When in 1050 the see of Devon and Cornwall was transferred from Credition to Exeter under Bishop Leofric, the abbey church of St. Mary and St. Peter was adopted as the new cathedral, a building of some pretensions for its period which sufficed until the advent of the first Norman bishop, Warelast, a nephew of the Conqueror and later chaplain to both Rufus and Henry I. A larger structure was then begun further west, of which only the present transept towers survive; and this had done less than eighty years when, in circa 1260, Walter Bronscombe, the first of a famous line of building bishops, with whom the work of enlarging and adorning the cathedral was generally nearer a passion than a duty, began the eastward extension of the presbytery on the site of the original Saxon church, together with a Lady Chapel in the fashion of the time. With the exception of this extension, the Norman plan was followed throughout the ensuing reconstruction, the height of the towers, which were retained as transepts and are unique in England save at the daughter church of Ottery St. Mary, regulating the scale throughout. Bronscombe’s work embraced the eastern chapels and the Lady Chapel to the cill level. Peter Quivil (1280-1291) continued it and adapted the towers as transepts, and under Thomas Bytton (1292-1307), the presbytery was completed with its aisles, and the Norman quire remodelled. Walter Stapledon, who followed him (1308-1326), furnished this quire largely out of his own pocket. A chaplain to Pope Clement V, Lord Treasurer of England and one of the first courtiers of his period, he did much to create in the cathedral that “radiantly decorative” character that is still its very individual charm, and the fine screen, bishop’s throne and rich sedilia date from his episcopate. He was murdered by the mob, defending London for Edward II, but his successor, John Grandisson (1327-1369), continued the work with unabated enthusiasm, and under him the nave was completed and the whole vaulted. By the close of the fourteenth century, Exeter was one of the most sumptuously appointed of the English cathedrals, possessed of a rare and dazzling consistence in its “luxurious spendthrift art” that has happily to a great extent been preserved through the vicissitudes of its later history.
Built of grey stone in a red sandstone country, the cathedral fabric, with the sole exception of the towers, represents a steady and continuous growth from the close of the thirteenth and throughout the fourteenth century, and is the finest surviving work of that most intriguing period. The plan is symmetrical throughout, chapel to chapel, tower to tower, window to window; and the design has a real exuberance and sunny charm in its display of tall pinnacles, striding buttresses and ranges of broad, splayed windows, with an imaginative diversity of Geometrical tracery that makes each a new excitement. The west front is built in three planes, with a curved triangular window in the gable and a vast lovely window of complex tracery filing most of the upper wall. The entrance screen dates from the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and displays in three tiers an array of kings, popular saints .and angels under canopies, much damaged, largely as a result of the annual Guy Fawkes bonfires held for centuries outside the church, and now considerably renewed.
In spite of its moderate dimensions, the interior gives an impression of peculiar spaciousness, enhanced by the consistent excellence of the proportions, the beauty of the lighting and the long uninterrupted stream of the vault through nave and quire. The piers, with their unusual stone seating around the bases, are built of massive blocks of unpolished Purbeck marble, sharply and exquisitely molded into a multiplicity of shafts, their soft blue-grey colouring contrasting with the yellow sandstone of the arcade and the white Caen freestone of the triforium and clerestory. The low band of the triforium consists of a blind arcade of small cusped arches, grouped four to a bay, surmounted by an elegant pierced parapet of a double range of quatrefoils. Above this rise the spacious windows of the clerestory, and over all, the splendid vault springs from slender shafts that descend low to the crisply molded capitals of the piers, terminating in beautiful tapering corbels of massed foliage, with occasional figures, that incorporate some of the finest carving in the cathedral. The ridge line has a series of carved bosses, the finest of which are in the quire, with subjects such as the Crucifixion and Murder of Becket alternating with the foliations beloved of the Exeter craftsmen.
The presbytery is the noblest part of the building, dating from the close of the thirteenth century when the style, unshackled from outworn precedent, blossomed into a short Spring of loveliness that was soon again to lose its freshness in a new subjection. The proportions, moldings and carvings are as nearly perfect as is possible to the human mind, the only comparable work of the same period being the chapter-house at Southwell Minster. The preservation of the Fabric Rolls allows us to follow the construction step by step, and learn something of the men responsible for the achievement. The carver of all this beauty of corbel and boss was William of Miontacute, from just over the border in Somerset; his portrait can be seen under the fiigure of St. Catherine on one of the corbels. The quire fortunately retains much of its original furniture, including the bishop’s throne, 57 feet high and incorporating some of the finest woodcarving in England, which, together with the stalls at Winchester and Lancaster and the sedilia at Beverley, forms our criterion of fourteenth-century carpentry. Up to the close of this period the carpenter followed the mason’s ideals - the work, when coloured and gilt, might easily be taken for stone - just as later the stonemason copied the carpenter in his slender pinnacled creations. Master Thomas de Winton, who was responsible for the stalls at Winchester, came to Exeter to choose the timber for the new throne, and no doubt provided the design. He was paid 3s. a week for four weeks, and 5s. for his journey home. The head carpenter, Robert de Galmeton, was paid 2s. 6d. a week, and the head carver, Walter of Membury, 2s. 9d. - both Devon men. The throne was finally set up in 1312, and the great reredos, since destroyed, with its fiifty statues and silver dorsal, the tall sedilia and the pulpitum followed shortly after. The latter is only in part preserved, the solid wall on the quire side having been broken through, though Scott, to his credit, managed to save the whole from demolition. The gallery of panels above originally contained sculpture (the Roll for 1322-1323 mentions "45 images for 11 panels, with a Doom"), and the present paintings that take its place are of the Stuart period. At the time of the Commonwealth, a wall was erected at the crossing by the Puritans, dividing the cathedral into two preaching churches, the “East” and “West Peters." The credit for its removal belongs to Bishop Seth Ward of happy memory, who after the Restoration laid down some £25,000 on necessary repairs and renovations.
