Pevsner: Exeter Cathedral

ARCHITECTURE. The English cathedral as a rule is an assortment of architectural styles. Salisbury and Exeter are the most notable exceptions. Both are of a piece throughout, the work of two generations in the case of Salisbury, of three in the case of Exeter; and in both cases the younger masters kept essentially to the plans of the older. Exeter was begun at the moment when Salisbury was complete, i.e. c. 1275. Salisbury had taken some fifty years to build, Exeter was to take eighty or ninety. The fact that the basic plan at Salisbury dates from 1220, at Exeter from 1275, makes all the difference to the style of the two buildings. The hallmark of Salisbury is concision, of Exeter abundance. Salisbury is economical in its means, Exeter profuse. The full impact of this contrast can be obtained only inside; for as to the exteriors, that of Salisbury is dominated by the one vital later addition to its structure, the C14 spire, while that of Exeter is oddly unimpressive throughout. It has no height, and the two massive towers are characteristic but hardly beautiful. They do not dominate the city on the hill as the towers of Lincoln or Durham do.

They are the earliest part of the present building, Norman obviously, but not exactly datable. The South-West English see was transferred from Crediton to Exeter in 1050, no doubt because the city afforded better protection against attack. The beginning of the Norman cathedral is attributed to Bishop William Warelwast, a nephew of the Conqueror. It had a main apse, in line with the present E transepts. This was polygonal outside and semicircular inside (cf. e.g. the chapel at the E end, Gloucester). It was no doubt flanked by subsidiary apses at the E end of chancel aisles (cf. Old Sarum, Hereford, etc.). Of the Norman nave flat buttresses survive in the present N wall, and also indications of the responds inside which suggest cross-ribbed vaults. Fragments of such ribs with the plainest roll-mouldings were indeed found after the air raid of 1942. They prove rib-vaults for the aisles. As to the nave we know nothing, except that also in 1942 circular scalloped capitals of impressive girth were found, belonging evidently to circular Norman piers such as are typical of the W country: Gloucester, Hereford, Tewkesbury, Oxford, etc. The Norman nave must have been as long as the present nave, as in 1280 a chapel was completed just N of the W end of the latter (see below). The unique feature of Norman Exeter, however, is the position of the TOWERS over the N and S transepts. Parallels known point to the ‘Burgundian’ orbit: Murbach in Alsace of C11, and the cathedrals of Lyons and Geneva, the choirs of the one built from 1174 onwards, of the other after 1185. Their elevations are severely unadorned and indeed as inaccessible as keeps. The N tower is the earlier. It has its lowest band of tall blank arcading only above the height of the Norman nave and chancel roofs. The S tower starts the first band lower down. Above the first (on the S second) stage of arcading is a frieze of intersected arches on the N, of circular windows on the S. Also the S arcading on this stage has zigzag decoration which was not common yet when the N tower had reached that height (introduced into English architecture c. 1110-20). The next stage blank arcading with zigzag N and S, the last stage with alternations of arched bell-openings and blank arcades. The battlements and square pinnacles are late C15. The original tops must be reconstructed with low pyramidal spires. Inside, the openings towards the crossing were of course low and round headed (cf. Crediton, etc.). They were opened to their present size c. 1285.

