Mother Church
Allan Maclean
rr he Victorians found great pleasure in
I the Cathedrals of England. Some ecclesiastics questioned their use, but most valued their tradition, and the public saw them as undeniable monuments to the con- tinuity of the church, its English history and architecture. Though the church reorganised the interiors and altered or completed the exteriors, they were, they believed, recreating the ideal of the English Cathedral, still suited to the needs of the church and the glory of God.
Histories of ecclesiastical buildings from those days are collectors' items. I have three little volumes which are the collected uniform guides to the English Cathedrals, of about the turn of the century. In each there is a short history, building dates, dimensions, monuments, historical notes, photographs, and a special section called Features to be Noticed. It lists all the distinctive parts which the late-Victorian visitor would wish to see. In nearly every one there is a superlative or unique feature. For example: Salisbury, Spire, highest in England, most beautiful in the world. Carli- sle, Choir, unsurpassed for beauty in England, East Window, most beautiful in the world. At Canterbury, however, the guide states that it does not owe its chief in- terest to its architectural story and features, but to its great names and its close associa- tion with the history of England. I wonder whether this is still true.
I find that Canterbury does not have the same atmosphere as other cathedrals. Though it is gigantic and has an architec- tural beauty (Archbishop Lang wrote 'Sure- ly the view of the choir and apse at Canter- bury is one of the most beautiful pictures in stone in England, perhaps the world'), it is disappointing. It seems to lack its raison d'etre, and fall short of one's expectation of the Mother Church of English Christen- dom, and the principal seat of the Anglican Communion.
Although from Augustine's time it was the Mother Church, it became speciallY venerated as a shrine of the saints; Dunstan, Alphege, Anselm and finally as the site of the martyrdom and shrine of Thomas Becket. With the destruction of the relics and shrines at the Reformation, as well as the dissolution of the monastery, the life of the building changed. The great names of the later English Church, Cranmer, Laud, Juxon, Lang, Temple, or Deans like George Bell, Dick Sheppard or Hewlett Johnson, have not left their
memory stamped on the building. The
Dr Francis Woodman in the Architec- tural History of Canterbury Cathedral comes to just such a conclusion. He sees the post-Reformation history as fascinating merely as a social and political study. He decries the destruction of the N.W. tower in 1831, replaced with a copy of the S.W. tower and so producing Canterbury's pre- sent symmetrical outline. Yet it is his adept use of just such social and political history, including the changing attitudes of the Archbishops and Priors, together with archaeological and architectural evidence, contemporary written material, particularly Gervase's Chronicle of c.1190, critically re- examined, and an early drawing (The Waterworks Drawing c.1160), which makes this book both an extremely fine piece of detective work and a major study on the mediaeval ecclesiastical architecture of England. It successfully challenges many accepted but out-of-date theories.
Canterbury Cathedral is shown to in- clude major triumphs in style (the Romanesque Cathedral dated 1070 to after 1110) and innovations which later influence other buildings (William of England's East End, dated 1179-1184). The building which at first sight appears to be built in three or four distinct sections, is shown in places to develop gradually, and elsewhere to incor- porate portions of earlier buildings. They were probably saved in part for sentimental and historical reasons; the site of the Martyrdom, the walls of Anselm 'Glorious Choir', destroyed by fire in 1174, the crypt where Becket's body first laY. Like a historical novel, which can both describe the past and suggest what people expected would happen, so this architec- tural history shows conjectural plans of the Anglo-Saxon basilica and Lanfranc's great Norman Cathedral, now not so closely allied to Caen; and also how William of Sens would have finished his new Choir. He fell from the scaffolding and injured himself so badly that he had to go back home. William of England, his successor, was far more adventurous and he transformed the planned East End into the Trinity Chapel and Corona as we know it now.
The architect of the great perpendicular nave is shown to be Thomas of Hoo, rather _,an Henry Yevele, and the pulpitum is dated, fairly conclusively from political and economic evidence, as 1450-60, rather than 1410, and probably given by Edmund Beaufort, second Duke of Somerset. The Bell Harry Tower is dated as largely 1491-8, and it is shown that its plans were being altered right up to its completion. For a egg time it was not expected to contain the 'Pell chamber above the beautiful crossing vault.
How different Canterbury would have looked with a lower central tower, one Nor- manWest Tower and one Perpendicular; or that matter without William of clIgland's apse, or with Anselm's "Manesque towers. Dr Woodman shows that the major architectural history comes t° an end at the Reformation, but the pro- cess of replacement, rebuilding, restoration and recording continues to the present, as a look at the fine, but century old, plans of 883 on the end papers shows.
Previous page
