The reasons why Bishop Poore moved from Old Sarum into the valley have already been stated (p. 387). The move must have been decided already shortly before 1200. Peter of Blois, a canon of Sarum, wrote in a letter, probably in 1198-9, that he was sorry not to be able to be present at the distribution of plots for canons’ houses, but delighted ‘that you have decided to transfer the site’ from a place ‘ventis expositus, sterilis, aridus, desertus’. The papal bull of Honorius III, dated 1219, finally authorizing the move confirms all the disadvantages of Old Sarum. ‘Let us descend joyfully to the plains, where the valley abounds in corn, where the fields are beautiful and where there is freedom from oppression. ’ Henry of Avranches in a highly rhetorical poem calls it ‘mons maledictus’, where nothing grows except ‘absinthia amara’, whereas in the valley there are lilies, roses, violets, of course ‘philomela’, and plenty of springs ‘cristallo clarior, auro purior, ambrosia dulcior’. In fact ‘ Huc si venisset expulsus de Paradiso/Exilium patriae preposuisset Adam’ (If Adam had gone here when he was expelled from Paradise/He would have preferred the exile to his fatherland).
Bishop Poore laid the foundation stones in 1220, one for the pope, one for Archbishop Stephen Langton, one for himself; and William Longespée, Earl of Sarum, and his countess Ela laid two more. In 1225 three altars could already be consecrated, those no doubt in the Lady Chapel and at the E ends of the choir aisles. In the week following their consecration the archbishop and the king visited the church. In 1226 William Longespée was buried in the church. Building continued at the same uncommonly fast rate. Matthew Paris wrote of Bishop Bingham, who died in 1246, that he perfecit the cathedral, including the front and its lead-covered gable. This can hardly be true. An indulgence was granted in 1244 to those who would contribute money to the building; for without such money the building could not be completed. And the consecration took place only under Bishop Bridport in 1258, and the leading of the roof (no doubt of the nave) is recorded only for 1266. At the same time a mighty campanile or bell tower was added in the NW corner of the precinct, square and heavily buttressed below, then with a smaller square stage, in its detail much like the interior of the crossing tower, and, above that, with an octagonal top stage, probably of wood, and a short spire.1 The cloisters and chapter house were begun at about the same time by Bishop de la Wyle, i.e. between 1263 and 127I, but completed only about 1300. About thirty years later the tower was wonderfully heightened and the spire added. The contract for this work dates from 1334. In the C15 two low chantry chapels were added to the N and S of the Lady Chapel: the Beauchamp Chapel, very sumptuous inside, by Bishop Beauchamp (1450-81), the Hungerford Chapel in 1464-77. The spire gave cause for worry, and Bishop Beauchamp put in the two strainer arches. In 1668, when Seth Ward, mathematician and astronomer, was bishop, Wren, his friend and a fellow astronomer, made a report on its state, praised the proportions of nave width to height and of nave to aisles, the presence of ‘large planes’ without too many ornaments (which might ‘glut the eye’), of windows without tracery (for ‘nothing could add beauty to light’), but criticized the inadequate foundations and inadequate buttressing. He recommended long-term measures for the future, but for the present only small adjustments including ‘the bracing ye Spire towards ye Top with Iron ’. Francis Price, surveyor to the cathedral, in his book of 1753, reported more in detail and with quite exceptional sagacity and competence. Then came James Wyatt and his restoration of 1789 etc. which has often been called disastrous and which was indeed both ruthless and biased. He swept away the two Perp chapels2, two small porches3, and the campanile, refurbished much of the interior, and tidied it up with depressing orderliness. Sir G. G. Scott in 1863 etc. swept away as much Wyatt as he could and replaced it by Scott. Of his time e.g. are nearly all the statues of the facade. Scott’s iron screen and reredos in their turn were swept away in 1959-60.
We do not know who the designer of Salisbury Cathedral was. Mr Harvey pleads for Nicholas of Ely, a mason who was granted a messuage E of the cloister by Bishop Poore. He is the most likely first master mason. But is he also the most likely designer? Elias de Dereham, Canon of Sarum, ought certainly to be considered seriously. Mr Harvey accepts him only as an appreciative client. But he may well have been more; for what we know of him not only establishes him as an extremely able churchman and administrator, present at Runnymede in 1215, an executor for instance after the deaths of Archbishop HerbertWalter, of Archbishop Stephen Langton, of Archbishop Grant, of Bishop Poore, of Bishop des Roches of Winchester, a personal friend of Bishop Jocelyn of Wells and Bishop Hugh II of Lincoln, but also as an artist and a man closely connected with architecture. In 1220 the shrine of St Thomas Becket for Canterbury was made, according to Matthew Paris by the ‘incomparabilibus artificibus mag. Walter de Colecestria, sacrista de Sancto Albano, et Elya de Derham, canonico Salisburiensi, quorum consilio et ingenio omnia quae ad artificium thecae . . . necessaria fuerant parabantur’. It would be highly unusual for an administrator to be called an incomparable artifex even in an age when faciebat applied to buildings often means ‘he was responsible for’ and not ‘he designed’. Now Elias was also in charge of the king’s works at Winchester and at Clarendon in the 1230s, had perhaps been busy on the king’s works in London already in 1199, where an Elias Ingeniator appears, and at Salisbury he is called ‘a prima fundatione rector novae fabricae’. Rector of course may well refer to administration only, but it stands to reason that an amateur artifex of high standing would also take more than a business interest in the new cathedral. Of later masons a Richard was left one mark by the treasurer of the cathedral in 1267, and the contract of 1334 for the building of the spire is between the chapter and Richard of Farleigh, who must have been a man of some reputation, as he insisted on also carrying on with his commitments at Bath Abbey and Reading Abbey.
The cathedral is built of Chilmark stone, i.e. a stone quarried a mere 12 miles from the site. The building is 449 ft long outside. The vaults are only 81 ft high inside. The height of the spire is 404 ft. It leaves all other English spires behind, though not all Continental spires. The tallest of all, that of Ulm, completed only in the C19, is 530 ft.
EXTERIOR
The plan of Salisbury Cathedral is the beau idéal of the E.E. plan. On a virgin site the designer could do exactly what he thought best, and the outcome differs in every respect from the French ideal of Chartres, Reims, and Amiens. At Salisbury all is rectangular and parts are kept neatly from parts. The Lady Chapel projects two bays. Then there are two bays of retro-choir. The high choir is seven bays long with an E transept projecting two bays and a main transept projecting three bays beyond the chancel aisles. The nave is of ten bays. A screen facade not organically growing out of nave and aisles finishes the building to the W. A tall N porch two bays deep is added, and this sticks out as straight and as detached from the rest as the two pairs of transepts and the E parts. In elevation the Lady Chapel and retrochoir are as low as the aisles.
Of all English cathedrals Salisbury is the most unified in appearance. It was built entirely in the course of sixty years except for its justly most famous feature, its spire. This, though of course far too high from the E.E. point of view, happens to be the work of a mason of the highest genius and fits the rest perfectly. The C13 has certain motifs in common throughout which can be listed at once. The windows are lancets, mostly in pairs or triplets and nowhere excessively elongated and narrow. They are often shafted outside and mostly inside - nearly always with Purbeck marble shafts. The windows appear with and without tracery, the tracery being of the plate variety. The buttresses are characterized by a group of five closely-placed set-offs about two thirds up. The base of the cathedral and the buttresses have also many set-off's, and at the sill-level of the windows there is yet another course with four set-offs. The top parapet is panelled with trefoil-headed panels. It rests on a frieze of pointed trefoils with a band of half-dog-tooth between.