But before that time, i.e. between the completion of the Norman and the beginning of the C13 cathedral, additions were made to the S for the clergy of the cathedral - Exeter being an establishment of secular canons like Hereford, Chichester, Salisbury, London, etc., and not of Benedictine monks like Worcester, Winchester, Canterbury, Ely, Durham, etc. The lower parts of the CHAPTER HOUSE belong to the time of Bishop Bruere (or Brewer, 1224-44), as proved at once by its ‘wind-blown’ stiff-leaf capitals. The chapter house is a rectangle of four bays, on the E side (as usual) of the former cloisters. It is entered by a doorway with a finely moulded arch on shafts with Wind-blown stiff-leaf capitals. Inside, it has a ground floor stage, plain except for the main Purbeck marble vaulting shafts, groups of three, meant for transverse arches and diagonal ribs. At the sill-level of the next stage they are divided by shaft-rings. On this stage the wall is enriched by two blank arcades per bay, again with grouped shafts. The higher parts were re-done from 1413 onwards, the main shafts replaced by shafts of the standard A profile leading up to pretty niches for figure sculpture, not surviving, and then the timber braces supporting the tie-beams of the low-pitched charmingly decorated roof. The decoration is a rendering in two dimensions of small fan-vault effects. The roof belongs to the time of Bishop Bothe (1465-78). The E.E. windows were replaced by four-light (E end seven-light) Perp windows with standard tracery. In the E.E. blank arcades remains of wallpaintings: figures under ogee canopies. The CLOISTER originally also belonged to the early C13. Nothing survives except a doorway in the E bay of the S aisle, round headed of two orders outside, with a depressed pointed arch inside. The capitals are of the same wind-blown stiff-leaf type as in the chapter house.

So much for the cathedral before rebuilding began. The exact date is not recorded, but it must have been in the last years of Bishop Branscombe (or Bronescombe). The general shape of the building is broadly speaking this: nave of seven bays with aisles, nave transepts with square E chapels, straight headed chancel of one narrow bay (for the pulpitum or rood screen) and seven bays (four choir, three presbytery), chancel aisles, low and narrow E transepts N and S of the 4th of the seven bays of the chancel aisles, each E transept with two shallow E chapels, straight E ambulatory, Lady Chapel of three bays flanked by E chapels of the N and S chancel aisles. The ambulatory and Lady Chapel are much lower than the nave and chancel clerestories. The building is throughout of grey limestone, mostly from Beer. The name of the original designer, the Master of Exeter, is unknown, although some later master craftsmen are recorded by name. The principal building dates can be more precisely fixed than in any other English medieval cathedral, thanks to the survival of a unique number of original fabric rolls.

Bishop Branscombe died in 1280 and wished to be buried in the chapel S of the Lady Chapel. The chapel is then called ‘fere de novo constructa’. In 1279 money was spent for windows in one of the chapels on the E side of the SE transept (the chapel was destroyed in 1942), in 1280 for windows in the chapel immediate N of the W end of the nave. In 1285 carpenters worked in the chapel N of the Lady Chapel. At the same time windows were put in in the main transepts, remodelled to make them go with the new work. Carving and glazing in the upper parts of the Presbytery, i.e. the E bays of the chancel in 1301-02. The roofs of the E end leaded 1303. The bosses in the vault of the choir, i.e. the W parts of the chancel, carved in the same year. These vaults painted 1309. By then, after about thirty-five years the E parts of the new cathedral were complete, and the Norman E end around which the novum opus had gone on had disappeared. The choir stalls (see Misericords below) were put in from 1309 onwards. On the High Altar workmen were busy from 1300 to 1322. The Bishop’s Throne (see below) dates from 1313 to c. 1317, the chancel screen (see below) from 1317-26.

If 1275-1309 comprises everything as far W as the crossing, the first bay of the nave had its bosses painted in 1317. Then in 1327 work on the nave was resumed in earnest, and probably also the W front started. The figure in the W gable of the W facade was in position in 1342. For the screen in front of the W facade with its figures and embattled top exact dates are missing; for the completion of the nave also. It was all done under Bishop Grandisson (or Graunson, 1327-69). The nave bosses look c. 1340 in style, but apparently the novum opus of vaulting the nave began only in 1353. Maybe the bosses had been carved in the masons’ lodge ten years before, and the Black Death had interrupted the intended progress. The W screen also is probably work of the forties and fifties.

