently holding a crown in the right and left
hands, close to his breast," long robe covering the feet; two wings.
292. Angels. "Carrying a regal or small hand organ," in left hand,
four wings, decayed; apparently bearing a wand in right hand.
THE APOSTLES' TIER.--The next tier, that of the Apostles, who are thus
raised above the angels, contains twelve figures of imposing design,
later in style than the rest of the statuary. The figures are hollowed
out at the back so as to press less heavily on the tier beneath. The
arrangement of these niches is very happily managed, so as to avoid
any monotony in the range of twelve similar niches; for, besides the
natural division formed by the small attached shafts between the
figures, an additional projecting shaft in every third division forms
the tier into four large bays with three figures in each. The capitals
of these niches are remarkable, the graceful foliage being disposed in
a very free manner, in some cases growing upwards, in others bent
down, but always true to the outline of the capital. Of the figures
themselves the central one, in the place of honour, and taller than
the rest, is St. Andrew. The others are not all so easy to name, the
attributes of some having disappeared; and, although Cockerell gave
names to them all (some of which were certainly wrong), we may content
ourselves with the following list, which at least is accurate so far
as it goes:--
293. No symbol in hand, which is covered with drapery. (Carter's
drawing represents a staff or spear, but he is quite unreliable,
though it is occasionally possible that the attributes he draws did
exist when he saw the figures a century ago.)
294. Book (?) in right hand, a vessel or bag of cylindrical form is
apparently suspended from the left arm. Perhaps St. Matthew with his
purse.
295. Holds something, which may be the fuller's club, in which case
the figure is that of St. James the Less; forked beard.
296. Club (?) in hand, long curly hair and beard. There is something
near the knee, which may be a palmer's hat. (Carter drew this figure
as St. Bartholomew with knife and skin.)
297. Carter drew this figure as St. Peter with the keys.
298. St. Andrew with his cross; he is so tall that his head fills the
upper portion of the canopy.
299. St. John holding the chalice, which has large bowl and short
stem; wavy hair. This is the only figure not bearded.
300. St. James the Greater. Staff in right hand, large satchel on left
side hung from hand over right shoulder, book in left hand (the book
of the Gospels with which St. James is always represented, in addition
to the pilgrim's stiff and scrip). He wears a high cap.
301. Perhaps St. Paul (who is often represented among the Twelve),
with sword and book.
302. St. Philip holds drapery in right hand. Ferrey says the five
loaves can be distinguished.
303. Long hair and head-dress like a veil bound by a fillet round the
brows, forked beard, book in left hand, girdle.
304. This figure occasioned much controversy, owing to Carter having
drawn it with a crown. Cockerell therefore attributed it to St. Peter,
and said that the crown showed Bishop Jocelin's papistical tendencies!
Planché scoffed at this, remarking with truth that none of the
Apostles are ever represented with crowns, but he caused even greater
confusion by suggesting that the figure stood for a Saxon king, and
that the tier, in spite of the Apostolic number, did not represent the
twelve Apostles. If he had looked at the actual figures instead of
Carter's drawings he would have seen that there is no crown at all. In
the photographs this is still clearer, the Apostle's head being
evidently covered by nothing more imposing than his own long hair or a
veil like that of the preceding figure.
THE UPPERMOST TIER.--The whole magnificent series was fitly crowned by
this group (305), of which only the lower part of the central figure
remains. That, however, sufficiently attests the noble character of
the rest: it represents our Lord seated in glory within a
vesica-shaped niche. The feet are pierced. It seems to have been
mutilated by Monmouth's followers, for it still bears the marks of
their bullets. The two figures in the niches on either side must also
have been destroyed at this time, for they are shown in a print in
Dugdale's _Monasticon_. Ferrey cannot have seen this print when he
suggested that the figures were of angels censing, for they are there
given as representing Our Lady (new covenant) and John Baptist (old
covenant).
THE WESTERN TOWERS.--The projection of these towers beyond the aisles
of the nave gives its great breadth to the west front, which is 147
feet across, as against the 116 feet of the almost contemporary
cathedral of Amiens, which is twice its height. It is an unusual
arrangement, of which there is no exactly similar example except at
Rouen. Above the screen the towers are Perpendicular, the southern
tower having been completed towards the end of the fourteenth, and the
northern at the beginning of the fifteenth century. They are thus
later additions to the original design of the front, and make it more
difficult for us to realise the effect that was first intended.
These two towers are very nearly alike, but the southern, or Harewell,
tower is some forty years the earlier of the two, and belongs to the
earliest days of the Perpendicular style, Bishop Harewell having died
in 1386. The northern tower was built with a sum of money left for the
purpose by Bishop Bubwith, who died in 1424, and his arms are carved
high up on a buttress upon the north side, those on the west being a
modern copy. In one of its two western niches is a figure of the
bishop in prayer. Both the towers have two belfry windows on each
side, tiny battlements, and a stair-turret on the outer western angle;
in both the buttresses are carried up, with but slight reduction in
bulk, two-thirds of their height and then finished with small
pinnacles. There are, however, certain slight differences between the
two towers; their height is not exactly equal, and there are no niches
on the earlier one. The south tower contains a peal of eight bells;
that on the north is traditionally considered "rotten," but to all
appearance it is sound enough.
[Illustration: The Central Tower From The South-east.]
THE CENTRAL TOWER is Early English to the level of the roof. The two
upper stages are Decorated, but there is a curious inter-mixture of
styles in them, owing to the repairs that were made after the
settlements of 1321. The chapter seemed determined to allow no
possibility of another accident, for besides the inverted arches and
buttresses of the interior, the original high narrow windows of the
upper part of the tower have been fortified by later insertions, by
way of bonding and stiffening the structure, which had been so
endangered by the sinking of its piers below. There are, however, no
signs of any rents in the Decorated part. The tower has square angular
turrets, and is divided vertically into three main compartments, each
division being marked by a small pinnacle, and the turrets by large
compound pinnacles. It is an interesting tower to ascend, the rents in
the wall being plainly discernible; and from the summit there is a
fine view of Wells and of the valley in which the city stands.
The NORTH PORCH is perhaps the finest piece of architecture at Wells,
though it generally receives far less attention than it deserves. It
is certainly the oldest part of the church, and must have been the
first work which Bishop Reginald undertook, about 1185; in style it
retains much of the Norman influence. The mouldings of the noble
entrance arch are numerous and bold, and twice the Norman zig-zag
occurs, though enriched with leaves in a manner that suggests the
coming Gothic. A weather moulding, exquisitely carved with deeply
undercut foliage, covers the arch. Its capitals on the east side
contain figures among their leaves representing the martyrdom of St.
Edmund the King: the first three of the caps have the saint in the
midst, crowned, and transfixed with a number of conventionally-arranged
arrows, and his enemies, two on either side, drawing their bows; the
fourth cap shows an executioner cutting off the saint's head; in the
fifth the head is found by the wolf; the sixth has been partly cut
away, but the body of the wolf and the heads of two figures remain.
In the spandrels above are two square panels containing a cockatrice,
and another strange beast. The gable is filled with an arcade, the
central member of which is corbelled off to make room underneath for
three little lancet windows which light the parvise chamber within.
The buttresses of the porch have slender shafts at the angles, which
are finished off with foliage of a remarkably free and graceful kind;
it should be noticed as an example of those subtle touches that are so
abundant in this porch. On the buttresses are pinnacles with an
arcade, at the top of which little openings cast a shadow that gives a
lightness to the whole effect. A smaller pinnacle is at the apex of
the gable, and underneath it an ornament of twisted foliage.
Nothing could well surpass the interior of this porch; the delicacy,
and refinement which are shown in every detail are the more amazing
when we consider that the architect and his masons had only just
emerged from the large methods of Norman building. A range of three
arcades on either side is divided in the midst by three shafts boldly
detached from the pear-shaped moulding round which they are grouped.
These shafts carry the ribs of the groined vault, and divide the porch
into two square bays. Their capitals are very boldly undercut, and
bear distinct traces of Romanesque influence; indeed, the volutes of
the cap on the west side give it almost the appearance of a very
freely-carved Corinthian capital. Those at the angles are of like
fashion, except that on the north-east, which has fuller and freer
foliage, wherein stands a man shooting with his bow at a bird, the
whole most vigorously conceived.
[Illustration: The North Porch.]
In the uppermost arcade the little touch of foliage that is worked on
to the junction of the mullions (which are made up of four pear-shaped
mouldings) illustrates the love of delicate things that is so
characteristic of this architect. Below is a projecting double arcade,
behind which, against the wall, is a third row of arches: the outer
mouldings intersect and the abaci of the outer caps are finished off
in a carefully restrained curl of foliage; those on the soffit are
deeply undercut, by means of which a very black shadow is secured. All
the capitals are carved with the stiff-leafed foliage; and in the
spandrels are grotesque beasts, full of character. The string-course
below is finished with dragons who bend round and swallow the end of
the string, their tails (on the west side) twisting right along the
moulding. It is significant of the free way in which the masons were
employed, that the carving varies very much on the two sides. The
grotesques in the spandrels above mentioned are finest on the east
side, but the dragons of the string course are best on the west side,
where their expressions, as they bite the moulding, are full of life
and humour. On this western side, too, the foliage which fills the
spandrels of the lowest arcade is at its best; it is indeed the purest
and truest piece of decorative work in the whole cathedral. Each
moulding in this beautiful porch, from the filleted ribs of the groins
to the bands round the shafts, and the moulded edge of the stone
bench, is most carefully thought out, and adapted to its position, in
a way that every architect will appreciate. The double doorway which
leads into the church has an unusual and most effective moulding on
its jambs, very large and simple, with slight projections worked upon
it: the inner moulding of the enclosing arch, however, is a boldly
projecting zig-zag, the supporting capitals of which have two figures,
one in a cope, the other a bishop in a very pointed chasuble. The
central pillar is of much later date. Above is a square recess filled
with later masonry, where perhaps a figure was once inserted.
Most happily, the North Porch has been spared from the restorer's
hand. It is a unique and most beautiful example of early work; any
restoration of it would practically destroy it, and would be an
unpardonable crime. The hungry eye of the modern vandal is sure to
seize on this piece of virgin work, sooner or later; for its very
purity will tempt him. We only hope that when that day comes the
Chapter will be faithful to their trust.
The GABLE END of the north transept, which must be very near to the
north porch in date, is a very similar example of the early work. It
is flanked by turrets which are capped with pinnacles; both turrets,
pinnacles and wall are rich with arcading, the effect of which is
especially charming in the gable, where, by a happy device, the
weather moulding is made to curve suddenly over the two topmost
arches, filling the angle at the apex of the coping, and leaving a
little space between it and the two arches to be occupied by foliage.
The general character of the WALLS is distinctly Transitional; the
buttresses are almost as low, broad, shallow and massive as in Norman
work; and the windows, though now filled with Perpendicular tracery,
are so broad that, were they but round-headed, they would look more
Norman than much real Norman work.