The building of the nave was interrupted by the Black Death, and when the pestilence had abated, no glaziers could be found for the windows, which had to be made up with wattle and daub. When work was resumed on the vault and the windows reopened, a great net, extending from roof to flloor, was bought to keep pigeons out of the quire. The piers were worked at the Purbeck quarries at Corfe by the Canons, father and son, and shipped by sea, thence up the Exe to Topsham. The beautiful minstrels’ gallery in the north triforium was built for the Palm Sunday services, and is faced with niches containing angels playing musical instruments. The great window of the west end is of nine lights, incorporating in its head a splendid circle); its eighteenth-century glass by William Peckett of York was replaced in 1904, but some fragments by this craftsman survive in the portion of the cloister reconstructed by Pearson. In the transepts, the elegant corbelled galleries were added under Quivil to complete a continuous triforium passage around the building; and in the north is the great astronomical clock - a type of mechanical device for which the West Country was famous during the Middle Ages.
Throughout the cathedral, the chapels and chantries form a splendid series, with their beautiful late screens of wood and stone, and the sepulchral work is particularly notable, including effiigies of the bishops from Bartholomew in 1184 to Cotton in 1621. Sometimes these tombs are matched, with typical Exeter regularity, across the church, as with Bishops Bronscombe and Stafford in the presbytery, under canopies added in the fifteenth century, and the rich sixteenth—century chantries of Bishop Oldham and Sir John Speke. A curious little chapel dedicated to St. Radegunde, and built in the thickness of the wall of the west front, contained the tomb of Bishop Grandisson, but was sacked during the reign of Elizabeth. The rectangular chapter-house adjoining the south transept was built in the thirteenth century and largely remodelled in the fifteenth, when the large windows were inserted. The disused Bishop's Palace, of which the garden envelops the east end, contains a thirteenth-century chapel ‘improved’ by Butterfield, and a pleasant Tudor fragment.
Pevsner.
These two great towers, one alone with a hundred Norman arches, have stood eight centuries, the piers and arches and the roof have stood for six, and still we may be sure that all this beauty about us will be drawing pilgrims unto it in another thousand years.
We may be long before we come indoors, for we shall wish to see the many views of it outside, the distant views in which we see its great mass rising nobly above the roofs of Exeter, or the nearer view from the bishop’s garden, or the many peeps of it as we walk about the Close. We shall stand by Alfred Drury’s statue of Bishop Hooker sitting in an armchair with his Bible, and look at the fine north porch in the shadow of the tower, and we shall stand long by the great west doorway marvelling at its tiers of statues. The north porch has two rows of niches in which a mother has set seven statues as a thank-offering for the return of three sons from the war; St George is in the centre, and there are figures of the patron saints of six of our allies.
The west front has three rows of statues with angels, prophets, apostles, soldiers, priests, and kings. On the gable above them all is Peter the patron saint, and among the 60 or 70 figures looking out stand Athelstan and the Confessor, Canute and the Conqueror, Ethelbert our first Christian king, and Alfred the founder of the nation. The three doorways are beautifully enriched, and the central arch has a boss of the Crucifixion. Set within the thickness of the great west wall at this central doorway is the odd little chantry mentioned in a deed of 1220; it was probably part of the Norman
This great sculptured screen with its gallery of statues is 14th century; the north porch is Norman with a 15th century front, and the statues in the niches are by Mr Herbert Read, the Exeter sculptor.
It is all older than the rich fan-vaulting which was to come in Henry the Seventh’s chapel and St George’s at Windsor, but these corbels are matchless, and they are being painted in their original colours. The fans at the east end are painted all the way, the handles, the shafts, the little capitals, and the ribs in red and gold; soon this roof will be once more as the builders saw it long ago.
There are 30 of these fans from end to end, beginning with these lovely handles and ending on this line of beautiful bosses that run for 300 feet. The eye runs along it all as it runs along some great avenue of trees - of graceful silver birches if we look up, but of mighty oaks if we look down, for these piers that run along for a hundred yards are each made up of 16 shafts and have 8 depths of moulding in their arches. Above each bay are four small arches in the triforium, with triple shafts and faces in the capitals, and above these runs a parapet of quatrefoils with the huge clerestory windows behind them.
Though the great screen carries the organ it does not break the view, and so vast is this grandeur about us that we may all too easily miss the minstrel gallery set high up in the triforium, a gem of the 14th century which looks today as it looked then, with l4 decorated niches in which a heavenly choir is playing musical instruments (harp, trumpet, bagpipe, guitar, tambourine, cymbal), and Edward the Third and his Queen Philippa hold up niches at the ends. The gallery has been restored in our time in its medieval colour, and is a promise of the exquisite beauty slowly coming back to this medieval fane.
But the most famous of them all are the two pathetic scenes of Calvary, with the most moving figures of Mary and John, and the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, in which we see the four assassins and his faithful attendant. There can hardly have been in medieval England better sculptors than the men who did these, and we know the name of one of them; he is called Roger, and he used to take his dog to work with him. It would sit in this place looking at its master chiselling away, and when he finished a corbel Roger would sign it with the portrait of his little dog. Here it is.
It is the choir that is the supreme glory of Exeter. The wonder of the walls of the nave continues through it, piers, arches, triforium, roof, and all; the great choir screen (crowned with one of the best organs in the land) is the guardian of the inner heart of a shrine that is hardly to be described in words.
The screen itself has stood 600 years and has three great arches with richly carved spandrels, and a row of painted panels over them. The arches rest on clustered columns and we pass through them under a vaulted roof to the golden gates into the choir. The paintings running along the top of the screen are 17th century and of no great merit; they show scenes from the Creation to the life of Christ. Under each of the side arches have been set two holy tables in memory of a cathedral Chancellor 700 years ago and of Bishop Trefusis and his wife, who worked in the diocese for half a century. The great choir (with ten thousand tiles in the floor) is the place where medieval and modern beauty meet. The stalls are Sir Gilbert Scott’s and the reredos is from his design, but for the rest we are back in the 13th and 14th centuries; even much of the glass in the great east window is from those days. The new stalls are crowned with pinnacled canopies and the ends of the seats are carved with about fifty natural scenes (birds, beasts, animals, flowers), with figures of angels and men illustrating the great psalm of praise.
These medieval treasures are hid except for those who look for them, but there are two medieval masterpieces in the choir which none may miss. Both have been here 600 years and more, both rise to great heights; one is the Bishop’s Throne richly carved in oak, the other is the sedilia richly carved in stone.
