Neither of the boys bothered with them.
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| St Saviour |
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| St Paul |
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Tuesday, 27 May 2014
St Albans, St Saviour and St Paul
Two brick built Victorian churches, St Saviour (open) dates to 1889 and St Paul (locked) to 1910 and neither building floats my boat. Having said that I liked the fact that St Saviour was open and was surprised at how high church the interior was, so high in fact that I thought for a bit it was actually RC not CoE.
Neither of the boys bothered with them.
Neither of the boys bothered with them.
St Albans, Christ Church
Christ Church, redundant now used as offices, is a rather nice Italianate style replica of the RC church of the Archangel Raphael in Surbiton; I really liked it.
CHRIST CHURCH, Verulam Road. Built in 1850 as a Roman Catholic church but soon taken over by the Church of England. The building is supposed to be a copy of the R.C. Church of the Archangel Raphael at Surbiton, Surrey. This was designed by Parker and illustrated in The Builder in 1847. Christ Church is of stone, in the Italian Renaissance style, and of ambitious proportions. The W tower is like a campanile, with arched openings and a far projecting roof. The windows are large twin-openings, the nave has arcades on columns. Only the chancel is straight-ended (an English custom which the architect evidently had no wish to abandon).
CHRIST CHURCH, Verulam Road. Built in 1850 as a Roman Catholic church but soon taken over by the Church of England. The building is supposed to be a copy of the R.C. Church of the Archangel Raphael at Surbiton, Surrey. This was designed by Parker and illustrated in The Builder in 1847. Christ Church is of stone, in the Italian Renaissance style, and of ambitious proportions. The W tower is like a campanile, with arched openings and a far projecting roof. The windows are large twin-openings, the nave has arcades on columns. Only the chancel is straight-ended (an English custom which the architect evidently had no wish to abandon).
Mee doesn't mention it.
St Albans, St Michael
St Michael, locked no keyholder but I have subsequently discovered on their website that they try to be open every Tuesday and Thursday from 22nd April to 25th September between 2 and 3.30pm and some Wednesdays and weekends, so a revisit is on the cards as the interior sounds fascinating.
ST MICHAEL. One of the archaeologically most interesting churches in the county, which is not at once noticeable, as the tower and the whole W end are Lord Grimth0rpe’s work of 1898. On entering, however, an early history of many stages becomes at once evident and is then borne out by external features. The nave and chancel walls are Saxon, probably of the C10. The nave windows with arches of Roman brick are partly exposed. A similar arch to a blocked doorway in the S chancel wall. The early C12 added aisles with very heavy low square piers (the Saxon walls simply left standing). The S aisle was pulled down later, but the blocked-up arcades remain. Early in the C13 the nave was heightened by a new clerestory. This with its small lancet windows also remains. So does the slightly later Lady Chapel, that is the S chancel chapel, much higher than the aisle so that the clerestory windows here look into the chapel. The Lady Chapel has very tall roundheaded lancet windows. The E end has a group of two with one circular window between, the whole framed to the inside by shafts with moulded capitals and pointed arches. The doorway from the nave into the chapel and the S doorway to the church have plain double-chamfered jambs and arches. Later alterations are the C14 ogee-headed window and low outer recess in the S chancel wall (the chancel E window is new), the Dec N aisle E window of unusual tracery design, several Perp windows, and the C15 nave roof on carved stone corbels. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with quatrefoil decoration. - PULPIT. Hexagonal, early C17, with tester, decorated panels, and daintily carved bookrests. - ORGAN. 1950, by Welch & Lander. — PLATE. Large London-made Chalice, Paten, Flagon, Almsdish, all of 1736; Almsdish, 1743. - MONUMENTS. Brass. to John Pecock d. 1330 and wife (S chapel). — Brass to a civilian (figure of the wife missing), within the head of a beautifully ogee-foliated cross, also c. 1330. — Brass to a Knight, c. 1400 (nave, E end). — The international fame of the church is the monument to Sir Francis Bacon, the philosopher and Lord Chancellor, d. 1626, life—size marble figure seated comfortably and asleep, an exceptionally ‘genre’ conception for the date.
ST MICHAEL. One of the archaeologically most interesting churches in the county, which is not at once noticeable, as the tower and the whole W end are Lord Grimth0rpe’s work of 1898. On entering, however, an early history of many stages becomes at once evident and is then borne out by external features. The nave and chancel walls are Saxon, probably of the C10. The nave windows with arches of Roman brick are partly exposed. A similar arch to a blocked doorway in the S chancel wall. The early C12 added aisles with very heavy low square piers (the Saxon walls simply left standing). The S aisle was pulled down later, but the blocked-up arcades remain. Early in the C13 the nave was heightened by a new clerestory. This with its small lancet windows also remains. So does the slightly later Lady Chapel, that is the S chancel chapel, much higher than the aisle so that the clerestory windows here look into the chapel. The Lady Chapel has very tall roundheaded lancet windows. The E end has a group of two with one circular window between, the whole framed to the inside by shafts with moulded capitals and pointed arches. The doorway from the nave into the chapel and the S doorway to the church have plain double-chamfered jambs and arches. Later alterations are the C14 ogee-headed window and low outer recess in the S chancel wall (the chancel E window is new), the Dec N aisle E window of unusual tracery design, several Perp windows, and the C15 nave roof on carved stone corbels. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with quatrefoil decoration. - PULPIT. Hexagonal, early C17, with tester, decorated panels, and daintily carved bookrests. - ORGAN. 1950, by Welch & Lander. — PLATE. Large London-made Chalice, Paten, Flagon, Almsdish, all of 1736; Almsdish, 1743. - MONUMENTS. Brass. to John Pecock d. 1330 and wife (S chapel). — Brass to a civilian (figure of the wife missing), within the head of a beautifully ogee-foliated cross, also c. 1330. — Brass to a Knight, c. 1400 (nave, E end). — The international fame of the church is the monument to Sir Francis Bacon, the philosopher and Lord Chancellor, d. 1626, life—size marble figure seated comfortably and asleep, an exceptionally ‘genre’ conception for the date.
A mile as the crow flies from St Stephen’s is St Michael’s church, reached from St Stephen’s by King Harry Lane and Bluehouse Hill, and from the city by the old-fashioned streets on each side of the river. St Michael’s is within the boundary of the Roman city. Together with the churchyard and the vicarage, it is on the site of the Roman Forum, the centre of the municipal life of the ancient city, where, in the Roman law courts, Alban was sent to his martyrdom. Roman brick and flint from the ruins are still in the church walls. There is Saxon walling in the nave and chancel. The Normans gave the nave its first aisles, shaping their arcades in the Saxon walls, and three massive Norman bays still stand on the north side, while four Norman bays of the south arcade are still to be seen - one open to the chapel, the others having doorways built under them. Two of these doorways are 13th century, and one has a 500-year-old door with studs and strap hinges. Above the arcades are remains of Saxon windows made with Roman bricks.
The 13th-century clerestory has original lancets, except for three windows of about 1500. Above it is the 15th-century roof resting on old angel corbels. The chancel has a blocked doorway of Roman brick probably built by the Saxons, and windows of all three medieval centuries; one lancet has an oak lintel. The tower and west end were rebuilt in 1898. The altar table is Elizabethan, and two chairs and the fine canopied pulpit were richly carved in Jacobean days. The old hourglass stand is still here. There are three shields in old glass, a 15th-century font, a 14th-century tomb recess in an outside wall (sheltering a coffin lid), and traces of wall painting which include remains of a Doom. A Roman coffin and part of a Roman pillar are under the tower. One of three fine old brasses is a cross with the small figure of a man in the head; he wears a long gown buttoned at the throat, and a sword hangs from his girdle. A knight in armour and helmet, with a dog at his feet, is about 600 years old and another brass of the same age is of John Peacock and his wife; John has a scrubby beard and a long robe with a cape, and Maud has a fine draped headdress. Three peacocks are on the shield.
No visit to St Albans is complete without a visit to St Michael’s, for here in the chancel sleeps Francis Bacon, and here, sculptured in marble by someone unknown, he sits in a chair, resting his head on his hand, wearing the elaborate dress of his time — puffed breeches, fur-lined mantle, and a big ruff, a wide hat on his head and rosettes on his shoes. From the lodge gates near the church, the fine tree lined Gorhambury Drive brings us to what is left of his old home, a sad ruin now, with roofless walls of brick and flint. The present house, a few hundred yards away, is the seat of Lord Verulam, and was built in 1778 by the third Viscount Grimston. An imposing house with a balustraded parapet, it has been much altered, but keeps its grand 18th-century entrance at the head of a flight of steps, with ten Corinthian columns.
The 13th-century clerestory has original lancets, except for three windows of about 1500. Above it is the 15th-century roof resting on old angel corbels. The chancel has a blocked doorway of Roman brick probably built by the Saxons, and windows of all three medieval centuries; one lancet has an oak lintel. The tower and west end were rebuilt in 1898. The altar table is Elizabethan, and two chairs and the fine canopied pulpit were richly carved in Jacobean days. The old hourglass stand is still here. There are three shields in old glass, a 15th-century font, a 14th-century tomb recess in an outside wall (sheltering a coffin lid), and traces of wall painting which include remains of a Doom. A Roman coffin and part of a Roman pillar are under the tower. One of three fine old brasses is a cross with the small figure of a man in the head; he wears a long gown buttoned at the throat, and a sword hangs from his girdle. A knight in armour and helmet, with a dog at his feet, is about 600 years old and another brass of the same age is of John Peacock and his wife; John has a scrubby beard and a long robe with a cape, and Maud has a fine draped headdress. Three peacocks are on the shield.
No visit to St Albans is complete without a visit to St Michael’s, for here in the chancel sleeps Francis Bacon, and here, sculptured in marble by someone unknown, he sits in a chair, resting his head on his hand, wearing the elaborate dress of his time — puffed breeches, fur-lined mantle, and a big ruff, a wide hat on his head and rosettes on his shoes. From the lodge gates near the church, the fine tree lined Gorhambury Drive brings us to what is left of his old home, a sad ruin now, with roofless walls of brick and flint. The present house, a few hundred yards away, is the seat of Lord Verulam, and was built in 1778 by the third Viscount Grimston. An imposing house with a balustraded parapet, it has been much altered, but keeps its grand 18th-century entrance at the head of a flight of steps, with ten Corinthian columns.
St Albans, St Stephen
St Stephen, locked no keyholder but it was having an open afternoon the following Sunday, didn't impress - particularly the poorly executed extension. Perhaps the interior is more interesting but Pevsner doesn't exactly glow.
ST STEPHEN. St Stephen, like St Michael, bears witness to those Early Norman decades when the cathedral was being rebuilt. The W front of the nave, of rough flint thickly embedded in mortar, has quoins of Roman brick and two small roundheaded windows. The front of the demolished N aisle which was left standing has one more such window. The N wall of the nave is a remarkable palimpset. It contains one large Early Norman window (splay only inside; otherwise one might have been tempted to assign to it a pre-Conquest date). This was blocked and cut into by a wide Norman arch, probably to the aisle, which is in style similar to the arcade at St Michael’s. It can hardly be later than c. 1120. This arch is also blocked. To the W of it an equally blocked pointed arch. Later, after the aisle had been pulled down, a pointed doorway was cut into the blocked roundheaded bay. The chancel masonry must also be Norman, as to it a S chapel was added early in the C13. The two S lancet windows are original. The s aisle arcade is again not of one date. The octagonal piers of the W bays have earlier moulded capitals than those farther E. The difference can easily be seen. The dates must be late C13 and early C14. The arches are of uneven width and height too, but all double-chamfered. In the C15 the W door was added and further odd additions were made in timber. Instead of a chancel arch there is a timber frame, and a similar timber frame at the W end carries a timber bell—turret, original even in the two—light timber bell—openings. — FONT. C15 with much figure carving of indifferent quality, small figures in cusped niches on the shapely demi—figures of angels with shields on the bowl. — LECTERN. Large Eagle Lectern of brass with an inscription: ‘Georgian Creichtown Episcopus Dunkeldensis.’ The inscription dates the lectern as between 1524 and 1543. - STAINED GLASS. Chancel N side by Hughes, c. 1866, rather pictorial and Raphaelesque; E window 1860, and S aisle window 1862, by Clayton & Bell. — PLATE. Chalice, Late Elizabethan; Salver, plated, 1718; Salver, 1789; Chalice, 1833. - MONUMENTS. Brass to William Robins d. 1482, wife and children (chancel N wall).
ST STEPHEN. St Stephen, like St Michael, bears witness to those Early Norman decades when the cathedral was being rebuilt. The W front of the nave, of rough flint thickly embedded in mortar, has quoins of Roman brick and two small roundheaded windows. The front of the demolished N aisle which was left standing has one more such window. The N wall of the nave is a remarkable palimpset. It contains one large Early Norman window (splay only inside; otherwise one might have been tempted to assign to it a pre-Conquest date). This was blocked and cut into by a wide Norman arch, probably to the aisle, which is in style similar to the arcade at St Michael’s. It can hardly be later than c. 1120. This arch is also blocked. To the W of it an equally blocked pointed arch. Later, after the aisle had been pulled down, a pointed doorway was cut into the blocked roundheaded bay. The chancel masonry must also be Norman, as to it a S chapel was added early in the C13. The two S lancet windows are original. The s aisle arcade is again not of one date. The octagonal piers of the W bays have earlier moulded capitals than those farther E. The difference can easily be seen. The dates must be late C13 and early C14. The arches are of uneven width and height too, but all double-chamfered. In the C15 the W door was added and further odd additions were made in timber. Instead of a chancel arch there is a timber frame, and a similar timber frame at the W end carries a timber bell—turret, original even in the two—light timber bell—openings. — FONT. C15 with much figure carving of indifferent quality, small figures in cusped niches on the shapely demi—figures of angels with shields on the bowl. — LECTERN. Large Eagle Lectern of brass with an inscription: ‘Georgian Creichtown Episcopus Dunkeldensis.’ The inscription dates the lectern as between 1524 and 1543. - STAINED GLASS. Chancel N side by Hughes, c. 1866, rather pictorial and Raphaelesque; E window 1860, and S aisle window 1862, by Clayton & Bell. — PLATE. Chalice, Late Elizabethan; Salver, plated, 1718; Salver, 1789; Chalice, 1833. - MONUMENTS. Brass to William Robins d. 1482, wife and children (chancel N wall).