Stylistic evidence confirms the evidence of the rolls. In the piscina and sedilia of the LADY CHAPEL (and one boss of the chapel E of the S transept) stiff-leaf foliage is still used. Then we find at once everywhere bosses of enchanting realism in the rendering of foliage: vine, rose, hawthorn, oak, etc. Particularly elaborate the corbels which carry the vaulting shafts of the presbytery vault. The closest possible study of the Exeter bosses and corbels, preferably with glasses and a strong torch, will amply repay the effort.¹ The Lady Chapel has a vault with longitudinal and transverse ridge-ribs and two pairs of tierceron ribs in the N and S cells of each bay, one pair more than, for example, at Lincoln, a little earlier. The Lady Chapel is divided from the NE and SE chapels by quatrefoil piers. The tracery of the Lady Chapel, NE and SE chapels, chancel aisles, and chancel clerestory (four-light and five-light) is also essentially in advance of Lincoln or Westminster or Salisbury. Its elements are (apart from the usual trefoils, quatrefoils and sexfoils in circles which are the characteristic element of geometrical tracery) trefoils and quatrefoils un-encircled, pointed trefoils and quatrefoils, pointed cusping of the tops of the individual window-lights, intersected mullions, spheric triangles and quadrangles - all in inexhaustible variations, with only the one limitation that windows which correspond to each other (e.g. clerestory same bay N and S, or NE chapel E window and SE chapel E window) have the same patterns.² The elevation of the Lady Chapel and the chapels flanking it shows blank arcading (pointed trefoil heads) on the ground floor with pointed trefoils in the spandrels.

The presbytery set the pattern for the whole rest of the cathedral: piers of lozenge-shape with sixteen c1ose-set shafts, more than anywhere else in England, correspondingly multiple mouldings of the arches, vaulting-shafts on corbels starting immediately above the piers, but not connected with them, large clerestory windows and comparatively low broad vaults with one pair of tiercerons in the E and W cells of each bay, and three pairs (again more than anywhere before) in the N and S cells. The luxuriant palm-branch effect is unforgettable. In only one respect does the present appearance differ from that of c. 1300. There was apparently originally no triforium at all - a very unusual thing in England (but cf. Pershore) - and the triforium, a low trefoil-headed arcade of four arches per bay with a pierced quatrefoil parapet for the clerestory passage above, was put in only in 1316-18, when this change in design had already been carried out in the choir.

Another significant if slighter change of style occurred even before the presbytery was complete, i.e. c. 1302. A comparison between the N and S corbels of the presbytery will show it. Leaves begin to lose their freshness and tend to display a tendency to undulate or congeal into a stylized nobbliness. This was a typical development all over England. It marks the end of classic Gothic perfection and the coming of the sophistication of the Dec style.

But Exeter, at least in its architecture as against its fittings and furnishings, did not go far on the way into Dec vagaries. The style as set before 1300 remained valid even under Bishop Grandisson. Evolution can be seen only in such details as the first and only appearance of lierne ribs in the vault of the chapel just N of the W end, and in the window tracery, where now more complex motifs occur such as large spheric triangles filled with smaller ones, lozenges with two sides concave and two convex, circles with a wheel of curved ‘fish-bladders’ (‘mouchettes’) and various spoke motifs in circles. Ogee arches, the standard motif of the earlier C14 in most other work in England, are used only very sparingly. Where change of style is most marked is again in bosses and corbels. There were many different hands busy on them. But the best of the nave (towards the W end) are as characteristic of c. 1340 (cf. Ottery St Mary bosses) as the best of the chancel arches and chapels had been of c. 1280-90.

