St Albans Cathedral III: The East End.

      And so passing to the right of the Rood Screen, and passing through the south choir aisle - past some attractive 18th century monuments and the site of the shrine of the two hermits Roger and Sigar - we enter into the beating heart, the engine room, of the cathedral. In this particular case there are two engines driving the spiritual life of this building: the choir & High Altar, and the reconstructed shrine of St Alban further east.

      Suddenly, emerging from the dark, cave-like s choir aisle we step into a vast space: the transepts and crossing. All is Norman, tough and masculine. Austere and light filled. In the Middle Ages however we wouldn't have been able to experience this space in the same way: two walls would have partially obstructed the view through the crossing to the N transept, isolating the working space of the choir from the subsidiary transepts.  And that returns me, briefly, to a theme from my last post - the contrast in perceptions of space in a building such as this over time. The rood screen was the first in a series of screens dividing the massive volume of the building into, perhaps, more manageable parts. The choir would have been isolated from the nave not only by the Rood Screen but by a second more massive masonry  construction called a pulpitum and perhaps from the presbytery and the High Altar by a thinner wooden screen. There was, certainly a second rood beam at this point. It is highly likely also that an altar stood somewhere between the choir and the High Altar. All of this would have produced a deep spatial complexity (if not confusion), and perhaps a heightened sense of mystery. Only from above, high in the clerestory for instance, would the visitor have any sense of spatial unity which we tend to look for these days in our post-Reformation, post-liturgical movement and now post-religious world when aesthetics and historical sensibilities have as much, if not more, weight as the spiritual.

      This spatial complexity is the result of a process outlined by the French architectural historian Alain Erlande-Brandenburg in his book 'The Cathedral: The Social and Architectural Dynamics of Construction'. The historical process is quite straightforward. In the post-Constantinian church it was the practice to give each of the various religious functions of a cathedral a distinct and independent  architectural expression; for instance baptistries. We can see a similar process in the secular architecture of Late Antiquity eg 'Villa Romana del Casale' at Piazza Armerina on Sicily, or the Palace of Antiochus in Constantinople.  The result was a complex of buildings such as you might find at Tebessa in N Africa. It can be seen today in several Orthodox monasteries and is also evident in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon monastic sites. The creation of the great abbeys and cathedrals of western Europe which begins with the Carolingian Renaissance and continued into the High Middle Ages witnessed the consolidation of those separate functions in one overarching architectonic expression in which those different uses were demarked with screens.

     The presbytery is Dec Gothic, and rather good with tall clerestory windows. The wooden vault, and its Medieval decorative scheme, I love. The vast wall of the Wallingford Screen is Late Gothic, the current statuary is by Harry Hems, the originals having been destroyed at the Reformation. The panel directly above the High Altar is by the Art Noveau sculptor Sir Alfred Gilbert - quite strange I think, but as it isn't possible to get that close I will reserve judgement! On either side of the High Altar are Late Gothic chantry chapels. Dec too the ambulatory and the heavily restored Lady Chapel. 

     And finally to the shrine. I entered the shrine space by the narrow door in the N presbytery aisle. It is an 'intense' space, cramped and vertiginous. I can see how it must have been an overwhelming experience on the Middle Ages; perhaps one might even call it a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all the senses were corralled into one overwhelming spiritual experience. And yet, for all of this I was strangely unmoved; I lit no candles and said no prayers.

St Albans Cathedral II: The Nave

     And now for the interior, and the nave. 

     Firstly, and I think this is quite a rare thing these days, the visitor is left quite alone - there is minimum signage, there is no eager 'greeter' resplendent in coloured sash and there is no entrance charge. The building is left to speak for itself. Commendable. 

     Secondly, I feel that I have to point out a Medieval pilgrim would have experienced this building in a way quite differently to us, apart from the changes to the building, liturgy etc. The pilgrim would have had only limited access to this church, entering and leaving by a door in the N presbytery aisle, not through the great west door as today. One can't help but think they were a bit short changed. The rest of the church was, I believe, out of bounds to them. We are used, these days, to the nave being used as a great congregational space, but 'back in the day' the original purpose was simply to provide for a space for processions safe from the vagaries of the English weather. That, and bit of ostentation. Later, as it became common for monks to be ordained (originally they had be simply laity under vows) and for them to say mass everyday the nave was used to house additional altars it being the Medieval custom that an altar could only be used once a day to celebrate the Eucharist. We shouldn't imagine that these additional masses were in anyway congregational. They were solitary affairs. There could have been any number of these Low Masses going on at any time throughout the building. After the Reformation the nave became used, I believe, as a sort of covered cemetery, oddly echoing the original use of the nave of St Peter's in Rome.

      So what did I notice stand there with the extremely long nave stretching out before me into the religious gloomth? The austerity of the space and its asymmetry. The south arcade has three periods of building and the north two. The Early English and the Decorated work both are very good, the Norman crude, massive and vigorous. And that neatly sums up the architectural history of the building for there are no major Perpendicular additions or alterations to the church, and as I mentioned in my previous post milord Grimthorpe did his utmost to remove all those Perpendicular intrusions he did find. Over this architectural mash-up is a flat Late Medieval ceiling - dark and a bit dull, except at its e end where it is painted. I think if had been a nineteenth century restorer I would have been inclined to remove the whole thing and replace it with a wooden tunnel vault, such as you might find in York Minster or Glasgow Cathedral. The intention of the Early English builders had been to vault in stone, but idea was quickly abandoned.  In fact the majority of roofs in the cathedral are of wood, the only original stone vaults being in the presbytery aisles; Hertfordshire being rich in timber and poor in good quality building stone. I wonder what the effect would have been if they had kept to their original scheme.