Nearly a mile from the city centre, St Stephen’s Church stands at the top of St Stephen’s Hill, at its meeting with King Harry Lane and Watling Street, which continued north-west through Verulamium. It is on the site of a Roman cemetery, and things brought to light in recent digging are in the Verularnium museum. In the churchyard of fine trees and hawthorn avenues is a Roman milestone, and there are Roman bricks in the oldest parts of the church. This is a charming picture, with its porch of stone and timber, and its quaint shingled tower and spire. The Saxon church almost vanished with rebuilding and alterations in Norman and medieval days, and most of the old work is 15th century, but some Norman masonry remains, and a blocked arch in the north wall of the nave is part of a 12th-century arcade which led to a lost aisle. Two small Norman lights are in the west wall. The south arcade is 13th and 14th century. On the pillars are old inscriptions and drawings and mason’s marks. One inscription tells of Edward Pearse, who was crushed under one of the stones, and another is said to have been cut by a Royalist soldier imprisoned here; there are men fighting, and a Crusader’s head. There are 13th-century lancets in the south chapel, whose interior, with leaning walls and a roof of old timbering, reminds us of a ship. It has a tiny peephole.
A rare feature is the oak chancel arch with traceried spandrels; it is chiefly modern, with some remains of the 15th century. The battered 500-year-old font has angels and shields on the bowl and the Madonna and saints on the stem. The brass eagle lectern, with three lions at the foot and an inscription to a Bishop of Dunkeld 500 years ago, is believed to have belonged to Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh. It was buried for safety under the chancel during the Civil War, and found 100 years later. William Robins of 1482 is here with his family in brass, William in armour with a dog at his feet, his wife in her butterfly headdress. In beautiful modern glass we see a boy (with a dog at his feet) touching one of the wounds of St Julian, and the Saxon Abbot Ulsinus holding a little church, with the abbey for a background.
A rare feature is the oak chancel arch with traceried spandrels; it is chiefly modern, with some remains of the 15th century. The battered 500-year-old font has angels and shields on the bowl and the Madonna and saints on the stem. The brass eagle lectern, with three lions at the foot and an inscription to a Bishop of Dunkeld 500 years ago, is believed to have belonged to Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh. It was buried for safety under the chancel during the Civil War, and found 100 years later. William Robins of 1482 is here with his family in brass, William in armour with a dog at his feet, his wife in her butterfly headdress. In beautiful modern glass we see a boy (with a dog at his feet) touching one of the wounds of St Julian, and the Saxon Abbot Ulsinus holding a little church, with the abbey for a background.
St Albans, St Peter
From the cathedral I went to St Peter where I found a grim Victorian rebuild: In 1893, after he had completed his restoration of the Abbey Church,
Lord Grimthorpe took it upon himself to restore St. Peter's at his own
expense. An hour-and-a-half's examination of the church enabled him to
decide "what is necessary and desirable to do in the way of restoring it
to a safe and creditable condition as far as the modern alterations
leave it possible". It is work such as this that led to the verb "to Grimthorpe" entering the English language of the time as a pejorative term for such insensitive "restoration".
Inside, however, is some good glass to be found in this grim building.
ST PETER. As far as the exterior is concerned Lord Grimthorpe’s restoration of 1894-5 has made the church a wholly Victorian building. He added a W front (with a big, rather thin rose window and lancets facing the aisles, a W bay to the nave, rebuilt the N aisle, the crossing tower, and the chancel, and proudly placed above the rose an inscription: ‘Templum hoc restituit Cathedrae renovator et auxit.’ The transepts had already been pulled down in 1802. So now the only original feature outside is the S aisle windows, large, of three lights, with simple Perp tracery. On the N side Lord Grimthorpe corrected this mistake and made his Geometrical and Dec, as he had made his chancel E.E. So one can read a whole non-existing building history into the stones of the church. Inside, the nave arcades are old, of very tall piers of the usual C15 four—shaft—four-hollow section. The clerestory was rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The angel corbels of the original roof were preserved. The outer wall of the S aisle has odd wall-shafts, also of C15 style, but possibly earlier than the nave arcade. They are shorter, too, so that they neither fit the nave piers nor the aisle windows. — PULPIT. With very rich Victorian carving, by J. A. Goyers of Louvain (1863). - SCREEN, 1905, by Temple Moore; correct without originality. - ORGAN and CASE. The organ was made by Ralph Dallens for St George’s Chapel at Windsor, went from there to St Martin-in—the-Fields, and finally to St Peter’s. Excellent scrolly carving. — STAINED GLASS. Plenty of fragments of C15 and later glass in the N windows, but much jumbled up. — The S window by J. Caprounier of Brussels, 1867. — The E window by Kempe’s successor Tower, 1910, entirely in the Kempe style. — PLATE. Magnificent set of Chalice, Paten, Flagon, and covered Bowl, foreign, given c. 1667; Paten of approximately the same date; Spoon given c. 1720-30; Chalice and Paten given in 1785. — MONUMENTS. Brass to Roger Pemberton d. 1627, wife and children. — Large finely classical Epitaph to Edward Strong d. 1723, with bust at the top in a broken pediment. Strong was chief master mason to St Paul’s Cathedral. The inscription says: ‘In Erecting the Edifice of St PAUL, Several years of his Life were Spent, Even from the Foundation to HIS laying the Last Stone, And herein (Equally with its Ingenious Architect SR. CHRISTOPHER WREN and its truly Pious Diocesan Bishop COMPTON) He Shared the Felicity of Seeing both the Beginning and Finishing of that Stupendous Fabrick.’
Inside, however, is some good glass to be found in this grim building.
ST PETER. As far as the exterior is concerned Lord Grimthorpe’s restoration of 1894-5 has made the church a wholly Victorian building. He added a W front (with a big, rather thin rose window and lancets facing the aisles, a W bay to the nave, rebuilt the N aisle, the crossing tower, and the chancel, and proudly placed above the rose an inscription: ‘Templum hoc restituit Cathedrae renovator et auxit.’ The transepts had already been pulled down in 1802. So now the only original feature outside is the S aisle windows, large, of three lights, with simple Perp tracery. On the N side Lord Grimthorpe corrected this mistake and made his Geometrical and Dec, as he had made his chancel E.E. So one can read a whole non-existing building history into the stones of the church. Inside, the nave arcades are old, of very tall piers of the usual C15 four—shaft—four-hollow section. The clerestory was rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The angel corbels of the original roof were preserved. The outer wall of the S aisle has odd wall-shafts, also of C15 style, but possibly earlier than the nave arcade. They are shorter, too, so that they neither fit the nave piers nor the aisle windows. — PULPIT. With very rich Victorian carving, by J. A. Goyers of Louvain (1863). - SCREEN, 1905, by Temple Moore; correct without originality. - ORGAN and CASE. The organ was made by Ralph Dallens for St George’s Chapel at Windsor, went from there to St Martin-in—the-Fields, and finally to St Peter’s. Excellent scrolly carving. — STAINED GLASS. Plenty of fragments of C15 and later glass in the N windows, but much jumbled up. — The S window by J. Caprounier of Brussels, 1867. — The E window by Kempe’s successor Tower, 1910, entirely in the Kempe style. — PLATE. Magnificent set of Chalice, Paten, Flagon, and covered Bowl, foreign, given c. 1667; Paten of approximately the same date; Spoon given c. 1720-30; Chalice and Paten given in 1785. — MONUMENTS. Brass to Roger Pemberton d. 1627, wife and children. — Large finely classical Epitaph to Edward Strong d. 1723, with bust at the top in a broken pediment. Strong was chief master mason to St Paul’s Cathedral. The inscription says: ‘In Erecting the Edifice of St PAUL, Several years of his Life were Spent, Even from the Foundation to HIS laying the Last Stone, And herein (Equally with its Ingenious Architect SR. CHRISTOPHER WREN and its truly Pious Diocesan Bishop COMPTON) He Shared the Felicity of Seeing both the Beginning and Finishing of that Stupendous Fabrick.’
From the museum we are soon at St Peter’s Church, which, like those of St Michael and St Stephen, was founded in the 10th century by the sixth abbot. Standing in a green churchyard, it is a fine picture outside with its massive tower rising between the nave and chancel, the transepts having been destroyed last century. Except for the nave arcades and the south aisle (which are medieval), the church was largely rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The striking feature of the bright interior are the lofty arcades of seven bays, with arches on clustered shafts reaching the low wide windows of the clerestory. The coloured angel corbels of the roof may be 15th century. The north aisle has medleys of old glass with figures and faces. Capronnier’s bright glass in the south aisle illustrates the parables and the Ascension, and the rose window at the west end has the Annunciation and Bible scenes. A chest is Jacobean.
Part of Roger Pemberton’s brass of 1515 was used in 1627 as a memorial to John Ball. Roger in fur-trimmed gown is with his wife in draped headdress, three sons and two daughters and a babe in swaddling clothes. Roger was Sheriff of Hertfordshire, and founded the simple row of almshouses almost facing the church. The iron arrow pointing upward on the archway in front of them reminds us of the story that Roger founded the hospital because he accidentally killed a widow when he was shooting in the woods.
A small monument has the bust of Edward Strong of 1723 in a long curling wig. He was Wren’s master-mason in the building of St Paul’s, and in his epitaph we read:
In erecting the edifice of St Paul several years Qf his life were spent, even from the foundation to the laying of the last stone. He shared the felicity equally with the ingenious architect Christopher Wren and pious Bishop Compton, of seeing, beginning, and finishing that stupendous work.
He sleeps in the church, and lived in the house facing it. One of the houses he built is now the electricity show-rooms, and has its original staircase.
Part of Roger Pemberton’s brass of 1515 was used in 1627 as a memorial to John Ball. Roger in fur-trimmed gown is with his wife in draped headdress, three sons and two daughters and a babe in swaddling clothes. Roger was Sheriff of Hertfordshire, and founded the simple row of almshouses almost facing the church. The iron arrow pointing upward on the archway in front of them reminds us of the story that Roger founded the hospital because he accidentally killed a widow when he was shooting in the woods.
A small monument has the bust of Edward Strong of 1723 in a long curling wig. He was Wren’s master-mason in the building of St Paul’s, and in his epitaph we read:
In erecting the edifice of St Paul several years Qf his life were spent, even from the foundation to the laying of the last stone. He shared the felicity equally with the ingenious architect Christopher Wren and pious Bishop Compton, of seeing, beginning, and finishing that stupendous work.
He sleeps in the church, and lived in the house facing it. One of the houses he built is now the electricity show-rooms, and has its original staircase.
St Albans Clock Tower
Having navigated my way through the centre of St Albans, which, incidentally, has the worst traffic management system I have ever come across, I parked the car and headed for the cathedral. On the way I passed the medieval clock tower which I mistook for the remnants of a disused church. Strictly speaking it does not fall within the remit of this blog but I include it for interest.
The centre of medieval St Albans was the CLOCK TOWER, one of the rare survivals of an English belfry. It was built in 1403—12 and is of four stages, unbuttressed, with one-light pointed and cusped windows in straightheaded frames. Near the Clock Tower was the Eleanor Cross to commemorate the resting place of Queen Eleanor’s dead body the night before it was conveyed to Waltham (q.v.). The Cross was pulled down in 1703 and a Market Cross built instead. This in its turn was replaced by the FOUNTAIN by Worley in 1874.
The centre of medieval St Albans was the CLOCK TOWER, one of the rare survivals of an English belfry. It was built in 1403—12 and is of four stages, unbuttressed, with one-light pointed and cusped windows in straightheaded frames. Near the Clock Tower was the Eleanor Cross to commemorate the resting place of Queen Eleanor’s dead body the night before it was conveyed to Waltham (q.v.). The Cross was pulled down in 1703 and a Market Cross built instead. This in its turn was replaced by the FOUNTAIN by Worley in 1874.
The four-storeyed Clock Tower facing the High Street is one of our few medieval belfries; it was built early in the 15th century and restored in the 19th, and the city clock now strikes the hour on a bell which is older than the tower itself, a curfew bell cast 600 years ago. It weighs a ton and on it is the Latin inscription, I have the name of Gabriel sent from Heaven. It used to ring at four in the morning to summon apprentices to work, and at eight in the evening to close the market and the shops. Till 1702 an Eleanor’s Cross stood in front of the tower, for Edward’s queen passed this way on her last journey to Westminster, resting for a night in the abbey church.
Monday, 26 May 2014
St Albans Cathedral
Due to a combination of inclement weather and work, and other, commitments I haven't done a church run for two months and rectified this omission last Thursday by visiting seven churches in St Albans and revisiting St Etheldreda in Hatfield;starting with the cathedral.
I was not expecting much from the cathedral knowing that it had suffered the attentions of Lord Grimthorpe and thus expected to find a thoroughly Victorianised building so I was delighted to find a fascinating church full of internal interest and character albeit the exterior is at best nondescript.
INTRODUCTION. The first impression is one of unbalanced length: a nave nearly 300 ft long, and no attempt to match it by high towers. The crossing tower is sturdy and seems squatter than it is, because of its uncommon breadth. W towers are completely lacking. That is unfortunate; the medieval Norman building had planned two W towers, and in any case the crossing tower would have had a spire, as one was indeed built in the C13. A spike of Herts type existed as late as 1800 and was taken down only in 1832. In approaching the building and getting a closer view of its Norman parts, the most striking peculiarity is the russet and blackish-grey colouring of the Roman brick and flint, which was originally, of course, all plastered white. As it is the building has a sombre tone, decidedly joyless. And joyless also is the interior. We are never made to forget the overpowering weight of the walls. Piers and arches appear only cut into them; no pier, no shaft becomes a being with an individual life. The grim austerity of all this is underlined by the shabby whitewash of the walls. There is nothing to attract, though much to respect and much to investigate.
Its peculiar architectural history, moreover, has deprived the cathedral of visual attractiveness. It is aesthetically a most unfortunate story. The Norman church (for of its Saxon predecessors nothing is left) was, it is true, built at one go and would have been as impressive in its gloom if it survived completely as, say, St Etienne at Nevers, or Tournus. Paul of Caen, the fourteenth abbot, built it between 1077 and 1088. He had been a monk of St Etienne at Caen when Lanfranc was its abbot. Rumour had it that Lanfranc was his father, and when Lanfranc was made Archbishop of Canterbury after the Conquest, Paul of Caen was made Abbot of St Albans. In his building he wished to outdo Lanfranc. His church was c. 360 ft long, with a nave of nine bays, a crossing with tower, a transept, and an apsidal chancel, flanked by shorter apsidal chancel aisles and by apses of diminishing depth on the E sides of the transept, two on the N and two on the S. Thus a stepped outline of seven apses was created, where Canterbury had only five. It must have been an impressive sight indeed. It is the richest development of a scheme first, it seems, conceived at Cluny in the C10.