Of special architectural pieces added in the C14 the charming balconies on the W walls of the transepts must be mentioned, which here take the place of the triforium. They rest on little demi-vaults just like the covings of later Devon screens. A little later, though also under Bishop Grandisson, the N PORCH was added. Its front is late C15, but too much renewed to serve as evidence. The W FRONT of the cathedral is at first puzzling to the student. It consists of a facade in place of the Norman one and a screen with two tiers of figures in front of and structurally interconnected with it. The screen was, it seems, an afterthought, but one that came only a few years after the facade had been completed. The facade itself has a large central window (nine lights), steep lean-to aisles without windows but with rows of climbing slender blank arches. Aisle and nave tops are embattled, the battlements climbing up the aisle slopes and then running horizontally above the nave window. Above and behind these battlements is the steep-pitched nave roof with a window of spheric-triangular shape and mouchette motifs in the tracery. The screen is like a reredos crowned by elaborate pierced battlements. The lower tier of figures represents kings seated on pedestals which are enriched by demi-figures. The upper tier has figures, put in, according to their style, in the late C14 if not early C15. The figures in both tiers are under canopies with three-dimensional or nodding ogee arches. Their faces and the folds of their garments are characteristic of c. 1340-50 and very similar to some of the nave bosses: long bodies, tortuous and yet stiff attitudes. The central doorway with angels in very shallow relief in the spandrels. Inside this doorway and the N and S side doorways porches to fill the space between screen and W front proper. In addition there is off the central porch in the thickness of the wall Bishop Grandisson’s tiny funeral chapel, with a pointed barrel-vault carrying an unusually large boss. The arches on the W and E have no capitals between jambs and voussoirs, and there are charming leaf-scrolls and fleurons in the arch mouldings. Both motifs were later going to be much used all over Devon. The porch of the S doorway of the W front has specially attractive figure-sculpture on the walls: Nativity and Adoration of the Magi in the 1330-50 style (note ox and ass below the Nativity), the N doorway a fan-vault, a C19 alteration (see Britton’s engraving). The three inner doorways between porches and church have also no capitals between jambs and voussoirs. The same applies to a small door from the S aisle into the former cloister just E of the W front. Here again there is fleuron decoration.

But such symptoms of a style in advance of that adopted in 1275 are unimportant. The main design remained unaltered from 1275 to the death of Grandisson and the completion of the building. It was a very personal design, of much character. One would wish to be able to ascribe it to a man known by name and circumstances of life. The Master of Exeter felt driven to the nec plus ultra of an existing style, the style of 1250-60, rather than to the creation of a new style. Such artists exist at all times. In his vaults he uses more tiercerons than anybody before, in his piers more shafts. This multiplication makes for richness, and the Master handled it with a sense of luxuriance, the epitome of late C13 tendencies. His work makes even the Angel Choir at Lincoln appear restrained. But he did not abandon the accepted type of vault or type of pier. He did not conceive the lierne, an essential innovation over and above the tierceron, nor the pier leading up without complete break into the vaulting zone, nor the pier wholly or partially without capitals, nor curvilinear tracery. His tracery is particularly personal. It is composed of motifs of immediate French derivation. The un-encircled trefoils and quatrefoils and the spheric triangles and quadrangles and elementary mouchettes in spandrels were the favourites of French designers about and after 1250 (Ste Chapelle, Paris; S transept, Notre Dame, Paris, etc.). They became the main stand-by in the cathedrals of the late C13 and early C14 (e.g. Nevers, Carcassonne, Bordeaux). The Master of Exeter must have seen them in France. There were not enough of them in England (e.g. spheric triangles, Westminster triforium, Hereford N transept, Lichfield). Yet he was emphatically an Englishman. The proportions of his nave are utterly un-French, generously broad, and the weight of the profuse palm-branch ribs from l. and r. makes the interior appear decidedly low. The short piers are also wholly against French C13 ideals, and the abundance of sculptured bosses has no parallel the other side of the Channel. Given these English characteristics of the building and its impressive scale and richness of architectural conception it is extremely surprising that, with the exception of Ottery St Mary and a few odd C14 windows here and there, it has virtually had no influence on the diocese, i.e. either Devon or Cornwall. The SW English parish church is of great consistency of style, but its style is not that of Exeter.

Additions after the death of Grandisson do not amount to much. The E window of the PRESBYTERY was replaced by one in the early Perp style in 1389. It is of nine lights and not specially original in its tracery. The renewal of the upper parts of the Chapter House has already been mentioned. The CLOISTER was rebuilt from 1377 onwards. Building went on into the C15. It was demolished during the Commonwealth, but its SE angle rebuilt in 1887. The details could largely be verified by surviving fragments. The transverse arches are panelled, the cells have lierne vaults starting in all four corners from mouchette-shaped comer-pieces. The bosses are original. The windows of four lights have standard tracery. The reconstruction is by Pearson, the C19 restoration of the cathedral by Scott 1870-7.