The richness of exterior effect is much increased by a most graceful
Decorated PARAPET, which is carried all round the church on the wall
of both nave and aisles. As for the masonry as a whole, with the
exception of the west front nothing could be sounder and more
skilfully executed. Mr Britton's opinion was that "perhaps there is
not a church in the kingdom of the same age where the stone has been
so well chosen, better put together, and where it remains in so
perfect a state: this deserves the particular notice and study of
architects."[5]
The CHAIN GATE, one of the peculiar glories of Wells, is really a
bridge over the roadway, built by Bishop Beckington and his executors,
to connect the chapter-house staircase with the vicars' close. Freeman
spoke of it as a "marvel of ingenuity," yet perhaps its excellence
consists rather in its simplicity. A covered way was needed to the
close, but the road lay between, and so a bridge was built; the bridge
had to rest on something: three arches were therefore made, one large
for carts, and two small for foot-passengers; a further space had to
be spanned between the road and the staircase: the bridge was
therefore continued on the same level, but, as the ground here was
lower, the arch on this side was built on a lower level. Furthermore,
the two ends of the bridge not being exactly opposite to one another,
the bridge had to turn at a slight angle where it reaches the road. It
is just such simple adaptation of means to an end that gave his chance
to a medieval architect; it is this that gives what is called its
picturesqueness to an ancient town, it is this that makes nature so
picturesque. A modern architect would have built his bridge in a
straight line across the road, and have pulled down something to avoid
the irregularity; he would not have had the sense of proportion which
alone was needed to make utility supremely beautiful. The builder of
the Chain Gate just used his opportunities to their very best. He saw
that but a small thing was wanted, that the close must not be dwarfed;
so he kept the work little and delicate, rich and light: he made its
chief beauty to lie in its _bijou_ character. Yet he preserved its
dignity by the wide opening of the central arch, the height of which
is emphasised by the smallness of the two arches on either side. But
although the two small arches effect so much by their contrast with
the large one, the harmony of the gateway is preserved by the
panelling above them which marks this part of the bridge off from the
rest. On the south of the gate is a blank wall, supported by a
buttress which was wanted here, and so here was put. On the south of
the buttress is the lower arch which is so admirable a foil both to
the height of the main gateway and the delicacy of the windows. A
correctly-minded architect would not have tolerated this blank wall
and irregularly-placed arch; but substitute what you will for the
wall, or alter the height of the arch, or replace both by an arcade,
and the dignity of the little gateway is gone. It may further be
noticed that the builder kept the upper and lower stages very
distinct, and made the upper storey as clearly a bridge as the lower
is a gateway: the charming little windows run in a continuous range
over blank wall, gate, and all, but they are grouped closer together
over the gate. A battlemented parapet finishes the top of the bridge.
Niches are placed in the midst of the two windows over the gate; they
contain graceful statues of St. Andrew and other saints. In the wide
moulding of the string course there are angels, curiously placed in a
horizontal position, as well as the stags' heads of Beckington's arms.
[Illustration: The Bishop's Eye.]
Passing under the Chain Bridge a good view of the CHAPTER-HOUSE is
obtained. It is a massive, buttressed octagon, the lower stage marked
by the small broad barred windows of the undercroft, the next by the
rather squat traceried windows of the house itself, while under the
cornice is an open arcade. The gargoyles are interesting. A parapet,
different in design and inferior to that of the church itself,
finishes the building. From this part of the road, there is a good
view of the cathedral in one of its most characteristic aspects;--the
Lady Chapel, the low buildings of the north-eastern transept and
retro-choir, the chapter-house in the foreground, all lying on ground
below the level of the road, and over the Chain Bridge a glimpse of
the north transept gable and the north-west tower.
A queer corner, hidden by a thick tree, is formed between the
chapter-house and the choir aisle; in spite of the obscure position, a
fine gargoyle of the head and shoulders of a man, carved in unusually
colossal proportions, is placed here at a low altitude, to carry off
the water that must gather at the junction of aisle with undercroft
passage. Through the walls that rise high on either side a capital
glimpse of the tower can be had.
From the same road, opposite the prebendal house (now allotted to the
Principal of the Theological College), which has a picturesque
Perpendicular doorway with a window above, the grouping of the Lady
Chapel with the rest of the church can be well seen.
The rich and light appearance of the EAST END is due not only to the
charm of its tracery, which contrasts so well with the network of the
Lady Chapel windows, and to the parapet which rises slightly in the
centre, but also to the three lights which pierce the gable; of these
the upper is diamond-shaped, and thus the masonry that is left has the
appearance of a stout Y cross.
FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.--One of the most interesting views of the
exterior is from the lovely grass-plot on the east of the cloisters,
where once stood the cloister Lady Chapel, and where the vicars were
formerly buried. It is being again used as a cemetery, which is
unfortunate, since there are few things more irreligiously dismal than
a modern burial-ground, and already a cluster of marble and granite
monuments has arisen to spoil one of the most peaceful and unspoilt
places in Wells. If monuments there must be (and why need we so
advertise the dead?), let them at least be quiet and humble and
beautiful: those ostentatious erections of hard and polished stone
ruin the grey walls before which they stand; their frigid materials
are too obtrusive for Christian modesty, too enduring for human
memory. May we not yet hope that this spot will be spared the fate of
the cloister garth?
From here the Lady Chapel is well seen as quite a separate building,
joined to the rest of the church only in its lower part, and with its
own parapet round all its eight sides; its form harmonises most
charmingly with the square presbytery behind it, and with the lofty
chapter-house, like itself octagonal. A further beauty is added by the
solitary flying buttress which stands out at the south-eastern corner;
though certain rents in the southern wall show that the buttress was
built for reasons of the gravest utility. On the south side of the
chapel there is a little door, covered by what looks at first like a
kind of porch, but it is really the passage of a small vestry (p. 132)
which was built up against the wall; the roof of the vestry was a
little higher than that of the passage, and must have leant against
the wall just under the window, as is proved by its gargoyle near the
passage door. This vestry was fatuously destroyed in the early part of
this century by an official who did not even know that it was medieval
work till the soundness of the masonry proved almost too much for his
workmen.
The junction between the earlier and the later presbytery is well seen
from here--too well seen, in fact, for it is awkwardly managed. The
later choir windows, with their crocketed ogee hood-moulds, are a good
feature, and so are the flying buttresses; but the high-pitched roof
of the earlier aisle is discontinued at the break in order to give
room for these windows and buttresses; and the effect of this sudden
termination of an aisle roof half-way along a building is not
pleasant. In the earlier part, too, the later windows have been
clumsily inserted some distance below the Early English dripstone, as
if only the internal effect had been considered. The same may also be
said of the window in the south transept gable: the gable, by the way,
is a much plainer affair than that of the north transept.
Here stood the two CLOISTER LADY CHAPELS, but unfortunately their
sites were not marked on the grass after the excavations were finished
three years ago. Thus nothing can be seen from here of the earlier
chapel, and, of the later, only the doorway and the Perpendicular
panelling against the cloister which marks its western end, and the
commencement of the walls. A small quatrefoiled hagioscope may be
noticed in the library above the cloister; it, no doubt, commanded a
view of the high altar of the chapel.
The earlier _Capella B.M.V. juxta claustrum_ is often referred to in
the chapter documents, and was a favourite centre of devotion. It
became a kind of family chapel for the numerous clan of Byttons, after
the first bishop of that name was buried there; it was also sometimes
used as a chapter-house. The Early English doorway which led to it can
still be seen in the cloister wall, on the right of the present
doorway; it is partly covered by an I.H.S. of later date, made with
the instruments of the Passion. The excavations of 1894, when the
foundations were laid bare under Mr Buckle's direction, showed that
this chapel consisted originally of a plain oblong building, earlier
even than the north porch in date (_i.e._ before 1185), which was
afterwards (c. 1275) enlarged by the addition of an aisle on either
side. The excavations showed that arches were used at this time to
replace the western part of the older walls, and thus to throw the
ancient chapel open to its new aisles. The original chapel, then, if
it was not actually part of Bishop Gisa's buildings, spared when John
de Villula destroyed Gisa's cloister, seems to have been built not
long after Gisa's time, and at least on the site of Gisa's chapel.
This would account for its orientation, which was in a more northerly
direction than that of the cathedral, and probably was the same as
that of the pre-Norman church. Excellent plans of the foundations both
of this and the later chapel are to be found in the _Somerset
Proceedings_ for 1894, where the whole matter is discussed in detail
by Canon Church and Mr Edmund Buckle.
The later chapel on this site was built by _Bishop Stillington_
(1466-91): it followed the orientation of the cathedral, and was of
much larger size than the former building, being about 107 ft. in
length. It consisted of a nave, transepts and choir, with fan-tracery
vault, of which some fragments have been lately fixed in the cloister
wall. Most profusely ornamented and panelled within, as can be seen by
the west end against the cloister wall, it is considered to have been
the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the Somerset Perpendicular, surpassing even
Sherborne and St. Mary, Redcliffe.
But its glory was not to be for long. Stillington was buried in this
"goodly Lady Chapell in the Cloysters," says Godwin, "but rested not
long there; for it is reported that divers olde men, who in their
youth had not onely scene the celebration of his funeral, but also the
building of his tombe, chapell, and all did also see tombe and chapell
destroyed, and the bones of the Bishop that built them turned out of
the lead in which they were interred." This was in 1552, when Bishop
Barlow and the chapter made a grant to that barbarous scoundrel, Sir
John Gates, of "the chappie, sett, lyinge and beynge by the cloyster
on the south syde of the said Cathedral Church of Wells, commonly
called the Ladye Chapple, with all the stones and stonework, ledde,
glasse, tymbre, and iron ... the soyle that the sayd chappie standeth
upon only excepted." The condition was that the rubble should be all
cleared away, and the ground made "fayre and playn," within four
years; but before this period had elapsed, Sir John's head had gone
the way of the Lady Chapel.
[Illustration: Doorway, South-east Of Cloister.]
The CLOISTER in its more prominent features is Perpendicular, having
been rebuilt in the fifteenth century. Nevertheless the outer walls
are of Jocelin's date, together with the doorway leading into the
palace (see illustration on this page); and the lower part of the east
cloister wall, including the two small doorways therein, is said by Mr
Buckle to be undoubtedly earlier than Jocelin's time, and contemporary
with the north porch, _c._ 1185. Thus we have still the original plan
at least of the thirteenth-century cloisters. This plan is
characteristic of a non-monastic church, where the cloister is not the
centre of a common life, but merely an ornamental convenience which
might or might not be added, and when added might be of any fashion
that was desired. There is no walk on the north side, no refectory or
dormitory, and the plan is not square, as would be the case with a
conventual building, but an irregular parallelogram, while the eastern
walk is built up against the south end of the transept instead of
against its western wall.
[Illustration: East Walk Of Cloister.]