The Bishop’s Throne has no rival of its kind. It was made to the order of Bishop Stapledon in 1316. He paid £300 in our money for it, and the men put it together with wooden pegs and without a single nail. It stands 59 feet high and has hundreds of little faces, wise and foolish, and the panels round the bishop’s seat have in them painted portraits of the four -great bishop builders, Warelwast, Quivil, Grandisson, and Stapledon. The throne is the earliest and most splendid of all the wooden thrones in our land. Only Hereford and St David’s possess such medieval masterpieces. It may be that the reason why this throne survived the Reformation is the fact that it is made without a nail, so that it could be taken to pieces and hidden with ease. It stands as a striking example of the way in which the craftsman in wood challenged and surpassed his fellow craftsman in stone.
The carving on the throne is distinguished by the exquisite grace of the foliage. Small heads of oxen, sheep, pigs, dogs, monkeys, and other animals enrich the corners of the pinnacles and there is room within its panelled base not only for the bishop but also for chairs for two chaplains. It was in this lovely place that William of Orange sat a few days after he had landed at Brixham and as he sat here he realised by the applause of the people that he had come to receive a welcome.
The exquisitely sculptured stone canopies of the sedilia, crowned with wonderful tabernacle work, are rich with the daintiest imaginable carvings of birds and animals and foliage. They are set in a bay by the altar and the three seats are carved on the back with portraits of Leofric between the Confessor and his Queen. It is in the middle seat that what is thought to be Leofric’s stone is set. The dainty columns dividing the seats rest on lions, and the whole structure is one of great dignity and beauty.
In front of the sedilia is the magnificent reredos glowing with alabaster adorned with precious stones, with Christ Ascending above, and below the Transfiguration and the Day of Pentecost. It is curious to remember that half a century ago the bishop brought a famous law case against the dean and chapter on the ground that this great structure was illegal here.
The choir pulpit is modern, like the pulpit in the nave. That in the choir is richly carved with over 60 figures showing Christ blessing the children, the Sermon on the Mount, Peter at Pentecost, and Paul in Athens and Rome; the nave pulpit, in memory of Bishop Patteson, has 20 figures showing the Bishop’s martyrdom, the martyrdom of St Alban, and Boniface leaving for Germany. Both pulpits are sculptured in marble. By the pulpit lies one of the six bishops sleeping here - Bishop Marshall of the 12th century, lying on a tomb of great splendour with his feet on a lion. Before the altar lies Bishop Bitton, whose episcopal rings have been recovered from his coffin and are in the library.
Bishop Bronescombe must come into any group of the finest effigies in England, and he is 13th century, with all the splendour the artist of those days put into his glorious robes. Two centuries older than his tomb, his figure holds us spellbound. It is believed to be the work of the Westminster Abbey school of craftsmen. We should note the lion turning at his feet.
Entering through this splendour, we are charmed with the simplicity of the lady chapel, which has two charming canopied recesses on each side, stone seats for priests on each side of the altar, and a reredos of painted panels running across the east wall. The panels are modern, filling the nine 14th century canopies of the reredos, and they have familiar Bible scenes, from the Garden of Eden to Galilee. Above them the great wall is filled with one of the best windows the cathedral has, with 25 figures of Our Lord, saints, and apostles, and unusual roundels in the tracery.
The bosses in the roof are fine and beautiful, but it is the two pairs of canopied tombs set in the walls that draw the eye. On one side lie two bishops, on the other a judge and his wife. Both recesses are the work of Peter Quivil in the 13th century, but the judge and his wife are Sir John and Lady Doddridge who died in Jacobean days; he was known as the Sleepy Judge because he would shut his eyes on the bench. He lies in an ermine cape and his judge’s cap, and his lady’s figure has drawn a host of women pilgrims to it by the exquisiteness of her dress. It is perfect in its detail, and so well preserved that the lace on her cuffs has been copied on a new pillow, as it was copied originally from one of her gowns. Her dress is enriched with brocaded roses and carnations, and charming she looks with her great ruff below her curly head, lying on her side with a skull in her hand.
The choir aisles are rich in monuments and chapels. In the north are the chapels of St Mary Magdalene, St George, and St Andrew, in the south are St Saviour’s, St Gabriel’s, and St James’s. St George’s chapel is interesting for a window and a tomb. The tomb is that of Sir John Speke of 1517, an ancestor of the African explorer; Sir John lies in chain mail on his tomb under an elaborate canopy. The window is copied from a picture by Ary Scheffer, with 15 figures in five panels, showing “the world drawn into Him.” The altar of the chapel is lovely in simple oak, with four small figures and our patron saint and the Madonna at the sides; the roof is attractive with 22 pendants.
In the Mary Magdalene chapel is a beautiful floor brass of William Langton, a kinsman of Bishop Stafford, and at the wall facing the Stafford tomb is the sculptured group of three Carews, Sir Gawen and his wife of Elizabethan days, two painted figures at prayer, with their nephew Sir Peter, whom we see again as an attractive small figure kneeling over the tomb of Sir Walter Raleigh’s half-brother in the south transept. He was “slain in Ireland,” and lies there, but here he is twice in stone.
Of the monuments in the choir aisles two stand out looking across the aisle at one another. In them lie Bishop Stapledon and his brother Richard. The bishop lies under the arch facing the sedilia across the altar and looks into the aisle across which Sir Richard lies under a pinnacled canopy, with heads on cusps and a curious sculpture of a man holding his horse. The bishop, who was killed by a London mob after he had done so much for this place and founded Exeter College at Oxford, has on his canopy a painting of Our Lord standing on the world, a small earthly king in scarlet taking refuge in his shadow.
In the opposite aisle lie two crusaders with swords and shields, striking figures with heads on helmets, one with a tiny angel on his shoulder, and not far away lies Bishop Cotton of Charles Stuart’s days, in his flat hat and his long beard, with a gold-winged angel blowing the bubbles of time and Father Time himself holding a death’s head and an hour-glass. A lifelike bust of Edward Cotton of 50 years later leans out of a laurel wreath.