As building went on from E to W, we start our more detailed examination at the LADY CHAPEL. Its E wall has three consecration crosses in encircled quatrefoils below the windows. The windows are a group of three stepped lancets, shafted (the shafts with a shaft-ring). The top of the E wall carries three crocketed gables. The side gables have two low lancets with a quatrefoiled circle in plate tracery. In the centre is a group of five stepped lancets, the l. and r. ones being blank with pedestals for statues and curved-back panels. The pinnacles are Scott’s. The N and S sides have pairs of lancets not shafted but only double-chamfered. The chamfering of the middle post of each pair stops at the top.
The CHOIR AISLES have their E windows as groups of three stepped lancets, shafted, the shafts with a shaft-ring, and gables like the middle gable on the Lady Chapel. The pinnacles are again Scott’s. The N and S walls are of four bays, identical with those of the Lady Chapel, except that in the bays closest to the transepts the chamfering of the post between the two lancets has an inner hollow chamfer.
The HIGH CHOIR has a group of seven shafted stepped lancets in the gable, with the first and the last blank, a group of five shafted stepped lancets below, again with the first and last blank and flat buttresses embracing the angles. On them are Perp pinnacles. To the N and S the High Choir has clerestory windows of groups of three stepped shafted lancets . Between the trefoil frieze and the panelled parapet there is here no dog-tooth, and that remains so throughout the clerestory. The E wall is steadied by steep flying buttresses on the N and the S side.
The E side of the MAIN TRANSEPTS is in no way different from what precedes it, except for one minor detail: in the clerestory the flat C13 buttresses, as they finish, do not divide the trefoil frieze into sections, but run up into one awkwardly elongated arch. This motif is carried on all along the nave. The facades of the main transepts are unfortunate: as there is an E but no W aisle, the composition is lopsided. The dog-tooth friezes break off as in the E transepts. The E aisle front has on the ground floor again the shafted two lancets with rising fragmentary arches l. and r. and on the first floor instead of agroup of three shafted lancets, the same two shafts but instead of arches three, then four, then again four rising half-arches to follow the roof-line. The centre or ‘nave’ part of the transept front is made tripartite by thin buttresses with set-offs which rise through the ground floor and first floor. To their l. and r. are single lancets with rising fragmentary arches only outward. In the centre is just one lancet. On the first floor pairs with quatrefoiled circles in plate tracery and again rising fragmentary arches outward. On the second floor a group of five, the outer ones blank, the middle one wider and higher and with a two-light window with a sexfoiled circle (the first we have come across) in plate tracery. Above one and two and four and five a large blank pointed quatrefoil (also the first). In the gable are two pairs with quatrefoiled circles and above them a big octofoiled circle (the first again). The surrounds are chamfered in the N transept, but in the S transept they have thick and heavy roll mouldings apparently of a slightly later date. The W sides of the main transepts have nothing new. The pairs of lancets, the pairs with the quatrefoiled circle in plate tracery, the clerestory triplets, the frieze and parapet all continue, and continue into the nave as well.
The NAVE clerestory has flying buttresses not evenly distributed on N and S. The more easterly ones have the Dec pinnacles, the two further to the W are thinner. Originally the C13 work had the flat buttress strips running awkwardly into the trefoil frieze which we have first met on the main transept E walls.
The NORTH PORCH is a very fine piece. Externally it continues the system of the nave, but the E and W walls are entirely blank, and the N wall has a tall and wide, richly shafted entrance. The innermost shafts are detached. One tier of shaft-rings. Richly moulded arch. On the first floor two pairs of shafted lancets with a quatrefoiled circle in plate tracery. However, the lancets now have pointed cusping in their heads (the first we have met). Small dog-tooth in the arches, a quatrefoiled circle in the spandrel. In the crocketed gable two quatrefoiled arches with shafts carrying stiff-leaf capitals (the first, except for the tower - see below). Inside, the porch is vaulted in two bays and has noble erect proportions. On the ground stage vigorous blank arcading with detached shafts and relatively simple stiff-leaf capitals. The arcading has pointed cinque cusping in the heads. On the upper stage each bay has two pairs of blank lancets. All shafting is detached. The capitals are moulded here. The arches again have pointed cusping.
The quatrefoils in the circles are also pointed. They
must still be called blank plate tracery, but come very close to bar tracery.
Above in the lunettes two quatrefoiled circles and a large octofoiled one. Bits
of stiff-leaf in various places. Quadri-partite vaults, resting on strong shafts
which stand detached from the walls and indeed cut into the ground-floor
arcading, even if they form an organic part of the first floor system. Finely
moulded ribs and stiff-leaf bosses. Terribly restored inner portal. Thick
shafting l. and r. The stiff-leaf capitals are of Purbeck marble, and those on
the l. seem original. Trumeau of four attached shafts with four small hollows
in the diagonals - a section which became popular much later. Pointed trefoil arches.
The C19 figure of Christ in the tympanum is placed in a large pointed
quatrefoil. Above a row of four short trefoiled arches, the shafts with
stiff-leaf capitals, and one blank quatrefoiled circle over. The ribs as well
as the large octofoil and the prominent pointed quatrefoils indicate a relatively
late date, not too far indeed from cloister and chapter house. The floor of the
porch, with its simple geometrical pattern of white and grey, could be
original.5
The FACADE of Salisbury Cathedral is a headache. There is so much in it which is perversely unbeautiful. There are also far too many motifs, and they are distributed without a comprehensible system. The facade is of the screen type, i.e. wider than nave and aisles (which the English had already done in Norman form e.g. at St Paul’s Cathedral and at St Botolph Colchester), and it has no tower or towers. Instead there are two square turrets, hardly more than over-broad buttresses at the angles, and they carry a spirelet each, hardly more than a pinnacle, each accompanied by four corner pinnacles. In the middle is a gable, but this has the nave width only and thus looks somewhat stunted. That the sculpture all over the facade is of the 1862 restoration (by Redfern) does not help either. Indeed only six figures are old, and they are so over-restored that only the Peter and Paul to the l. and r. of the great W window can count.6 Their style is decidedly C14. Is this due to the restorers?7 The same question arises with regard to the bases of the statues. Most of them have stiff-leaf brackets, but on the lowest tier the decoration is partly by ballflower. That again is impossible before 1300, and the facade cannot be as late as that. Are these motifs then again due to the restorers?
The great W window is the centre of the facade, a group of three stepped lancets, triple-shafted, the shafts with two shaft-rings. To the l. and r. rise once more the ununderstandable fragmentary arches. Much dog-tooth. This window dwarfs all the rest and especially the triple porch below, a French motif with its three gables, but ridiculously insignificant, as the three together represent the nave, not the nave and the aisles. Moreover in all its details it is C19. The side parts have no doors, just blank arcading, the middle part five shafts on each side in the iambs, two portals separated by a trumeau, filigree stiff-leaf in one order of the arch, and in the tympanum three C19 figures beneath pointed-trefoiled arches with gablets over. The portal recess is much deeper than the side recesses. The latter being left blank proves of course that the designer used the French scheme of the three portal gables expressing nave and aisles without an inkling of its meaning. The real aisle fronts also have three gables each, but they are narrower and lower. Portal with cinque cusped arch. In the middle, above the porches a gallery of saints under trefoil-headed canopies. In the aisles pairs of lancets with the usual quatrefoiled circle in plate tracery and the perennial fragmentary side arches. In addition, the square angle turrets which project beyond the aisles, and also the buttresses between nave and aisles, have two tiers of statues at this level, flanked by shafts which carry pointed-trefoiled, gabled canopies. These canopies, a new and most unfortunate motif, break round the corners. In outline they look bitten out. Also - and this makes one more doubtful about the capabilities of the designer than anything else - the buttresses project further than the turrets, and to even that out, the turrets in their inner quarter send out their own buttress to range with the other buttresses. That the niches and gables of the buttress part are cut off by the meeting with the turret part will by now hardly surprise. It applies to the other buttresses as well.