The inner part of Jocelin's cloister was probably a wooden penthouse
like that of Glastonbury. At all events, it has entirely disappeared.
The eastern alley was built by the executors of Bishop Bubwith, who
died in 1424. That on the west, with its rooms, was built by
Beckington (1443-65) and his executors. That on the south was
completed soon after by Thomas Henry, the treasurer. Beckington, by
the way, showed a reckless disregard of the earlier work by carrying
his cloister right up against the south-west tower, and completely
concealing the beautiful arcading of that part. Beckington's
executors, in the time of Bishop Stillington, also built the singing
school over the western cloister. Bubwith's executors built the
northern part of the library over the eastern cloister; but the
southern part was added at a later date. The square windows were
inserted later still by the famous Dr Busby, about 1670. The fourteen
bays of lierned vaulting over the east alley, and one on the south,
were executed in 1457-8 by John Turpyn Lathamo, at the cost, we find
from the fabric roll, of ¾d. per foot, or £6, 11s. 3d. for the
whole, though an additional ten shillings was presented to him for his
diligence.
Each alley consists of thirteen bays in the Perpendicular style; the
windows are now all unglazed, of six lights, with transoms and
tracery; between the windows are buttresses to support the rooms
above, which extend, however, only over the east and west alleys.
Turpyn's vaulting is of a curiously decadent character, which reminds
one of the Jacobean Gothic of Oxford and Cambridge. The ribs spread at
the start to enclose a trefoiled panel, and they curve into one
another when they meet at the bosses. In the rest of the south walk,
however, the bosses are square, and receive the ribs in the usual
manner; in the west walk they are still square, and more varied in
their ornament, bearing Beckington's initials, arms, and rebus,
arranged in several different ways. Beckington's arms, which occur
also on the gateways, are argent on a fess azure, between in chief
three bucks' heads caboshed gules, and in base as many pheons sable, a
bishop's mitre or. His rebus is a fire _beacon_ lighted, a _tun_
holding the fire.
Two small stone pent-houses, of which the purpose is uncertain, are
built up against the windows of the fourth and sixth bays of the
eastern alley. The vault of this alley was built without reference to
the fine Early English doorway into the transept, one side of which it
hides, the weather moulding being cut away. This doorway is mentioned
in an Act of the Chapter of 1297, but it was probably made by Jocelin
before he built the cloister wall, which comes uncomfortably near to
the door, as if it were an afterthought. The companion doorway from
the western alley, which was the usual entrance to the cathedral in
the thirteenth century, has been similarly defaced by the vault. Three
annual fairs used to be held in the cemetery, till Bishop Reginald set
apart for the purpose the new ground which is still the market-place.
The traditional entrance to the church by this south-western porch may
have been due to the fact that the citizens gathered for secular
business on the south-western side. At the south end of the eastern
alley is the Early English bishop's doorway, which no doubt led
straight to the palace in the days when there was no moat to obstruct
this route. The door was originally hung to open inwards; a beautiful
moulding was destroyed to hang it in its present position. There is a
bracket of later date over this doorway.
The cloister-garth, which is hideous with modern tombstones, is
traditionally called the _Palm Churchyard_, no doubt because of the
yew which grows there. Yew trees, so common in churchyards, are still
commonly called palms, because their branches were used for the
procession on Palm Sunday. This churchyard was anciently the
burial-place of the canons, the ground east of the cloister (now used
again as a cemetery) being reserved for the vicars, while the space
before the west front was the lay burial-ground.
An admirably contrived _dipping-place_ was still standing in the Palm
churchyard, near the second bay of the east cloister, within the
memory of living persons, but now no trace of it remains above ground.
A water-course, held within a channel of carefully-worked masonry,
runs under the eastern cloister from St. Andrew's well, and passes on
to fall ultimately into the old mill-stream. The oblong building over
it that formed the dipping-place was entered at the south end, and a
few steps (with aumbries for the linen at either side) led to the
washing-place at the little stream. An arch covered this spot, where
the water ran through two low arches on either side and was bridged in
the midst by a pavement. The place was used for washing linen, and the
water required for the cathedral was drawn here before the modern
supply pipes were introduced.
THE LIBRARY is over the east walk of the cloister, and is entered from
the south transept. It is a charming old-world place, full of ancient
volumes, many of which are of great interest. A passage runs from end
to end, along the east side of the long room, the other side being
mainly occupied by the old desks, benches and bookcases, which project
at right angles to the wall, many of the book-chains still hanging on
them. There are said to be over three thousand volumes, including the
bulk of Bishop Ken's library, a collection of early editions of his
works, and his copy of Bishop Andrewe's "Devotions." There are also
several books (including one Aldine "Aristotle") with MS. notes and
autograph of Erasmus. The collection of old charters, which have
recently been made to throw so much light on the history of the
cathedral, is also preserved here. Some of the most interesting
charters are displayed in glass cases; one of them, Edgar's grant to
Ealhstane, is specially venerable for the signature of St.
Dunstan--_Ego Dunitan Ep._--which occurs third among the witnesses to
the document.
Two precious relics of medieval times are also kept here. One, which
is generally called a lantern, was till lately hung in the undercroft.
There is no trace of its ever having been used as a lantern, and it is
probably the wooden _canopy of the pyx_ which hung before the high
altar. The Blessed Sacrament was in medieval times reserved, not in a
tabernacle, but in a hanging pyx of precious metal; and this graceful
wooden canopy probably contained the pyx. There are only two other
possible examples of the pyx-canopy (at Milton Abbas and Tewkesbury),
and both are of later date than this, which is thirteenth century.
Woodwork of this period is so rare that, even were it not a
pyx-canopy, it would be of extreme interest. It is cylindrical in
form, divided into three storeys of open tracery, and crowned with a
cresting of three-lobed leaves. Its height is 3 ft. 11¼ in., its
internal diameter 14½ inches. It is made of oak, certain parts of a
later restoration being of deal. Mr St. John Hope (_Proc. of Soc. of
Antiquaries_, 1897), thus enumerates the traces of colour: "The whole
of the body and its upper and lower rings have been painted red, with
gold flowers or other devices upon the transverse bands. The slender
dividing shafts seem to have been coloured blue. The leaves of the
cresting have apparently been painted white, but the circular boss in
the middle of each leaf was entirely red." Two pairs of iron rods,
with a ring and swivel hook, serve to suspend it in a steady position.
The other relic is the thirteenth-century _crozier_ which was recently
found in a tomb in the cathedral, and probably belongs to the time of
Savaric, though there is no evidence, beyond its style, for describing
it as his crozier. It was dug up in a stone coffin in the western
burial-ground of the cathedral in the time of Dean Lukin (1799-1812).
It is thus described in the _Catalogue_ of the Burlington Fine Arts
Club exhibition of enamels, June 1897: "A complete crozier, [the
staff] wooden (modern), with enamelled head one foot in length.
Limoges, thirteenth century. The volute is a serpent with blue scales
and serrated crest, enclosing a winged figure of St. Michael and a
dragon studded with turquoises. The knop is encased in pierced
repoussé open work formed of dragons, and the socket ornamented with
thirteenth-century foliated scrolls in these slightly spiral bands,
separated by jewelled dragons whose tails form three rings under the
knop." St. Michael is represented in the act of attacking the dragon
with his spear.
A little MUSEUM has been formed in one of the rooms over the western
cloister. It contains a collection of seals, Mr Buckle's plans of the
cloisters and the Cloister Lady Chapel excavations, and many other
objects of interest.
The principal buildings in connection with the cathedral are the
vicars' close, the bishop's palace, the deanery, the archdeaconry, and
the canon's houses. There are also Beckington's fine gates,--the Chain
Gate by the vicars' close, Brown's, or the Dean's Gate, near the
deanery, the Penniless Porch, leading from the Market Place to the
cathedral; and the Bishop's Eye, leading from the Market Place to the
palace.
[Illustration: The Chain Gate, Entrance To Close, 1824]
Most deservedly famous is the unrivalled VICARS' CLOSE, which contains
the houses built by Bishop Ralph and his successors for the
vicars-choral. Passing through the gate, one sees the two long ranges
of quiet and lovely houses, fronted by their little gardens, with a
roadway betwixt them. Nothing can surpass this arrangement for its
peaceful seclusion and constant charm, not even the square quadrangles
and cloisters of Oxford, and yet, so convenient is it, that no better
model could be chosen should there ever come any general return to the
old collegiate life; for a settlement, for a model factory, one can
imagine nothing better even now. There are forty-two houses,
twenty-one on either side: each consisted originally of two rooms, one
above the other, with a staircase; for the vicars were single men. Now
that the vicars-choral are married, many of them live in the town, but
all the theological students are lodged here, and there are always a
few rooms to be let to those visitors who are wise enough to stay in
this charming place.
The tall chimneys rise up through the eaves of the little houses;
octagonal at the top, they are perforated like a lantern, with two
openings on each side. On them are shields bearing the arms of the
see, of Bishop Beckington and his executors, Swan, Sugar, and Pope,
sugar-loaves and swans abounding in the decoration.
At the farther end of the close is the tiny chapel (finished by
Bubwith, and finally consecrated in 1489, after Beckington had added
the wooden ceiling and the chamber above), where compline is still
said by the theological students. It is one of the most beautiful
things in Wells--a jewel, like so much of its period--and it has been
well decorated in sgraffitto and colour by Mr Heywood Sumner. An
interesting feature of its exterior is that some of the old Early
English carving was worked in with the masonry of the wall, by way of
decoration, and very effective it is. A passage at the side leads to
the Liberty, where are some of the prebendal houses.
Over the entrance, and leading into the bridge of the Chain Gate, are
the hall and its offices, which are approached by a fine staircase. In
the hall is a painting of much interest, which represents Bishop Ralph
seated on his throne, the vicars kneeling before him; the petition
which he holds runs--_Per vicos positi villae, Pater alme rogamus, Ut
simul uniti, te, Dante domos maneamus_; and the answer, which has the
episcopal seal, is--_Vestra petunt merita, Quod sint concessu petita:
Ut maneatis ita, Loca fecimus hic stabilita._ On the right are
seventeen figures with ruffles, evidently added in Elizabethan times;
corresponding inscription has also been added--_Quas primus struxit_,
etc.
There is also a pulpit over the fireplace, which is large, with good
mouldings and an inscription, _In vestris prec[=i] habeat^s
comedat[=u] do[=m] Ricard[=u] Pomroy quem salvet Ihs. Amen_. On the
hearth are a pair of fine fire-dogs.
Just outside the entrance to the vicars' close is a beautiful ORIEL
WINDOW, which has been much copied in modern times. It springs from a
corbelled head, from which foliate four cinquefoiled panels. The
window now has only three square-headed lights, the centre one being
large. Under its sills are rich panels, and it is capped by a slight
crenelated cornice with a boldly-carved drip, from which springs a
conical roof surmounted by a fleur-de-lys.