A hundred years after Paul of Caen, Abbot John of Cella (1195-1214) lengthened the nave yet farther and began to erect a worthy W front with two towers outside the lines of the aisles, just as was done at Wells a little later. The style he used was E.E., and St Albans is amongst the earliest representatives of the style. However, John of Cella’s finances were not of the soundest, and in 1197 work had to be suspended. The W parts were completed only c. 1230, without the towers, and also without the intended nave vaults. So in 1230 the nave at St Albans had nine Norman bays and four E.E., aesthetically not a happy combination. But worse happened. In 1323 five piers on the S side of the Norman nave collapsed causing much further damage, and so in a style blending with the E.E. W bays but conflicting with the Norman ones opposite, the S side of the Norman nave was rebuilt. There can be no peace for the eye in such conflicting surroundings.
The E parts of the abbey had in the meantime also been completely rebuilt. The need for room and also for altars was so great that even the seven apsed spaces were not sufficient. It is the development we find in most English cathedrals. The rebuilding began E of the crossing in 1257 and went on till the Lady Chapel was completed about 1320. This was slow work compared with that under Paul of Caen. His impetus was evidently lacking. Just as the builders of the W parts of the nave had given up the projected vaults, so the new chancel, retrochoir, and Lady Chapel had all been begun with the intention of stone vaulting and all ended with wooden vaults or ceilings. Had money or enthusiasm returned after that, the nave might have been entirely rebuilt as at Canterbury later in the C14 or at least entirely remodelled as at Winchester. The painful conflict between N and S would then have been avoided.
But the separateness of parts of St Albans goes still further. The monks’ choir extends for three bays into the nave. A large C14 rood screen of solid stone ends it in the W and thus cuts off part of the nave and the view towards the crossing tower and the E. And another even bigger and heavier screen, the reredos, forms another division farther E.
Finally, to end this tale of unhappy circumstances, St Albans is the only one of the major churches of England which has a W front completely, or almost completely, Victorian. It is the work of Lord Grimthorpe, done at his own expense, in 1879. The cathedral was indeed in a sad state early in the C19. The Lady Chapel was walled off as a grammar school, a public way led through the chancel, and the w front was a ruin with the lateral porches walled up. Restoration began with a report of 1871 by Sir G. G. Scott. But work had to be stopped after Scott’s death for lack of further funds. That was when Lord Grimthorpe, a lawyer, amateur theologian, and architect, aged 63, intervened, and as he is reputed to have spent £130,000 on the abbey it would be ungracious to speculate what Bodley or Pearson or Oldrid Scott would have made of so responsible a job.
THE NORMAN ABBEY. All that remains of the Norman style at St Albans (and it is much and of great power) belongs, with one exception, to the years immediately after the Conquest. Paul of Caen began it, probably in 1077, that is as soon as he had been made abbot to reform the lax Saxon monastery. His church was completed after only eleven years, a miraculous feat. Of its E parts, described above, little survives. We have to go to the transept and the crossing tower to receive the full impact of that mighty and graceless style. The building is of flint, with all strengthening at the angles, round doors and windows, and in similar places by means of Roman bricks taken freely from old Verulamium. Arches and windows are completely unadorned (no more than one step back instead of any mouldings). The walls are articulated by strip-like flat buttresses without set—offs (rather than lesenes). Paul of Caen might have seen these at St Etienne in Caen, begun in 1064 and consecrated about I075-80. In the N and W walls of the N transepts the ground floor windows survive, and in both transepts the clerestory windows. Moreover, inside the transept the three equal openings to the chancel aisles and the apsidal transept chapels can still be seen. In the S transept two small windows remain above them. Of the S front of the s and the N front of the N transept we cannot say much, as Lord G. has given the one a spectacular group of E.E. lancets, the other a large rather thin rose—window. In their stead there had been big Perp windows. The interior system of the transept is of a tall ground floor, a triforium, and a clerestory with wall passage. The triforium has for each bay two pairs of openings. The colonnettes are circular or octagonal or of an odd, decidedly Saxon-looking baluster shape. This has been explained as a re-use of Saxon pieces; it may, however, easily be a survival of a tradition amongst craftsmen. The tympana of the arches are filled by a criss-cross of bricks, which was no doubt once white-washed, as all the rest. On the whitewash originally simple patterns were painted (an apparent alternation of red and white blocks of stone, for example, or a sham ashlaring by red lines to indicate joints or by zigzag lines.(1)
The crossing tower rests on immensely high arches. The supporting piers have a double-stepped section for each side. Above this is a triforium of three twin openings, and above this two large windows. The rest is hidden by a wooden ceiling painted early in the C16 with pretty square panels. The exterior of the crossing tower is entirely of brick. The builders did not trust flint for construction so high up in the air. Above the first stage of windows is an outer gallery of four arches of twin openings on each side, and above this the bell—stage with two large twin openings and a curious piercing of the tympana by rows of little triangles. The angles of the tower are strengthened by buttress-strips which higher up develop into circular angle supports. The tower is embattled.
Of the E parts, as they were built by Paul of Caen, the beginning can be traced in the exterior on the N side and in the interior on both sides. The chancel aisles are groin-vaulted. On the s side a blocked arch in the first bay marks the former access from the chancel aisle to the inner transeptal chapel. In the second bay a pair of quite tall windows has been found and exposed. The nave remains complete in the first three bays from the crossing, at least at arcade and clerestory level. The flat ceiling is of the C15 but of course replaces an equally flat Norman ceiling. W of the third bay only the N side is Norman. The nave has tall arcades with broad rectangular piers, in fact hardly piers at all, but chunks of solid wall masonry left standing. To appreciate the contrast between this raw treatment of the arcade and the articulate and elegant arcading of later styles one need only look at the C13 work farther E. The Early Norman piers are, as it were, piers only potentially, not yet really. Their wall character is emphasized by the pilaster-strips or buttress-strips which rise on their surface and go right up into the clerestory zone. Towards the arches the piers are double-stepped, a small progress against the single-stepping farther E. But there are not yet any further mouldings anywhere, nor any capitals, nor any ornaments.
Equally unadorned was no doubt the storey above the arcade. But here some alterations have been made which obscure the original state and have in fact until now prevented a full appreciation of the design of St Albans. As things are at present, one sees from inside a deep unmoulded arch above each arcade bay at the outer-end of which is a three-light C15 looking window. These windows give no light. They lead into the roof of the aisle. An engraving by Kip and Hawksmoor of 1723 shows, however, that at that time the aisle roof did not reach up so high and that the windows were of quite a different shape. Evidence inside the present roof shows in fact that the window wall is a Norman outer wall. So St Albans had no gallery originally, as all the major Norman churches in England have, but only a triforium, that is a passage in the thickness of the wall of the passage itself; all traces have now gone, but to the l. and r. of the main upright pilaster—strips shallow piers can still be seen with their bases and unmoulded capitals on which formerly the arches towards the nave must have rested. According to Sir Alfred Clapham these were large, one arch for each arcade arch below, like at St Etienne in Caen, but a triforium as against a gallery can hardly be reconstructed with one arch of this kind and it seems much more probable that the triforium was indeed subdivided towards the nave, more or less as in the transepts. The large brick arches visible in the outer wall (i.e. the roof-space of the aisle) would then have been mere blank relieving arches. So the elevation of St Albans was not derived from St Etienne but from its sister foundation at Caen, Ste Trinité, which also possesses (an exception in Normandy as in England) a triforium instead of a gallery. The Trinité also was complete by the time Paul of Caen left Normandy. Details of the C11 triforium at St Albans have no doubt to be visualized as raw and bare as the arcade.
That St Albans, in the C12, did not shun ornament is proved by the SLYPE, that is the passage between s transept and Chapter House (see below) which is decorated with blank arcading with intersected arches. These arches have rings at close intervals so that they look like bent spinal cords. Some of the arcading is still in situ, but most of it has been re—erected against the s wall of the s transept. Below it is, also re-set, the highly ornate DOORWAY from the Cloister into the Slype. This has three orders, without any break between jambs and voussoirs, the outer of foliage scrolls, the middle one with two sets of roundheaded crenellations, one on the intrados, the other on the extrados. The inner order is C19 reconstruction. Amongst architectural fragments exhibited in the Slype there are many more pieces of C12 decoration.
THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. What reason can Abbot John de Cella (1195-12I4) have had to lengthen yet farther the nave of the church, the nave being the least important part of an abbey church? Or was he only carrying out what had been planned from the beginning? He added three bays and started a proper W facade. The design is wholly in the Gothic style. No compromise with the existing nave is aimed at. Considering the fact that the Gothic chancel at Canterbury had been begun only twenty years before and Lincoln and Wells no more than five, John of Cella was certainly a modern—minded man. However, after only two years, Work was stopped for lack of money, and much of what we see now goes back only to William of Trumpington (1214-35). The new bays of the nave have piers of an unusual section. They are basically square, with four attached shafts, but as the angles are broadly chamfered they appear as if they had semi-octagonal shafts in the diagonals. It is a somewhat heavy section, due perhaps to existing square Norman foundations for the lengthening of the nave? The arch mouldings are more complex than can here be described. The arches reach up higher than the Norman ones. Their apexes touch the sil1—line of the triforium. For the E.E. extension also has no proper gallery. The triforium is of two twin-openings per bay, with ample dog-tooth decoration along the sill and up the shafts, and with pierced quatrefoils in the spandrels. The most interesting thing about the triforium is, however, the fact that no differentiation is made between the curve of the inner arch of each light and that of the outer arch above both lights of one twin opening. Thus it looks as if the outer arch started with one broad complex set of mouldings from which some suddenly break off to form the smaller arch inside — a lack of articulation or logicality typically English. It exists at Worcester as well, probably a little earlier (Retrochoir consecrated 1218). Most of the work on this stage belongs to the second building phase. During the first, that is between 1195 and 1197, vaulting shafts of Purbeck marble had been attached to the spandrels of the arcade below. The triforium was prepared to receive their continuation up to the projected vault, but they were abandoned, as can clearly be seen, and with them the plan to vault the nave. The clerestory continues the wall passage of the Norman nave. On the outside it is handsomely shafted, with a larger arch for each lancet window and smaller, more pointed, blank arches between. The aisle windows were all altered by Lord G. Inside, the aisles have bare walls (none of the usual English blank arcading), but the s wall has tripartite vaulting shafts along the wall, as if for aisle vaults. The existing vaults, however, are C19. De Cella’s W end was meant to be a grand show-piece, with two W towers standing outside the nave to widen the facade, and with three deep porches. The idea of towers was given up, the rest was built but fell into such dismal decay that it was almost entirely rebuilt by Lord G. Of the upper parts of the facade nothing is C13: a nine-light Perp window was demolished by Lord G. to replace it by his Late Geometrical one. The porches are original in their structure, but only in few details. The long Purbeck shafts carrying an outer skin of arcading in front of the blank arcading against the back walls of the porches, however, can be ascribed to the late C12. The inside of the front towards nave and aisles is richly adorned with blank lancet arcades. The capitals are of the crocketed as well as the stiff-leaf type.
The next addition to the church was the replacement of the Norman E end by one more spacious and more up to date. The work was started in 1257 close to the crossing. Here the Norman walls of the chancel and the first bays of the chancel aisles were left standing and tall blank arcades applied to the chancel walls. Two entrances into the chancel from the aisles with odd and very pretty little tripartite balconies above them (what was their use? they are inaccessible from outside) were provided. The balconies have three canopies each with three pointed and cusped arches and three crocketed gables. Farther E, that is in the Feretory or space for the Shrine, behind the altar and reredos, the chancel arcades are open, with piers of four major and four minor shafts. The aisles have quadripartite rib-vaults. Above the arcade is a small mostly blank triforium of even little cusped arches, and above that the clerestory with clusters of nook-shafts and wall passage. Here also a stone vault was planned, but only a wooden vault carried out. It is of C13 timber, but was repainted in the C15 and again recently by J. C. Rogers and Professor Tristram. The chancel ends to the E in an arcade of three bays (2) and a large and excellent group of a four—light Geometrical window and two flanking lancets. The large window has two trefoils in circles and above them a splendid large octofoil, similar to the contemporary chapter house at Salisbury. E of this the building is carried on one-storeyed, and on its general outline, especially from far away, this lowering of the roof line has an unfortunate effect. In plan the new E parts seem quite able to balance the long nave; in elevation they don’t, except when the building is seen from the NE or SE. The E exterior consists of the Retrochoir and the Lady Chapel. Contrary to custom (cf., for example, Exeter) the Lady Chapel was the last undertaking. The retrochoir carries on the line of the chancel aisles, but uses an octagonal pier to separate the aisles from the roomy central span. This is not broader than the chancel but appears so because it is so much lower, and also because it has a flat ceiling. All this is not as it was originally intended. The foundations of columns have been found which would have divided the central span into three naves as is the case at Salisbury. Against the outer wall is renewed blank arcading, and above it open the windows. The window decoration, where it is preserved, is of the earliest bar-tracery type, two cusped lights with a foiled circle above. Others have the slightly later form of three unencircled quatrefoils above the two lights. Yet others (retrochoir aisle E, Lady Chapel vestibule N and s) go a decisive step farther away from the purity of the E.E. style.
The Lady Chapel itself must be called Dec, although it has none of the fantasies of East Anglia or Yorkshire. A special effort was made here (e.g., the outer walls of these E parts were intended to be, and were partly, stone—faced). A vault was also intended, but once more not carried out.(3) The outer walls have again blank arcading inside, all in its present form C19. The windows are sumptuously adorned. They have inside bell-flower decoration and in addition tier above tier of small figures on brackets. Their tracery is complex. It includes ogee reticulation and small ogee heads to the individual lights of the five-light E window. These are mostly oddly crowned by little crocketed gables, as if they were blank arches, although the glazing of the window goes on above them in the larger forms of the arch common to the whole five—light window. Otherwise there are intersections, unencircled trefoils, daggers arranged cross-wise so as to fill the oblong lozenge—shape at the top of a four-light window, a wheel of six cusped daggers in a circle, with mouchettes in the spandrels, etc. The Royal Commission dates all this as c. 1308. There is, however, no conclusive reason why it should not have been completed as late as c. 1320, which is a much more likely date. If one looks at the Sedilia, for example, the charming blank arcading above has much crocketing but no ogees. Thus it appears earlier than, for example, the window above the Sedilia, which was (an extreme oddity) given the shape of a spheric triangle. If work was carried on at ground floor level, that is the level of the Sedilia, c.1300-10, the more advanced tracery forms may well be a revision of the design made c. 1315-20.