There are many tablets and portraits in these two choir aisles. Rachael O’Brien is remembered by a marble figure of a weeping woman with a cherub; she died in 1800, still in her teens, while trying to save her child from fire. William David is remembered because he was a chorister who for 50 years helped worshippers here by the music of his voice, which he retained to the day of his death at 80.
In glass cases are some interesting documents: a papal bull of 1495, Stephen Langton’s confirmation of the election of a dean, and Queen Elizabeth’s copy of her father’s will. Fine sculptures face each other across the transepts. Under the face of the old clock in the north transept is James Northcote RA with his brush and palette, a splendid figure by Chantrey; and facing him in the south transept is an engaging group of sculptures of the 14th and 16th centuries. Lying on a magnificent tomb with 18 slender canopies and a mass of pinnacles is Hugh Courtenay with his wife Margaret Bohun, he with a lion at his feet and a rich belt and sword, she with extraordinary swans, and both with angels kneeling. They have been here 600 years.
Behind their tomb is that of Sir John and Lady Gilbert, two delightful figures, he in armour with a high collar, she with a ruff and an embroidered skirt. Sir John was half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh,
and above their tomb is another kinsman of Raleigh, Peter Carew, kneeling.
High up in the transept walls are two charming galleries reached from the clerestory, and off the transepts are the two chapels of St Paul and St John, St Paul’s with remarkable bosses and a copy of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. Among the transept memorials are the 12th century tomb of Bishop John, the carved and painted figure of Matthew Godwin (1586) kneeling at an altar rich with cherubs descending from the clouds, a bust of Dr Aubrey Spencer, Bishop of Jamaica, and a marble figure in memory of Dean Palmer.
But the chief interest of the transepts lies in its north wall, where the old face of one of the most remarkable clocks in the country still carries on though the works are new behind it; its ancient works lie down below in the chantry of William Sylke, a canon whose shrouded effigy lies on his tomb, with the warning words for all of us: I am what thou wilt be, and was what thou art. He lies here, a poor battered thing, with the old works of the clock to keep him company. The chantry enclosing them is Tudor, and is interesting because the door leading into it is made from a piece of the 14th century woodwork of the choir. It is curious that beside it hangs a very old door with a cat hole at the bottom of it, leading to the works of the clock. In this odd corner of the cathedral hang one of the oldest clocks in the world and the two oldest doors in Exeter.
On the wall by the clock two medieval wall paintings stand out in much of the original brilliance they were given in the 15th century. Both are rather stiff pictures of subjects common on church walls in medieval times. One shows the Resurrection, with Christ stepping out of a big stone tomb. One of the soldiers is awake and curious, two others are also awake but evidently dumbfounded, while the rest sleep. In the distance the women are seen approaching, the sexton comes with his spade, and his wife with a lantern. The other painting is formal and decorative in its design. Its artist has crowded scenes of the Madonna into a pointed arch above a row of battlements. Richly arrayed in a brocaded robe over a red tunic, the Madonna floats surrounded by an aureole of red and yellow rays held by ten angels. Two angels are about to crown her and above the crown the red-robed Father and Son give their blessing, while a white dove flutters between them. On each side of the central group are Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, and Virtues, duly labelled and carrying their sceptres, swords, spears, and chant-books - these drawn the wrong way round! As a work of art this scene is not important, but it has quaint and eager spirit in some of the figures.
Looking down into the nave is the great west window, its 14th century stonework glazed with 20th century glass. It fills the west wall above the three doorways and the tiers-of statues, and its glass covers over a thousand square feet. Below are nine lancets forming three groups, and resting upon them in the tracery is a great circle 20 feet across, filled with richly moulded stonework and glowing with angels, shields, and coats-of-arms. The window is in memory of Bishop Temple, and the great figures in it are Peter enthroned, Edward the Confessor and his queen, and six bishops of the diocese, among them Miles Coverdale writing the Bible and Bishop Temple holding the crown, wearing the robes he wore when he placed the crown on the head of Edward the Seventh. Another fine modern window is to Dr Walter John Edwards, in recognition of his work in India; he died in 1914, and the window has four dainty figures and four fine scenes of the early days of Our Lord.
There is a little old glass in the clerestory looking down on the bishop’s throne, an ancient portrait of Bishop Staflbrd kneeling in a window of Mary Magdalene’s chapel where he lies, and in the great east window of the choir the most precious glass of all, much of it original. The window fills the east wall to the roof, and is divided into nine lancets below and a variety of panels above. In the old glass are shields and saints, kings and patriarchs, St Thomas, St Catherine, Mary Magdalene, St Sidwell with the scythe of her martyrdom, and Helena crowned.
Easily missed is one work of art which we found in the little used St Edmund’s chapel, set in a corner of the west wall; it is the big picture of Gethsemane by Tom Mostyn. Not easily missed is the bronze of a steel helmeted soldier with his bayonet fixed, which may seem to some a little out place in this great nave. It is one of a group of memorials to our heroes. One is a bust of General Park, who in the Boer War led the charge of the Devons at Wagon Hill and saved Ladysmith; and there is a bust of General Buller, a wall sculpture with two figures in memory of Flora Macdonald’s son, and one of the rare modern brass portraits, in memory of Dr John Horder, an extraordinary man who became a missionary bishop.
We have walked long without tiring in this most friendly of all cathedrals (with a rest room at the Deanery for those who do tire, and with even a room where the stranger may have tea). We sat in this north aisle one Sunday morning when the nave was crowded and we had two peeps between these mighty pillars, like looking through a forest of clustered trunks. One peep was of a Prime Minister’s son, the grey-bearded bishop in the pulpit, the other peep was of these tiny silk flags on the wall, one of them having been to the Arctic in the search for Sir John Franklin, and one having been on the sledge of Captain Scott. Not stone only are our great cathedrals; are they not of the very stuff of which our race is made?
Flickr.
As we come into the Close through the narrow way that brings us from the busy street to the very heart of Exeter, this wonder of the centuries bursts upon us. It has been as we see it for about 600 years; it was dreamed of and begun 300 years before that, and it stands as the witness of the genius and devotion of the craftsmen of three centuries, bishops and builders, masons and carpenters and glaziers, painters and sculptors, and Devon men all - for this great shrine of Devon is believed to be Devonshire through and through.
