Salisbury Cathedral: Furnishings

     Just back from a couple of nights in London, but more of that in another post

     If you have been reading my cathedral posts over the years you may be aware of vicissitudes of these buildings have undergone over the centuries.  This is particularly of their furnishings, which are venerable not only to changes of theology, and liturgy, but also taste. All the Medieval Cathedrals of Greta Britain, have since the Early Modern Period, been subject to repeated (and very often self-conscious) purging of furnishings especially the art.  Salisbury was no different.  After the iconoclasms of the 16th & 17th centuries, the cathedral underwent two seismic re-orderings firstly under Wyatt and then Sir George Gilbert Scott.  Much effort has been expended since in gradually undoing latter, when there was an effort, I think successfully, to re-order the interior in the manner advocated by the Alcuin Club.  Out went Scott's metal choir screen, the marble High Altar, the gasoliers and the encaustic tiling.  The architect, William Henry Randall Blacking (1889-1958), who trained under Sir J N Comper, was the consultant. Sadly his work in the Trinity Chapel has succumbed to the vagaries of fashion with terrible results - the 'English' altar has been removed and the new glass is far too dark.  The place has become a horror.

     What I haven't mentioned so far in these series of posts on the cathedral is the role the cathedral played in the liturgy of the British mainland in the Middle Ages, when the Rite of the Cathedral - what is known as the Sarum Rite - became the predominate liturgical expression not only in England, but in Scotland and Wales.  Some of the Medieval furnishings such as the pulpitum, and (apparently) the Rood beam, survived until the fell hand of Wyatt swept them away.

     Like Lichfield, Salisbury is rich in monuments.

Work in Progress: San Pietro delle Immagini

     Currently working on this, the façade of the Sardinian Romanesque church of San Pietro della Immagini - St Peter of the Images.  The images being a Deposition group of polychromatic sculptures that was once housed in the church.  St Peter's is situated in the small town of Bulzi. 

December

 

December by John Clare (1793-1864)

While snow the window-panes bedim,

The fire curls up a sunny charm,

Where, creaming o'er the pitcher's rim,

The flowering ale is set to warm;

Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,

Sits there, its pleasures to impart,

And children, 'tween their parent's knees,

Sing scraps of carols o'er by heart.

And some, to view the winter weathers,

Climb up the window-seat with glee,

Likening the snow to falling feathers,

In fancy infant ecstasy;

Laughing, with superstitious love,

O'er visions wild that youth supplies,

Of people pulling geese above,

And keeping Christmas in the skies.

As tho' the homestead trees were drest,

In lieu of snow, with dancing leaves,

As tho' the sun-dried martin's nest,

Instead of ickles, hung the eaves,

The children hail the happy day -

As if the snow were April's grass,

And pleas'd, as 'neath the warmth of May,

Sport o'er the water froze as glass.

Salisbury Cathedral: Interior

    Like a football match the interior of Salisbury cathedral is a game of two halves.  There is the nave and w transept; and there is the choir, e transept, and e chapels.  The former is lucid and numinous.  The latter is darker and more architecturally complex. More mysterious. 

     But to talk of the interior as a whole.  With the widespread use of Purbeck marble that the influence of Canterbury and Lincoln is obvious.  But whereas Lincoln is rich and complex and experimental, Salisbury is austere and refined and cautious.  Here, is something almost Cistercian.  Here, the dado rails in the aisle are blank; the rib vaults are minimalist - no tiercerons, no ridge rib.  At Lincoln ornament is profuse, and Salisbury it is not.  There is, for instance, a very limited use of foliage capitals.  There is, perhaps, a hierarchy of ornament.  An element of reservation.  Elegant restraint.

     At first the interior seems incredibly uniform, but there are variations, particularly in the design of the piers: the choir, transepts and nave all have a different designs. I suppose the flaw in all this equipoise is the triforium, which is somewhat awkward from being squeezed into a space far too small for its intentions. I do wonder if the design owes something to Northern English precedent, e.g. the transepts of York Minster. The only real structural additions are the two sets of strainer arches: Decorated gothic in the e transept, and Perpendicular gothic, along with a complex vault, under the tower designed to strengthen the crossing piers.  There was never an attempt to enlarge any windows, as one would expect to have happened.