In 1323 part of the s side of the Norman nave came down, and instead of a complete rebuilding of the nave, only this side (six bays long) was redone. The designer decided to keep to the general scheme of the C13 work farther W. He used piers of the same shape and only adjusted his capitals and arch mouldings according to a different taste. He abandoned the C13 vaulting shafts in the arcade spandrels, as he never intended vaults, and introduced pretty label stops instead in the form of heads: a King, a Queen, a mitred Abbot, and a layman, probably the master mason. His triforium also differs from that of the C13 in such details as the elongated cusping of the arches and the decoration of the spandrels. The earlier dog-tooth ornament was replaced by knobbly foliage. The clerestory fenestration is different too, as can be seen outside from the s. In the aisles five-partite instead of tripartite shafts are used and vaults actually carried out.
Some time later in the c14 vestries were built E of the s transept, where the Norman chapels had been. Their two doorways still exist, as does also the infinitely more elaborate late C14 doorway from the s aisle into the Cloister. This is set in a square frame, as pleased the taste of those who believed in the new Perp style. The door arch is very cusped. In the spandrels are those quatrefoils with shields which appear in the W doors of so many parish churches. To the l. and r. are slim niches with tiny lierne—vaults inside. For the Cloisters, see below (Monastic Buildings).
The C15, so prominent in most major churches, whatever their original dates, is almost absent at St Albans (except for the nave windows above the Norman arcades). Lord G. everywhere replaced it by his version of the E.E.
FURNISHINGS, ALTAR AND REREDOS. The reredos was erected by Abbot Wallingford (1476-92) and cost 1,100 marks. It looks repulsively un-genuine now with all its Harry Hems figures of 1884-90, but its structure is indeed essentially original, a solid stone wall with three tiers of thickly canopied niches. The schematism of the uprights and horizontals is far stronger than the fancy of the details (a typical Late Perp feature).(4) The relief now inserted in the reredos immediately above the altar is by Sir Alfred Gilbert. As the reredos cuts awkwardly into the chancel arcading short STONE SCREENS (with very plain Perp panelling) were erected in the chancel aisles. — ROOD SCREEN. The rood screen separating not the chancel (i.e. the area E of the crossing) but the monastic choir from the nave, stands three bays W of the crossing. It is also of stone and was probably built by Abbot de la Mare (1349-96). It has none of the grace and lightness of earlier C14 pulpit such as those of Exeter or Southwell. In its solid squareness with straight top and only a thin cresting it is wholly in the new Perp spirit. It has two doors, the lay-altar between them, and above this seven closely set niches for images with tall canopies above. More niches, strangely at a slightly lower sill level to the 1. and r. of the doors. — CHOIR STALLS, 1905, by Oldrid Scott. - PULPIT. In the nave, big and circular, of stone, with c13 diaper patterning, designed and given by Lord Grimthorpe.
ORGAN CASE. By Oldrid Scott. — FONT and COVER, 1933, by J. A. R. Blacking. - SHRINE OF ST ALBAN. Erected c. 1320, destroyed in 1539, and found in 2,000 pieces in 1872. The base is like a tomb-chest with the usual quatrefoil decoration. In front of it detached buttresses, linked up, it seems, with the main structure only higher up. The base itself has four canted niches on each of the long sides, decorated inside with blank ogee-reticulated tracery. Crocketed gables above the niches, the spandrels with excellently carved but badly damaged figures, seated saints, the Martyrdom of St Alban, censing angels, etc. The top of this base formed the platform on which the shrine itself stood. This was always under the watchful eye of a custos feretri for whom a special raised box or bridge was constructed late in the C14. — This WATCHING LOFT has only one parallel, the one at Christ Church, Oxford. It is of timber, the ground floor made into cupboards and a narrow staircase, the upper floor coved out like a rood loft. The upper floor is one chamber, open towards the Shrine in eight twin—windows. The detail is all of the simplest Perp, again much like that of rood screens. The designing and carving was probably done by a workshop usually engaged on such jobs. - SHRINE OF ST AMPHIBALUS (N chancel aisle). Here also only the base remains, reconstructed in the C19. It is mid C14 work of clunch, whereas the major shrine of St Alban is partly of Purbeck marble. - DOORS. N wall, N transept, with big Norman iron hinges. — From s aisle to cloister, richly traceried, late c14. — The original W doors, also late CI4, of similar design, now in the N transept. - BREAD CUPBOARDS. Late c16, small, in a W recess of the S transept, with balusters instead of doors. — TILES. A few c14-C15 tiles placed in front of an altar in the N transept.
PAINTINGS. St Albans possesses an amount of medieval wall painting unique amongst the major churches of England, even if far inferior to what, for example some French and German churches possess (St Savin, Reichenau). There are first of all traces in many places of the decorative motifs used to enliven the white-washed wall surfaces, sham ashlaring, alternation of red and white courses, zigzag, foliage scrolls, etc. The whole church must be visualized painted in this fashion. Of the late Middle Ages are the pretty vine scrolls in a N transept N window and the dark green Tudor roses on a strong red background on the piers to the SE of the Shrine of St Alban. There are also traces left of the major figure motifs which must originally have been everywhere in the most important positions, e.g. a mid c13 Christ in Majesty with angels, on the E side of the arch between crossing and chancel. Similarly there is an earlier C13 figure of an angel on the E wall of the s transept and, on the E wall of the N transept, a c15 scene of Doubting Thomas against elaborate canopy work. Then two large C13 figures have been uncovered between the clerestory windows at the E end of the N aisle, and finally there is the decoration of the Norman nave piers themselves. Two of them have large c14 figures facing the nave, and five have the precious remains of C13 paintings originally no doubt above altars. It is a most interesting fact in itself that altars should have stood against all these piers in the nave of an abbey church. Each painting is of two tiers, and in each case the Crucifixion is on the upper tier. This repetition is again interesting, and equally interesting is the variety of treatment and sentiment, from the gentleness of the second of the painted piers (counting from W) to the majesty of the third, and the terrible distortion of the fifth. In date they range from c. 1215 (first) to c. 1275 (fifth).
LATER PAINTINGS. Last Supper; this cannot be the picture by Fellows, painted in 1701. It is obviously late C18. — The Passing of Queen Eleanor, by Sir Frank Salisbury, 1918, a piece of facile, colourful, historical fiction.
STAINED GLASS. Surprisingly little of interest. E window 1881, by Burlison & Grylls. Lady Chapel s and N windows by Kempe, 1896 and 1900. — PLATE. Chalice of 1560; two more C16 Chalices; Chalice, 1639; Paten, 1697; Spoon, 1709; Flagon, 1721. Spanish Crystal Cross, C16 (on the lay—altar).
MONUMENTS. The most important are the three CHANTRY CHAPELS to the N and s of the chancel. They are Humphrey, Duke of G1oucester’s, 1447, Abbot Wheathampstead’s d. 1465, and Abbot Ramryge’s d. 1519. The most beautiful feature of the Gloucester Tomb does not belong to it, the late C13 iron grille of rectangular panels alternatingly built up of vertical and horizontal and of diagonal bars. The chantry itself has a large tripartite opening to the altar and above stonework of the design usual in screens, with piers between on which are three tiers of figures in niches. The vault inside is traceried. — The Wheathampstead Chantry has a wide four-centred arch closed by contemporary ironwork and a heavy straight-topped super-structure with the Abbot’s emblem (wheat ears) and his device, Valles Habundabunt (of wheat). There is nothing fanciful about the architecture of this tomb. It is deliberately less sumptuous than that erected by Wheathampstead to his patron the Duke of Gloucester. The Ramryge Chantry of c. 1515-20 is the most elaborate of the three, a tall ground floor with a close stone screen, again of the patterns used for stone rood screens, and above finer and thinner decoration with ogee arches and polygonal turrets. Amongst the carvings appear, apart from shields and Ramryge’s emblem, the ram, the Instruments of the Passion and scenes from the Martyrdom of St Alban. The interior is daintily fan-vaulted. The door into the chapel is original. — The only other medieval stone memorial is a RECESS in the s aisle, arched and cusped, late C13. — On the other hand there is a large number of BRASSES preserved, and even more indents. Most of the figure brasses have been collected on a wooden board inside the Wheathampstead Chantry. They are all of the C15 and early c16 and of no special merit. Remaining on the floor Ralph Rowlatt d. 1543, merchant of the Staple of Calais (s chancel aisle), and R. Beauner, c. 1455, and Sir A Grey d. 1480 (chancel). In the chancel floor fine tripartite brass canopy with concave sides belonging to the brass of Abbot Stone d. 1451. But the finest brass at St Albans is the large plate of Flemish workmanship to Abbot de la Mare d. 1396. It now lies on the tombchest of Abbot Wheathampstead in his chantry. It has broad buttresses on the sides of the figure with three tiers of pairs of small figures under canopies and two of single figures above. In the low top canopy the Lord holding the Abbot’s soul in a cloth, and four angels, the whole done exceedingly delicately. — Post—medieval monuments are scanty and not of great interest. Painted epitaph to Ralph Maynard d. 1613 with kneeling figure (s chancel aisle), and below epitaph without effigy to Charles Maynard d. 1665. — J. Thrale d. 1704, epitaph with two frontal busts against an altar backplate with weeping putti l. and r. — W. King d. 1766, epitaph of variously coloured marbles and with charming cherubs’ heads at the foot (both s aisle). — Christopher Rawlinson d. 1733, large epitaph with lifesize figure of History seated on a sarcophagus against a black obelisk (N transept). — Mrs Mure d. 1834, by Chantrey, pure white, with a kneeling female allegory and Grecian detail. - Bishop T. Legh Claughton, designed by Oldrid Scott, the figure by Forsyth, 1895; alabaster tombchest with recumbent marble effigy. — A. Blomfield d. 1894, by Sir A. Blomfield, tomb-chest with tracery panels and poor figures between them (all these N transept).
MONASTIC BUILDINGS. Of these surprisingly little can now be seen. It amounts to this: the SLYPE along the s wall of the s transept.(5) Then the blank arcading and the springers of the vault of the CLOISTER. This went along the E half of the S side of the nave. The remains are clearly of the early C14. s of the Slype was the Chapter House whose site and size have been ascertained by excavations. s of this probably was the Dormitory, along the s range of the cloister the Refectory, and along the W range the cellars with probably the Abbot’s Lodgings over, or extending separately farther w along the nave. The Guest House, Aula Regia, etc., were farther W still, not far from the GATEHOUSE which survives in all its bulk. It stands in a line with the S aisle of the church, c. 50 ft away from it, with the gateway leading from N to s into the abbey precincts. The building is due to Abbot de la Mare, that is belongs to the second half of the C14. It is of flint with stone dressings, a big, broad, fortress-like structure. The gateway is divided on the N side by a pier into a carriage-way and a pedestrian entrance, but on the s side there is only one very wide and high opening, flanked by rectangular turrets. The lieme-vault has a central octagon of ribs inscribed into a four-pointed star.
1. Examples must also be looked for in the nave and the chancel aisles.
2. Into the springers of the arches odd little blank arcades have been carved, for no purpose which can now be understood.
3. The present stone vault is C19. Before it there was a wooden vaulting.
4. Fragments of original stonework from the Reredos removed at the time of the restoration are preserved in one of the E recesses of the s transept.
5. On its Norman decoration, see above.
I was not expecting much from the cathedral knowing that it had suffered the attentions of Lord Grimthorpe and thus expected to find a thoroughly Victorianised building so I was delighted to find a fascinating church full of internal interest and character albeit the exterior is at best nondescript.
INTRODUCTION. The first impression is one of unbalanced length: a nave nearly 300 ft long, and no attempt to match it by high towers. The crossing tower is sturdy and seems squatter than it is, because of its uncommon breadth. W towers are completely lacking. That is unfortunate; the medieval Norman building had planned two W towers, and in any case the crossing tower would have had a spire, as one was indeed built in the C13. A spike of Herts type existed as late as 1800 and was taken down only in 1832. In approaching the building and getting a closer view of its Norman parts, the most striking peculiarity is the russet and blackish-grey colouring of the Roman brick and flint, which was originally, of course, all plastered white. As it is the building has a sombre tone, decidedly joyless. And joyless also is the interior. We are never made to forget the overpowering weight of the walls. Piers and arches appear only cut into them; no pier, no shaft becomes a being with an individual life. The grim austerity of all this is underlined by the shabby whitewash of the walls. There is nothing to attract, though much to respect and much to investigate.
Its peculiar architectural history, moreover, has deprived the cathedral of visual attractiveness. It is aesthetically a most unfortunate story. The Norman church (for of its Saxon predecessors nothing is left) was, it is true, built at one go and would have been as impressive in its gloom if it survived completely as, say, St Etienne at Nevers, or Tournus. Paul of Caen, the fourteenth abbot, built it between 1077 and 1088. He had been a monk of St Etienne at Caen when Lanfranc was its abbot. Rumour had it that Lanfranc was his father, and when Lanfranc was made Archbishop of Canterbury after the Conquest, Paul of Caen was made Abbot of St Albans. In his building he wished to outdo Lanfranc. His church was c. 360 ft long, with a nave of nine bays, a crossing with tower, a transept, and an apsidal chancel, flanked by shorter apsidal chancel aisles and by apses of diminishing depth on the E sides of the transept, two on the N and two on the S. Thus a stepped outline of seven apses was created, where Canterbury had only five. It must have been an impressive sight indeed. It is the richest development of a scheme first, it seems, conceived at Cluny in the C10.
