Worcester Cathedral I: The Exterior and the Close

   Over to Worcestershire on Monday to visit family.  Yesterday we drove down the Severn Valley to Worcester for the day. Our first port-of-call was the Cathedral. I won't bore with a history of the building - it's very long and very complex.  Here, instead, is what took my fancy, starting with the exterior of the cathedral (nearly all Victorian and later stonework - the Cathedral is built of a highly friable sandstone) and the surrounding close.

   It is a mistake to think that all English cathedrals are surrounded by wide lawns and cedar trees in the manner of Salisbury. Worcester is quite hemmed in with buildings and was more so in the Middle Ages, with a parish church, bell-tower and charnel chapel on the north side and the monastic buildings on the south. There was in particular a large Guesten Hall to the south of the cathedral choir that survived until the nineteenth century when it was demolished and the great timber roof used as the nave roof at the new church of Holy Trinity in the city, before ending up at the Avoncroft Museum at Stoke Prior. Damage was done to the north end of the close in the 19th century when a road was pushed through, and most fearfully in the 1960s the medieval Lychgate (the entrance to the close for funerals) was demolished for a new dual carriageway and redevelopment.  Here's what's left, with a couple of views of streets just outside the close.

St Martin, Stamford II

   The interior of St Martin's is lofty and spacious; the architecture elegant and a little on the cool side.  Not an unusual thing with Perpendicular architecture, especially when it has been denuded of the original colour and furniture.  The original stained & painted glass, or what was left of it, was removed in 1704, but later however, in 1757-60, medieval glass, from Holy Trinity, Tattershall, was installed and set among geometric patterns of coloured glass by William Peckitt of York.  Most of the present furniture is Victorian, designed by Edward Browning. I wonder if he was responsible for the marvellous array of encaustic tiles in the chancel?  They're some of the best I've yet seen.

As I talked about in my previous post the north chancel chapel is the burial place of the Cecils, and has a splendid array of monuments and hatchments.  William Cecil's is perhaps the most famous, of alabaster it dates from 1598 and has been ascribed tentatively to Cornelius Cure.  Also attributed to Cure is the memorial to Richard Cecil and his wife of 1587; their three daughters kneel in prayer on the monument's plinth. Lastly the grandest of them all: the great Roman Baroque monument to 5th Earl of Exeter and his wife.  Carved, in Rome, by Pierre-Etienne Monnot (1657-1733) in 1700 and erected here in Stamford in 1704 by William Palmer.

St Martin, Stamford I

   St Martin is the parish church of that part of Stamford that lies south of the river Welland, known as Stamford Baron.  It is the largest church in the town and the most homogeneous being entirely Perp in style and constructed in fine ashlar masonry.  As with the overwhelming majority of buildings in this most unique of English towns the stone used is oolitic limestone. The spectacular Burghley House lies on the eastern edge of the parish and St Martin's is thus also the dynastic church of the Cecil family.  The old north chancel chapel, which was extended in 1865 and the only addition to the original structure, forms the family pew and burial place.  It contains two nationally important monuments: the tomb of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley and elder statesman of Elizabethan England, and the Roman Baroque tomb of the 5th Earl of Exeter and his wife.
   I didn't realize until taking the photos Friday how monumental the west end of the church actually is - more so now than when built thanks to a road widening in 1803 which removed the western churchyard.  The mason who designed the church must have been well aware of how prominent in the streetscape and townscape of Stamford it would be and designed something robust and confident. The tower is a particularly strong design - note the local touch of the paired belfry windows set in a larger arch and way the central mullion hits the apex of the arch. The towers of All Saints and St John, both in Stamford, have the same motif, as do the towers of Market Deeping, Great Ponton and Folkingham.  There are a pair of fine iron gates to the churchyard and a two storey, vaulted porch to greet you.

Own work - Life drawing XXIV

   Returned to the Life drawing studio after the half term break, to a very difficult couple of poses.  Very tired too, suffering as I am from prolonged insomnia.  That's my excuse anyway for a couple of so-so drawings.

Bourne Abbey Church

   Bourne Abbey today.  The remains of the Arrouasian house of St Peter & Paul founded in 1138 by Baldwin de Clare brother of the Earl of Pembroke.   It was never very big but was under continual aristocratic patronage, starting with the Wakes & then the Hollands.  This pattern of sponsorship, which also included Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, wife of the Black Prince, culminated in Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.  In her first will her intention was to be buried at Bourne with her 2nd husband, Edmund Tudor, who was then buried in the Greyfriars church in Carmarthen.  In the end she was interred in Westminster Abbey and her husband remained in Wales (though moved to St David's cathedral at the Reformation).  The abbey was dissolved in 1536. The nave which had always been used by the parish was retained by them and the rest demolished. The monastic quarters that were to the north of the church became a private residence. They were not finally demolished until the nineteenth century.

   The grandest part of the church is the mighty west front; an incomplete attempt to create a two towered façade. Like many Early English facades it is very flat.  I put its unfinished state down to structural problems - hence the blocked windows and the great buttress - obviously a later addition.  The three central lancet windows are Victorian, replacing a single great Perp window.  The west door below is too a late Medieval insertion.  The bell stage of the tower and the clerestory are of the same period.  Tempting to assign them to the patronage of Lady Margaret, but there is no evidence, alas, for her involvement.  The south side is the most picturesque, with a porch and a truncated transeptal chapel. The chancel is I think post-reformation. I have no evidence; it's just a hunch  There are a number of good gravestones in the church yard and standing forlornly in a corner the former Grammar School building.

   Inside the west end, which is almost like a western transept, is interesting and monumental with a wall-walk at clerestory level and all sorts of incomplete fragments of architecture. Obviously something grand was attempted but abandoned for whatever reason. The nave arcade is robust Norman, but on the whole the interior is vast, big-boned and a bit empty. There are, alas, no fittings commensurate with the scale. The church was restored in 1868-9 by Edward Browning, son of Bryan so beloved of this parish.

Own work: The Rustiche of Sebastiano Serlio VII

   The next instalment of the Rustiche.  Eleven complete, only another nineteen to go!

Bryan Browning II Bourne Town Hall

   It's a long time, (nearly two years) since my last post on that very interesting provincial Georgian architect Bryan Browning.  Here is the remarkable town hall he designed in Bourne, dating from 1821, from the very end of the Georgian tradition.  Alas its setting which is unduly scruffy, does it no favours.

   However, as you can see, it is a powerful composition with a Baroque feeling of movement.  Like the 'House of Correction' in Folkingham the influences are the English Baroque of Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor and (rather French) Neo-classicism.  And like the House of Correction it is a nationally important building.  A very sophisticated, and original, effort all round.  The masonry is excellent. Originally the ground floor was open on both sides - the present window and door in the left hand arch date, I think, from the 1980s - and there was a cupola behind the pediment, but this burnt down in the 1920s and was not replaced.  On the first floor was the council chamber and the magistrates court.  Presently the building is unoccupied and its future uncertain.