Above this level the familiar frieze of half-dog-tooth comes round, the one (much too weak) motif that tries to tie the whole facade together. Then the great W window, and alas to its side, below the fragmentary arches, statues under their canopies, two l., two r., one on top of the other. They have so little space that the canopies cannot stand on shafts. In the aisle parts this tier of the elevation is much less high, just two pairs of lancets, with the indispensable quatrefoiled circles. Dog-tooth in the arches. In the turrets on this level more statues, more shafted canopies, more gables and dog-tooth. The aisles then come out with a broad band of quatrefoiled lozenges with trefoils in the spandrels. This motif is repeated, higher up, in the centre, above the great W window and moreover cut into by the raised middle lancet of the window. At this level, in the aisles and turrets are more pairs of lancets with the quatrefoiled circles. Shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. Finally aisles and turrets end with the panelled parapet familiar from the E part of the cathedral and battlements over, and the centre ends in a steep gable. Here once again two pairs of lancets with quatrefoiled circles. Above the circles a lozenge with a vesica inside. In this a Victorian Christ in Majesty and above the vesica, again rather squeezed in, a bird in profile, probably a Pelican. Is it original? It is not in the Grimm engraving of 1779. Very much dog-tooth all around here.
As the turrets project beyond the aisles they have a visible E side, an awkward fact which spoils the view W along the nave and aisles. There is, for example, a supporting wall with a sloping-up top as a kind of prop with rising blank arches. The repetition of the clerestory triplets on the E side of the screen wall, i.e. where the facade itself pretends to have upper aisle windows, on the other hand, is a happy solution.
The idea of the Salisbury facade must be derived from Wells on the one hand, Norman towerless screen facades on the other. Wells has the display of statuary, but mighty towers as well. The effect is baffling enough, even if not quite as baffling as that of Salisbury. The Wells facade seems to have been designed about 1235, i.e. earlier than the Salisbury facade.
After so much has been said against the Salisbury facade two redeeming features deserve to be noted. There is one major motif which ties the discrepant parts of the front together. If one draws a triangle connecting the top of the great W window with the tops of the aisle W windows, the two lines will be parallel to those of the top gable. And secondly, though this is not the merit of the designer of the facade, the crossing tower and spire, seen from a distance, do not call for any greater emphasis on the W front than the spirelets of the turrets and the middle gable provide. Anything more prominent would compete, to the detriment of what must after all be considered the crowning glory of Salisbury.
So now, after pages of embarrassed criticism, we can indulge in the examination of the CROSSING TOWER and the STEEPLE. The E.E. cathedral was meant to have only a relatively low lantern tower. On top probably was a lead pyramid spire. The C13 stage of the tower, the one against which the roofs abut, has tall blank E. E. arches with depressed trefoil heads. Shafts and stiff-leaf capitals (the earliest so far in the cathedral). Then the Dec work begins. Its date, as has already been said, is 1334 etc. Ballflower frieze and blank battlements and then two tall stages. They are studded everywhere with ballflower. Tall two-light windows with circles over. In these, on the lower stage, undulating foiling, on the upper subcusped foiling. Friezes of cusped lozenges and trefoils. All these motifs are an intelligent, up-to-date restating of E.E. motifs of the cathedral. The angle buttresses start flat and set-back, but in the Dec work turn polygonal, with the same kind of fine blank arches, tracery, and gables that we have found in the pinnacles of the fyying buttresses added at the same tune to help carry the tower and spire.
The spire is wonderfully slender, and the solution of the problem of how to reach the octagon from the square is perfect. Short crocketed pinnacles on the buttresses, in the middles of the sides at the foot of the spire lucarnes under crocketed gables and with pinnacles, and again at the corners taller inner pinnacles rising higher than the lucarnes. They are square, with their own angle buttresses and angle pinnacles, as it were. From a distance the effect varies. If you are inside the Precinct the pinnacles keep close to the spire and the outline is almost like that of a broach-spire, except for just the slightest barbs. If you are in the meadows to the S or W the pinnacles speak individually and form a subordinate preamble to the spectacular rise of the spire.
INTERIOR
The interior of Salisbury Cathedral is as unified as is the exterior. That (and Wyatt’s tidying-up) gives it its perfection, but also a certain coolness. The whole interior (like the whole exterior) has certain motifs in common: particularly the slender, detached polished Purbeck shafts applied wherever possible. These, in conjunction with the consistently used lancet windows, endow the interior with a vertical vigour needed to counteract the relative lowness of the vault and the strong stresses on horizontals, especially in the gallery. The result is poise, and so contributes to the perfection of the whole.
The LADY CHAPEL and RETROCHOIR with the E ends of the choir aisles must be taken as one. They are all of the same height, considerably lower than the High Choir. This conception Salisbury Cathedral took over from Winchester, where it had been demonstrated by Bishop de Lucy before 1204. The Lady Chapel as well as the retrochoir have narrow aisles (on the ‘hall ’ principle), though those of the retrochoir are not at once noticed, because the chancel aisles act as more prominent, wider aisles. What distinguishes Salisbury at once from Winchester is the emphasis on the slenderest Purbeck shafts. In the Lady Chapel the piers separating nave and aisles are just single Purbeck shafts without any shaft-rings - like stove pipes, it has been said disrespectfully. In the retrochoir there is a cluster of five shafts instead, all detached. Between retrochoir aisles and choir aisles a similar cluster, but with stronger shafts and an extra shaft added to the inside to correspond with the detached wall shafts of the Lady Chapel aisle walls. These detached wall shafts to carry the vaulting become a recurrent motif throughout. The windows moreover also have detached shafts throughout. In the vaults thin ribs and transverse arches no wider, though of a different moulding. The W bay of the Lady Chapel has small dog-tooth in ribs and transverse arches. The w bays of the retrochoir aisles are a little irregular in shape to connect with the piers of the E wall of the High Choir.
A few further details may be noted. Most capitals – most capitals of Salisbury Cathedral - are moulded and of Purbeck marble. But the capitals of the piers to N and S between retrochoir ‘nave’ and retrochoir aisles have dainty stiff-leaf sprays, the earliest in the cathedral. The arches from the retrochoir to the E ends of the chancel aisles are enriched with big dog-tooth.
Against the walls of the Lady Chapel Perp niches with little fan-vaults, a foliage frieze, and cresting. In the retrochoir on the S side a fine double piscina with trefoil-cusped arches, on the N side double aumbry with shelf on triangular heads, heavily roll moulded.
The CHOIR AISLES just carry on, though in the vaults there are now small stiff-leaf bosses. All this work so far probably belongs to 1220-5. There are five bays from E to W, i.e. to the level of the E aisles of the E transepts. The E transepts will be examined a little later. To their W the choir aisles continue for another three bays. What is different now, and the sign of a slightly later date, is that the stiff-leaf bosses are decidedly bigger than further E.