It has all the beauty of Devon in it, its little gems of loveliness, its sweeping majesty. These wondrous towers that have stood 800 years have something in them of the grandeur of the hills, and set between them is this great splendour facing the wind and the rain with the strength of a rock, yet indoors with the tender beauty of a flower. We have no other west front like it; we have no pair of towers like these, we believe there is no architectural cunning in the land that can compare with the way in which this marvellous roof is buttressed and held in place. It is the longest roof ever built in the Pointed Style of architecture, it is four feet thick, and those who know it best are not sure which it is that most commands their admiration - the cleverness of the men who built it to last through all these centuries, or the genius of those medieval masters who made it so beautiful. Out of the 12th and 13th and 14th centuries has come no single thing surpassing this.
If it is true that Leofric’s stone is in this wonderful sedilia, then we may think it the most precious stone in Devon, for it is the beginning of this wonder that we see. We have to think of it as the very stone to which Edward the Confessor and his Queen Editha led the Saxon Bishop on his great day. There he sat enthroned in his Saxon Cathedral, which the Normans refashioned into a greater place adorned with these two towers. The Saxon shrine has passed away, and the Norman has vanished save for the towers and the walls of the nave, and in the hundred years from 1257 to 1369 the cathedral set up by the men who followed the Conqueror was transformed into this marvellous shrine, which is for the south of England in the west what Canterbury is in the east.
Leofric the Saxon, Warelwast the Norman, Peter Quivil, John Grandisson, Walter Stapledon - five names they are that must be for ever famous here, and Leofric lies in primitive simplicity with his great successors painted round the Bishop’s Throne. Here is the spirit of Time which binds our England as by a chain whose links are centuries. In the great west window stands Leofric holding up the charter the Confessor gave him, and within these walls is the charter itself, older than the Conqueror.
These two great towers, one alone with a hundred Norman arches, have stood eight centuries, the piers and arches and the roof have stood for six, and still we may be sure that all this beauty about us will be drawing pilgrims unto it in another thousand years.
We may be long before we come indoors, for we shall wish to see the many views of it outside, the distant views in which we see its great mass rising nobly above the roofs of Exeter, or the nearer view from the bishop’s garden, or the many peeps of it as we walk about the Close. We shall stand by Alfred Drury’s statue of Bishop Hooker sitting in an armchair with his Bible, and look at the fine north porch in the shadow of the tower, and we shall stand long by the great west doorway marvelling at its tiers of statues. The north porch has two rows of niches in which a mother has set seven statues as a thank-offering for the return of three sons from the war; St George is in the centre, and there are figures of the patron saints of six of our allies.
The west front has three rows of statues with angels, prophets, apostles, soldiers, priests, and kings. On the gable above them all is Peter the patron saint, and among the 60 or 70 figures looking out stand Athelstan and the Confessor, Canute and the Conqueror, Ethelbert our first Christian king, and Alfred the founder of the nation. The three doorways are beautifully enriched, and the central arch has a boss of the Crucifixion. Set within the thickness of the great west wall at this central doorway is the odd little chantry mentioned in a deed of 1220; it was probably part of the Norman
cathedral, and is known as the chapel of Radegunde. Bishop Grandisson prepared it for his tomb and was laid here in 1369 but his bones have been scattered no man knows where; he is lost to the place for which he did so much, but in the roof of this small shrine we may see the holes from which were hung the lamps which burned for him. On this roof also is a curious figure of Christ, an ancient sculpture.
This great sculptured screen with its gallery of statues is 14th century; the north porch is Norman with a 15th century front, and the statues in the niches are by Mr Herbert Read, the Exeter sculptor.
We come into the nave and stand enchanted with the glory of it all. The roof is twenty yards above our heads and the end of it is a hundred yards away. The clustered piers rise like trees in a forest, and between the great bays running up past the clerestory into the wondrous roof are the loveliest fans we have seen in any cathedral. They have handles like delicate ivory, exquisitely carved. They run up the walls and are held by a neat little band like a jewel at the level of the beautiful triforium, and they branch out until they meet at the height of the roof in a line of bosses. It is the handles of the fans that are so captivating, the wonderful corbels so elegantly shaped and packed with work of rare delicacy.
It is all older than the rich fan-vaulting which was to come in Henry the Seventh’s chapel and St George’s at Windsor, but these corbels are matchless, and they are being painted in their original colours. The fans at the east end are painted all the way, the handles, the shafts, the little capitals, and the ribs in red and gold; soon this roof will be once more as the builders saw it long ago.
There are 30 of these fans from end to end, beginning with these lovely handles and ending on this line of beautiful bosses that run for 300 feet. The eye runs along it all as it runs along some great avenue of trees - of graceful silver birches if we look up, but of mighty oaks if we look down, for these piers that run along for a hundred yards are each made up of 16 shafts and have 8 depths of moulding in their arches. Above each bay are four small arches in the triforium, with triple shafts and faces in the capitals, and above these runs a parapet of quatrefoils with the huge clerestory windows behind them.
Though the great screen carries the organ it does not break the view, and so vast is this grandeur about us that we may all too easily miss the minstrel gallery set high up in the triforium, a gem of the 14th century which looks today as it looked then, with l4 decorated niches in which a heavenly choir is playing musical instruments (harp, trumpet, bagpipe, guitar, tambourine, cymbal), and Edward the Third and his Queen Philippa hold up niches at the ends. The gallery has been restored in our time in its medieval colour, and is a promise of the exquisite beauty slowly coming back to this medieval fane.
Wonderful in carving and colour is this great array of corbels and bosses. The best of all the corbels has been finished and is superbly gilded; it is the one in the choir which shows Our Lord as a child in his mother’s arms, affectionately looking at her and holding her chin. One of the corbels in the choir is a wonderful carving of oak leaves and acorns, another shows Aaron and Hur holding up the hands of Moses, others have natural foliage with nuts and vine and fruit. The immense bosses, about a yard across, have foliage and faces and such carvings as Samson slaying the lion, the crowning of the Virgin, the Crucifixion, David playing the harp, Balaam on the ass, and a mermaid.