FURNISHINGS. ROOD SCREEN. 1320-4, called La Pulpyte, the Pulpitum, in the fabric rolls. The screen as well as all the other furnishings and fitments provided in the early C14 are characterized by a far more fanciful treatment than the masons allowed themselves in the architecture itself. The rood screen is of the ‘verandah type’, not just a partition wall or arcade. It consists of three depressed ogee arches on stone piers with moulded capitals, the spandrels above them decorated with fantastically curved elongated quatrefoils filled densely with nobbly foliage. At the outer angles niches placed diagonally, a typically Dec conceit. The parapet with cusped and crocketed blank ogee arcades, now filled with C17 paintings of little value. Elaborate ogee cresting. Fragments of a C17 timber gallery displayed in the nave aisles. Behind the three main arches little vaults. E wall with tracery panels not of specially interesting shapes.

OTHER SCREENS. The oldest is the SCREEN to ST EDMUND’S CHAPEL (N of W bay of nave), plain, solid timber construction, mullions only, no tracery, the only decoration a top band of pierced circles with a mouchette wheel - the motif taken over from the architecture of the W end. - Timber, otherwise, only the short PARCLOSE SCREENS between the chancel aisles and chancel in the bay which has also the E transepts. They are supposed to be late C14, and have four-light doors with standard Devon screen tracery, but the l. and r. sections of two lights only, one band of decoration above, and pierced cresting. - The other screens are of stone. The oldest is now fitted up against the N wall of the NE transept. It is not known where it was originally. It consists of three sections with steep crocketed gables, the sections separated by large projecting figures of angels above them. Between the gables two well-carved faces. The arches and the pierced trefoils in the gables all ogee-shaped: C14 certainly and probably of the time of Grandisson. It may have been a canopy of a tomb or a sedilia and not a screen. - The other screens are all of one and the same design with very minor variations: Screens to the transept E chapels (1433-4) and to the Lady Chapel and the chapels N and S of it (before 1419). They have very slim four-light sections with standard Devon tracery and entrances headed by a boldly cusped arch below the tracery of one four-light section.

SEDILIA. (1) In the LADY CHAPEL (cf. above). Three seats stepped up and two-light piscina with six-foiled circle in top. The sedilia with simple pointed trefoil heads. (2) In the PRESBYTERY, far more elaborate, and much restored, but still the most impressive proof of the development from 1275 to c. 1320 (unfortunately no exact date known). They possess all the intricacy and unrestrained spatial play which characterize Dec say at Ely or Bristol, but are absent in the major architecture of Exeter. The seats with tall, plain concave backs painted to represent cloth hung up. Tiny heads at the top of each of these curved back walls. Above the back walls the sedilia are open towards the aisle. Each seat is crowned by a seven-sided canopy, two sides for the back, one each for the l. and r. sides, and three for the front. The back and sides supported by shafts or outer walls, the front unsupported. Minute star-vault inside each canopy. The gables ogee-shaped and sumptuously crocketed. On top of the canopies another set of tall, fragile three-sided canopies, with the point of the triangle facing the aisle. From the aisle one sees the elaborate shaft-work, with unexpected shafts and gables peeping through a gossamer of finely carved forms. The Pointe of the composition is that the back has three and a half not three gables, so that every time a shaft between two gables corresponds to the centre of a gable in the front. It is more easily seen than described.

MINSTRELS’ GALLERY. The most popular fitment at Exeter, but neither architecturally nor sculpturally of a high order. It is placed high up in the bay of the nave which corresponds to the N porch, and takes the place of the triforium and the parapet above it. Its precise purpose and its date are unknown. It can, however, not be earlier than c. 1330 and looks in style rather 1350. Fourteen angels in tiny flattish recesses, all with different musical instruments.

CHOIR STALLS. 1309-10, probably by john of Glastonbury. Replaced by Gilbert Scott’s stalls in the 1870s. The original seats must have been older; for the MISERICORDS remain, the earliest set in England, dating from c. 1230-70 according to their style. Some have still stiff-leaf foliage; in others the leaves are naturalistic. Of figures, note, for example, the following: an elephant, a lion, a mermaid, a siren, a centaur, Aristotle saddled, ‘Lohengrin’, a knight fighting a bear.