The HIGH CHOIR has piers of beautiful grey unpolished Purbeck with black, polished, detached Purbeck shafts. The forms of the piers differ remarkably. First the E side. There are three arches. The piers consist of two strong grey shafts, just detached, and two slender black shafts to N and S. Arches with many thin rolls, those to the l. and r., i.e. those corresponding to the retrochoir aisles, a little higher than the middle one - the first of the minor oddities inside of which we have found so many outside. The reason is that the wide band of mouldings is the same for the three arches and that the steeper angle of the side arches pushes their apex up higher. The arches have hood-moulds with stops consisting of two pellets, one above the other, a motif that was to become standard for a while. The NE and SE corner piers are stronger. They have four big detached grey shafts and four thin black ones. Now the N and S sides. The arches here have dog-tooth. The first pier is quatrefoil with eight detached shafts, the next octagonal with concave sides into which black shafts fit nicely. Then the piers of the E crossing, again quatrefoil with eight shafts. The motif of detached Purbeck shafts round a pier was taken over from Canterbury and Lincoln. In St Hugh’s Choir at Lincoln especially they are used in front of concave sides of a pier. But both Canterbury and Lincoln have foliage capitals, whereas at Salisbury only the W piers introduce any ornamentation in the capitals. They are of the crocket type. The arches are many-moulded, and they have the pellet stops like the E end; however, only on the N, not on the S side. We do not go further W yet, but first look at the upper parts.
Salisbury still has a gallery - like Lincoln and Westminster Abbey - though the Ile de France had by that time given up galleries. Moreover, the gallery of Salisbury emphasizes the horizontal particularly strongly. The E wall at gallery level has five arches, the middle one a little wider. They are thickly Purbeck-shafted, and the arches themselves are cinque cusped. The clerestory has a group of five stepped lancets. The outer bays have rising half-arches, of three curves outside, only one short one inside. The next bays have two and one, and only the middle one is a normal arch. In the spandrels stiff-leaf paterae.
The gallery has for each bay two pairs of two-light openings with trefoiled heads. They are low and much Purbeck-shafted. The two sub-tympana have foils in awkward areas, bordered by two sub-sub-arches and the sub-arch. The foils are quatrefoils, then octofoils, then again quatrefoils. In the main tympanum a quatrefoiled circle, then an octofoiled circle which has the foils pointed, then again a quatrefoiled circle. The super-arches are excessively depressed as though the designer wanted to do everything in his power to counterbalance the verticalism of all his shafts. The foils of the circles have little knob-like cusps, and the hood-mould stops, wherever they occur, are knobs too. The vaulting shafts start only in the spandrels between the super-arches. They stand on heads and have rich stiff-leaf capitals, much richer than the few further E. The leaves are quite big, but arranged as only one tier. Clerestory with wall passage and stepped triplet arcading – the Anglo-Norman tradition. Again all detached shafts. Spandrels with stiff-leaf paterae.
The vaults are quadripartite rib-vaults on an oblong plan, i.e. the French system of Chartres, Reims, Amiens, etc. Ribs and transverse arches are, as in the E parts, very thin and of the same thickness, which is not usual in c 13 France. The mouldings again differ. Small stiff-leaf bosses, also in the E crossing.
The EAST TRANSEPTS are separated from the chancel – for safety’s sake - by strainer arches inserted probably in the C14. Their date is uncertain. They stand on Chilmark piers with attached shafts, deliberately similar to those of the C13. Small Perp leaf capitals. Arch with many fine mouldings, and on its apex an inverted arch, the two together performing the shoring action. Vertical frame-like moulding and horizontal moulding across at the level where the arches meet.
The NE and SE transepts are essentially identical. The inner bay of the E aisle is of course identical with the W bay of the E part of the chancel aisles. The bay has a stiff-leaf boss, the arches have dog-tooth. The pellet-stops are present, and in fact remain part of the system of decoration, until further notice. The first pier of the E aisle is of the octagonal type with concave sides and eight shafts, the next is of the type with two strong detached grey shafts and two thin black ones to N and S (see chancel E wall). The details differ a little. In the S transept the SE bay has bits of dog-tooth in the window arches, the next bay to the N in the arcade arch. The SE bay has a stiff-leaf boss, the next has not. In the N transept the NE bay also has dog-tooth in the windows but no boss, the next bay no dog-tooth and no boss. But these variations are not relevant. The gallery continues as in the High Choir, except that some of the hood-mould stops have stiff-leaf instead of being simply knobs. The clerestory continues too, except that there are no paterae in the spandrels. In the aisle of the NE transept in the S wall double piscina, in the N wall double aumbry, exactly like the pair in the retrochoir. In the SE transept in the S wall double piscina, in the N wall double aumbry, the former with pointed-trefoil-cusped arches.
The S wall of the SE transept and the N wall of the NE transept have first three big lancets of even height with detached triple shafts and pellet hood-mould stops. However, where the triplet ends, another arch starts and has no space to carry on, a most disconcerting conceit. We shall see more of this than we want. At gallery level there are three lower lancets, the middle one wider, and their capitals do not range with the gallery capitals, which is disconcerting again. At clerestory level, four windows but only three openings to the inside. The outer ones rise again by three half-arches and come down by only one (see E wall of the High Choir). To the W the two outer bays have single lancets delightfully detailed. Shallow niches fill the jambs, a tiny quadripartite rib-vault the intrados of the arch. The inner bays have the arches to the W parts of the chancel aisles. There is here the usual gallery opening over. Above the single lancets are paired windows with stiff-leaf hood-mould stops. The vaulting-shafts here start lower, close to the bottom of the windows. They also stand on heads. These heads are of Purbeck marble, whereas the corbel-heads on the E wall, which, like those in the choir and nave, are at capital level, are of Chilmark stone. The details are very varied.8 The clerestory is like that of the E side, but the shafts now have shaft-rings. The small bosses are a little bigger than those of the chancel.
Now the W bays of the choir, i.e. the three bays W of the E crossing. They continue the system, i.e. have a pair of piers which are quatrefoil with eight shafts and one pair which is octagonal with concave sides and eight shafts. Arches with dog-tooth, gallery with two quatrefoils in circles and the big circle octofoiled with pointed foils, clerestory without shaft-rings and paterae, and vaults with bosses. The one principal difference is that these bosses are emphatically bigger and more agitated than any so far (or any after).
So we have reached the main CROSSING. The piers have five shafts to each side. On the bases are slight bits of decoration, of stiff-leaf on the SE and SW piers, of an abstract kind (or never carved further?) on the NE and NW. The arches are studded with thick C15 fleurons. A lierne-vault was also put in in the C15. It is thinly cusped. The geometrical patterns are such that the step to Elizabethan plaster patterns really is not wide. But above it is the lantern stage of the C13, originally open from below. It has very tall blank twin arches with a quatrefoil in plate tracery. The dividing major shafts are quatrefoil, the minor ones single, and both types of Purbeck marble with shaft-rings. While this stage is closed to the space below by the lierne-vault, it is open to the lower Dec stage. Between crossing and transepts strainer arches were put in in the C15. They have wide jambs with tall, narrow image niches, embattled tops, and spandrels with open tracery. In the tracery straight and nearly straight diagonals play an important part. In addition the crossing tower and spire were steadied by flying buttresses in the gallery and the clerestory wall-passage to E, W, N, and S.