The beautiful BISHOP'S PALACE was mainly built by Jocelin, who died in
1242. It consists of three sides of a quadrangle, the bishop's house
being on the east, the chapel on the south, the kitchen and offices
running alongside the moat on the north: on the west side there was
formerly a gate-tower and a wall having a cloister within which led to
chapel and hall. In addition to these buildings the great hall, now in
ruins--forming, with the walls and outhouses, an outer court--was
built to the south-west of the chapel. The whole group of buildings
stands on a piece of ground, rich with trees, surrounded by a lovely
old wall and moat, the single approach being by the bridge and the
gate-house, which has Renaissance windows and retains the slit for the
portcullis and the drawbridge-chains. Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury
constructed the gate-house and fortifications, which form an irregular
pentagon, with a bastion at each angle, and an extra one in the
south-east side. The bastion in the western angle (on the south of the
gate-house) contains two storeys, of which the lower, called the
cow-house or stock-house, was used as a prison for criminous clerks.
The moat is fed by a stream from St. Andrew's well hard by.
[Illustration: The Bishop's Palace.]
The palace itself is a most interesting example of medieval
architecture, and remains very much in its original condition. It is
oblong in plan, and divided lengthwise by a solid wall, running
through both storeys from end to end, at about one third of its width;
the long outer chamber formed by this wall on the ground floor is
divided into the entrance hall of three bays (containing a fireplace,
_temp._ Henry VIII.), and the passages to staircase and to chapel at
either end. The wider chamber within the wall is lighted by plain
lancet windows, and has a row of slender Purbeck pillars down the
middle, which, with the corbels on the wall, carry a groined vault:
this, the "crypt," or undercroft, was probably used as a storage-room;
it is now the dining-room. To the north of this hall is a square
chamber with a pillar in the centre; and to the east of the chamber a
small room projects beyond the ground plan of the building, with a
space at one end (probably a closet) now walled up.
On the first floor the great chamber (68 by 28 feet) stood over the
undercroft, while on its north was the bishop's private room, both
open to the roof, and to the east of this, his private chapel. The
gallery above the entrance hall was formerly divided into three
chambers, the two larger of which Mr Buckle thinks were used as a
lobby and a wardrobe. The windows in the gallery were restored by Mr
Ferrey in 1846, but nothing is new except the marble shafts and bases.
The two windows at the north end of the great chamber are evidently
later additions, as they have fully developed bar-tracery, while the
other windows in the chamber consist of pairs of trefoil-headed
windows with a quatrefoil in plate tracery above them.
The GREAT HALL, which is now but a beautiful ruin, was built by Bishop
Burnell, who died 1292. It was a magnificent chamber, 115 feet by 59½,
with high traceried windows. It was divided into nave and aisles
by rows of pillars to carry the roof and the passage at the west end
led between buttery and pantry to the kitchen; over these rooms was a
large solar, and on the north side a porch with staircase at the side
leading to the solar. Both hall and palace are well and fully
described by Mr Buckle in the _Somerset Proceedings_ for 1888. Bishop
Barlow had the hall dismantled, employing Sir John Gates for the
purpose; the walls, however, were left standing until Bishop Law's
time, when they were partly demolished in order to make the ruin more
"picturesque."
The chapel is very similar in style to the hall, and was built very
shortly afterwards; it is at present defaced by bad decoration and
fittings. The carving is very fine and varied; some of the capitals
retain the old stiff-leaf foliage, while in some the leaves grow
freely round the bell in the Decorated manner. The vaulted ceiling is
also an excellent example of the transitional work of the period. The
west window is of later date, and has been twice restored--once by
Bishop Montague (1608-16), and again in the present century. On the
north side, at some height from the ground, are the indications of
what may have been a gallery used as a private pew.
Bishop Beckington (1443-66) added the northern block of buildings, now
considerably altered, the kitchen and various offices, _le botrye,
cellarium, le bakehous, ad lez stues ad nutriendos pisces_, in William
of Worcester's words, as well as the gate now called the Bishop's Eye,
_aliam portam ad introitum de le palays_, and the parlour (_parlurum_)
and guest-chambers adjoining the kitchen. This block lies very
prettily alongside the moat.
Unfortunately the palace, which had so wonderfully escaped the brutal
adaptations of the eighteenth-century architect, was restored in 1846
by Mr Ferrey, and its west front completely altered. The upper storey,
the porch, the buttresses were all added by Mr Ferrey; not to mention
the tower at the north and the turret at the south, and the
conservatory. Bishop Bagot, at whose order the work was done, also
rebuilt the kitchen and offices; in fact, he did what he could to
destroy the unique character and beauty of a block of buildings
without parallel anywhere.
THE BISHOP'S BARN, which stands in a field near the palace is
remarkable for its length (110 ft. by 25½) and the number of its
buttresses. Simple in character, stately in proportions, it is a
striking instance of the perfect sense of fitness which marked the
medieval builders: in fact, it is the exact opposite to what a modern
builder would erect if asked to provide a barn in the Gothic style.
THE DEANERY, rebuilt by Dean Gunthorpe (1472-98), is an almost perfect
specimen of a fifteenth-century house, in spite of the modern sash
windows and other alterations which deface it. As at the palace, the
principal apartments were on the first floor; and of these the chief
is the hall, an excellent example of the more comfortable late
medieval arrangement. Two handsome oriel windows with vaults of
fan-tracery are at the upper end, not quite opposite to each other,
where the sideboards used to stand; and at the lower end a stone arch
carries a small music-gallery, with three small windows opening to the
hall. Under this arch is the lavatory, a stone niche, in which a small
cistern was suspended, with a drain at the bottom; so that the diners
could put their hands under the tap of the little cistern as they
passed into dinner.
Over the hall are guest chambers with fine windows; and behind the
partition at the back of the dais is another chamber with a large
window, which Mr J.H. Parker thought to have been the chapel.
Fuller description of the various ecclesiastical buildings can be
found in Mr Parker's paper in the _Somerset Proceedings_ for 1863.
THE ARCHDEACONRY was built in the time of Edward I., but the front of
the house has been entirely modernised. The hall is larger than that
of the deanery, and occupies the whole height of the building, having
a very fine early fifteenth-century open timber roof.
THE CHOIRMASTER'S HOUSE, at the east end of the cathedral, is a fairly
perfect example of a fifteenth-century house, retaining its beautiful
porch unspoiled. The roof and upper part of the windows of the hall
remain, but are disguised and concealed by modern partitions. It is
now the residence of the Principal of the Theological College.
An organist's house once communicated with the singing-school, which
is over the western cloister; it was much defaced in the eighteenth
century, and entirely removed a few years ago.
THE CANONS' HOUSES, which lie in the Liberty to the north of the
cathedral, have been either entirely rebuilt, or much spoilt by
alterations.
THE SCHOOLHOUSE is partly of the fourteenth century, with wings added
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; it retains some features of
interest.
BISHOP BUBWITH'S ALMSHOUSE is near St. Cuthbert's Church. It was much
spoilt in the fifties: the original plan was a great hall, with a
chapel at the end of it, and cells along the side for the almsmen.
These cells were open at the top so that there was plenty of fresh
air, and if an almsman became ill or infirm, he could hear the service
chanted daily in the chapel without leaving his bed. At the west end
of the hall is a building of two storeys built by the bishop's
executors, given to the citizens of Wells as a Guildhall, and used for
that purpose till about 1779. Here is preserved a very fine money
chest of the fifteenth century, painted with a scroll pattern, and
resting on a stand inscribed with curious doggerel of the date 1615.
ST. CUTHBERT'S CHURCH, which is kept open during the daytime, is thus
described by Mr J.H. Parker in the _Builder_ for 1862 (p. 655):--
"It was originally a cruciform church of the thirteenth century with a
central tower, and with aisles to the nave; but of the church all that
remains in the original state is a part of the north aisle. The
central tower has been removed, the church entirely rebuilt in the
fifteenth century. The pillars and arches of the nave have been
rebuilt in the fifteenth century also, and the pillars lengthened
considerably. The arches, with their dripstones, preserved and used
again on the taller pillars, and most of the capitals have had the
foliage cut off. The aisle walls, the clerestory, and roof, are all
Late Perpendicular, about the time of Henry VII.; but the beautiful
west tower is evidently earlier than the clerestory and roof, and has
the mark of the old roof on the east side of it, coming below the
present clerestory. This fine tower, which is certainly one of the
finest of its class, and which Mr Freeman considers, I believe, to
rank only second to one other [Wrington], is said to have been built
in the time of Bishop Bubwith, or about 1430; and this appears to me
probable. The character of the work is rather Early Perpendicular, and
the groined vault under the belfry appears to be an imitation of the
Decorated vault of the cathedral."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The road should be followed for about a quarter of a mile out
of the town; at this point a path leads over a stile and through
a coppice to the best point of view.
[2] Vol. i. 421.
[3] _History of the Cathedral_, 125.
[4] The Doulting stone, of which the cathedral is built, comes
from the St. Andrew's quarry at the little village of
Doulting, where Bishop Ealdhelm died. It is inferior oolite,
and very like Bath stone, which is the greater oolite. The
exterior shafts were blue lias, and those within either blue
lias or Purbeck marble, though there are one or two shafts of
red Draycot stone in the western responds of the nave.
[5] _Cathedrals_, iv. 98.
CHAPTER III
THE INTERIOR
The earlier architecture of Wells Cathedral presents so many puzzles,
that the most skilled experts have differed widely both from each
other, and, as we know now, from the truth. There are four distinct
varieties of Early English work, covering a period of about a century
from the time of Bishop Reginald, whose episcopate began in 1174; and
yet, until Mr Bennett deciphered the old charters, which have at
length settled the problem, all the work was attributed to Jocelin,
for nothing was known of Reginald's building, and some of the best
judges were even convinced that the west front was built before the
nave. The difficulty was mainly caused by the unusual character of the
architecture of the nave; "unlike that of any ordinary English
building, and belonging to a style on the whole fifty years earlier"
than the west front, as Professor Willis said, who gave it a name of
its own, and called it the Somerset style. Thus the theory came to be
that two bodies of masons had been employed--an ordinary English
company for the front, and a local Somerset company for the nave,
transepts and choir, who worked in a local variation of the prevalent
Early English style. In this way, an attempt was made to overcome the
difficulty of attributing to Jocelin work which Mr Willis had himself
pronounced to be "only a little removed from the early Norman style."
Mr Freeman, too, had allowed that the north porch might be earlier
than Jocelin; and, long before, Britton had said that there would be
little hesitation in ascribing the church to the transitional period
of Henry II. (1154-89) on architectural evidence, were it not for
Godwin's assertion, that Jocelin had entirely pulled down the old
church and built a fresh one.