     Anyway these elements of asymmetry and austerity add to the sense of the parochial that permeates not only the nave but the whole church and which I mentioned when talking about the exterior. Not that that is a bad thing. This is also partly due to the lack those elements that we associate with the cathedral; for instance, there are no grand post-reformation monuments and very few from before. As for the furnishings in the nave; there is an excellent west window by Sir J N Comper, and a lovely font cover by Randoll Blacking. However of more importance are a number of precious medieval survivals. Firstly there is the medieval Rood Screen, built of stone like the one at Crowland in Lincolnshire. Apparently they were more likely constructed of wood like the surviving one at Peterborough, which alas is no longer in situ, but is currently in use as a parclose screen in the north transept there. It did however survive in situ into the nineteenth century, when Blore, I think, was let loose on the interior. I digress. Originally the Rood screen would have been surmounted by a depiction of the Crucifixion. In addition this sculptural group could be flanked by two seraphim standing on wheels, combining Old Testament imagery from the Books of Isaiah and Ezekiel. The second survival, and is really is a fluke of history, are the paintings on the Norman piers of the n arcade. They really are something special, and some display Byzantine influence. Originally they served as reredoses for those additional altars I mentioned above. 

St Albans Cathedral I: The Exterior

     I really must apologize for the tardiness of this post it is nearly two months since I took the Thameslink train north from St Pancras to St Albans. I am not over the effects of Lockdown. Anyway I was in London for the annual TAG Awards and pre-Christmas party. A catch up with friends. I took the opportunity to have a weekend away from the Infernal City. I hadn't been St Albans in years, decades when I think about it. At the time the city made little impression on me. However the old centre is very attractive, and there is much to enjoy with street after street of pre-modern houses - George St is particularly fine. And there are the remains of the Roman town of Verulanium.  However St Albans both benefits and suffers by its proximity to London. Housing is very expensive and it is inordinately busy and congested. But at least it's not like Reading.

     This post was originally going to begin with: 'Poor old St Albans, in turn abbey, parish church and finally cathedral, has suffered so much and so repeatedly in its long history.' Which sounds dramatic and, I hope, intriguing, but isn't really that accurate. Other cathedrals and greater churches have suffered more: Lichfield, for instance, was in ruins at the end of the English Civil War. In Wales the cathedrals of St David's and Llandaff were themselves largely ruinous by the mid-nineteenth century. So St Albans is no means unique in having a rough time of it after the Reformation. At least it stayed roofed and relatively intact at time when it must have been very difficult for the congregation to pay for the upkeep for what is a vast building. And oddly parochial it still feels for such a large and important building - for St Albans has one of the oldest and most continuous histories of any church in the British Isles. It stands long and low, atop Holmhurst, now Holywell, Hill, almost shorn of context, overlooking the valley of the Ver, on the site traditionally associated with the Protomartyr Alban's passio. Depending on who you read that event has been placed anywhere between 205 and 305AD, though the money these days is on the middle of that range, that is during the reigns of either the Emperors Decius or Valerian. Contemporary scholars tend also, I think, to believe that the Cathedral marks not the site of the martyr's execution but his grave and later his cella memoria in an area known to have contained a Romano-British cemetery. Either way it is a place of considerable historic importance and continuity. Tantalising. 

     The current building dates back from the time of the Paul of Caen, 14th abbot of the monastery. The massive central tower dates from this period and like the rest of Paul's monastic church is constructed of spolia, that is material garnered from the ruins of Verulamium down in the valley, in this case mainly bricks. It is this use of spolia that makes for crude and powerful architecture. Barbaric splendour, if you will, commensurate with the martyr's Antiquity, his Romanitas. It is also some of the earliest Norman work in the country. So we are lucky to have retained it. 

     One of the richest abbeys in England St Albans was, apparently, inept at managing its finances so that it was never wholly rebuilt which allowed for the retention of the Norman central tower.  And then came the Reformation. The Abbey church became parochial, the monastic buildings with the exception of the Great Gate demolished, and the town took on the almost unequal struggle of maintaining such a vast building. But survive it did, only, in the late nineteenth century to run into Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe. Lawyer and 'controversialist', Beckett was rich, domineering and an amateur architect who volunteered both his money and his meagre talents in the continuing restoration of the church when Sir George Gilbert Scott died in 1878. It was, I suppose, an offer that couldn't be refused, but it was an unequal match and a lot of damage done, texture lost. 

     The result is a rather odd patchwork of materials and styles. It lacks that cohesiveness and sublimity that one associates with cathedrals. It is a muted presence in the city. We are back to that sense of the parochial. From the west the tough, majestic tower is engaged in a uneven struggle with the inordinate length of the nave. Grimthorpe to his credit did, I think, realise this but his west front does little to address the aesthetic problem. I should add here that the west front does contain three Early English porches, which though heavily rebuilt are very stylish, sophisticated pieces of architecture. Gilbert Scott thought very highly of them. That said the w front seems almost completely disengaged with what it is going on behind. To get a better sense of the massive scale and vaulting ambition of Abbot Paul it's best to go down either Waxhouse Gate, or Sumpter Yard, where the tower looms over transepts and presbytery.

     The underlying reason for this lack of 'cathedralness', lies in the the geology. Hertfordshire possesses no good building stone. There is chalk but that is really not suitable for exterior work. It weathers far too easily. And there is flint. The nearest good hard wearing freestone is available from the Limestone Belt and that would make is expensive to transport, and that is why the Norman builders resorted to spolia and why, I suspect, the work of later abbots was always so tentative.