Back to the tower. Inside it iron tie-rods were placed by Wren, by Price, and later by Scott. To see the inside of the SPIRE one must ascend high. But the climb is worth the effort. One can see the timber scaffolding put up for the construction of the spire and sensibly left standing as a steadying. It has a middle post with arms and braces. One can also see the bronze ties inserted in 1939. The stonework of the spire is 2 ft below, thinning up to 9 in. at a height of 20 ft.9
The MAIN TRANSEPTS are again nearly identical. The E arcade has first one of the octagonal piers, then piers of four strong grey shafts without black ones. Arches with some dog-tooth. In the aisle vaults small stiff-leaf bosses. The gallery has for the first bay three quatrefoiled circles, for the rest two and the big upper one octofoiled. Hood-mould stops etc. with stiff-leaf instead of plain knobs. This, it will be remembered, was the same in the E transept gallery. The clerestory shafts have shaft-rings like the W walls of the 12 transepts, and this now becomes standard. The S transept S and N transept N walls are very similar to those of the E transept end walls. The triple shafts of the ground-floor windows are stronger, the three arches on the gallery level of equal width, and the climbing arches of the clerestory are treated differently too. The centre here is a pair with pointed-trefoil heads and an octofoiled circle over. In the W walls are three pairs of lancets, then on the gallery level three two-light pairs with stiff-leaf hood-mould stops. The vaulting-shafts, as in the E transepts, start close to the foot of the upper windows. They stand, like all the others, on heads. The clerestory with shaft-rings as on the E side. The vaulting bosses are smaller again, not as big as in the W part of the chancel. N and s transepts are identical, except for one minute detail: one hood-mould stop on the ground floor of the S transept W wall has stiff-leaf instead of the pellets. Actually, this does represent a deliberate change, as we shall see presently. In the S transept W wall doorway to the cloister. It is of Purbeck marble. The arch is very depressed, two-centred, and stands on short vertical pieces - a Westminster Abbey motif. A similar doorway, also Purbeck, but with an arch almost flattened out to be horizontal, in the N transept W wall.
The NAVE continues the system without major revisions. What is different is only this: the arcade piers are now grey quatrefoils set diagonally with four black shafts in the main directions, a change made no doubt under the influence of the round piers with four shafts of Westminster Abbey (and the French cathedrals). Westminster Abbey was begun in 1245. Does that date the nave, or at least its design? The shafts have no shaft-rings, except for the W responds. The piers are placed on continuous sleeper-walls (due to the swampy terrain ?10). The richly moulded arches have no dog-tooth, but hood-mould stops with stiff-leaf instead of pellets, i.e. what had been begun in one bay of the W wall of the transepts. On the gallery the foiling of the circles above the openings is now as follows: it alternates between four, four, four and four, four, eight; the eight being all pointed foils with stiff-leaf decoration in the little spandrels. Stiff-leaf also for hood-mould stops and cusps. The mouldings round the foiled circles are much deeper and more subdivided, i.e. on the way from plate to bar tracery. The clerestory continues as in the main transepts, i.e. with shaft-rings. The vaulting bosses are certainly smaller than those of the W parts of the chancel, though of about the same size and type as those of the main transepts.
The W wall is again an embarrassment. How can it be that the designer cared so little for any linking with the nave walls? Did the sense of keeping part from part as isolated units, as we have seen it at work in the whole exterior, go so far that even walls inside were not seen in conjunction? The ground floor has three blank arches, the middle one much wider. They have stiff-leaf stops, and their capitals are just a little below the shaft-rings of the nave w responds. Under the middle arch is another blank arch, and under this the two real arches of the portal. Stiff-leaf stop in the middle. The string-course finishing this ground-stage at the top is not at the level of the capitals or abaci of the nave piers. The next stage has four pairs of blank arches with quatrefoiled circles over. The arches are pointed-trefoiled. Then the great W window, amply shafted. The shafts have two tiers of shaft-rings. Here again the system of the nave walls is in no way continued. The sill of the great triplet is just that painfully little lower than the floor level of the gallery.
FURNISHINGS
They are described topographically from E to W. LADY CHAPEL. STAINED GLASS. In the E triplet C13 greyish-green glass in geometrical patterns. In the middle window and at the bottom of the r. window also c16 fragments (French or Dutch). In the l. window at the bottom some C14 glass (Annunciation11). - N windows by Clayton & Bell, c.1901. - S windows by Clayton & Bell, c.1872.
RETROCHOIR. STAINED GLASS. N side, second from W: c.1900 by Powell. - S windows by Clayton & Bell, c. 1885.
SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, EAST PART. PAINTINGS. Presentation in the Temple by Palma Giovane. - St Jerome by Ribera. - STAINED GLASS. Two windows, very good, with white and brownish single figures, under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites. By Holiday, made by Powell, 1881 and c.1892.
NORTH EAST TRANSEPT. PISCINA (or IMMERSION FONT?), S chapel. Perp. Panelled base with trough at the top. Recess with diagonally set jambs. Little vault inside. Cusped ogee arch with crockets. Straight top. - ROOD SCREEN. Part of the original rood screen is here re-erected. Stone. Wonderfully unrestored. five plus five shallow niches for statues of kings (there were originally seven plus seven) and a Perp doorway in the middle. The doorway comes from the Beauchamp Chapel. Between the niches triple Purbeck shafts, flanked by thick stiff-leaf sprays. Big, very agitated stiff-leaf capitals, dating the screen to c.1235-50. The niches have nodding trefoiled heads with little gablets partially over. The gablets stand on stiff-leaf stops. Arches on outstandingly well characterized heads above the gablets. In the spandrels small demi-figures of angels with spread wings. The motif of the angels is familiar from the Westminster Abbey transepts, but is later there. At Westminster it was taken over from the exterior of the apsidal chapels at Reims Cathedral, at Salisbury it is more probably derived from work on a smaller scale. It occurs already in the C10 illumination of the Athelstan Psalter and in stone e.g. in a recently published fragment of c.1200 in a private collection at Monchen Gladbach. The screen has a tall, narrow doorway with a four-centred arch, a concave-sided gable against a panelled background, and a straight top – SCREEN. A simple, panelled screen W of the piscina; Perp. – STAINED GLASS. In the E aisle the S windows by Powell, c.1911; the N windows by Burlison & Grylls, c.1887. - The W single lancets by Powell, 1920. - N window by Powell, c.1907 (Heavenly Jerusalem).
SOUTH EAST TRANSEPT. SCREEN to the N. The openwork rosewood carving is Indian and recent. - COPE CHEST. Large, semicircular. Attributed to the c13. - CHEST. Probably C13 5 ft long. The feet were probably longer. - STAINED GLASS. NE windows by O’Connor, 1859. - Then to the S Clayton & Bell, c. 1877. - The S windows have C13 grisaille glass in geometrical patterns re-set in 1896.
NORTH CHOIR AISLE, WEST PART. STAINED GLASS. Both windows by Clayton & Bell, c.1884.
SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, WEST PART. STAINED GLASS. The E window by Clayton & Bell, c.1885. - The W window by Morris & Co., the amply draped figures by Burne-Jones, part of a series of the hierarchy of the angels. Background of scrolled foliage. 1878-9. The same composition was also woven as tapestry (see e.g. Eton College Chapel, Brockhampton Church Herefordshire).
CHOIR. Scott’s REREDOS and IRON SCREEN were scrapped in 1960, a crime against the tenets of the Victorian Society, but the need of the C13 cathedral was indeed greater than theirs.12 - STALLS. The lowerparts C14. With MISERICORDS and arm-rests decorated with heads, beasts, and foliage. The upper parts by Scott, c.1870, as is the BISHOP’S THRONE. - The PULPIT is of 1877, also by Scott. - The ORGAN CASES are of 1879-83 by G. E. Street (completed by A. E. Street). Rich and stuffy. - PAINTING of the vault. Re-done c.1870 on the general lines of the c13 work. Medallions with figures and scenes, sparse scroll ornament, and masonry lines. The repainting is by Clayton & Bell. - STAINED GLASS. The E window of the Brazen Serpent, though it looks late C16 or early C17 Flemish in composition, colouring, and Michelangelesque poses of the figures, is in fact of 1781, designed by Mortimer and made by Pearson.