BISHOP’S THRONE. 1313-c. 1317, the most exquisite piece of woodwork of its date in England and perhaps in Europe. Probably by Thomas of Winton (= Winchester) who appeared at Exeter in 1313 for a month and then returned versus patriam suam, where incidentally wooden choir stalls had been made c. 1290. The basic shape is square with large crocketed gables on the lowest and largest stage. The arches underneath the gables have cusped nodding ogee arches (fine carved human heads), amongst the earliest in the country. The upper stages recede and are fantastically pinnacled.

FONT. Tall, white marble, on pillar, 1692.

CLOCK. On N wall of N transept, large, square and originally of 1376. Not over-ornamented. Much restored and redecorated, notably in 1760. Much of the detail is Gothic of that period. The medieval works are now on show inside the Sylke Chapel. The clock shows hours, minutes, days, and phases of the moon.

SCULPTURE. St Ann, the Virgin and Child: Flemish group, C16, in Speke Chantry, N chancel aisle.

LECTERN. In the shape of an eagle; brass, probably late C15 and made in East Anglia. The figure is hollow and may have been used originally to collect Peter’s Pence.

WALL PAINTINGS. (1) Chapter House, see p. 133. (2) Above Sylke Chapel, N transept: Ascension of Christ, looks Flemish, late C15.

STAINED GLASS.³ In 1644 one Richard Symons noted down 150 coats of arms in windows. Less than twenty of these remain. In order of time the earliest surviving glass is the grisailles in the SE chapel and the NE chapel, very neat and delicate geometrical work. It dates from the first years of the C14, as borne out by the fabric rolls (glass bought 1303, and again, and this time from Rouen, 1317).⁴ The early windows have the same naturalistic foliage as the earliest bosses (oak, hawthorn, ivy); see the small fragments in the s choir aisle. Also early C14, but a little later, the clerestory window facing the Bishop’s Throne, also grisaille, but with a row of figures of saints (headless) under tall canopies. Similar figures and canopies in the six side-lights of the E window. Its centre lights renewed 1389 by Robert Lyen of Exeter. Lyen used yellow stain, still absent in the early C14, but his canopies are in imitation of the Dec predecessors. – William Peckitt of York, the most celebrated mid-Georgian glass painter, did much restoring in the 1760s and a new W window in 1766. Fragments of Peckitt’s predominantly yellow windows are now in the cloister. - E window, NE transept, by Sir Ninian Comper, 1948.

PLATE. Very damaged Chalice from the tomb of Bishop Bitton, 1307. - Four Chalices given 1628, two Flagons 1629. - Two fine fluted Candlesticks, 28 in. tall, 1693 (?). - The rest Georgian, notably Cradle Chalice, London, 1771, two square Almsdishes 1771, large oval Dish (German?) with inscription, 1772.

MONUMENTS. As there are not over-many of them at Exeter, a chronological arrangement may be preferable to a topographical.