But the most famous of them all are the two pathetic scenes of Calvary, with the most moving figures of Mary and John, and the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, in which we see the four assassins and his faithful attendant. There can hardly have been in medieval England better sculptors than the men who did these, and we know the name of one of them; he is called Roger, and he used to take his dog to work with him. It would sit in this place looking at its master chiselling away, and when he finished a corbel Roger would sign it with the portrait of his little dog. Here it is.
It is the choir that is the supreme glory of Exeter. The wonder of the walls of the nave continues through it, piers, arches, triforium, roof, and all; the great choir screen (crowned with one of the best organs in the land) is the guardian of the inner heart of a shrine that is hardly to be described in words.
The screen itself has stood 600 years and has three great arches with richly carved spandrels, and a row of painted panels over them. The arches rest on clustered columns and we pass through them under a vaulted roof to the golden gates into the choir. The paintings running along the top of the screen are 17th century and of no great merit; they show scenes from the Creation to the life of Christ. Under each of the side arches have been set two holy tables in memory of a cathedral Chancellor 700 years ago and of Bishop Trefusis and his wife, who worked in the diocese for half a century. The great choir (with ten thousand tiles in the floor) is the place where medieval and modern beauty meet. The stalls are Sir Gilbert Scott’s and the reredos is from his design, but for the rest we are back in the 13th and 14th centuries; even much of the glass in the great east window is from those days. The new stalls are crowned with pinnacled canopies and the ends of the seats are carved with about fifty natural scenes (birds, beasts, animals, flowers), with figures of angels and men illustrating the great psalm of praise.
But it is below these seats that the most fascinating carving lies, for here are some of the earliest miserere carvings in this country. There are 51 of them, mostly 13th century, an extraordinary collection among which we see a crocodile swallowing its prey, an elephant between a monk and a crusader, a knight attacking a leopard, a mermaid holding a fish, a minstrel playing a pipe, and a man drawn in a boat by a swan, one of the first African elephants known in carving, and a remarkable figure of a king sitting as penance in a cauldron of boiling water.
These medieval treasures are hid except for those who look for them, but there are two medieval masterpieces in the choir which none may miss. Both have been here 600 years and more, both rise to great heights; one is the Bishop’s Throne richly carved in oak, the other is the sedilia richly carved in stone.
The Bishop’s Throne has no rival of its kind. It was made to the order of Bishop Stapledon in 1316. He paid £300 in our money for it, and the men put it together with wooden pegs and without a single nail. It stands 59 feet high and has hundreds of little faces, wise and foolish, and the panels round the bishop’s seat have in them painted portraits of the four -great bishop builders, Warelwast, Quivil, Grandisson, and Stapledon. The throne is the earliest and most splendid of all the wooden thrones in our land. Only Hereford and St David’s possess such medieval masterpieces. It may be that the reason why this throne survived the Reformation is the fact that it is made without a nail, so that it could be taken to pieces and hidden with ease. It stands as a striking example of the way in which the craftsman in wood challenged and surpassed his fellow craftsman in stone.
An existing record tells how the oak from which it was fashioned came from Chudleigh, £6 12s 8d being paid for it in 1312. For four years it was seasoned, and then £4 was paid to Robert de Galmeton to make the throne. There was a charge of 30s for painting and probably the statues which once adorned its niches were extras.
The carving on the throne is distinguished by the exquisite grace of the foliage. Small heads of oxen, sheep, pigs, dogs, monkeys, and other animals enrich the corners of the pinnacles and there is room within its panelled base not only for the bishop but also for chairs for two chaplains. It was in this lovely place that William of Orange sat a few days after he had landed at Brixham and as he sat here he realised by the applause of the people that he had come to receive a welcome.
The exquisitely sculptured stone canopies of the sedilia, crowned with wonderful tabernacle work, are rich with the daintiest imaginable carvings of birds and animals and foliage. They are set in a bay by the altar and the three seats are carved on the back with portraits of Leofric between the Confessor and his Queen. It is in the middle seat that what is thought to be Leofric’s stone is set. The dainty columns dividing the seats rest on lions, and the whole structure is one of great dignity and beauty.
In front of the sedilia is the magnificent reredos glowing with alabaster adorned with precious stones, with Christ Ascending above, and below the Transfiguration and the Day of Pentecost. It is curious to remember that half a century ago the bishop brought a famous law case against the dean and chapter on the ground that this great structure was illegal here.
The choir pulpit is modern, like the pulpit in the nave. That in the choir is richly carved with over 60 figures showing Christ blessing the children, the Sermon on the Mount, Peter at Pentecost, and Paul in Athens and Rome; the nave pulpit, in memory of Bishop Patteson, has 20 figures showing the Bishop’s martyrdom, the martyrdom of St Alban, and Boniface leaving for Germany. Both pulpits are sculptured in marble. By the pulpit lies one of the six bishops sleeping here - Bishop Marshall of the 12th century, lying on a tomb of great splendour with his feet on a lion. Before the altar lies Bishop Bitton, whose episcopal rings have been recovered from his coffin and are in the library.
We leave the choir with all its beauty, old and new, and find ourselves behind it in the lady chapel. It may be that we are standing over the very beginnings of this great place, its oldest stones; it is certain that at the entrance to this chapel we stand before one of the most beautiful spectacles in Devon, the view of the two tombs which guard it like proud sentinels. They divide the lady chapel from St Gabriel’s chapel on the south and Mary Magdalene’s on the north, and where we stand at Bishop Bronescombe’s tomb, looking through it to Bishop Stafford’s, we are moved with the feeling that we have seen few things more superb. Bishop Bronescombe died about 1280 and Bishop Stafford in 1419, but the tombs as we see them are both the work of our famous 15th century, Bishop Stafford having re-fashioned the Bronescombe tomb to match his own. It is unthinkable that the louts who spoil the world for us have scratched their silly names upon these stately tombs, but they remain majestic as a witness of medieval England, and wonderful in their detail. Both tombs are rich beyond description, and under their gorgeous canopies, with an almost incredible delicacy of carving about them, lie these two prelates, robed and mitred and with their croziers, with hundreds of little gold roses, flying angels, wonderful crestings, delicate quatrefoils, and painted heraldry.