CROSSING. PULPIT. 1877.
NORTH TRANSEPT. REREDOS (Chapel of St Edmund Rich) by A. Blomfield with paintings by C. Buckeridge. – STAINED GLASS. In the E aisle N windows by A. O. Hemming and by Ward & Hughes, c.1884. - The E windows by Clayton & Bell, c.1880-5 (?). - CHESTS. Two iron-bound chests from the former Muniment Room.
SOUTH TRANSEPT. EMBROIDERY. Altar frontal, C18, probably Spanish. - STAINED GLASS. Of the S windows the centre light of the top tier contains C13 grisaille glass from the chapter house. The rest is imitation, by James Bell (directed by G. E. Street), 1880. - Also some original grisaille glass in the northernmost twin window of the ‘gallery’ tier on the W side.
NAVE and AISLES. COLLECTING TABLE (N aisle). This incorporates a MISERICORD with the story of the Virgin and the Unicorn. It was presented to the cathedral. - CLOCK. C14. Formerly in the bell tower. Restored to its original working order in 1956. - STAINED GLASS. The nave W window is largely C13 grisaille glass in the usual geometrical patterns, but it includes C15 and early C16 glass from France, arranged in 1824 by John Beare. – C13 grisaille glass also in the aisle W windows. - S aisle third bay from the W excellent C14 and C15 glass with whole C14 figures and some C13 remains of a Tree of Jesse. It comes from the great W window. - Fifth bay from the W, 1891 by Holiday. - Easternmost by Clayton & Bell, c.1887.
MUNIMENT ROOM (now Choir Practice Room) TILES on the floor of the upper room and the staircase landings, probably of c.1260. Remarkably complete and undisturbed pavement.
PLATE. C13 Chalice said to come from the tomb of Bishop Longespée, who died in 1297; Paten from the same grave; Flagon, 1606; pair of Tankard Flagons, 1610; pair of large Chalices with Paten Covers, early C17; pair of silver-gilt Patens, 1661; pair of silver-gilt Candlesticks, 1663.
MONUMENTS
The monuments are arranged topographically from E to W.
Salisbury is rich in monuments, but not rich in monuments of outstanding quality. After the C14 they get in fact very few.
RETROCHOIR, from N to S. Sir Thomas Gorges, the builder of Longford Castle, erected in 1635 and very Baroque. Two recumbent eFigies. Arches to all four sides, with flanking fluted pilasters. The decoration curiously Early Renaissance. At the corners large detached twisted Corinthian columns. Top with obelisks, various polyheclra, with square and hexagonal facets, pediments, and four Virtues. The very top is formed of four semicircular members like the top of an arbour. Inside, above the effigies coved ceiling with circular reliefs of the seven dona spiritus sancti and cherubs’ heads. Many inscriptions. The scenes have been identified to varying degrees of probability: Judgement of Solomon, Sacrifice of Manoah, David at Prayer ?, Sacrifices of Cain and Abel, Samson slaying the Philistines, Joseph and his Brethren, Esther, Joseph warning Pharaoh. Among the inscriptions the following are specially felicitous:
Sagax et Celer Insequitur Praedam
Constans et Fidelis Consequitur Praemium
and
Mundus mare Vita navis
Quisque navigat Mora portus
Patria Caelum Fidelis intrat.
- Bishop Wordsworth. By Frampton, 1914. White marble recumbent effigy on a black marble tomb-chest. - Perp tomb-chest in a recess with thin continuous mouldings. - St Osmund d. 1099. Tapering black (Tournai?) marble lid of a former coffin. - Earl of Hertford d. 1621, son of the Protector and his wife, sister of Lady Jane Grey. Very tall wall-monument, almost covering the E window of the s aisle. The type of monument erected at the same time in Westminster Abbey, where the tallest of all monuments is that to Lord Hunsdon d. 1596. Tripartite centre. The lower side parts with two kneeling children between columns, facing the altar. Very big obelisks I. and r. The centre with the two recumbent effigies, she behind and above him. Coffered arch. Obelisks also on the side parts and curiously fragmentary bits of curved pediments with allegorical figures. Top structure in the centre with more allegorical figures and more obelisks.13 - William Wilton, d. 1523. Tomb-chest with cusped quatrefoils and lettering and a rebus. Recess with panelling. Frieze with inscription. - Bishop Moberly d. 1885. Designed by Sir A. Blomfield. Rich, with big gabled arch and recumbent effigy. Against the back wall big quatrefoil with four scenes.
NORTH CHOIR AISLE, EAST PART. Bishop Bingham d. 1246. Excellent Purbeck eFfigy under nodding pointed-trefoiled head-canopy on thin shafts. His staff overlaps the canopy. Stiff-leaf border. The effigy belongs to a mid-C13 Purbeck type of which similar examples occur e.g. at Ely (Bishop Northwold d. 1254, Bishop Kilkenny d. 1256). The canopy over the tomb is rebuilt, but correctly. - Bishop Audley d. 1524. Large, important chantry chapel. A tall stone screen surrounds it. To the aisle it has two tall transomed windows, polygonal buttresses and pinnacles with concave sides, and many niches for images. To the chancel the composition is much more restless. The two windows are subdivided differently, the W one into a doorway and a window, the E one into a tomb-chest with a canopy and a very pretty extra canopy over with pendants and a little fan-vault inside. The whole chapel has a fan-vault as well. Against the E wall lively reredos with niches. - Roger de Mortival d. 1329. Tomb-chest. Black lid; the brass is missing. Ogee arch with openwork cusping and subcusping. A clan of charming little figures reclines on it. Enormous top finial. On top of this thin buttress canopy similar to those of Edward II at Gloucester and the Despencers at Tewkesbury. l. and r. pairs of slim openings with gables and a little Dec tracery. An original iron grille fills the main arch.
SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, EAST PART. Bishop Kerr Hamilton d. 1869. By B. Pleydell Bouverie. Recumbent effigy of white marble. Canopy in the C13 style. - Walter Lord Hungerford d. 1449. The monument comes from the Hungerford chapel, demolished by Wyatt. It was beautified by Lord Radnor in 1778. To this date belongs the thin Gothic decoration of the stone base towards the chancel. The tall sides are entirely of iron, and the cresting, though it looks stone, is of wood (?). Pretty painted ceiling inside with shields undulatingly connected by cord. - Simon of Ghent d. 1315. Tomb-chest. The brass has disappeared. Wide ogee arch, filled by an original iron grille (cf. the Mortival monument opposite). Jambs with ball-flower. Arch with fleuron trail in one order. Big crockets and very big finial. Buttress-shafts l. and r. - Between chancel aisle and E aisle of the SE transept Bishop Giles de Bridport d. 1262.
A marvellous monument of Purbeck and stone. Purbeck effigy, beardless, under a pointed cinque foiled head canopy. Turrets to its l. and r. Two angels also l. and r. The bishop raises both hands. The effigy lies in a shrine-like architecture open in two twin openings to N and S. To the N they are of Purbeck marble, to the S of stone. They consist each of pointed-trefoiled arches and a quatrefoiled circle over. All this is pierced work, i.e. bar tracery, and the earliest occurrence at Salisbury of this important motif, some five or ten years before the cloisters, though over fifteen years after Westminster Abbey. Stiff-leaf sprays. The upper parts are of stone on both sides. Gables on dragons, small heads between the arches and the gables. The gables again with leaf sprays, just on the point of abandoning the stiff-leaf convention. Scenes from the life of the bishop in the spandrels, again earlier than in the chapter house. The scenes are unrestored. Slender figures and much relished landscape elements. Shrine like roof as a top. On it stiff-leaf crockets and finials.