A hundred years after Paul of Caen, Abbot John of Cella (1195-1214) lengthened the nave yet farther and began to erect a worthy W front with two towers outside the lines of the aisles, just as was done at Wells a little later. The style he used was E.E., and St Albans is amongst the earliest representatives of the style. However, John of Cella’s finances were not of the soundest, and in 1197 work had to be suspended. The W parts were completed only c. 1230, without the towers, and also without the intended nave vaults. So in 1230 the nave at St Albans had nine Norman bays and four E.E., aesthetically not a happy combination. But worse happened. In 1323 five piers on the S side of the Norman nave collapsed causing much further damage, and so in a style blending with the E.E. W bays but conflicting with the Norman ones opposite, the S side of the Norman nave was rebuilt. There can be no peace for the eye in such conflicting surroundings.
The E parts of the abbey had in the meantime also been completely rebuilt. The need for room and also for altars was so great that even the seven apsed spaces were not sufficient. It is the development we find in most English cathedrals. The rebuilding began E of the crossing in 1257 and went on till the Lady Chapel was completed about 1320. This was slow work compared with that under Paul of Caen. His impetus was evidently lacking. Just as the builders of the W parts of the nave had given up the projected vaults, so the new chancel, retrochoir, and Lady Chapel had all been begun with the intention of stone vaulting and all ended with wooden vaults or ceilings. Had money or enthusiasm returned after that, the nave might have been entirely rebuilt as at Canterbury later in the C14 or at least entirely remodelled as at Winchester. The painful conflict between N and S would then have been avoided.
But the separateness of parts of St Albans goes still further. The monks’ choir extends for three bays into the nave. A large C14 rood screen of solid stone ends it in the W and thus cuts off part of the nave and the view towards the crossing tower and the E. And another even bigger and heavier screen, the reredos, forms another division farther E.
Finally, to end this tale of unhappy circumstances, St Albans is the only one of the major churches of England which has a W front completely, or almost completely, Victorian. It is the work of Lord Grimthorpe, done at his own expense, in 1879. The cathedral was indeed in a sad state early in the C19. The Lady Chapel was walled off as a grammar school, a public way led through the chancel, and the w front was a ruin with the lateral porches walled up. Restoration began with a report of 1871 by Sir G. G. Scott. But work had to be stopped after Scott’s death for lack of further funds. That was when Lord Grimthorpe, a lawyer, amateur theologian, and architect, aged 63, intervened, and as he is reputed to have spent £130,000 on the abbey it would be ungracious to speculate what Bodley or Pearson or Oldrid Scott would have made of so responsible a job.
THE NORMAN ABBEY. All that remains of the Norman style at St Albans (and it is much and of great power) belongs, with one exception, to the years immediately after the Conquest. Paul of Caen began it, probably in 1077, that is as soon as he had been made abbot to reform the lax Saxon monastery. His church was completed after only eleven years, a miraculous feat. Of its E parts, described above, little survives. We have to go to the transept and the crossing tower to receive the full impact of that mighty and graceless style. The building is of flint, with all strengthening at the angles, round doors and windows, and in similar places by means of Roman bricks taken freely from old Verulamium. Arches and windows are completely unadorned (no more than one step back instead of any mouldings). The walls are articulated by strip-like flat buttresses without set—offs (rather than lesenes). Paul of Caen might have seen these at St Etienne in Caen, begun in 1064 and consecrated about I075-80. In the N and W walls of the N transepts the ground floor windows survive, and in both transepts the clerestory windows. Moreover, inside the transept the three equal openings to the chancel aisles and the apsidal transept chapels can still be seen. In the S transept two small windows remain above them. Of the S front of the s and the N front of the N transept we cannot say much, as Lord G. has given the one a spectacular group of E.E. lancets, the other a large rather thin rose—window. In their stead there had been big Perp windows. The interior system of the transept is of a tall ground floor, a triforium, and a clerestory with wall passage. The triforium has for each bay two pairs of openings. The colonnettes are circular or octagonal or of an odd, decidedly Saxon-looking baluster shape. This has been explained as a re-use of Saxon pieces; it may, however, easily be a survival of a tradition amongst craftsmen. The tympana of the arches are filled by a criss-cross of bricks, which was no doubt once white-washed, as all the rest. On the whitewash originally simple patterns were painted (an apparent alternation of red and white blocks of stone, for example, or a sham ashlaring by red lines to indicate joints or by zigzag lines.(1)
The crossing tower rests on immensely high arches. The supporting piers have a double-stepped section for each side. Above this is a triforium of three twin openings, and above this two large windows. The rest is hidden by a wooden ceiling painted early in the C16 with pretty square panels. The exterior of the crossing tower is entirely of brick. The builders did not trust flint for construction so high up in the air. Above the first stage of windows is an outer gallery of four arches of twin openings on each side, and above this the bell—stage with two large twin openings and a curious piercing of the tympana by rows of little triangles. The angles of the tower are strengthened by buttress-strips which higher up develop into circular angle supports. The tower is embattled.
Of the E parts, as they were built by Paul of Caen, the beginning can be traced in the exterior on the N side and in the interior on both sides. The chancel aisles are groin-vaulted. On the s side a blocked arch in the first bay marks the former access from the chancel aisle to the inner transeptal chapel. In the second bay a pair of quite tall windows has been found and exposed. The nave remains complete in the first three bays from the crossing, at least at arcade and clerestory level. The flat ceiling is of the C15 but of course replaces an equally flat Norman ceiling. W of the third bay only the N side is Norman. The nave has tall arcades with broad rectangular piers, in fact hardly piers at all, but chunks of solid wall masonry left standing. To appreciate the contrast between this raw treatment of the arcade and the articulate and elegant arcading of later styles one need only look at the C13 work farther E. The Early Norman piers are, as it were, piers only potentially, not yet really. Their wall character is emphasized by the pilaster-strips or buttress-strips which rise on their surface and go right up into the clerestory zone. Towards the arches the piers are double-stepped, a small progress against the single-stepping farther E. But there are not yet any further mouldings anywhere, nor any capitals, nor any ornaments.
Equally unadorned was no doubt the storey above the arcade. But here some alterations have been made which obscure the original state and have in fact until now prevented a full appreciation of the design of St Albans. As things are at present, one sees from inside a deep unmoulded arch above each arcade bay at the outer-end of which is a three-light C15 looking window. These windows give no light. They lead into the roof of the aisle. An engraving by Kip and Hawksmoor of 1723 shows, however, that at that time the aisle roof did not reach up so high and that the windows were of quite a different shape. Evidence inside the present roof shows in fact that the window wall is a Norman outer wall. So St Albans had no gallery originally, as all the major Norman churches in England have, but only a triforium, that is a passage in the thickness of the wall of the passage itself; all traces have now gone, but to the l. and r. of the main upright pilaster—strips shallow piers can still be seen with their bases and unmoulded capitals on which formerly the arches towards the nave must have rested. According to Sir Alfred Clapham these were large, one arch for each arcade arch below, like at St Etienne in Caen, but a triforium as against a gallery can hardly be reconstructed with one arch of this kind and it seems much more probable that the triforium was indeed subdivided towards the nave, more or less as in the transepts. The large brick arches visible in the outer wall (i.e. the roof-space of the aisle) would then have been mere blank relieving arches. So the elevation of St Albans was not derived from St Etienne but from its sister foundation at Caen, Ste Trinité, which also possesses (an exception in Normandy as in England) a triforium instead of a gallery. The Trinité also was complete by the time Paul of Caen left Normandy. Details of the C11 triforium at St Albans have no doubt to be visualized as raw and bare as the arcade.
That St Albans, in the C12, did not shun ornament is proved by the SLYPE, that is the passage between s transept and Chapter House (see below) which is decorated with blank arcading with intersected arches. These arches have rings at close intervals so that they look like bent spinal cords. Some of the arcading is still in situ, but most of it has been re—erected against the s wall of the s transept. Below it is, also re-set, the highly ornate DOORWAY from the Cloister into the Slype. This has three orders, without any break between jambs and voussoirs, the outer of foliage scrolls, the middle one with two sets of roundheaded crenellations, one on the intrados, the other on the extrados. The inner order is C19 reconstruction. Amongst architectural fragments exhibited in the Slype there are many more pieces of C12 decoration.
THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. What reason can Abbot John de Cella (1195-12I4) have had to lengthen yet farther the nave of the church, the nave being the least important part of an abbey church? Or was he only carrying out what had been planned from the beginning? He added three bays and started a proper W facade. The design is wholly in the Gothic style. No compromise with the existing nave is aimed at. Considering the fact that the Gothic chancel at Canterbury had been begun only twenty years before and Lincoln and Wells no more than five, John of Cella was certainly a modern—minded man. However, after only two years, Work was stopped for lack of money, and much of what we see now goes back only to William of Trumpington (1214-35). The new bays of the nave have piers of an unusual section. They are basically square, with four attached shafts, but as the angles are broadly chamfered they appear as if they had semi-octagonal shafts in the diagonals. It is a somewhat heavy section, due perhaps to existing square Norman foundations for the lengthening of the nave? The arch mouldings are more complex than can here be described. The arches reach up higher than the Norman ones. Their apexes touch the sil1—line of the triforium. For the E.E. extension also has no proper gallery. The triforium is of two twin-openings per bay, with ample dog-tooth decoration along the sill and up the shafts, and with pierced quatrefoils in the spandrels. The most interesting thing about the triforium is, however, the fact that no differentiation is made between the curve of the inner arch of each light and that of the outer arch above both lights of one twin opening. Thus it looks as if the outer arch started with one broad complex set of mouldings from which some suddenly break off to form the smaller arch inside — a lack of articulation or logicality typically English. It exists at Worcester as well, probably a little earlier (Retrochoir consecrated 1218). Most of the work on this stage belongs to the second building phase. During the first, that is between 1195 and 1197, vaulting shafts of Purbeck marble had been attached to the spandrels of the arcade below. The triforium was prepared to receive their continuation up to the projected vault, but they were abandoned, as can clearly be seen, and with them the plan to vault the nave. The clerestory continues the wall passage of the Norman nave. On the outside it is handsomely shafted, with a larger arch for each lancet window and smaller, more pointed, blank arches between. The aisle windows were all altered by Lord G. Inside, the aisles have bare walls (none of the usual English blank arcading), but the s wall has tripartite vaulting shafts along the wall, as if for aisle vaults. The existing vaults, however, are C19. De Cella’s W end was meant to be a grand show-piece, with two W towers standing outside the nave to widen the facade, and with three deep porches. The idea of towers was given up, the rest was built but fell into such dismal decay that it was almost entirely rebuilt by Lord G. Of the upper parts of the facade nothing is C13: a nine-light Perp window was demolished by Lord G. to replace it by his Late Geometrical one. The porches are original in their structure, but only in few details. The long Purbeck shafts carrying an outer skin of arcading in front of the blank arcading against the back walls of the porches, however, can be ascribed to the late C12. The inside of the front towards nave and aisles is richly adorned with blank lancet arcades. The capitals are of the crocketed as well as the stiff-leaf type.
The next addition to the church was the replacement of the Norman E end by one more spacious and more up to date. The work was started in 1257 close to the crossing. Here the Norman walls of the chancel and the first bays of the chancel aisles were left standing and tall blank arcades applied to the chancel walls. Two entrances into the chancel from the aisles with odd and very pretty little tripartite balconies above them (what was their use? they are inaccessible from outside) were provided. The balconies have three canopies each with three pointed and cusped arches and three crocketed gables. Farther E, that is in the Feretory or space for the Shrine, behind the altar and reredos, the chancel arcades are open, with piers of four major and four minor shafts. The aisles have quadripartite rib-vaults. Above the arcade is a small mostly blank triforium of even little cusped arches, and above that the clerestory with clusters of nook-shafts and wall passage. Here also a stone vault was planned, but only a wooden vault carried out. It is of C13 timber, but was repainted in the C15 and again recently by J. C. Rogers and Professor Tristram. The chancel ends to the E in an arcade of three bays (2) and a large and excellent group of a four—light Geometrical window and two flanking lancets. The large window has two trefoils in circles and above them a splendid large octofoil, similar to the contemporary chapter house at Salisbury. E of this the building is carried on one-storeyed, and on its general outline, especially from far away, this lowering of the roof line has an unfortunate effect. In plan the new E parts seem quite able to balance the long nave; in elevation they don’t, except when the building is seen from the NE or SE. The E exterior consists of the Retrochoir and the Lady Chapel. Contrary to custom (cf., for example, Exeter) the Lady Chapel was the last undertaking. The retrochoir carries on the line of the chancel aisles, but uses an octagonal pier to separate the aisles from the roomy central span. This is not broader than the chancel but appears so because it is so much lower, and also because it has a flat ceiling. All this is not as it was originally intended. The foundations of columns have been found which would have divided the central span into three naves as is the case at Salisbury. Against the outer wall is renewed blank arcading, and above it open the windows. The window decoration, where it is preserved, is of the earliest bar-tracery type, two cusped lights with a foiled circle above. Others have the slightly later form of three unencircled quatrefoils above the two lights. Yet others (retrochoir aisle E, Lady Chapel vestibule N and s) go a decisive step farther away from the purity of the E.E. style.
The Lady Chapel itself must be called Dec, although it has none of the fantasies of East Anglia or Yorkshire. A special effort was made here (e.g., the outer walls of these E parts were intended to be, and were partly, stone—faced). A vault was also intended, but once more not carried out.(3) The outer walls have again blank arcading inside, all in its present form C19. The windows are sumptuously adorned. They have inside bell-flower decoration and in addition tier above tier of small figures on brackets. Their tracery is complex. It includes ogee reticulation and small ogee heads to the individual lights of the five-light E window. These are mostly oddly crowned by little crocketed gables, as if they were blank arches, although the glazing of the window goes on above them in the larger forms of the arch common to the whole five—light window. Otherwise there are intersections, unencircled trefoils, daggers arranged cross-wise so as to fill the oblong lozenge—shape at the top of a four-light window, a wheel of six cusped daggers in a circle, with mouchettes in the spandrels, etc. The Royal Commission dates all this as c. 1308. There is, however, no conclusive reason why it should not have been completed as late as c. 1320, which is a much more likely date. If one looks at the Sedilia, for example, the charming blank arcading above has much crocketing but no ogees. Thus it appears earlier than, for example, the window above the Sedilia, which was (an extreme oddity) given the shape of a spheric triangle. If work was carried on at ground floor level, that is the level of the Sedilia, c.1300-10, the more advanced tracery forms may well be a revision of the design made c. 1315-20.