Bishop Bronescombe must come into any group of the finest effigies in England, and he is 13th century, with all the splendour the artist of those days put into his glorious robes. Two centuries older than his tomb, his figure holds us spellbound. It is believed to be the work of the Westminster Abbey school of craftsmen. We should note the lion turning at his feet.
Entering through this splendour, we are charmed with the simplicity of the lady chapel, which has two charming canopied recesses on each side, stone seats for priests on each side of the altar, and a reredos of painted panels running across the east wall. The panels are modern, filling the nine 14th century canopies of the reredos, and they have familiar Bible scenes, from the Garden of Eden to Galilee. Above them the great wall is filled with one of the best windows the cathedral has, with 25 figures of Our Lord, saints, and apostles, and unusual roundels in the tracery.
The bosses in the roof are fine and beautiful, but it is the two pairs of canopied tombs set in the walls that draw the eye. On one side lie two bishops, on the other a judge and his wife. Both recesses are the work of Peter Quivil in the 13th century, but the judge and his wife are Sir John and Lady Doddridge who died in Jacobean days; he was known as the Sleepy Judge because he would shut his eyes on the bench. He lies in an ermine cape and his judge’s cap, and his lady’s figure has drawn a host of women pilgrims to it by the exquisiteness of her dress. It is perfect in its detail, and so well preserved that the lace on her cuffs has been copied on a new pillow, as it was copied originally from one of her gowns. Her dress is enriched with brocaded roses and carnations, and charming she looks with her great ruff below her curly head, lying on her side with a skull in her hand.
In the tombs across the chapel the bishop with a richly jewelled mitre, with two angels at his head and an extraordinary beast between his feet, may be Simon of Apulia of 1223, and the other is Bishop Bartholomew, whom they laid here a generation before him. A primitive figure cut in the stone, his staff is impaling a winged dragon. In the centre of the floor, under his stone, lies Peter Quivil, laid here in 1291, the inspirer of this wondrous place sleeping in its simplest corner under its plainest stone.
The choir aisles are rich in monuments and chapels. In the north are the chapels of St Mary Magdalene, St George, and St Andrew, in the south are St Saviour’s, St Gabriel’s, and St James’s. St George’s chapel is interesting for a window and a tomb. The tomb is that of Sir John Speke of 1517, an ancestor of the African explorer; Sir John lies in chain mail on his tomb under an elaborate canopy. The window is copied from a picture by Ary Scheffer, with 15 figures in five panels, showing “the world drawn into Him.” The altar of the chapel is lovely in simple oak, with four small figures and our patron saint and the Madonna at the sides; the roof is attractive with 22 pendants.
In the Mary Magdalene chapel is a beautiful floor brass of William Langton, a kinsman of Bishop Stafford, and at the wall facing the Stafford tomb is the sculptured group of three Carews, Sir Gawen and his wife of Elizabethan days, two painted figures at prayer, with their nephew Sir Peter, whom we see again as an attractive small figure kneeling over the tomb of Sir Walter Raleigh’s half-brother in the south transept. He was “slain in Ireland,” and lies there, but here he is twice in stone.
The small chapel of St Andrew has two altars, and stone seats which may have come from the ancient reredos, and it is fronted with an oak screen having a beautiful and slender crest of angels. This fine little screen is matched on the other side of the choir in the companion chapel of St James, standing over a crypt which is one of the reputed burial places of Leofric.
The most interesting of all these six chapels is St Saviour’s, Bishop Oldham’s Chantry. We come into it through a small linenfold door, and find ourselves in a tiny house of stone in which a bishop is lying with eyes wide open looking at us, wearing his jewelled mitre, angels at his head, nine rings on his fingers, and a jewel on the back of his hand, gorgeous in his robes and with his crozier, his tomb painted in red and gold. But most of all the curious will notice that everywhere about this place are little stone owls, a play on the bishop’s name or a suggestion of wisdom, for a wise old man he was; he founded Manchester’s grammar school.
Of the monuments in the choir aisles two stand out looking across the aisle at one another. In them lie Bishop Stapledon and his brother Richard. The bishop lies under the arch facing the sedilia across the altar and looks into the aisle across which Sir Richard lies under a pinnacled canopy, with heads on cusps and a curious sculpture of a man holding his horse. The bishop, who was killed by a London mob after he had done so much for this place and founded Exeter College at Oxford, has on his canopy a painting of Our Lord standing on the world, a small earthly king in scarlet taking refuge in his shadow.
In the opposite aisle lie two crusaders with swords and shields, striking figures with heads on helmets, one with a tiny angel on his shoulder, and not far away lies Bishop Cotton of Charles Stuart’s days, in his flat hat and his long beard, with a gold-winged angel blowing the bubbles of time and Father Time himself holding a death’s head and an hour-glass. A lifelike bust of Edward Cotton of 50 years later leans out of a laurel wreath.
There are many tablets and portraits in these two choir aisles. Rachael O’Brien is remembered by a marble figure of a weeping woman with a cherub; she died in 1800, still in her teens, while trying to save her child from fire. William David is remembered because he was a chorister who for 50 years helped worshippers here by the music of his voice, which he retained to the day of his death at 80.
There is a marble tablet with an inlaid picture of the Good Shepherd to Canon Atherton of 1907, a bronze bust of Dr Knight-Bruce, Bishop of Bloemfontein, and a figure of Bishop Carey of 1626 lying on two fine cushions. Bishop Weston of 1741 lies in a black and white tomb with an angel and a crozier on it. There is a bust by Flaxman of General Simcoe, 18th century busts of the Fursman family, a white marble medallion of Prebendary Hedgeland of 1911, a marble portrait of Dean Earle, a medallion portrait of Basil Daer of 1794, a bronze of Dean Cowie by Herbert Read of Exeter, and a magnificent floor brass of Sir Peter Courtenay, who fought with the Black Prince and was standard-bearer to Edward the Third. The brass is much defaced, but is a notable memorial still, eight feet long.
In glass cases are some interesting documents: a papal bull of 1495, Stephen Langton’s confirmation of the election of a dean, and Queen Elizabeth’s copy of her father’s will. Fine sculptures face each other across the transepts. Under the face of the old clock in the north transept is James Northcote RA with his brush and palette, a splendid figure by Chantrey; and facing him in the south transept is an engaging group of sculptures of the 14th and 16th centuries. Lying on a magnificent tomb with 18 slender canopies and a mass of pinnacles is Hugh Courtenay with his wife Margaret Bohun, he with a lion at his feet and a rich belt and sword, she with extraordinary swans, and both with angels kneeling. They have been here 600 years.