But now we have got behind Godwin, and have found from contemporary
evidence that Bishop Reginald commenced the present church. Thus we
are able to divide the Early English work into no less than four
periods, (1) The three western arches of the choir, with the four
western bays of its aisles, the transepts, and the four eastern bays
of the nave, which are Reginald's work (1174-1191), and so early as to
be still in a state of transition from the Norman. It is a unique
example of transitional building, and Willis calls it "an improved
Norman, worked with considerable lightness and richness, but
distinguished from the Early English by greater massiveness and
severity." The characteristics of this late twelfth-century work are
bold round mouldings, square abaci, capitals, some with traces of the
classical volute, others interwoven with fanciful imagery that reminds
us of the Norman work of Glastonbury; while in the north porch, which
must be the earliest of all, we even find the zig-zag Norman moulding.
(2) The rest of the nave, which was finished in Jocelin's time--that
is to say, in the first half of the thirteenth century--preserves the
main characteristics of the earlier work, though the flowing
sculptured foliage becomes more naturalistic, and lacks the quaint
intermingling of figure subjects. (3) The west front, which is
Jocelin's work, and alone can claim to be of pure Early English style.
(4) The chapter-house crypt, which is so late as to be almost
Transitional, though, curiously enough, it contains the characteristic
Early English dog-tooth moulding which is found nowhere else except in
the west window. From this, we reach the Early Decorated of the
staircase, the full Decorated of the chapter-house itself, the later
Decorated of the Lady Chapel, the transitional Decorated of the
presbytery, and the full Perpendicular of the western towers.
Much of the masonry in the transepts, choir, choir aisles, and even in
the eastern transepts, bears the peculiar diagonal lines which are the
marks of Norman tooling. This does not, of course, prove that any part
of Bishop Robert's church is standing, for medieval builders were
notoriously economical in using up old masonry, but it does show that
there are more remains of his work in the building than was generally
supposed. A characteristic feature in this Norman tooling is that if a
rule be laid along its lines, they will be found to be very slightly
curved, a feature which is due to the fact that Norman masons dressed
their stones with the broad curved blade of an axe.
[Illustration The Nave.]
The plan of the church is remarkably complete, symmetrical, and
well-proportioned. Nave, transepts, choir, each flanked with its
aisles, combine to form with the Lady Chapel and chapter-house a
cathedral church which, though not of the first magnitude, is the most
complete and typical in England. The ground plan itself, as set out in
all technical severity on page 160, possesses an unusual attraction
for the eye. It is free both from mutilation and excrescences; and yet
all the picturesque external grouping, and internal mystery, which the
afterthoughts of Gothic architects so often lend to a building, are
secured, in the case of Wells, by the carefully-placed chapter-house
and the beautiful arrangement of the Lady Chapel. The transepts of the
choir are very happily carried far enough east to be internally
subordinate to this chapel, which arrangement, with the apsidal form
of the chapel itself, adds much to the beautiful proportions of the
church. A third transept is given to the west end of the nave by the
two towers.
The length of Wells Cathedral from east to west is 383 feet within the
walls, and 415 without. The length of the nave is 161 feet, its
breadth 82 feet, and its height 67 feet. The length of the choir is
117 feet, and its height 73 feet. The transepts are 135 feet within
and 150 feet without.
THE NAVE.--The general effect of the nave is that of length rather
than height, and this is mainly due to the continuous arcade of the
triforium which leads the eye from end to end of the building instead
of from floor to roof. If this be compared with the older work in the
transepts, it will be seen at once by how simple a device this radical
change in the effect has been produced. Instead of being carried down
right across the triforium, as in the transepts, the triple vaulting
shafts are cut off above the arcade so as to be little more than
corbels, and the space thus gained is used to give one additional
opening to each bay of the triforium. In the transepts the triforium
is composed of pairs of lancet arches separated by vaulting shafts,
the triforium of each bay being a distinct composition over its pier
arch; but by the time the architect had come to the nave, a new idea
had occurred to him, and he made the triforium in one continuous
arcade, unbroken from east to west, evidently with the deliberate
intention of producing a horizontal rather than a vertical effect. The
arrangement has undoubtedly a character of its own, and "there is no
nave in which the eye is so irresistibly carried eastward as in that
of Wells."
In spite of this method of securing an effect of length, the builders
managed to make the most of the small height of their church. The
manner in which this was done forms an interesting example of the
subtle feeling of proportion which early architects possessed. The
clerestory was made unusually lofty, and the comparative lowness of
the triforium both adds to the soaring effect and prevents the
horizontal appearance being overmastering. This is increased by the
bold vaulting of the ceiling, and the way in which the lantern arches
fit into the vault.
But, homogeneous as the nave appears, a little examination will
clearly reveal the break which marks the separation between the late
twelfth-century work of Reginald de Bohun and the thirteenth-century
continuation of Jocelin. The earlier work, as we have seen, consisted
of the four eastern bays, which, with the present ritual choir and
transepts, formed Reginald's church; and, as a matter of fact, at the
fifth bay (the next bay westward of the north porch) the marks of
change are so evident that all writers upon the cathedral have based
their theories upon it. The earlier masonry in the spandrels on the
east of this point consists of small stones indifferently set: the
later masonry is made up of larger blocks more carefully laid
together; in the earlier part there are small heads at the angles of
the pier arches, in the later there are none, while the small heads in
the angles of the earlier triforium arcade give place to larger heads
in the later; the tympana, which fill the heads of the lancets in this
arcade, also are mainly ornamented in the earlier part with grotesque
beasts, while in the later they contain foliage, with two exceptions.
Again, the medallions which decorate the spaces above the triforium
are sunk in the earlier masonry, but, in the later, they are flush
with the surface and not so deeply carved. Even more noticeable is the
difference in the capitals, those of the western bays being lighter,
freer, and more undercut, though less interesting and hardly as
beautiful as those of the earlier part. With the exception of these
differences, however, which are doubtless due to the freedom enjoyed
by medieval workmen, the original design of the nave was faithfully
adhered to, the square abaci, even, being retained, though the
circular abacus had become a leading characteristic of the true Early
English of Jocelin's period. Certainly it is an unusual instance of an
architect deliberately setting himself to complete the works of an
earlier period in faithful accordance with the original plan; and we
may well be grateful to him for his modesty.
[Illustration: A Capital--the Fruit-stealer's Punishment.]
All the carving is most interesting and beautiful: the caps and
corbels of the vaulting-shafts; the little heads at the angles of the
arches, which are vivid sketches of every type of contemporary
character; and the carvings in the tympana, above referred to, which
are best in the seventh, eighth, and ninth bays (counting from the
west end), those on the north excelling in design and execution, while
those on the south are more grotesque. But the CAPITALS of the piers
are the best of all, and the most hurried visitor should spare some
time for the study of these remarkable specimens of sculpture,
vigorous and life-like, yet always subordinated to their architectural
purpose. Those in the transepts are perhaps the best (p. 89), but the
following in the nave should not be missed:--
_North Side, sixth Pier._--(By north porch) Birds pluming their wings:
Beast licking himself: Ram: Bird with human head, holding knife (?).
_Eighth Pier._--Fox stealing goose, peasant following with stick:
Birds pruning their feathers: (Within Bubwith's chapel) Human monster
with fish's tail, holding a fish: Bird holding frog in his beak, which
is extremely long and delicate.
_Ninth Pier._--Pedlar carrying his pack on his shoulders, a string of
large beads in one hand.
Toothless monster, with hands on knees.
_South side, seventh Pier._--Birds with human heads, one wearing a
mitre.
_Eighth Pier._--Peasant, with club, seized by a lion: Bird with
curious foliated tail: (Within St. Edmund's chapel) Owl: Peasant with
mallet (?).
The lofty clerestory windows are divided into two lights by
Perpendicular tracery of late fourteenth or early fifteenth century
date, which extends to the level of the passage, the lower part being
filled with masonry. The windows were not, however, altered in shape
when the tracery was inserted. In the tracery are very slight traces
of the old glass.
The triforium passage is capacious enough to form a large tunnel,
which gives a good effect to its lancet openings. The small iron
rings, which are prominent enough to be rather tiresome to the eye,
were recently inserted for the use of those engaged in cleaning the
walls. Within the passage additional arches may be seen, inserted to
strengthen the arcade at the commencement of the later work and in
other places.
The groined ceiling has carved bosses at the intersection of its ribs.
The red pattern is a restoration of the old design which was found on
the removal of the whitewash, but the restorer seems to have missed
the right tints.
There is a music-gallery in the clerestory of the sixth bay on the
south side; it is composed of three panels with quatrefoils containing
plain shields, and is finished with an embattled cornice. Another
gallery, perhaps for an organ, must have been supported by the two
noticeable brackets on the spandrels of the fourth bay of the same
side. One may conjecture that it was of wood, and was reached from the
triforium. The brackets are carved in the shape of very large heads of
a bishop and a king, both supported by smaller heads, and of an
extremely benevolent expression. The hair of the king has that curious
formal twist with which we are familiar on playing-cards. As some of
the small heads in the chapter-house have the same style of hair,
these two brackets probably belong to the end of the thirteenth
century.
[Illustration: A Capital--toothache.]
Sir John Harrington in the _Nugae Antiquae_ (ii. 148) says of these
two heads that "the old men of Wells had a tradition, that, when there
should be such a king and such a bishop, then the church should be in
danger of ruin." At the time of the Reformation it was noticed that
the head of the king bore a certain resemblance to Henry VIII., and
that the king held in his hands a child falling, who, it was said,
could be none other than Edward VI. The peculiarity of the bishop's
figure is that he has women and children about him. "This fruitful
bishop, they affirmed, was Dr Barlow (p. 156), the first married
bishop of Wells, and perhaps of England. This talk being rife in Wells
in Queen Mary's time, made him rather affect Chichester at his return
than Wells, where not only the things that were ruined but those that
remained, served for records and remembrances of his sacrilege."
The west end of the nave is covered in its lower portion by an arcade
of five arches with Purbeck shafts, the middle one being wider than
the rest, to contain the two smaller arches of the doorway. The three
lancet windows were re-modelled in Perpendicular times by the
insertion of the triple shafts, which have the casement mouldings and
angular caps of the period; but the dog-tooth moulding of the arches,
the medallions in the spandrels, and the little corbel heads of the
Early English work remain. A Perpendicular parapet along the sill of
the window marks the gallery which, pierced through the splays,
carries the triforium passage round the end of the nave. A string
course runs along the bottom of this gallery and forms the bases of
the triple shafts; the bases are supported on corbels which die off
upon the sloping wall below. This wall conceals a curious gallery, the
purpose of which is not known; it is entered by steps from the
triforium, and lighted by round openings which can be seen in the
central quatrefoils of the west front; when these quatrefoils were
filled with sculpture it would have been difficult to detect the
existence of the dark gallery.
[Illustration: Specimens Of Capitals.]