In 1323 part of the s side of the Norman nave came down, and instead of a complete rebuilding of the nave, only this side (six bays long) was redone. The designer decided to keep to the general scheme of the C13 work farther W. He used piers of the same shape and only adjusted his capitals and arch mouldings according to a different taste. He abandoned the C13 vaulting shafts in the arcade spandrels, as he never intended vaults, and introduced pretty label stops instead in the form of heads: a King, a Queen, a mitred Abbot, and a layman, probably the master mason. His triforium also differs from that of the C13 in such details as the elongated cusping of the arches and the decoration of the spandrels. The earlier dog-tooth ornament was replaced by knobbly foliage. The clerestory fenestration is different too, as can be seen outside from the s. In the aisles five-partite instead of tripartite shafts are used and vaults actually carried out.
Some time later in the c14 vestries were built E of the s transept, where the Norman chapels had been. Their two doorways still exist, as does also the infinitely more elaborate late C14 doorway from the s aisle into the Cloister. This is set in a square frame, as pleased the taste of those who believed in the new Perp style. The door arch is very cusped. In the spandrels are those quatrefoils with shields which appear in the W doors of so many parish churches. To the l. and r. are slim niches with tiny lierne—vaults inside. For the Cloisters, see below (Monastic Buildings).
The C15, so prominent in most major churches, whatever their original dates, is almost absent at St Albans (except for the nave windows above the Norman arcades). Lord G. everywhere replaced it by his version of the E.E.
FURNISHINGS, ALTAR AND REREDOS. The reredos was erected by Abbot Wallingford (1476-92) and cost 1,100 marks. It looks repulsively un-genuine now with all its Harry Hems figures of 1884-90, but its structure is indeed essentially original, a solid stone wall with three tiers of thickly canopied niches. The schematism of the uprights and horizontals is far stronger than the fancy of the details (a typical Late Perp feature).(4) The relief now inserted in the reredos immediately above the altar is by Sir Alfred Gilbert. As the reredos cuts awkwardly into the chancel arcading short STONE SCREENS (with very plain Perp panelling) were erected in the chancel aisles. — ROOD SCREEN. The rood screen separating not the chancel (i.e. the area E of the crossing) but the monastic choir from the nave, stands three bays W of the crossing. It is also of stone and was probably built by Abbot de la Mare (1349-96). It has none of the grace and lightness of earlier C14 pulpit such as those of Exeter or Southwell. In its solid squareness with straight top and only a thin cresting it is wholly in the new Perp spirit. It has two doors, the lay-altar between them, and above this seven closely set niches for images with tall canopies above. More niches, strangely at a slightly lower sill level to the 1. and r. of the doors. — CHOIR STALLS, 1905, by Oldrid Scott. - PULPIT. In the nave, big and circular, of stone, with c13 diaper patterning, designed and given by Lord Grimthorpe.
ORGAN CASE. By Oldrid Scott. — FONT and COVER, 1933, by J. A. R. Blacking. - SHRINE OF ST ALBAN. Erected c. 1320, destroyed in 1539, and found in 2,000 pieces in 1872. The base is like a tomb-chest with the usual quatrefoil decoration. In front of it detached buttresses, linked up, it seems, with the main structure only higher up. The base itself has four canted niches on each of the long sides, decorated inside with blank ogee-reticulated tracery. Crocketed gables above the niches, the spandrels with excellently carved but badly damaged figures, seated saints, the Martyrdom of St Alban, censing angels, etc. The top of this base formed the platform on which the shrine itself stood. This was always under the watchful eye of a custos feretri for whom a special raised box or bridge was constructed late in the C14. — This WATCHING LOFT has only one parallel, the one at Christ Church, Oxford. It is of timber, the ground floor made into cupboards and a narrow staircase, the upper floor coved out like a rood loft. The upper floor is one chamber, open towards the Shrine in eight twin—windows. The detail is all of the simplest Perp, again much like that of rood screens. The designing and carving was probably done by a workshop usually engaged on such jobs. - SHRINE OF ST AMPHIBALUS (N chancel aisle). Here also only the base remains, reconstructed in the C19. It is mid C14 work of clunch, whereas the major shrine of St Alban is partly of Purbeck marble. - DOORS. N wall, N transept, with big Norman iron hinges. — From s aisle to cloister, richly traceried, late c14. — The original W doors, also late CI4, of similar design, now in the N transept. - BREAD CUPBOARDS. Late c16, small, in a W recess of the S transept, with balusters instead of doors. — TILES. A few c14-C15 tiles placed in front of an altar in the N transept.
PAINTINGS. St Albans possesses an amount of medieval wall painting unique amongst the major churches of England, even if far inferior to what, for example some French and German churches possess (St Savin, Reichenau). There are first of all traces in many places of the decorative motifs used to enliven the white-washed wall surfaces, sham ashlaring, alternation of red and white courses, zigzag, foliage scrolls, etc. The whole church must be visualized painted in this fashion. Of the late Middle Ages are the pretty vine scrolls in a N transept N window and the dark green Tudor roses on a strong red background on the piers to the SE of the Shrine of St Alban. There are also traces left of the major figure motifs which must originally have been everywhere in the most important positions, e.g. a mid c13 Christ in Majesty with angels, on the E side of the arch between crossing and chancel. Similarly there is an earlier C13 figure of an angel on the E wall of the s transept and, on the E wall of the N transept, a c15 scene of Doubting Thomas against elaborate canopy work. Then two large C13 figures have been uncovered between the clerestory windows at the E end of the N aisle, and finally there is the decoration of the Norman nave piers themselves. Two of them have large c14 figures facing the nave, and five have the precious remains of C13 paintings originally no doubt above altars. It is a most interesting fact in itself that altars should have stood against all these piers in the nave of an abbey church. Each painting is of two tiers, and in each case the Crucifixion is on the upper tier. This repetition is again interesting, and equally interesting is the variety of treatment and sentiment, from the gentleness of the second of the painted piers (counting from W) to the majesty of the third, and the terrible distortion of the fifth. In date they range from c. 1215 (first) to c. 1275 (fifth).
LATER PAINTINGS. Last Supper; this cannot be the picture by Fellows, painted in 1701. It is obviously late C18. — The Passing of Queen Eleanor, by Sir Frank Salisbury, 1918, a piece of facile, colourful, historical fiction.
STAINED GLASS. Surprisingly little of interest. E window 1881, by Burlison & Grylls. Lady Chapel s and N windows by Kempe, 1896 and 1900. — PLATE. Chalice of 1560; two more C16 Chalices; Chalice, 1639; Paten, 1697; Spoon, 1709; Flagon, 1721. Spanish Crystal Cross, C16 (on the lay—altar).
MONUMENTS. The most important are the three CHANTRY CHAPELS to the N and s of the chancel. They are Humphrey, Duke of G1oucester’s, 1447, Abbot Wheathampstead’s d. 1465, and Abbot Ramryge’s d. 1519. The most beautiful feature of the Gloucester Tomb does not belong to it, the late C13 iron grille of rectangular panels alternatingly built up of vertical and horizontal and of diagonal bars. The chantry itself has a large tripartite opening to the altar and above stonework of the design usual in screens, with piers between on which are three tiers of figures in niches. The vault inside is traceried. — The Wheathampstead Chantry has a wide four-centred arch closed by contemporary ironwork and a heavy straight-topped super-structure with the Abbot’s emblem (wheat ears) and his device, Valles Habundabunt (of wheat). There is nothing fanciful about the architecture of this tomb. It is deliberately less sumptuous than that erected by Wheathampstead to his patron the Duke of Gloucester. The Ramryge Chantry of c. 1515-20 is the most elaborate of the three, a tall ground floor with a close stone screen, again of the patterns used for stone rood screens, and above finer and thinner decoration with ogee arches and polygonal turrets. Amongst the carvings appear, apart from shields and Ramryge’s emblem, the ram, the Instruments of the Passion and scenes from the Martyrdom of St Alban. The interior is daintily fan-vaulted. The door into the chapel is original. — The only other medieval stone memorial is a RECESS in the s aisle, arched and cusped, late C13. — On the other hand there is a large number of BRASSES preserved, and even more indents. Most of the figure brasses have been collected on a wooden board inside the Wheathampstead Chantry. They are all of the C15 and early c16 and of no special merit. Remaining on the floor Ralph Rowlatt d. 1543, merchant of the Staple of Calais (s chancel aisle), and R. Beauner, c. 1455, and Sir A Grey d. 1480 (chancel). In the chancel floor fine tripartite brass canopy with concave sides belonging to the brass of Abbot Stone d. 1451. But the finest brass at St Albans is the large plate of Flemish workmanship to Abbot de la Mare d. 1396. It now lies on the tombchest of Abbot Wheathampstead in his chantry. It has broad buttresses on the sides of the figure with three tiers of pairs of small figures under canopies and two of single figures above. In the low top canopy the Lord holding the Abbot’s soul in a cloth, and four angels, the whole done exceedingly delicately. — Post—medieval monuments are scanty and not of great interest. Painted epitaph to Ralph Maynard d. 1613 with kneeling figure (s chancel aisle), and below epitaph without effigy to Charles Maynard d. 1665. — J. Thrale d. 1704, epitaph with two frontal busts against an altar backplate with weeping putti l. and r. — W. King d. 1766, epitaph of variously coloured marbles and with charming cherubs’ heads at the foot (both s aisle). — Christopher Rawlinson d. 1733, large epitaph with lifesize figure of History seated on a sarcophagus against a black obelisk (N transept). — Mrs Mure d. 1834, by Chantrey, pure white, with a kneeling female allegory and Grecian detail. - Bishop T. Legh Claughton, designed by Oldrid Scott, the figure by Forsyth, 1895; alabaster tombchest with recumbent marble effigy. — A. Blomfield d. 1894, by Sir A. Blomfield, tomb-chest with tracery panels and poor figures between them (all these N transept).
MONASTIC BUILDINGS. Of these surprisingly little can now be seen. It amounts to this: the SLYPE along the s wall of the s transept.(5) Then the blank arcading and the springers of the vault of the CLOISTER. This went along the E half of the S side of the nave. The remains are clearly of the early C14. s of the Slype was the Chapter House whose site and size have been ascertained by excavations. s of this probably was the Dormitory, along the s range of the cloister the Refectory, and along the W range the cellars with probably the Abbot’s Lodgings over, or extending separately farther w along the nave. The Guest House, Aula Regia, etc., were farther W still, not far from the GATEHOUSE which survives in all its bulk. It stands in a line with the S aisle of the church, c. 50 ft away from it, with the gateway leading from N to s into the abbey precincts. The building is due to Abbot de la Mare, that is belongs to the second half of the C14. It is of flint with stone dressings, a big, broad, fortress-like structure. The gateway is divided on the N side by a pier into a carriage-way and a pedestrian entrance, but on the s side there is only one very wide and high opening, flanked by rectangular turrets. The lieme-vault has a central octagon of ribs inscribed into a four-pointed star.
1. Examples must also be looked for in the nave and the chancel aisles.
2. Into the springers of the arches odd little blank arcades have been carved, for no purpose which can now be understood.
3. The present stone vault is C19. Before it there was a wooden vaulting.
4. Fragments of original stonework from the Reredos removed at the time of the restoration are preserved in one of the E recesses of the s transept.
5. On its Norman decoration, see above.
St Albans. It is of towns like this that the history of the world is made; there is no more thrilling town within an hour of London unless it is Windsor. It was here that our long roll of martyrs began, and the town is named after the first man in our island to die for his faith. It was here that the Wars of the Roses began in the tragic days of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. It was here that King Offa of Mercia built a little Saxon church which has grown into a vast cathedral with the handiwork of the Romans in it, collected from the ruins of the city of Verulamium. Farther back than Rome it goes, for the story of Verulamium, the only Roman town in Britain made into a municipality, begins before the Christian Era as a prehistoric settlement in Prae Wood, a plateau richly clothed with trees today and marvellously beautiful with blue bells in due season.
The city crowns a hill washed by the little River Ver flowing on its way to the Colne. As a bishopric it is not a century old, but its story is linked with the tale of cities which stood across the valley before and after the Romans came, and ended as a city of the Romans on the other bank of the river. The walls enclosed an area of 200 acres, roughly oval in shape, and crossed by Watling Street as well as by the road from Silchester to Colchester.
Though it is the third in a line of cities claiming descent from prehistoric Verulamium, the story of modern St Albans begins with the death of Alban, the first martyr in Britain. Born and educated here as a pagan, he was converted by a Christian priest who had sought refuge in his house from the persecution of Diocletian. For helping him to escape, Alban was condemned to death, led across the ford to the brow of the opposite hill, beaten with rods, and beheaded. That was early in the 4th century. In the 5th, after the decline of Verulamium, the Saxons built a new town on this eastern slope of the valley, which became known as St Albans after Offa founded in 793 a great Benedictine abbey in honour of the martyr, building it on the spot where he is said to have died, and founding it in atonement for his murder of Ethelbert. Offa found Alban’s bones and placed them in the abbey church.
Offa’s abbey was rebuilt soon after the Normans came. The 38th of its 40 abbots was Cardinal Wolsey. Matthew Paris and Roger Wendover were among its famous monks and chroniclers. Lawn and field have taken the place of most of its buildings, for, except for slight traces here and there, only the splendid church and the fine 14th-century gatehouse are left today. Built largely with material from the ruins of the Roman city, the church was bought by the people of St Albans for their own after the Dissolution, and carries on as the cathedral; second to Winchester in length, it stands at a greater height above the sea than any other English cathedral, and is a landmark for miles with its tower rising 144 feet. Imposing with three storeys and a vaulted roof with carved bosses, the gatehouse was built about 1363 by Abbot de la Mare as the entrance to the abbey court. It served as a prison for French soldiers in the Napoleonic wars; the dungeons are still below. Since 1870 it has helped to accommodate the flourishing school which is said to have had its origin in the 11th century, or even earlier, and Matthew Paris recorded that in his day it had more scholars than any other school in England. After Edward VI’s charter had given it a new lease of life the school was housed for three centuries in the lady chapel. Among its famous men were Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman to become Pope; Sir John Mandeville, the 14th-century man of travel and mystery, who was born in the town and has an inscription in the cathedral; Francis Bacon, and his father Sir Nicholas, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, who obtained from Elizabeth I a charter for the town to grant licences for the sale of wines, the proceeds of which were to go to the school. St Albans still has this privilege, which is possessed in England by only two other towns, Oxford and Cambridge. During the peasant revolt of 1381 the gatehouse was besieged in a riot led by John Ball, who was executed in the town. A proud memory of St Albans is that the third printing press in England, following those at Westminster and Oxford, was set up here about 1479, and that on it the Chronicle of the monastery and the famous writings on heraldry and hawking by Dame Juliana Berners were printed. She lived here at Sopwell Priory in the 15th century. Another press was set up here in 1534., and in the Old Library of the school are books from these early presses.