NORTH EAST TRANSEPT. Brass to Bishop Wyville d. 1375. An enormous piece, the actual brass plate 7 ft 6 in. long. The composition is unique. A fantastic tower or abbreviation of a fortress, a suitable thing for so militant a bishop.14 In the fortress, the bishop, a demi-figure, and below him a smaller figure of a knight on guard.
SOUTH EAST TRANSEPT. On the E side: William Lisle Bowles, the poet, d. 1850. Gothic tablet, no doubt by Osmond (see below). - J. H. Jacob d. 1828. Grecian sarcophagus in relief. - On the S side: Bishop Burgess d. 1837. Standing wall-monument with canopy. By Osmond, Gothic of course. - On the W side: Dean Clarke d. 1757. Astonishingly classical, without a touch of the Rococo, i.e. on the way from Rysbrack to Wilton. Below, a still-life of astronomical and geometrical instruments. This was originally above the inscription, and on top was a big urn inside an arch (Devizes Museum 1, 49). - Bishop Seth Ward d. 1689. Large tablet. A bad bust at the top. At the foot a still-life in the round of mathematical instruments. - Gothic tablets to Richard Hooker and William Chillingworth, both placed by Bowles in 1836 and both by Osmond.
NORTH CHOIR AISLE, WEST PART. Thomas Bennett d. 1558. Cadaver on a half-rolled-up straw mat. Tomb-chest with cusped quatrefoils and shields with initials. Recess with four-centred arch, panelled. Straight top. l. and r. re-used triple Purbeck shafts. In the E jamb Crucifixus. Not a trace of the Renaissance yet. - George Sydenham d. 1524. Cadaver, already on a half-rolled-up mat, which makes a date in the 1540s more likely. No tomb-chest. - Bishop Woodville d. 1484. Purbeck tomb-chest with cusped quatrefoils. Much wider surround. Very broad panelled posts l. and r. Four-centred arch towards the top really straight-sided. Horizontal top. Rather plain.
SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, WEST PART. Bishop Selcot d. 1557. Tomb-chest with quatrefoils, purely Gothic still. – Bishop Davenant d. 1641. Standing monument, no longer Jacobean in style. Complicated architectural setting with, at the top, a segmental pediment and two fragments of a wider segmental pediment l. and r. - Sir Richard Mompesson d. 1627. Probably by the master of the Hertford Monument. Two recumbent effigies, he behind her and a little higher. Detached columns with vine wound round. hallow back arch. Big obelisks outside, l. and r. Top with allegorical figures and obelisks. - Bishop Mitford d. 1407. Alabaster. Tomb-chest with gabled niches. Recumbent effigy. Much wider surround. Four-centred panelled arch. In one of the orders martlets and very pretty columbines. In the spandrels shields with allegorical figures and arms. Top quatrefoil frieze.
NORTH TRANSEPT. In the E aisle Walter Long d. 1807, a surgeon. Marble tablet with Gothic details. l. and r. allegories of Science and Benevolence. It is signed by John Flaxman. - On the N wall: Richard Colt Hoare. By R. C. Lucas, 1841 (of Leonardo da Vinci fame - the wax bust). Seated marble figure with a book. Heavy chair. - Bishop Blyth d. 1499. Recumbent effigy. Tomb-chest with cusped quatrefoils. Tight-fitting plain canopy with horizontal top. - On the W wall: William Benson Earle d. 1796. By Flaxman. Big tablet with standing female figure unveiling a relief of the Good Samaritan. Obelisk background.- First Earl of Malmesbury. By Chantrey, 1823. Very Grecian semi-reclining figure with book. But the architectural details Gothic. - George Lawrence d. 1861. By Gaffin. Still with a Georgian mourning woman, amazingly late. - James Harris d. 1780. By Bacon. Seated female holding a portrait medallion. Obelisk background. - John Britton, the antiquarian, d. 1857. Brass plate.
SOUTH TRANSEPT. In the E aisle: J. H. Jacob d. 1862. Designed by Street. Ornate table tomb with alabaster and mosaic. Low coped tomb-chest beneath. Under a canopy (added later). - Bishop Fisher d. 1825. Made by Osmond, 1828. Tomb-chest and on it, instead of an effigy, a cushion, the Bible, and the crozier. Canopy with four-centred arch. - On the S wall: tablet to Bishop Hume d. 1782, by King of Bath. So small and so simple. - Poore family, 1817. Already in an archaeologically accurate Perp. Triple canopy. By John Carline of Shrewsbury, to a design of the Rev. Hugh Owen. - On the W wall: T. H. Hume d. 1834. Gothic tablet by Hopper. - Sir Robert Hyde d. 1665. Black and white marble. Bust in an oval medallion; bad. By Besnier (B. Bailey).
NAVE AND AISLES. Wyatt transferred the monuments from the Lady Chapel and the Beauchamp and Hungerford Chapels to the nave and lined them all up neatly on the sleeper walls between the arcade piers.15 We take them from the NE to the W and back to the SE. Sir John Cheney d. 1509. Tomb-chest with cusped fields. Alabaster effigy. - Walter Lord Hungerford d. 1449. Two tomb-chests side by side, to appear as one very broad one. The brasses have been looted. - Sir John de Montacute d. 1390. Damaged effigy of a formidable knight. The N side of the tomb-chest is of Purbeck marble and was the top of the canopy of a Hungerford monument. - Tomb-chest of a person unknown. Cusped quatrefoils. - William Geoffrey d. 1558. Tomb-chest with on the N and S sides three small sexfoils enclosing shields. - William Longespée the Younger d. 1250. Purbeck effigy of a cross-legged knight. One hand on the sword-hilt, the other holds the shield up high. – Miniature stone effigy of a bishop; C13. Pointed-trefoiled, nodding head-canopy. Angels to its l. and r. - Tapering coffin lid of an unknown bishop, C12 or c13.
Against the W wall: D’Aubigny Turberville d, 1694. His wife died in 1704. Very tall black base with long inscription. On top putti, a shield, and a vase. - Thomas Lord Wyndham d. 1745. By Rysbrack. Seated female figure (in the round) drying her tears and holding a staff and a lyre. On the l. big urn. To the l. of this on the ground a curious square slab with the arms of George II, in style consciously antiquated, i.e. of c.1700.
S aisle from the W: black lid with tapering sides. Unknown whom it records. - Then two effigies. The first is Bishop Roger’s. He died in 1139. It is a lid with tapering sides. The carving is completely flat, except of the head, which is a C14 replacement. Flat leaf border. Crozier on a dragon. The slab is of Tournai marble (i.e. imported) and may date from the mid C12. The head is Purbeck marble. Mr Hugh Shortt has pointed out the close similarity of the slab to that of St Memmie at Chalons-sur-Marne. The leaf border and the dragon are almost identical. - The other slab is Purbeck throughout. It commemorates Bishop Joscelin de Bohun d. 1184. The head is bearded. The modelling is considerably rounder. The head in an odd two-lobed surround. Inscription on the orphrey of his chasuble: Quisquis es, afi'er opem, devenies in idem, i.e. Whoever you are, help (with prayer). You will be like me. A much longer rhymed inscription on the rim. It starts: ‘Flent hodie Salesbirie quia decidit ensis/Iustitiae, pater ecclesie Salesbiriensis ’. The whole inscription in Mr Shortt’s felicitious translation (at the same time interpretation) is as follows:
They weep today down Salisbury way, for now lieth broken Justice’s sword, Sarum’s bishop and lord, yet low be it spoken, While yet alive, the poor used to thrive - he feared not the strong ones But was a mace that could batter the face of the proud and the wrong ones. Princes in hordes, dukes nobles and lords as his sires he could muster, Bishops were three who had sat in this see, and to them he gave lustre.
