Norwich, RC Cathedral

St John the Baptist, open [as you'd expect a Cathedral to be], was one of the main reasons for a revisit to Norwich, the other being to properly record the main Cathedral's cloisters, and it is magnificent. Definitely worthy of a visit in its own right.

ST JOHN BAPTIST (R. C.), St Giles’ Gate. An amazing church, proof of Victorian generosity and optimism - optimism in this case concerning the future of Catholicism in Norwich. The church was built by the Duke of Norfolk, begun in 1884, completed in 1910. It was designed originally by George Gilbert Scott jun. and continued after his early death in 1897 by his brother John Oldrid Scott. The nave is by the elder brother, the chancel was designed by both. The church is of cathedral size, all ashlar-faced, 275 ft long and over 80 ft high inside the chancel. The nave is of nine bays, the chancel of four, the transepts of three with an E aisle, and there are a polygonal chapel attached to the E side of the N transept, and a tall crossing tower. The style is E. E., with all windows lancets and fine if conventional combinations of them, with flying buttresses for the clerestory, with a triforium inside, and with stone vaulting throughout, quadripartite in the nave (which was built first and finished in 1894), with ridge-ribs and tiercerons in the chancel. Sumptuous portals with black marble shafting, the same in the wall arcading and more in the E parts, and stiff-leaf capitals everywhere. The church is of course an end, not a beginning. It belongs to Pearson (not to Sir G. G. Scott Sen. incidentally), that is to self-effacing historicism. It has nothing of the new freedom and licences of Sedding or Caroe, i.e. the Arts and Crafts. - The thing which gives the interior its peculiar holiness is the STAINED GLASS, by John Powell of Hardman & Powell, and, for the E parts, his son Dunstan Powell. Its colours are dark and glowing, its composition designed on the principle of C13 cathedral windows - historicism here too and not Arts and Crafts, but supremely well done.

At the point where Unthank Road and Earlham Road meet just outside the old city wall, the Roman Catholic church of St John the Baptist rose between 1884 and 1910 on the site of the old city gaol. The gift of the 15th Duke of Norfolk, it is an impressive pile of grey stone in 13th-century style, and has been described as the finest Gothic building erected since the Reformation. It claims to be the biggest Roman Catholic church in England except for Westminster Cathedral and the cathedral now rising in Liverpool.

The church dominates the hill on which it stands, and its very foundations are level with the top of the cathedral tower. Under the chancel is a vaulted passage. The massive square tower rises from the middle of a cross, and the walls outside are enriched with buttresses, gables, turrets, flying arches, and many strange gargoyles. The east front (reminding us of Ely) is striking with its three tiers of lancet windows, flanked by buttresses with niches and turrets with pinnacles. The gabled entrances in the west wall of the nave are a charming feature of the exterior, and the north porch and the north transept are notable, for their stonework is magnificently sculptured, while their doors are covered with exquisite ironwork. Two fine rings in heads of lions are on the doors of the porch.

The majesty of a cathedral belongs to the interior of this great place, where dark marble blends with stone. Everywhere are stone vaulted roofs; the aisles have arcaded walls; the nave, the chancel, and the transepts rise with triforium and clerestory over their arcades. The nave occupies 160 of the church’s total length of 275 feet, and is 58 feet high inside. Its fine avenue of richly moulded arches rests on massive round pillars with plain and leafy capitals, and bases carved with foliage and fruit and dragons eating berries. It is a noble vista. Under the mighty arches of the tower we look up into a vaulted lantern with eight lancets. The rood across the eastern arch was carved by a craftsman of Oberammergau. Three arches on clustered shafts support a vaulted gallery at the west end.

The chapel in the north transept has glass (by Clayton and Bell) telling the history of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, which was destroyed four centuries ago; the reredos is crowned with a figure of Our Lady of Walsingham, and shows in panels below the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, and the vision which led to the founding of the original chapel at Walsingham. In the mosaic of colour filling the noble group of three lancets in this north transept are Our Lord and His Mother enthroned, queens from the Old Testament, pilgrims adoring, and medallions of East Anglian saints.

Flickr.