Printing has become one of the chief industries of this city in which old and new are intermingled, as is to be expected in a place which has more than doubled its population since the beginning of our century. Its 50,000 people live on more than 5000 acres, traversed by four old highways which meet almost at right angles near the Clock Tower, where traffic is for ever streaming by. As we travel these roads and the network of narrow ways between them, old houses and inns come constantly into view, though many have had their ground floors converted into shops. Some have Georgian dignity; others have Tudor timbering, plasterwork, mellowed brick, old roof tiles, gables and dormers, and overhanging storeys. The four-storeyed Clock Tower facing the High Street is one of our few medieval belfries ; it was built early in the 15th century and restored in the 19th, and the city clock now strikes the hour on a bell which is older than the tower itself, a curfew bell cast 600 years ago. It weighs a ton and on it is the Latin inscription, I have the name of Gabriel sent from Heaven. It used to ring at four in the morning to summon apprentices to work, and at eight in the evening to close the market and the shops. Till 1702 an Eleanor’s Cross stood in front of the tower, for Edward’s queen passed this way on her last journey to Westminster, resting for a night in the abbey church.
The spirit of the old country town is vividly alive in the neighbourhood of the Clock Tower, for about it is a conglomeration of old buildings of all styles and at all angles. The tower is at one end of an island of them; at the other end is a charming gabled storey of 1637. To the west of the tower is the quaint narrow street called French Row, reminding us that the French troops occupied it in 1216. Next to a tilting gable-fronted storey projecting over shops is the Fleur-de-Lys inn with a roof of old tiles and overhanging eaves. Though it is much restored, the inn has its old timber frame, and is part of a larger house built in the 14th century, in which King John of France was imprisoned after the battle of Poitiers in 1356.
French Row brings us from High Street to the little marketplace and the 19th-century town hall, its pillared front facing the spacious St Peter’s Street. Ending the fine vista along this busy street is the memorial to over 600 men who fell in the Great War, standing in a Garden of Remembrance, with the church of St Peter rising behind it. Shaded by limes, and bustling with the business life of the city, St Peter’s Street was the setting for two of the three most important battles in the Wars of the Roses. The Clock Tower was young when the alarm for the first battle rang out from it in 1455, a battle in which the king’s forces were crushed with great slaughter. Three noblemen who fell lie in nameless graves in the lady chapel of the cathedral: Henry Percy, Earl ofNorthumber1and, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and John, Lord Clifford. Henry VI was found sheltering in a cottage, and was imprisoned in the abbey. The second battle of St Albans, in 1461, was a victory for the Lancastrians, the army of Queen Margaret defeating the forces of the Earl of Warwick with great loss. It is said to have been fought for the most part on Bernard's Heath, to the north of St Peter’s Church, and many of the slain were buried here. The day after their victory the king and queen gave thanks at the abbey.
Facing the town hall is a fine old house which keeps its own balcony, dormers in its old tiled roof, an old lion knocker on the door, and massive beams within. Near by, at the corner of the marketplace and Dagnal Street, is the old Moot Hall with its timbered storey overhanging one of W. H. Smith’s fine shops. Leading from St Peter’s Street, Catherine Street brings us to the Daltons, known locally as Bleak House because it claims to be the original of Dickens’s book. Modern building has encroached on its grounds, but it is still a very pleasant place with a beautiful copper beech among its embowering trees, and a drive round its circular lawn. The passage by which it was approached (Gombards) is still here, but the avenue of trees is gone. Charles Dickens was often at St Albans, and Dickens Close, north of Bleak House, keeps his memory green.
By the Clock Tower, a narrow passage leading from High Street to the east end of the cathedral marks the site of an old gate of the monastery. Continuing from High Street, George Street (on the north side of the cathedral) is rich in old houses and inns, serving chiefly as shops but keeping their rambling old rooms upstairs. At the top is a 15th-century block with a projecting storey; part of it was once a tallow factory, and now accommodates the wares of an antique dealer, but the rest was till our time the George Inn which gave the street its name, famous in days gone by as a resting place for the pilgrims to St A1ban’s shrine. After the Reformation its private chapel was turned into stables. Turning from George Street into Spicer Street we come to the Congregational chapel of 1797, facing the Tudor almshouses. At the opposite corner, in College Street, a boot factory has taken the place of the house where the poet Cowper stayed with Dr Cotton during the worst of his periods of insanity; the doctor sleeps in St Peter’s churchyard.
From George Street we drop down Romeland Hill and the narrow Fishpool Street to the mill by the Ver, which is here crossed by a bridge as well as by the ford which was so important centuries ago. Among the old houses we pass is a charming one with a gabled tilting storey and plaster decoration. Farther down is St Michael’s Manor House, with little in the street front to remind us of its 16th-century origin; the site was given by an abbot of St Albans, and on a fine plaster ceiling is the date 1586. Across the river the road continues as St Michael’s Street, quaint with gables and dormers in the low-roofed old dwellings, entering the site of the Roman city on its way to St Michael’s church. This is one of the three churches of St Albans founded in the 10th century.
The public spirit of St Albans has been vigorous enough to buy over half of the site of ancient Verulamium, which it has made into a charming addition to its parks and open spaces, turning the fishpond into a lake. We come to it down Abbey Mill Lane, at the foot of which silk is made in the 18th-century mill now standing on the site of the old abbey mill. Here, too, is one of the smallest inns and one of the oldest houses in St Albans. A pointed roof crowns its eight sides of 16th-century timber and plaster, on a medieval stone base which is said to have belonged to a fishing lodge of the abbey. It has been an inn only since the Dissolution, and was for a time a centre for the cruel sport which gave it its name of Fighting Cocks. On the other side of the city are the 25 acres of Clarence Park. Batchwood Hall, the home of Lord Grimthorpe, has become the club house of a municipal golf course. What is known as the ruin of Sopwell Nunnery, a mass of walls buried in ivy, is really the remains of the house built by Sir Richard Lee after the Dissolution of the Monasteries on the site of a nunnery.
St Albans has no more delightful scenes than those about its remarkable cathedral, and few cathedrals look out on a fairer aspect than this green valley. High on one slope stands the great pile raised by the Normans and those who came after them; on the other side of the shining river the site of the Roman city climbs gently to Verulam Woods by King Harry Lane, and green fields carry the eye to Prae Wood on the western horizon.
We come to the cathedral from George Street along a road fragrant with lilac and wallflowers in spring, bounding one side of a burial ground known as Romeland, where George Tankerville, a baker, was burnt at the stake in 1556. Old and new are about us here. Looking on to the plot is Abbot de la Mare’s gatehouse, charmingly grouped with the modern buildings of the school, and only the space of a lawn away rises the cathedral’s stately front with flanking turrets, arcaded walls, and a great west window with rose and wheel tracery, and three gabled porches with vaulted roofs and splendid doorways with clustered shafts. Except for some of the vaulting and other traces of medieval work seen inside, this west front is entirely the work of Lord Grimthorpe’s restoration; he is said to have spent over £140,000 on the cathedral last century.
For the rest, the exterior is impressive rather for its size than its beauty. It is gigantic, a cross 550 feet long and 177 feet from north to south of the transepts, covering an area of about 40,000 square feet. The walls are largely of flint and brick and stone taken from the Roman city, so that those great walls might have in them the oldest materials in any cathedral in the land. Many windows have been renewed, two of Lord Grimthorpe’s spectacular alterations being the great round window in the north wall of the north transept (with 37 roundels filled with leaded glass looking like spider’s webs), and the five lancets (called the Five Sisters) in the south transept, so tall that the middle one is said to be the longest in the country, 60 feet.
The cathedral is an arresting spectacle outside, with its nave 285 feet long, the longest in the world; the pinnacled transepts still looking much as the 11th-century Normans built them with the Roman material; and the enormous central tower. Except for the later parapet, and the fact that Sir Gilbert Scott stripped off the plaster to expose the Roman brick, this unique tower, higher than any other Norman tower in England, stands as it stood when the Normans built it after the Conquest. Two of its four stages are open inside, and the arches on which it rests are 55 feet from the floor. In the triforium arcading of both transepts (seen inside) are some of the Saxon baluster shafts from King Offa’s church; they were used by the Normans, and are said to have been turned on a lathe. There are no other remains of the Saxon church. Some of the plaster has been removed from the triforium wall in the south transept to show the construction of Roman brick. In the outside wall of the south aisle are remains of the handsome 14th-century traceried bays of the vanished cloister, of which the site is laid out on the grass.
It was Paul de Caen, the first Norman abbot, who rebuilt Offa’s monastery. It took him 11 years, and when completed in 1088 it was one of the finest in the land, unique with its Roman material and destined to become in the 13th century the wealthiest English shrine. It had the simple plan we see today, except that the nave was only about three-quarters of its present length, and the vestibule and lady chapel at the east end did not exist. St Albans is rich in its early Norman work, for, in addition to the tower and transepts, Abbot Paul’s church still exists in the western portion of the presbytery and its aisles, and in 12 bays of the nave—nine on the north side and three on the south. The western end of the nave (four bays on the north and five on the south) was begun about 1195, and completed in about 30 years.
Mounting the five steps from the west end we enter the nave, striking, lofty, and long, though the handsome 14th-century stone rood screen (enriched with canopies, arcading, and doorways) breaks into the vista. The three periods of the nave’s architecture are plain. The richly moulded arches of the main arcading in 13th- and 14th-century work rest on piers with four attached shafts. The lovely arcading of the 13th- and 14th-century triforium has ornament in the arches, between the clusters of shafts. Crude in comparison with this medieval work is that of the Normans. Their plain round-headed arches are on massive piers, and their bays are divided by flat buttresses; the simple severity of the style relieved by some of the old wall-painting for which the cathedral is notable.
On the underside of the arches is a gay medley of the brick, zigzag, and lattice pattern dear to the Normans, but the figure-work on the piers and elsewhere is chiefly 13th and 14th century, including Crucifixions, scenes in the life of the Madonna, St Christopher, Thomas Becket, and other saints. Remains of three 15th-oentury figures are high up in the choir, and the 15th-century ceiling of this part of the nave has its original painting of the Coronation of the Virgin. The rest of the nave roof is modern, except for the old brackets, on which are some figures holding shields and some at prayer. The north aisle is plain and much changed; the south aisle keeps some of its old vaulting. The beautiful 14th-century cloister doorway remains at the eastern end with a cornice of trailing leaves and rich cresting, and spandrels with painted shields. In it hangs an old door with exceedingly fine tracery. It is one of several old doors the cathedral has preserved, two of them 500 years old being in the north transept. Near the cloister doorway is a handsome tomb recess which is said to be the resting-place of two hermits.
Passing to the choir we have one of the most impressive views of the cathedral, dominated by the magnificent stone screen behind the altar. It comes from the time of Abbot Wallingford, about 1484,and ranks with Winchester’s great screen as one of the finest in England. For three centuries after the Reformation this beautiful thing stood battered and broken, but thousands of pounds were spent on it by Lord Aldenham last century, and the exquisite canopies of its three tiers of niches are restored to their original beauty, and all the statues (about 70) are new. Under a fine Crucifixion in the centre of the screen is Our Lord with the Disciples in a dainty row of alabaster figures, and below this row we see Him rising from the tomb in a panel sculptured by our famous Alfred Gilbert, whose Eros in Piccadilly Circus the whole world knows. On each side stand three saints, the six being St Alban and the priest he died for defending (St Amphibalus), the venerable Bede, Hugh of Lincoln, St Edmund, and Pope Adrian IV (the Englishman Nicholas Breakspear). On the eastern side of the screen is a lovely Madonna and Child, and over the two doorways are figures of John the Baptist and St Stephen.
All about us as we stand in the choir is Norman work of the Conqueror’s own century—the choir itself, the transepts right and left, the mighty tower in front of us with its fine lantern, and the west end of the presbytery. The ceiling of the tower, 100 feet from the floor, has 16th-century painting of red and white roses, with shields of the arms of England and St George, St Alban and the Confessor. The roof of the presbytery, carrying our eye eastward from the choir, has a 13th-century timber vault with floral bosses; the painting on the moulded ribs, and the leafy roundels with the lamb and eagle, are 15th century. There is much of this old colour still left in the cathedral. In the south transept is an angel with outspread wings still with its 13th-century colour, and in the north transept is vine pattern enriching window splays and a picture of St Thomas touching the wound to satisfy his incredulity; it is all 15th century. From the same time comes the picture of King Offa crowned on the west wall of the presbytery aisle. The red-and-blue figure of William of York in St Alban’s Chapel is 14th century, and shows him in his archbishop’s robes giving blessing. A big painting on wood in the south aisle here has come down from the transept roof; it shows the martyrdom of St Alban, the head of the saint (just struck off with the sword) having wide open eyes. It is said that the roof from which it came in the north transept covers the spot where the saint was killed.
Two chantry tombs face each other in the presbytery, one built for himself by John of Wheathampstead in the 15th century, the other the tomb of Robert Ramryge. The Wheathampstead tomb has stout iron grilles, a traceried stone roof, and a cornice of shields, ears of wheat, and vines growing from heads of lions. The Ramryge tomb is rich enough in decoration to look like a wing of the screen; it has charming window tracery on its two storeys, shields borne by rams, and a fine oak door with linenfold opening to reveal a lovely stone roof with a pendant boss.
Facing the eastern side of the great screen is the Saint’s Chapel, drawing us to it as it drew pilgrims long ago. Here they came in great numbers to kneel at St Alban’s shrine, and here by a miracle of restoration still stands the pedestal on which the shrine rested. Set on a base of quatrefoil panels is a series of ten niches with leafy gables under a rich cornice of foliage, and carved in relief is King Offa holding his church, St Alban being martyred, and a company of angels and saints. There are touches of the original red-and-blue paint in the tracery still clear after 600 years. It is surprising that this rich piece of work is here for us to see, for it was found last century in more than 2000 fragments which have been marvellously pieced together again.