Behind their tomb is that of Sir John and Lady Gilbert, two delightful figures, he in armour with a high collar, she with a ruff and an embroidered skirt. Sir John was half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh,
and above their tomb is another kinsman of Raleigh, Peter Carew, kneeling.
High up in the transept walls are two charming galleries reached from the clerestory, and off the transepts are the two chapels of St Paul and St John, St Paul’s with remarkable bosses and a copy of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. Among the transept memorials are the 12th century tomb of Bishop John, the carved and painted figure of Matthew Godwin (1586) kneeling at an altar rich with cherubs descending from the clouds, a bust of Dr Aubrey Spencer, Bishop of Jamaica, and a marble figure in memory of Dean Palmer.
But the chief interest of the transepts lies in its north wall, where the old face of one of the most remarkable clocks in the country still carries on though the works are new behind it; its ancient works lie down below in the chantry of William Sylke, a canon whose shrouded effigy lies on his tomb, with the warning words for all of us: I am what thou wilt be, and was what thou art. He lies here, a poor battered thing, with the old works of the clock to keep him company. The chantry enclosing them is Tudor, and is interesting because the door leading into it is made from a piece of the 14th century woodwork of the choir. It is curious that beside it hangs a very old door with a cat hole at the bottom of it, leading to the works of the clock. In this odd corner of the cathedral hang one of the oldest clocks in the world and the two oldest doors in Exeter.
The clock is one of the oldest timepieces in the world, with a big dial and a small one. The small one shows the minutes and the big one shows the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun with three circles round them. The Sun’s outer circle is divided into 24 hours of the day, the Moon’s middle circle into the 30 days of the month, and the Earth is in the centre. When the small dial has gone round on its journey of 60 minutes the Sun in the big circle moves an hour. So the clock shows us that the Sun goes round the Earth in 24 hours, while the Moon is arranged to go round it in 30 days. This curious clock was made in 1376, and there are similar ones at Wimborne and Wells.
On the wall by the clock two medieval wall paintings stand out in much of the original brilliance they were given in the 15th century. Both are rather stiff pictures of subjects common on church walls in medieval times. One shows the Resurrection, with Christ stepping out of a big stone tomb. One of the soldiers is awake and curious, two others are also awake but evidently dumbfounded, while the rest sleep. In the distance the women are seen approaching, the sexton comes with his spade, and his wife with a lantern. The other painting is formal and decorative in its design. Its artist has crowded scenes of the Madonna into a pointed arch above a row of battlements. Richly arrayed in a brocaded robe over a red tunic, the Madonna floats surrounded by an aureole of red and yellow rays held by ten angels. Two angels are about to crown her and above the crown the red-robed Father and Son give their blessing, while a white dove flutters between them. On each side of the central group are Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, and Virtues, duly labelled and carrying their sceptres, swords, spears, and chant-books - these drawn the wrong way round! As a work of art this scene is not important, but it has quaint and eager spirit in some of the figures.
Near this painting and above the clock is one of the fine modern windows of Exeter, subscribed for by the women of Devon in the generation before ours. In it are famous women of the Bible: Miriam with her timbrel for music, the Queen of Sheba for high rank, the little maid of Naaman’s wife for service, Lydia the seller of purple for trade, Eunice with Timothy for education, and Dorcas for charity.
Looking down into the nave is the great west window, its 14th century stonework glazed with 20th century glass. It fills the west wall above the three doorways and the tiers-of statues, and its glass covers over a thousand square feet. Below are nine lancets forming three groups, and resting upon them in the tracery is a great circle 20 feet across, filled with richly moulded stonework and glowing with angels, shields, and coats-of-arms. The window is in memory of Bishop Temple, and the great figures in it are Peter enthroned, Edward the Confessor and his queen, and six bishops of the diocese, among them Miles Coverdale writing the Bible and Bishop Temple holding the crown, wearing the robes he wore when he placed the crown on the head of Edward the Seventh. Another fine modern window is to Dr Walter John Edwards, in recognition of his work in India; he died in 1914, and the window has four dainty figures and four fine scenes of the early days of Our Lord.
There is a little old glass in the clerestory looking down on the bishop’s throne, an ancient portrait of Bishop Staflbrd kneeling in a window of Mary Magdalene’s chapel where he lies, and in the great east window of the choir the most precious glass of all, much of it original. The window fills the east wall to the roof, and is divided into nine lancets below and a variety of panels above. In the old glass are shields and saints, kings and patriarchs, St Thomas, St Catherine, Mary Magdalene, St Sidwell with the scythe of her martyrdom, and Helena crowned.
Easily missed is one work of art which we found in the little used St Edmund’s chapel, set in a corner of the west wall; it is the big picture of Gethsemane by Tom Mostyn. Not easily missed is the bronze of a steel helmeted soldier with his bayonet fixed, which may seem to some a little out place in this great nave. It is one of a group of memorials to our heroes. One is a bust of General Park, who in the Boer War led the charge of the Devons at Wagon Hill and saved Ladysmith; and there is a bust of General Buller, a wall sculpture with two figures in memory of Flora Macdonald’s son, and one of the rare modern brass portraits, in memory of Dr John Horder, an extraordinary man who became a missionary bishop.
But more moving than all other human memories in this great nave are two little flags in the south-west comer; they seem to be woven into the heroism of our race, and they must thrill all those who see them and know what they have seen.
We have walked long without tiring in this most friendly of all cathedrals (with a rest room at the Deanery for those who do tire, and with even a room where the stranger may have tea). We sat in this north aisle one Sunday morning when the nave was crowded and we had two peeps between these mighty pillars, like looking through a forest of clustered trunks. One peep was of a Prime Minister’s son, the grey-bearded bishop in the pulpit, the other peep was of these tiny silk flags on the wall, one of them having been to the Arctic in the search for Sir John Franklin, and one having been on the sledge of Captain Scott. Not stone only are our great cathedrals; are they not of the very stuff of which our race is made?
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