1100-1400. Spurious monument to BISHOP LEOFRIC, d. 1072, N chancel aisle. Made up in 1568 and interesting for its date and the antiquarian attitude which its making implies. - BISHOP BARTHOLOMEUS ISCANUS, d. 1184 (?). SE recess Lady Chapel, coffin-shaped Purbeck marble slab, very flat relief obtained by carving away the background between the figure and the arcade in which he stands. Only slightly curved triangular arch, angels in the spandrels. The draperies still with the few ‘telescoped’ folds usual in France fifty years before. – SIDE SLAB or TOMB-CHEST, c. 1200. S side N chancel aisle, Purbeck marble, with three seated figures in quatrefoils. They are Christ in Majesty, St Peter and St Paul. - BISHOP MARSHALL, d. 1206. S side N chancel aisle. Tomb-chest with effigy on coffin-shaped slab. Much higher relief. The sides of the chest may not belong. They have also three seated figures in quatrefoils with small quatrefoils with heads (cf. Walter Monument, Canterbury, 1205) between the larger ones and a fine display of stiff-leaf sprays. - BISHOP SIMON OF APULIA, d. 1223. SW recess Lady Chapel; still coffin-shaped, same composition as Bartholomeus, but now with the higher relief, the easier attitude, and the finer folds of the garments characteristic of the E.E. style. - Another SIDE SLAB or TOMB-CHEST with cusped quatrefoils in circles, late C13, also S side N chancel aisle. - BISHOP BRANSCOMBE, d. 1280. In the interval between Lady Chapel and SE chapel, as he desired it in his will. Black basalt, of the most delicate workmanship. Still the same composition, though no longer of coffin-shape. Capitals and leaves of the arch of the arcade still pre-naturalistic. - The draperies with their fewer and heavier folds and the position of the hands should be compared with Simon of Apulia. Canopy, angels at the foot, etc., added 1442. - BISHOP QUIVIL, d. 1291. Slab with foliated cross on the floor in the Lady Chapel. - BISHOP STAPLEDON, d. 1326. S side N chancel aisle, i.e. close to the High Altar, erected during Stapledon’s time. The first of the canopied tombs, but only with a low canopy (was it originally higher?). To the chancel depressed, cusped, crocketed ogee arch, fleurons in jambs and voussoirs, to the aisle three trefoiled openings. Hovering angels in the frieze. The effigy recumbent and looking up at a contemporary painting in the roof of Christ displaying his wounds. C18 iron railings to the aisle. - SIR RICHARD DE STAPLEDON, d.. 1320 (?). Opposite the bishop, his brother, N side N chancel aisle: recess with slightly taller ogee arch. The knight cross-legged, and at his head and feet two enchanting figures of pages, the one holding a horse. Angel heads as cusps of the arch. If all this survived in its original state, we should know better how exquisite English carving of the time could be. - Two CROSS-LEGGED KNIGHTS in modern recesses in the S chancel aisle, also early C14 and supposed to be Sir Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Sir Henry de Ralegh. - BISHOP BERKELEY, d. 1327 (?). S chancel aisle; Purbeck slab with circular matrix for brass demi-figure in a trefoil shape. – BISHOP GRANDISSON, d. 1369. See p. 138. - KNIGHT, later C14. Rubbed-off stone slab on the floor of the S chancel aisle. - SECOND EARL OF DEVON, d. 1377, and his Countess. S transept. Free standing tomb-chest with recumbent effigies. Originally in a chantry chapel near the E end of the nave, erected in 1381. The Countess’s badge, the Swans, interlocked at her feet.

1400-1550. SIR PETER COURTENAY, d. 1409. Brass at E end chancel aisle, nearly life-size, the thin architectural framework reconstruction. Very much like the Hawley brass at Dartmouth and another at Hurstmonceux, Sussex. - CANON LANGTON, d.1413. Brass in N chancel chapel; kneeling and with a scroll coming out from between his praying hands. - BISHOP STAFFORD, d. 1419. Between Lady Chapel and N chancel chapel. The earliest surviving monument of a type which became a pattern for the whole C15, and was, for example, copied in 1442 for Branscombe’s monument opposite. Tomb-chest with cusped quatrefoils, cusped Tudor arch, traceried spandrels, cornice with hovering angels, broad quatrefoil cresting. One composition with the stone parclose screen which here as well as opposite has contemporary paintings of saints (contemporary also the screens to the three chapels of the E end; see p. 140). - CADAVER (‘Gisant’) in recess with elaborate little, tipped-forward vault, N side, N chancel aisle; said to be Bishop Lacy’s brother, but probably a little later. - Another Cadaver in the front of the SYLKE CHANTRY, d. 1508, in the N transept. The inscription says: ‘Sum quod eris, fueram quod es, pro me, precor, ora.’ The chapel has no altar. It is surrounded by Perp stone screens with small figures against the uprights and crisp tracery. The wooden door comes from a screen in the chancel and is C14. - SPEKE AND OLDHAM CHANTRIES, built out to the N and S of the E ends of N and S chancel aisles. Sir John Speke died in 1518, Bishop Oldham (founder of the Manchester Grammar School and of Corpus Christi College, Oxford) in 1519. In design the two chapels are very similar outside, but quite different inside. The front walls of four sections with outer uprights decorated with small statuary. Broad parapet as horizontal top ending. Tracery and details of doorway as in contemporary stone screens. The large openings guarded by contemporary iron bars. Contemporary wooden door to the Oldham Chapel. Quatrefoil tomb-chests inside both chapels. Inside, the Speke Chapel has fully panelled walls, figures of angels in niches above, and a gently vaulted ceiling with pendants; not an inch left unadorned. The Oldham Chapel on the other hand has an unusually elaborate reredos with three figure scenes (Annunciation, Mass of St Gregory, Nativity), but less decoration otherwise.