Two small transepts at the west end of the nave are formed by the
western towers, which project in this church beyond the aisles. These
transepts are connected with the aisles by an arch, the lower part of
which is closed by wooden doors. That on the north was used as a
chapel of the Holy Cross, and of late years as the consistory court:
it is now the choir-boys' vestry; that on the south served as a porch
in the days when the usual entrance to the church was by the Early
English doorway which leads into it from the cloister; it is now
appropriated to the bell-ringers. They are both of strikingly
different style to the rest of the interior, as they were built in
pure Early English style, at the same time as the west front, of which
the towers form, of course, an integral part. Their shafts are of blue
lias, the capitals richly carved; their groined vaults have a circular
opening to admit to the upper storey of the tower, which has its
corbels ornamented with foliage, although they cannot be seen. Over
the doorway in the south chapel an arcade is curiously fitted into the
available space beneath the vault.
[Illustration: A Capital.]
THE AISLES OF THE NAVE (see p. 19) are of the same character as the
nave itself, the later part having been resumed at about the same
time, and at the same place. Among the capitals the following in the
north aisle may be specially mentioned:--
_Fifth Shaft._--Peasants carrying sheep, etc., a dog in the midst.
_Ninth Shaft._--Man in rough coat, which falls before and behind
rather like a chasuble, carrying foliage on his back. A very good
figure.
_Tenth Shaft._--(By arch of vestry) Man carrying what seems to be a
hod of mortar and a mason's mallet.
_Opposite side of arch_, at end of the string course: Peasant in hood
carrying a staff. On the caps opposite are two heads with tongues on
their teeth (see p. 92).
The windows, both of these aisles and those of the transepts, were
filled with Perpendicular tracery at about the same time as the
clerestory windows. The date of this addition must have been before
Bishop's Bubwith's time, for the library which that prelate built over
the cloister blocks the south window of the west aisle of the south
transept. A stone bench runs along all the aisles.
[Illustration: Specimens Of Capitals.]
GLASS OF THE NAVE, TRANSEPTS, AND AISLES.--Most of the glass of the
west window was collected abroad, during his exile, by Bishop
Creyghton, while he was yet dean (1660-70). The main part of it is
devoted to the life and death of St. John Baptist, and is of excellent
early sixteenth-century work, for under the fantastic figure of the
executioner is the inscription _Sancti Johannis Decollatio_ 1507. The
two other lights containing the large figures of King Ina and Bishop
Ralph are, however, of later date, and to judge by their costume they
should belong to Creyghton's own time; moreover, on the southern one
are Creyghton's arms. Apparently the compositions at the extreme top
and bottom of the middle light are much later; a little handbook on
the cathedral by Mr John Davies, the verger in 1814, states that the
then dean and chapter re-arranged and restored the window in 1813;
these additions must belong to that time, and according to him they
were brought from Rouen. Their ugly reds and blues certainly do not
blend with the earlier glass, as do the figures of Ina and Ralph, but
considerably mar the mellow and delicate effect of the whole. There
are only a few slight fragments of old glass in the other windows.
There are also two modern windows at the west end of the aisles.
[Illustration: View Across Nave, Shewing Sugar's And Bubwith's
Chapels.]
BISHOP BUBWITH'S CHANTRY CHAPEL.--Two chantry chapels stand opposite
each other under the ninth pier-arches of the nave. They are alike in
general characteristics, though there is an interval of sixty years
between them. The chantry of Bishop Bubwith (_ob._ 1424), who built
the north-west tower, is formed by a hexagonal screen between the
piers, the three eastern sides being filled with a reredos that gives
the chapel a square appearance within. The screen is composed of the
most light and elaborate tracery, its corners surmounted by a crest;
it is open above, but has a rather coarsely-carved canopy over where
the altar stood. Doorways, whose jambs are too delicately carved to
have ever carried doors, give free access and a clear view of the
interior from either side. Altogether it was an ideal place for votive
Celebrations, when but few worshippers were present. The niches over
the altar have been hacked level with the wall, and the little pillar
piscina is also defaced. The triple shafts of the pier at the western
end are corbelled off, the corbel being carved with Bubwith's arms
(argent, a fess engrailed sable between twelve holly leaves vert, 4,
4, 4, and 4, arranged in quadrangles) impaled with those of the see.
The altar here was formerly dedicated to St. Saviour.
SUGAR'S CHANTRY.--In the ninth bay of the nave, on the south side, is
the chantry of Treasurer Hugh Sugar. Before its erection, the altar of
St. Edmund of Canterbury, who was canonised in 1246, stood here; and
perhaps, when it comes to be used again, it will be maintained in
honour of that most attractive scholar saint. Speaking of these
chantries, which were endowed in such profusion in the later Middle
Ages, Canon Church (_Somerset Proceedings_, 1888, ii. 103) says: "The
belief in the communion of saints, living and dead, and the desire for
continued remembrance after death, and for the intercessions of the
living, led practically to the endowment of chantries and obits,
whereby not only was the church enriched, and the services of many
priests provided for, but also attachment to the church of their
fathers was greatly strengthened, as being the common home of the dead
and the living." That attachment, one would think, is hardly likely to
be revived by this beautiful chapel and its fellow being put to base
uses. At present it serves as a kind of booking-office, where visitors
deposit their sixpences and sign their names, while the other is
stored with hassocks, and becomes the resting-place of any brooms,
pails, and dustpans that are in use.
St. Edmund's (or Sugar's) chapel is hexagonal, like that of Bishop
Bubwith, but its tracery, frieze, and reredos are more elaborate. The
canopy over the altar is vaulted with lace-like fan-tracery. Five
niches, now empty of their figures, form the reredos; their sumptuous
pedestals and canopies are in excellent condition. Attached to the
frieze without, on either side, are six demi-angels, with delicate
wings and extremely curly hair, bearing shields, with representations
of the Five Wounds, the Lily of the Annunciation, between angels'
wings; the arms of the see (a plain saltire surmounting a pastoral
staff in pale between two keys addorsed, the bows interlaced on the
dexter, and a sword erect on the sinister); the arms of Glastonbury
Abbey (a cross flory, in dexter chief a demi-virgin with child
proper), the arms of the vicars (a saltire), the initials H.S., and
Sugar's arms, originally a "canting coat," three sugar-loaves, and in
chief a doctor's cap. Sugar's initials and arms also occur under the
canopy. It is the fashion to consider this chapel inferior to its
fellow, merely because it is later in date, but a little impartial
study will show that it is much the better of the two. The tracery,
though less uncommon, is more graceful, that over the doorway
especially being far better contrived; the cornice is better
proportioned, and is not spoilt by the untidy trail of foliage which
runs round that of Bubwith's chapel; the canopy, too, fits in with the
curve of the tracery, while that of the others projects clumsily
across it.
THE PULPIT.--From the west end of this chapel steps lead into the
stone pulpit which adjoins it. This pulpit was built in Henry VIII.'s
reign, by Bishop Knight, who died in 1547. It is a low, but
well-proportioned, structure, resting on a basement, and fronted with
panelled pilasters; it is surmounted by an entablature. In front are
the bishop's curious arms, which occur more distinctly in the glass of
the north choir aisle--Per fess, in chief a demi-eagle with two heads
and sans wings issuing from a demi-rose conjoined to a demi-sun in
splendour in base. On the frieze is the inscription--_preache. thov.
the. worde. be. fervent. in. season. and. ovt. of. season. reprove.
rebvke. exhorte. w^t. all. longe. svfferyng. &. doctryne. 2. Tim[=o]._
A board along the top, covered with red baize, impairs its beauty at
present.
[Illustration: Sugar's Chapel--the Lectern And Pulpit.]
THE LECTERN, which stands near, is composed of a massive double desk,
surmounted by ornamental work, containing the arms of the see. It
rests upon a ball and turned stem and base, and is entirely of brass.
Bishop Creyghton, who had it made when he was yet dean, inscribed it
on both desks with his arms and this legend:--_Dr. Rob^{t.} Creyghton
upon his returne from fifteen years Exile, w^{th} o^r Soveraigne Lord
Kinge Charles y^e 2^{d.} made Deane of wells, in y^e yeare 1660, gave
this Brazen Deske, w^{th} God's holy worde thereon to the saide
Cathedrall Church._ The Bible referred to still rests upon it, bearing
the same date; it is bound up with the Prayer Book, and contains
initial letters and a frontispiece, but it stops at the book of Job.
Opposite the lectern are two sixteenth-century panelled wooden stalls,
with round finials, all bearing the same device on both sides--a Tudor
rose with _I.H.S._ in the centre, and the letters _m.d.l.i.i._ (1552)
on the five petals. These excellent examples of simple and effective
woodwork were found amongst some lumber in 1846, and now form part of
the temporary choir stalls that are used for the nave services.
On the south side of Bubwith's chapel, and partly covered by it, is a
slab, 10 ft. long, covering the grave of Bishop Haselshaw, with the
inscription, _Walterus de Haselshaw Ep. 1308_. On the west of Sugar's
chapel, another slab bears the inscription, _Radulphus Erghum Ep.
1401_. In a slab near the entrance to the choir there is the matrix for
a brass of a lady, with mitred head-dress of the period, _c._ 1460,
beneath a canopy. The style suggests that it may belong to Lady Lisle,
whose tomb possibly stood here.
THE TRANSEPTS are both of the same architectural character, and were
evidently built before the nave. They have less ornament, the
medallions and the carved tympana of the nave being alike absent,
although there are the same small heads at the angles of the pier
arches. The triforium, too, is different; each bay consists of two
large openings, devoid of ornament, instead of three narrower ones,
and is separated from the next bay by the vaulting-shaft which reaches
down to the string-course of the pier arch (see p. 77). Some of the
carved work, however, of the capitals and corbels is of a later date
than that of the nave, which may be due to the capitals having been
left uncut till after the nave was finished, or to damage done by the
fall of the _tholus_ in 1248. Apparently the corbels of the vaulting
shafts are later than those of the nave, they are certainly more
elaborate. Of the capitals those on the west side of both transepts
are of one style and abound in representations of the toothache. The
capitals on the east side are different from those on the west of the
third pier on this side of the south transept, and that is of a style
that suggests the Decorated period. Those on the west are certainly
the best, and some of the following are the finest in the church, and
perhaps in England:--
NORTH TRANSEPT, _first Pier._--(Inside the Priest Vicars' vestry) A
prophet (?) with scroll on which there is no name: Man carrying goose.
(Outside) Head with tongue on teeth.
_Second Pier._--Aaron, writing his name on a scroll: Moses with the
tables of stone.
_Third Pier._--Woman with a bandage across her face.
Above this cap the corbel consists of a seated figure, naked, with
distorted mouth and an agonised expression.
[Illustration: Section of North Transept, and Elevation of South
Transept.]
SOUTH TRANSEPT, _second Pier_ (from the south end).--Two men are
stealing grapes, one holds the basket full, the other plucks grapes,
holding a knife in his other hand: The farmers in pursuit, one carries
a spade and the other a pitchfork: The man with the fork, a vigorous
figure, catches one thief: The man with the spade hits the other
(whose face is most woe-begone) on the head (illust. p. 79).