- Tomb-chest with three cusped lozenges. - Opposite against the S wall Alexander Ballantyne, 1783, designed by Nicholas Revert. Simple but very elegant tablet. - Bishop Beauchamp d. 1481. Tomb-chest with ornate quatrefoils.16 - Opposite tablet to Edward Davenant d. 1639. Already entirely classical; black and white. - Robert Lord Hungerford d. 1459. Purbeck tomb-chest with cusped fields. Alabaster effigy. - Opposite Mary Cooke d. 1642, also classical. - St Osmund. Part of the shrine, probably C13, with three kneeling-holes to the N, three to the S. - Bishop de la Wyle d. 1271. Perp tomb-chest with quatrefoiled panels of Purbeck marble. These come from the canopy of the monument to Robert Lord Hungerford. Purbeck effigy with a pointed-trefoiled nodding head-canopy. It must have been of good quality once. - Opposite Sir Henry Hyde d. 1650. With a militantly royalist inscription. Black columns with white Ionic capitals. - Elihonor Sadler d. 1622. Kneeling figure with columns l. and r. - William Longespée d. 1226. Tomb-chest of wood with wooden shafts carrying pointed-trefoiled arches. This was once covered with gesso and painted. The effigy of freestone is the earliest English military effigy. Chain mail, also covering the one visible arm and hand. Long shield with six lions rampant.
CLOISTERS (for the architecture see below). Many Gothic tablets of stone, no doubt by William Osmond. There are tablets commemorating two Osmonds, one who died in 1875 aged 84, the other who died in 1890 aged 69. One classical tablet (d. 1824) is also signed Osmond.
Salisbury is a secular, not a monastic cathedral, and so, while a chapter house was needed, a cloister was not, and indeed the Salisbury cloister has no other rooms attached to it. It was an afterthought altogether. No provision was made for it when the S aisle was built. It is entirely isolated from the cathedral, except for the W side of the S transept and a corridor or branch passage continuing the W walk to the N until it meets the aisle. To the E of this passage is an open space, called the Plumbery. The
cloisters were begun by Bishop de la Wyle, as we have seen. This may have been about 1270. They are of twelve bays to each walk. In the middle of the garth are two splendid cedar trees, beautifully framed by the broad openings of the cloister walks. The cloisters introduce the bar tracery of Westminster Abbey to Salisbury,17 and with it a sumptuousness so far quite absent from the design of the cathedral. The lancets which had dominated up to 1270, even with what plate tracery there is, emphasize height, the cloister openings breadth. They are framed by plain buttresses with plain set-offs. Each bay has two-light openings with a deeply moulded quatrefoiled circle. The truméux are of a centre shaft with two shafts at r. angles to the wall attached to it and two detached shafts in the direction of the wall - a subtle, wholly successful arrangement. All capitals are moulded. In the lunette above the two pairs is a large circle alternately cinque foiled and sexfoiled. Westminster Abbey in 1245-55 had taken this type of four-light bar tracery from Amiens, where it had occurred about 1235-40. Above the arcade runs a parapet with small quatrefoiled circles, two to each bay. Only in the E wall opposite the chapter-house entrance the system of the openings is interrupted. There are here simply two large openings into the garth without subdivision or tracery. Above the N half of the E walk is the LIBRARY, built in 1445. It has straight-headed cusped two-light windows to the W, i.e. the garth, as well as to the E. Actually what happened in 1445 is that the new accommodation on the upper floor was built as long as the whole E range. The surviving N part was the Chancellor’s Schools. The library occupied the S part. This was demolished in 1756, and the library moved N.
The interior of the walks is rib-vaulted throughout, with quadripartite bays and bosses. The ribs and the transverse arches have the same thickness and mouldings. The bosses are mostly stiff-leaf in the E and N walks, though there is the occasional figure-motif, e.g. biting dragons by the chapter-house entrance and mermaids further S. At the SE corner the foliage turns naturalistic and goes on being so in the S walk. The vaulting of the W walk came last. The bosses here have more human figures and heads. The style is decidedly later, say of c.1300-10, though the rib profiles do not change. At the N end of the W walk a branch runs N to connect with the S aisle of the cathedral W of the Plumbery. The walls of the cloister walks are all covered with blank arcading, echoing the openings with their bar tracery. Each bay has two arches with a big sexfoiled circle over. All shafts are detached. At the entrance to the S transept the S wall of the short passage to the entrance is canted, and the blind arcading cants with it in the same disconcerting way in which in the earlier C13 work quatrefoils were broken round corners.
There are a number of C13 DOORWAYS out of the cloister. That in the NE corner to the S transept is nine times cusped with stiff-leaf cusps and stiff-leaf in the spandrels. To its S is a second, minor doorway, cinque cusped. Where did it originally lead to? Another small doorway leads E from the SE corner. It is also cinque cusped. The entry to the cloister from the W is by a doorway at the NW corner. This has a type of arch frequent at Westminster Abbey. The arch is very depressed two-centred and stands on short vertical pieces. The doorway cuts into the blind wall arcading, though symmetrically. The same type in the doorway from the N branch of the W walk to the Plumbery, also cutting into the wall-arcading and also symmetrically. The doorway into the S aisle is cinque cusped with leaf cusps and cuts very awkwardly into the blank arcading. The exterior of the cloister ranges is very bare, without windows and only with simple buttresses, but the leif motif of the parapet of blank trefoil-headed panels is preserved even here.
1Such campanili were not an exception, although only two - at Chichester and at Evesham (the latter as late as c.1530) - survive. But there were campanili also e.g. at Westminster Abbey, Norwich Cathedral, St Augustine Canterbury, Tewkesbury, Worcester, Romsey, Kenilworth.
2 The decision to do so had already been taken by Bishop Shute Barrington before Wyatt appeared on the scene.
3One led to the N transept, the other to the S chancel aisle.
4The upper room has a renewed, octagonal central pier of wood and eight renewed, curved, radiating braces of wood.
5The porch was restored by G. E. Street in 1880-1 (P. Joyce).
6The others are the two below Peter and Paul and two in the bottom row of the N tower.
7It is not known whether the facade had all its statues before the C19. An engraving by Hollar shows twenty-two, but there is no reference to their destruction.
8On these heads see Selby Whittingham: A Thirteenth Century Portrait Gallery of Salisbury Cathedral, where it is argued that at least some of the heads are contemporary portraits.
9At the base of the spire is a C14 TREADMILL of 12 ft diameter, used to hoist the masonry and the timbers of the spire.
10For swampy it was - Philomela or no Philomela.
11The Annunciation comes from Mr Tower’s private collection. Tower was Kempe’s partner.
12Part of the screen has been made into a communion rail for Aiderbury church.
13The wife of Lord Hertford died in 1598 and was buried in Westminster Abbey with an equally splendid
monument, which round its top also has five Obelisks.
14He obtained licences to crenellate his manors of Sarum, Sherborne (both of which he had recovered), Woodford, Chardstock, Potterne, Canning, and Salisbury House London.
15He no doubt interfered with the tomb-chests as well.
16The tomb-chest did not originally belong.
17But cf. the Bridport Monument.
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