1550-1860. Not one monument of the first rank. – A Harvey, d. 1564. N chancel aisle, the earliest with Italian motifs; balusters instead of Gothic uprights, Renaissance instead of Perp scrolls in the voussoirs of an otherwise still Perp depressed segmental arch. Still much quatrefoiling, and still block-letter inscription on the plain tomb-chest. - The following four are Later Elizabethan: Sir Peter Carew, d. 1589: S transept, epitaph with kneeling figure. - Matthew Godwin, d. 1586: N aisle; relief, representing an organist of Exeter cathedral who died aet. 18, an ‘adolescens’, kneeling in profile with musical instruments, organ, etc.; charming and full of feeling. - Carew family monument, 1589: NE chancel chapel; the most ambitious of the later monuments. Sir Gawen and his wife, recumbent behind low columns carrying an entablature with achievement. Below as in a truckle-bed their nephew Sir Peter - represented cross-legged! It must be one of the earliest instances in sculpture of a conscious medieval revival. - Sir John Gilbert, d. 1596, and wife: S transept; recumbent figures not behind columns but behind low arches (cf. Poltimore). - The following Jacobean and Carolean: Lady Dodderidge, d. 1614, Lady Chapel effigy propped up on elbow in C13 recess; a cartouche behind the effigy. - Sir John Dodderidge, d. 1623, recumbent, in robes of office, also Lady Chapel. - Then two very similar monuments of a usual type: Bishop Cotton, d. 1621, S chancel aisle, and Bishop Carey, d. 1626, N chancel aisle. Both alabaster, With bearded recumbent figures under shallow arches with columns l. and r. In the spandrels of Cotton, Fame and Father Time, of Carey simply putti. - Again a pair: John Bidgood, d. 1691, and Jacob Railard, d. 1692, both in E ambulatory, and both quite grand, sombre, black and gold epitaphs of a type not infrequent in Exeter parish churches. Quite a different mood: Benjamin Dillen, d. 1700, N transept: epitaph with portrait bust in medallion and a naval scene as a tail-piece. - BISHOP WESTON, d. 1742: at entry into S chancel aisle, with a dully carved angel blowing a trumpet and pointing at an inscription. - Finally C19: Flaxman’s General Simcoe, damaged in 1942 and to be re-erected in Canada. - DEAN PALMER, d. 1829, S transept, standing figure, with reversed torches, cold; by Hopper. - James Northcote, d. 1831: N transept, life-size seated marble figure by Chantrey. - Mrs Howe, d. 1834: S aisle by Gaffin of Regent Street. - Officers and men of the Ninth Lancers who fell in India, 1860, by Baron Marochetti: N aisle, very popular, with two relief bronze figures on horseback.

¹ They have all been photographed by the late C. J. P. Cave, and many of them will be included in a forthcoming King Penguin Book.

² In the Lady Chapel one small S door was added under Bishop Lacy, i.e. between 1420 and 1455.

³ Not restored to its original positions at the time of writing. Some of this glass was damaged during the Second World War.

⁴ In the E window of the NE chapel a C15 figure of a kneeling canon is inserted.

Flickr.