_Third Pier._--Woman pulling thorn out of her foot: Man with one eye,
finger in his mouth: Baboon head: Cobbler; this figure shows very
plainly the method of shoemaking at this time; the cobbler, in his
apron, sits with the shoe on one knee, his strap passes over the knee
and round the other foot, his foot is turned over so as to present the
side and not the sole to the strap: Woman's head with long hair.
_Fourth Pier._--Head perfectly hairless: "Elias P." (the prophet) with
hand on cheek as if he too has the toothache: Head in hood, with
tongue on the one remaining tooth.
It may be well here to say a word about the general classification of
these earlier capitals, since their date is a matter of great
architectural interest. I would venture to divide them into five
groups--
1. Those of the three western bays of the choir: simple carved foliage
of distinctly Norman character, as in the north porch: these belong to
the time of Reginald (1174-1191).
2. The four eastern bays of the nave and its aisles. Some of these may
belong to the first period, though later than the choir: they are more
advanced in the foliage, and teem with grotesque birds and beasts.
Some, however, of the caps in these bays are of quite different
character (p. 80); they contain _genre_ subjects of perfectly
naturalistic treatment, very different to the St. Edmund of the north
porch capital, but exactly similar to the figure caps of the
transepts. They must therefore have been carved later than the death
of Saint William Bytton.
3. The western bays of the nave. These, which are of much less
interest, belong to the period of Jocelin's reconstruction
(1220-1242). They are characteristic examples of rich stiff-leaf
foliage, freer than that of the earlier work, but much less varied and
without either human figures or grotesques.
4. On the eastern range of transept piers. These would seem also to
come within Jocelin's period, with the exception of the third pier of
the south transept.
5. On the western range of transept piers (p. 89), with which must be
classed those later caps already referred to in the nave under group
2. Their date is settled by the fact that they abound in unmistakable
representations of the toothache. Now Saint William Bytton died in
1274, and his tomb became immediately famous for cures of this malady.
In 1286 the chapter decided to repair the old work, no doubt because
the offerings at his tomb had brought money to the church; this part
of the church had been damaged ever since the fall of the _tholus_ in
1248. The caps must therefore have been carved during the episcopate
of Burnell (1275-1292). Mr Irvine, indeed, suggests that the figure of
the woman taking a thorn ("bur") from her foot may contain a reference
to Bishop Burnell. The undercroft passage, with its curious corbels
and bosses, was probably also a part of the old work then completed,
as it contains one "toothache" head. Although the introduction of such
finished figure-subjects into the capitals suggests this lateness of
date, they are still completely Early English in style, and a great
gulf is fixed between them and the Decorated caps of the chapter-house
begun by Burnell's successor, William de Marchia (1293-1302).
[Illustration: The South Transept From North Side Of Nave.]
[Illustration: Capitals In Transept]
THE FONT is of peculiar interest as the one surviving relic of Bishop
Robert's Norman church. Whether it also stood in the still earlier
Saxon church is still an open question: it is as likely to be of
pre-Norman as of Norman date, and the fact that whatever ornament
there may have been in the spandrels of its shallow arcades has been
hacked off, makes conjecture unsafe. Its unusual position in the south
transept may be due to the Bishop Giso's quasi-conventual buildings on
the south of the church, which would have made this transept the most
common entrance to the cathedral at the time of the Conquest. A
Jacobean cover rests upon the font, and with it forms a charming
combination of pre-Gothic and post-Gothic Romanesque design.
[Illustration: The Font. (Drawn by W. Heywood.)]
At the south end of the south transept is the tomb of Bishop _de
Marchia_ (_ob._ 1302). The effigy lies in a recess, and is covered
with a canopy of three bays, the ogival arches, finished in sumptuous
crockets and finials, painted red and gold, the spandrels being
alternately green and red, powdered with a little pattern, the cusps
and mouldings scarlet and crimson and green and gold, with a dark
colour in the shadows. The effigy of the bishop is one of the best in
the cathedral, but even more lovely are the three little figures so
charmingly supported on foliage at the back of the tomb--two angels
and a bishop between them. The heads of these three figures have been
wickedly destroyed, but parts of the chains of the angels' censers
remain. Of the two beautiful angels which hold the cushion the heads
fortunately remain. Along the plinth of the tomb are six heads which
are quite unique in their treatment; three are bearded (one of these
is bald); one is shaven, tonsured, and turned half round in a
strangely naturalistic manner; another is also shaven, and the
remaining head is that of a woman in a veil. Two large faces are
carved on the east and west ends of the tomb, both with long wavy
hair--one of a woman, the other with a wavy beard. The central boss of
the vaulting is carved with five roses, which are coloured green,
their foliage, like all the foliage in this tomb, being gilt on a red
ground with the red edges showing. The little angels at the back had
gilded robes with red lining, and blue wings; the little bishop wore a
red chasuble with green (or blue) dalmatic, and red tunicle over his
white alb; the lappets of his mitre, which have survived, were red,
and traces of dark blue are on his shoes: there seem to have been
patterns on the various vestments, and the colours can still be seen
where their sleeves overlapped. Modern lettering has been cut across
the back of the tomb and coloured, by way of contrast to the ancient
work.
Under the battlemented cornice of the curtain-wall to the west a row
of heads is painted in fresco on a red ground, which seems to be part
of the same scheme with the curious heads on the plinth of de
Marchia's tomb: one of these, a woman in a dark-coloured hood, is
especially distinct. No doubt, the whole wall was originally painted.
The sill of the window over the tomb seems to have been used for some
special purpose: there is a passage cut through the splay of the
window, through which the sill may be reached, which is not the case
with the corresponding window of the north transept. The passage is
reached from a staircase concealed behind the curtain-wall, which is
reached by an ogee-headed doorway (with cusps in the head, finial, and
two small heads to its very beautiful mouldings). This staircase also
leads to a chamber on the level of the passage, but on the west side:
the interior of the chamber can be seen from the ground, as its old
wooden door is kept open. It is supposed by some to have been a
watching chamber in connection with the tomb. There can, indeed, be
little doubt that these arrangements had something to do with de
Marchia's tomb, or that the ornamented doorway in the curtain wall of
the same date as the tomb, together with the frescoes on the wall,
were connected with the strong efforts that were made at this time for
his canonisation. Perhaps the sill was used for the display of his
relics, and the chamber was the ordinary resting-place of the
reliquary, for which purpose the door and the absence of windows would
have fitted it.
Next to de Marchia's tomb on the other side, the monument of Joan
Viscountess _Lisle_ (_ob._ 1463) gives a good illustration of the
change of architecture in a hundred and fifty years. The crockets are
less free, and straight lines and square members abound; the fine ogee
curve of its single arch is weakened by the rather weedy cusps, its
shafts have become tiny mouldings, and their capitals mere knops. It
is coloured, too, all over, in green and red and yellow, but heavily
in comparison with its neighbour. The colour has been unusually well
preserved, owing to the fact that the tomb was plastered over, and not
discovered till 1809. There is no effigy, but a brass of apparently
recent date bears this inscription:--_Hic jacet Joanna Vicecomitilla
de Lisle una filiarum et haeredum Thomae Chedder, armiger quae fuit
uxor Joannis Vicecomitis de Lisle, filii et haeredis Joannis Comitis
Salopiæ et Margaretæ u[=x] ejus unius filiarum et haeredum Ricardi
comitis Warwici et Elizabethae uxoris ejus filiæ et haeredis Thomæ de
Berkley militis, domini de Berkeley, quæ obiit xv^{mo} die mensis Julii
A[=n][=n] D^i MCCCCLXIII._ Lady Lisle's husband was killed at the
battle of Chastillon (1453), when he was serving under his father, the
famous Earl of Shrewsbury. The painted designs above the three niches
should be noticed, and also those of the moulding and fleurs-de-lys at
the side. The monument was evidently used as a chantry chapel; but it
did not originally stand here. The brass by the north side of the
screen (p. 89) may mark the site.
The eastern aisles of the transepts are divided off into chapels by
two Perpendicular stone screens, that of the south transept having a
doorway in it for each chapel. These chapels are thus dedicated,
beginning from the south--St. Martin, St. Calixtus, St. David, Holy
Cross. From the last-named chapel the chapter-house is reached through
an Early English doorway, and a similar doorway (now partly blocked by
Biconyll's tomb) led from St. Martin's to a small building, supposed
to have been a vestry, which once stood outside. In the south transept
there are also--a small door to the tower, a small door with ogee head
(p. 96), a rather larger doorway with modern lintel leading to the
library (two shafts just above this door have been cut off, and faces
very roughly cut on their extremities by way of corbel), and the large
doorway leading to the cloister. The principal windows belong to the
original work, having been merely filled with Perpendicular tracery.
The windows of the south-east aisle contain Decorated tracery, but the
tracery of the north-east aisle is not good.
The western aisle of the south transept is open; that of the north
transept is cut off by a Perpendicular stone screen, which is solid in
the southern bay, and through carved in the northern. The latter is,
however, boarded up, and used as the vestry of the priest-vicars, the
other being the vestry of the vicars-choral. From the priest-vicars'
vestry a door leads into a small chamber now used for the water
supply, and over the doorway there is a small and pretty figure of a
woman under a little niche.
There are a very few fragments of Early Perpendicular glass in some of
the upper lights of the nave and transept windows. There are also two
modern windows at the west end of the nave, and one in the south
transept, of which I have been unable to discover the actual
designers' names.
TRANSEPT CHAPELS.--ST. MARTIN'S, where the obits of Savaric and
Jocelin were celebrated, is separated by a solid Perpendicular screen
from the adjoining chapel of St. Calixtus. It is now used as the
canons' vestry. Partly blocking the old Early English doorway is the
tomb of _Biconyll_, who was chancellor in 1454. His will, with a good
deal of information about him, is given in the _Somerset Proceedings_
for 1894, by Mr A.S. Bicknell, a descendant. The name was originally
Bykenhulle (A.S. for Beacon Hill), and has been spelt in forty-seven
different ways. His effigy lies on the tomb, dressed in cassock, long
surplice, and _cappa nigra_ or choral cope. The ends of the almuce can
be seen in the opening of the cope, and its hood hangs over the
shoulders.
ST. CALIXTUS' chapel is enclosed on the side of the choir aisle by
part of the beautiful ironwork from Beckington's tomb. The doors of
this and St. Martin's chapel are also made from the same iron screen.