     The architectural fireworks as I have hinted are reserved for the e end and the Trinity Chapel which is constructed as a 'hall church' with nave and aisles of equal height, all supported on piers of incredible slimness.

Salisbury Cathedral: The Chapter House and the Cloisters

     I hadn't planned to devote a separate post to the cloisters and chapter house at Salisbury, but they are of such quality and the cathedral so large and complex, I don't think it possible to do them justice any other way.

      Strictly speaking, the cloisters and chapter house at Salisbury are superfluous; the cathedral has never been monastic.  It was, and still is, governed by a body - the Chapter - of secular priests.  And it's not as though they connect the cathedral to any other structure apart from the chapter house, so their utility is limited, providing perhaps merely shelter from the British climate for processions.  Salisbury was not however unique among Medieval 'secular' cathedrals in England in possessing cloisters; they exist at Lincoln, Hereford (two), Exeter, Chichester, and Old St Pauls had two, one on either side of the nave.  Of  these the cloister at Salisbury is the largest. 
     Of the Post-reformation cathedrals two were planned, at Bury St Edmunds and Truro, but neither have been completed.  Truro, long ago, threw in the towel.

     The Salisbury cloisters are spacious and serene, a beautiful and almost frivolous gesture.  (Frivolous is almost certainly the wrong word here as it suggests a lack of seriousness, when the design is actually very serious.) They stand to the south of the cathedral nave.  Square in plan, and almost completely inward looking - there are, for instance, no exterior windows.  And it is this exclusion, along with that seriousness of design and intent, that makes for such serenity.  Two porches tether the cloisters to the cathedral; one in the nw corner to the w end of the nave and one in the ne corner to the south transept. Cloister and chapter house were built, of the same Chilmark stone as the cathedral, in the 1270s in the Geometric Decorated style, the English response to the development of the Rayonnant style in Northern France in the first half of the 13th century.  On the exterior is a conscious attempt to tie-in the new work to the cathedral with the adoption the same parapet design; while the interior shares some of the serene austerity of the cathedral interior eg. no foliate capitals.  
     In the late Middle Ages a library was constructed over the length of the e walk, but that fell victim of that ol' bruiser Wyatt who curtailed it to a mere four bays.

     In the w walk poignant relics of WWI in form of the original grave markers for men, connected with the cathedral, lost in that terrible conflict.  Too poignant for words, really.
     There is something almost Zen about the position of two cedars add greatly to the atmosphere of this serene almost transcendental space, but the contemporary sculpture does not.

     The plan of the cloisters and their relationship to the chapter house suggest an ultimately Late Antique origin, but I think that must coincidental.  Salisbury chapter house, is based on that at Westminster Abbey, though, I think, smaller.  Like its prototype, it is a centralised structure, octagonal in plan with a tall central pier of Purbeck marble (a sort of axis mundi) to support the vault, but unlike Westminster all of the eight sides contains a window. The effect is dazzling.  Both buildings represent some of the best examples of the Rayonnant style in Britain, with the windows filling all the available space between the structural elements. Below the windows is a tall dado decorated with arcading.  In all very refined and sophisticated, and a uniquely English/British architectural form.

     The spandrels above the arcading contain a sculptural cycle of events from the first two books of the Old Testament: Genesis and Exodus i.e. from the Creation to the Patriarch Moses receiving the Law on Mt Sinai. For some reason, which we couldn't work out, a disproportional number of the sculptures relate the story of Joseph, Son of Jacob.  I realise that Joseph is the type of Christ, but this emphasis seems to throw things out of balance somehow.
     Sir George Gilbert Scott Snr restored the chapter house in the 19th century, introducing painted decoration, stained glass, and encaustic tiling, and restoring the sculptures.  And he has come in for censure ever since.  The restoration of the sculptures below the windows has come in for particular criticism. I suppose it matters to some, but it seemed fine to me.  The painted decoration has been erased at some point in the late 19th/early 20th century, probably for the best.

     Between the cathedral and the cloisters is a space known as the Plumbery.  I think wisely the cathedral authorities have used this space for the café and gift shop.  Fine views of the cathedral.

 

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