Within the chapel, and near the screen, in strange contrast to it,
stands one of those indescribable stoves which disfigure the church,
its chimney, as usual, driven through the vault. The east end of the
chapel is occupied by the canopy which formed part of Bishop
_Beckington's_ tomb till the restoration of 1850, when it was, by an
inexcusable act of vandalism, taken down and fixed up in this place
(p. 125). This canopy did not cover the tomb, but stood at its foot so
as to form the eastern part of a chantry chapel, the tomb being on its
south side and the iron screen enclosing it where it jutted into the
choir on the north side. It will be noticed that its northern angle
was sloped off so as not to present an awkward corner on the side of
the choir. The reredos, for such it really is, is a most elaborate and
charming piece of work; "pretty" is perhaps the word that describes it
best, if "pretty" be taken in its very best sense. Here there is
nothing of the suave grace of de Marchia's tomb, nothing of the vigour
and truth of the transept capitals, nothing of the noble delicacy of
the north porch, which was a delicacy of intellect, while this is a
delicacy of execution. It is certainly decadent; even by the side of
Sugar's chapel it is over-refined and a thought effeminate, but, with
the colour that still covers it fresh and bright, it must have had all
the fascination of a splendid piece of jewellery, where profusion of
ornament is more desired than structural grace. The cornice is
particularly rich with a finely-carved vine ornament, and with two
angels, their long outstretched wings minutely feathered, who bear
shields having representations of the sacred wounds. The tabernacle
work behind the altar is gone, like the altar itself, with the
exception of the small niches which formed the sides of the central
composition, but the little canopy of the central niche remains to
give us a slight idea of its workmanship. The short wings of the
reredos have panels and traceried openings, and, on the south, a
piscina which looks almost too tiny to be real. The top has a toy-like
vault of fan-tracery with little pendants.
On the south side of St. Calixtus' chapel is _Dean Husse's_ alabaster
tomb (_ob._ 1305), which bears some of the best carved work in the
cathedral. The effigy itself is good: it represents the Dean clad in
the same choir vestments as the figures on the panels below. These
panels should on no account be missed. The first on the left
represents the Annunciation with a grace that is not less delightful
for the strain of exaggeration which pervades it. The Blessed Virgin
(see illustration on p. 101), a lovely figure in long, close-fitting
kirtle and mantle thrown gracefully over her shoulders, turns round
from the desk at which she is kneeling, and throws out her arms with a
quaint gesture of surprise; her crown and nimbus are both of enormous
size. A very small Gabriel dashes down from the top corner, bearing a
scroll which takes up the whole of the panel; he is preceded by a Dove
with very long rays. The next three panels (passing over these with
shields) contain three figures of clergy, two of which hold books, and
all their short staves. They wear the cassock, long surplice, and a
long, graceful choral cope, somewhat like the modern academic gown in
shape, the rounded ends of the hooded almuce reach to the knee and are
held at the chest by a cord with tassels. There is no better
representation of medieval choir vestments in existence than these
three figures. The last panel is a curious representation of the
Eternal Father holding the crucifix; this remarkable figure has a
_very_ long face, great masses of curly hair, a huge crown, and _very_
long hands.
The two chapels of the north transept can only be reached through the
choir aisle, no doubt because the way to the chapter-house was through
them. The first was probably ST DAVID'S chapel. Here should be noticed
the capital of the easternmost shaft of the second transept pier--a
head with curly hair and handsome smiling face. This shaft is
corbelled off, and the corbel through carved in the shape of a lizard
eating the leaves of a plant with berries thereon; it is a charming
study. The tomb of Bishop _Still_ (1543-1607) in this chapel is under
a handsome canopy of warm-coloured marbles, with black columns and
red, blue, and gold decoration. The effigy is dressed in rochet and
chimere, over which is a red robe lined with white fur; a ruff is
round the neck, a close-fitting black cap covers the head and part of
the ears, and the rochet is finished at the wrists with a plain black
band.
In the chapel of the HOLY CROSS the monument of the intruding Bishop
_Kidder_, Ken's successor (p. 158, _ob._ 1703), stands on the site of
the altar, whither it has been removed from its original position on
the south side of the choir. Standing in all its chilly
pretentiousness so near to Still's tomb, it well illustrates the
immense decline in monumental art which took place during the
seventeenth century. The bishop's daughter, who erected the monument,
is represented reclining, as, with one arm outstretched, she looks at
two urns which are supposed to contain the ashes of her father and
mother; underneath is a very long Latin inscription.
[Illustration: The Annunciation--Husse's Tomb.]
Against the north wall and close to the entrance to the chapter-house
stands the tomb of Bishop _Cornish_ (_ob._ 1513). He was chancellor
and precentor of Wells, and suffragan bishop under Bishop Fox of Bath
and Wells and Bishop Oldham of Exeter, his title being Bishop of
Tenos. Part of the inscription remains:--_Obiit supradictus d[)u]s
Thomas Tinensis Ep[)u]s tercio die mensis Julii anno ... MCCCCCXIII
Cujus Anime p_[_ropitietur Deus A_]_men_. The three panels on the
front bear shields--T with a sheaf of corn, Cornish's arms (on a
chevron between three birds' heads erased a mitre) and C with a sheaf
of corn; on the side panel are the arms of the chapter, the arms, that
is, of the see without the pastoral staff. Against the wall within the
canopy are some matrices of small brasses, in which the kneeling
figure of a bishop, a scroll, and two plates for inscriptions can be
traced.
[Illustration: Priest In Surplice--Husse's Tomb.]
From several peculiarities in Cornish's tomb, I am convinced that it
was also used as the _Easter Sepulchre_, where the Host was laid
during the concluding days of Holy Week. These sepulchres were often
made in connection with a tomb, and the usual place for them was
somewhere on the north side of the choir. The position here in the
chapel of the Holy Cross (which is an appropriate dedication) would be
particularly convenient for the purpose. The chapel was easily reached
by the clergy without their having to go into the public part of the
church; it was thus as safe a place as the choir itself, and at the
same time was much more open to the people, who could pay their
devotions from the transept, and through the open stone screen could
see the candles burning round the sepulchre.
[Illustration: The East End In 1823.]
Just where it could be best seen from the transept, on the eastern end
of the upper storey of the tomb under the canopy, is a carving of the
Resurrection. A wide arch is cut in the stone; within this is carved a
square opening, not through-cut, but farther recessed, to represent
the mouth of the sepulchre; in front of the square recess is the
figure of Christ, issuing from the tomb, clad only in a long mantle,
which He holds across His body; the hair is long, the face mutilated,
and the hands gone. At the left is the kneeling figure of a bishop,
the head gone, but part of the staff remaining in the hands. There is
a great crack (now filled with mortar) round these two figures, as if
the attack of the iconoclasts had been made with heavy tools. A
pedestal at the right-hand corner of the square recess seems a later
insertion, as it is loose and does not exactly fit; probably it was
added soon after the tomb was made, to hold a small silver figure of
an angel, or of a soldier, as there is a little hole (now filled with
mortar) at a height above it convenient for rivetting a metal figure.
The Sepulchre proper would have consisted of a small coped chest, in
shape like a reliquary, round which would be painted the incidents of
the Passion. The slab of the tomb, being without the usual recumbent
effigy, would have formed the place on which this "coffer" rested,
this being the usual method when a tomb was used for the purpose. On
Good Friday, the Host, often in a specially-made pyx, was with much
ceremony laid in the coffer, together with the altar-cross, and there
was kept, surrounded by candles and guarded by watchers, till Easter
Day. We know that there was a special provision at Wells for one
candle to burn continuously within the Sepulchre "_I cereus in
sepulchro cum corpori Dominico qui continue ardebit donec Matutinae
cantentur in die Paschae_" (_MS. Harl._ 1682, _fo._ 5). There is a
small hole in the east wall of this chapel, close to the tomb and a
little below the level of of the slab whereon the coffer would have
rested; this may have held a sconce or some ornament. But the _cereus
in sepulchro_ was probably a large candle within the chapel, and in
accordance with general usage, there would have been other candles
burning upon cressets. There are two other holes in the north wall, a
few inches to the east of the top of the tomb, which may have held
rods for the curtains that were used in much profusion for the
adornment of Easter sepulchres. While the coffer stood on the slab it
would have hidden the carving of the Resurrection; but on its removal
on Easter Day, the carving would have stood in full view of the
people, bright, no doubt, with colour and surrounded by lights. It
will further be noticed that the tomb stands eighteen inches away from
the east wall, the space being now filled with modern masonry; this
was probably in order to leave ample room for the sacred ministers in
their vestments; had it stood close against the wall the ceremonial
could not have been conveniently carried out.
Near the tomb is the doorway, with a fine old oak door, which leads
into the chapter-house; and above the tomb is a window which was
blocked up when the vestibule was built, and a bracket set in the
masonry.
THE CLOCK is a great favourite with visitors, who generally congregate
in the north transept at the striking of the hour and laugh gently to
one another when the quaint performance is over. "Jack Blandiver"
(this is the name given him by the country people for some
undiscovered reason) kicks his bell at each quarter in the most
life-like manner, his feet trembling afterwards with the exertion; but
at the hour, after Jack has sounded his four quarters, as the big bell
begins to toll, the four "knights" above the clock rush round in
contrary directions, and charge each other with so much ferocity that
one unfortunate is felled at each encounter, and has barely time to
recover his upright position before he is again and again knocked down
with resounding clatter upon his horse's back. The other three fight
twenty-four times a day unscathed.
The clock was thus described by Mr Octavius Morgan, F.R.S., in the
_Archaeological Journal_ for 1883:
"In the Cathedral of Wells is what remains of the ancient clock which
once belonged to Glastonbury Abbey. This very curious timepiece is
said to have been originally executed by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of
the abbey, but at the cost of Adam de Sodbury, who was promoted to the
abbacy in 1322. It appears to have been originally placed in the south
transept of Glastonbury Abbey Church, where it continued till the
Dissolution, when, tradition says, it was carried to Wells and placed
in the north transept of the cathedral with all its belongings--viz.
the figure which strikes the quarters with his heels on two little
bells within the church, and the two "knights" which perform the same
service with their battle axes on the outside. The inside figure
strikes the hour on a bell before him with a battle-axe in his hands.
The face of the dial is 6 feet in diameter, contained in a square
frame, the spandrels of which are filled with angels holding in their
hands the head of a man; the outer circle is painted blue, with gilt
stars scattered over it, and is divided into twenty-four parts,
corresponding with the twenty-four hours; the horary numbers are in
black-letter characters on circular tablets, and mark the hours from
twelve at noon to midnight, and from thence to midnight again (noon
and midnight being marked by a cross instead of a numeral). The hour
index, a large gilt star or sun, is attached to the machinery behind a
second circle which conceals all except the index. On the second
circle are marked the minutes, indicated by a smaller star; a third
and lesser circle contains the numbers of the days of the month, which
is marked by a point attached to a small circular opening in the
plate, through which the phases of the moon are shown. On the opposite
side is a female figure, with the motto _Semper peragrat Phoebe_.
"An arched pediment surmounts the whole, with an octagonal projection
from its base like a gallery, capped with a row of battlements,
forming a cornice to the face of the clock. A panelled and
battlemented turret is fixed in the centre, round which four figures
mounted on horses revolve in opposite directions, as if charging at a
tournam
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