Filling a bay of the north side of the Saint’s Chapel is a captivating Watching Chamber, like a little wooden house with an upper storey overhanging an elaborate vaulted canopy. It has been here since 1400, and in its upper room, enriched with traceried panels and reached by a tiny staircase with steps of solid oak, a monk was always on guard to see that no harm befell the shrine. In the cupboards below relics and treasures were kept; now their carved doors open to show us fragments of wood, stone, and tiles, and a wreath of holly leaves and yew which is said to have hung in the church for over 200 years in memory of a bride who died on her wedding day. In the cornice over the vaulting is a gallery of quaint carvings of huntsmen with hounds, a chained bear, a pig and its litter, the shepherd playing pipes to his sheep, a dog, and a boar, a wolf with a lamb in its mouth, and a milkmaid milking a cow. (We noticed that she is sitting on the wrong side.) Near the back of the watching chamber, in the north aisle of the presbytery, are the battered remains of the 14th-century pedestal of the shrine of St Amphibalus, the teacher who converted St Alban; the cathedral is fortunate in its possession of fragments of these ancient shrines.
A rare treasure is the beautiful grille of hammered iron on the south side of the Saint’s Chapel, made in Sussex about 1275. Fashioned in a charmingly simple design and painted blue and gold, it has 4.2 panels of square and diamond lattice with studs, and served as a protection for the shrine. Now we see it only from the aisle, for in the bay across which it extends is the 15th-century two-storeyed monument of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, magnificent with its triple arch, the traceried roof with pendant bosses, the traceried panels with fine canopies, and the shields. The Good Duke Humphrey (called so for his patronage of learning) sleeps beneath his monument. A son of Henry IV, he lives in Shakespeare and is remembered for having given the first books for a library at Oxford. At the east end of the Saint’s Chapel, is a fine group of 13th-century arches on clustered shafts, with fragments of tracery above the capitals.
Beyond the chapel is the vestibule leading to the lady chapel, both much changed since they were built 600 years ago. The modern stone vault of the chapel has fine bosses of vines, fruit, and flowers, and springs from exquisite cone-shaped corbels carved with passion flowers, hazel nuts, and leaves of the vine, sycamore, and oak. Also modern is the rich arcading on the walls, and here again are foliage, flowers, and fruit enriching capitals and spandrels. But the windows are original, and arresting for their beautiful tracery, the strings of trailing ballflowers edging their splays, and the dainty niches with statuettes in the splays and on the mullions. Among these figures are kings, queens, bishops, evangelists, prophets, martyrs, the Madonna, and St Anne. In the tracery of the east window is a crescent of five leafy arches.
It is a memorable view that is presented to us as we stand in the lady chapel and look across the vestibule to the Saint’s Chapel, seeing the three pointed arches as frames for three fine pictures - the shrine (with the lovely Madonna for a background), the Duke of G1oucester’s chantry tomb, and the Watching Chamber. In the vestibule hangs a beautiful bronze candelabra copied from one of Cromwellian days, now lit by electric candles; and on each side is a modern oak screen with linenfold base, dainty shields in tracery, a cornice of vine and lace-like cresting. Beyond the screens are the eastern chapels of the aisles of the vestibule, the south chapel restored by the Mothers’ Union for their own, the north chapel of St Michael restored in memory of men and women who have worshipped here or been associated with the cathedral. In it stands a delightful figure of the Archangel on a serpent; he has silver armour, a green mantle, and purple wings, and he holds a sword with his hands on his breast. On an oak lectern in the vestibule, surmounted by a golden St George with the dragon, are the illuminated Books of Remembrance with the names of more than 12,000 men in the Diocese who fell in the Great War.
Under the great lancets in the south transept is Norman arcading from the 12th century; below it is an elaborately carved doorway of the same time. In the blocked arches in the east wall are two 14th-century doorways. The west wall has two 13th-century lancets, and a blocked 11th-century doorway which opened to the cloister. In it are three beautiful little cupboards with baluster fronts (two Elizabethan and one Jacobean) from which bread is given on Sundays to 20 poor women from a 17th-century bequest. In one cupboard are three old wooden bosses, the biggest carved with foliage coming from the face of a grotesque. On the same wall hangs Frank Salisbury’s impressive painting (15 feet long and 5 feet high) of the Passing of Queen Eleanor. King Edward in his crown (his hands at prayer) sits astride his horse, which is draped in black; behind the abbot in his white robes trimmed with gold are the red-robed monks; figures in black robes and hoods are bearing torches, and Eleanor, lovely with auburn hair, lies on her bier. We read that the panel represents the honour paid at St Albans to Queen Eleanor by the king, and links his efforts as the last great Crusader of 1272 with the deliverance of Jerusalem by British arms in 1917. It was given to the cathedral as a thankoffering for the men of Hertfordshire who offered their lives in the Great War, but years before the war broke out the picture had been in the Royal Academy. It was this picture, we believe, which resolved Mr Salisbury’s career as a historical painter, for at the end of the Academy Exhibition the Committee of the House of Lords desired the artist to paint one of the frescoes in the Peers’ Corridor. He painted the Trial of Catherine of Aragon.
From the 17th century come several chairs, a settle, and a chest in the south presbytery aisle—the chest having locks and a slot for alms, for which a little wooden man with a stick is holding out his wide-brimmed hat on the wall above. The capitals of the stone arcading in this aisle are exquisitely carved with hawthorn, nuts, primroses, and vine. In the north transept are some medieval tiles, and four fine old shields in a window, with arms of Edward III and three of his sons. Rich glass in the lady chapel has the Nativity, Simeon with Jesus, the Flight into Egypt, and saints. Two beautiful windows in the north aisle of the nave have the Annunciation and scenes from Our Lord’s life. Glowing red and blue, Sir Ninian Comper’s glass in the great west window is a memorial to the 12,778 men and three women of the diocese who fell in the Great War. In the crowd at the foot of the Cross are the holy women, soldiers, sailors, nurses, warrior saints, Joan of Arc, and shields of the dominions, the allies, and the towns of the diocese.
There is fine modern craftsmanship in the oak stalls and the bishop’s throne. The stalls are vaulted, and the tracery of the panels is tipped with angels playing instruments. Those across the west end form a screen and have rich canopies; the entrance arch has pelicans and leaves; and the finial is a pedestal for a statue of St Alban. Minstrel angels stand in niches at each side. The bishop’s throne is exceedingly rich. Built in our own century, it is a mass of carving from the floor to the tip of its soaring spire. On the finial in front of its canopy St Alban stands with a sword and a cross, and at the back of the throne is the Crucifixion. There are angels on pillars, and on the cusping, the desk has poppyheads of roses and pomegranates, and at each side of the seat are panels of pierced carving of birds among vines and berries. The font has a white marble bowl set on a stem of black marble, and its striking cover is like a coloured spire with three tiers of Corinthian columns, adorned with figures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in golden robes.
In the presbytery and its aisles are many stones which have lost their brasses of abbots and monks, knights and ladies, civilians, priests, and family groups. One has remains of a border engraved with quaint animals and grotesques, and one has three canopies left. The brass of Master Robert Fairfax, doctor of music, was renewed in 1921, 400 years after his death; the dainty portraits are of Robert in his fur-edged gown and his wife in a headdress embroidered with roses, a dog at her feet; with them are two sons and two daughters. Ralph Rowlatt of 1543, a merchant of Calais, is a civilian with six little daughters in kennel headdress, but he has lost his wife and sons. Another wool merchant, Thomas Faryman of 1411, is with his wife. Brother Robert Beauner, who served the abbey for over 40 years before he died in 1460, is a tall monk holding a heart. Near him in the floor of the presbytery is a charming brass of a Yorkist knight, Sir Anthony de Grey, of 1480; his armour has curious elbow guards like leaves; he has a sword, a tiny waist, long hair, and a crown at one side of his head. He was Elizabeth Woodville’s brother-in-law.
Mounted on a board in the Wheathamstead chantry are four complete brass portraits, a headless figure, half of a figure with hands at prayer, and halves of a man and a woman. On the floor of this chantry lies one of the finest brasses in existence, brought here for safe preservation from its stone in the presbytery. It is of Abbot Thomas de la Mare who died in 1396, and was the work of a Flemish craftsman about 1375, made under the supervision of the abbot himself. His vestments are exceedingly rich. His hands are crossed, and he has his crook. The background is diapered with leaves and heraldic beasts, and at each side and above his figure are a score of saints, angels, and prophets in canopied niches.
On an unknown tomb in the south presbytery aisle is an altar stone with five crosses. High on the wall we see Radulf Maynard of 1613 kneeling in cloak and ruff. In the north transept the first Bishop of St Albans, Thomas Legh Claughton, lies on his tomb, and Bishop Blomfield, the first suffragan bishop, has a slab of black marble on a tomb with rich open tracery and canopied figures of the Evangelists.
A charming picture to keep in our memory of a visit to the cathedral is seen as we stand outside its eastern arm. Here a fine cedar reaches out to the cathedral wall and the garden of the deanery, which hides in its lofty trees, and ending the vista along the quiet little retreat called Sumpter Yard (where packhorses with supplies for the abbey were unloaded) is the timbered White Hart Inn on Holywell Hill and near it the Saracen’s Head, both 17th century.
The cedar was one of two brought from Lebanon; the other is on the lawn of the almshouses founded by Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough. Facing these is the County Museum, a small place rich in its collection of local antiquities from prehistoric, Roman, and medieval days. Stone Age implements and tools are here in fine array, and of the Bronze Age there are celts, palstaves, daggers, and spear blades. There are necklaces, bangles, and brooches of the Iron Age, Roman pottery, urns, lamps, tear-vases, plates, and a fine glass bowl; a good collection of English silver and copper coins and Hertfordshire tokens, coins from Verulamium, old books and illuminated manuscripts, and a collection of swords and daggers and helmets from the 15th century. We see an old loom that was making bonnet trimmings 100 years ago, a quaint fire engine with leather buckets, an exquisite piece of coral, beautiful chalices, an ivory sceptre with four rows of cherubs, ivory plaques with Bible scenes, and the Yard of Ale glass, a yard high. Among the old domestic objects typical of the county are toys, utensils, dress, and straw hats in the process of making. The foot of the stairway is set out as a period room, with a settle, cradle, and spinning-wheel.
From the museum we are soon at St Peter’s Church, which, like those of St Michael and St Stephen, was founded in the 10th century by the sixth abbot. Standing in a green churchyard, it is a fine picture outside with its massive tower rising between the nave and chancel, the transepts having been destroyed last century. Except for the nave arcades and the south aisle (which are medieval), the church was largely rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The striking feature of the bright interior are the lofty arcades of seven bays, with arches on clustered shafts reaching the low wide windows of the clerestory. The coloured angel corbels of the roof may be 15th century. The north aisle has medleys of old glass with figures and faces. Capronnier’s bright glass in the south aisle illustrates the parables and the Ascension, and the rose window at the west end has the Annunciation and Bible scenes. A chest is Jacobean.
Part of Roger Pemberton’s brass of 1515 was used in 1627 as a memorial to John Ball. Roger in fur-trimmed gown is with his wife in draped headdress, three sons and two daughters and a babe in swaddling clothes. Roger was Sheriff of Hertfordshire, and founded the simple row of almshouses almost facing the church. The iron arrow pointing upward on the archway in front of them reminds us of the story that Roger founded the hospital because he accidentally killed a widow when he was shooting in the woods.
A small monument has the bust of Edward Strong of 1723 in a long curling wig. He was Wren’s master-mason in the building of St Paul’s, and in his epitaph we read:
In erecting the edifice of St Paul’: several years Qf his life were spent, even from the foundation to‘ the laying of the last stone. He shared the felicity equally with the ingenious architect Christopher Wren and pious Bishop Compton, of seeing, beginning, and finishing that stupendous work.
He sleeps in the church, and lived in the house facing it. One of the houses he built is now the electricity show-rooms, and has its original staircase.
Nearly a mile from the city centre, St Stephen’s Church stands at the top of St Stephen’s Hill, at its meeting with King Harry Lane and Watling Street, which continued north-west through Verulamium. It is on the site of a Roman cemetery, and things brought to light in recent digging are in the Verularnium museum. In the churchyard of fine trees and hawthorn avenues is a Roman milestone, and there are Roman bricks in the oldest parts of the church. This is a charming picture, with its porch of stone and timber, and its quaint shingled tower and spire. The Saxon church almost vanished with rebuilding and alterations in Norman and medieval days, and most of the old work is 15th century, but some Norman masonry remains, and a blocked arch in the north wall of the nave is part of a 12th-century arcade which led to a lost aisle. Two small Norman lights are in the west wall. The south arcade is 13th and 14th century. On the pillars are old inscriptions and drawings and mason’s marks. One inscription tells of Edward Pearse, who was crushed under one of the stones, and another is said to have been cut by a Royalist soldier imprisoned here; there are men fighting, and a Crusader’s head. There are 13th-century lancets in the south chapel, whose interior, with leaning walls and a roof of old timbering, reminds us of a ship. It has a tiny peephole.
A rare feature is the oak chancel arch with traceried spandrels; it is chiefly modern, with some remains of the 15th century. The battered 500-year-old font has angels and shields on the bowl and the Madonna and saints on the stem. The brass eagle lectern, with three lions at the foot and an inscription to a Bishop of Dunkeld 500 years ago, is believed to have belonged to Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh. It was buried for safety under the chancel during the Civil War, and found 100 years later. William Robins of 1482 is here with his family in brass, William in armour with a dog at his feet, his wife in her butterfly headdress. In beautiful modern glass we see a boy (with a dog at his feet) touching one of the wounds of St Julian, and the Saxon Abbot Ulsinus holding a little church, with the abbey for a background.
A mile as the crow flies from St Stephen’s is St Michael’s church, reached from St Stephen’s by King Harry Lane and Bluehouse Hill, and from the city by the old-fashioned streets on each side of the river. St Michael’s is within the boundary of the Roman city. Together with the churchyard and the vicarage, it is on the site of the Roman Forum, the centre of the municipal life of the ancient city, where, in the Roman law courts, Alban was sent to his martyrdom. Roman brick and flint from the ruins are still in the church walls. There is Saxon walling in the nave and chancel. The Normans gave the nave its first aisles, shaping their arcades in the Saxon walls, and three massive Norman bays still stand on the north side, while four Norman bays of the south arcade are still to be seen - one open to the chapel, the others having doorways built under them. Two of these doorways are 13th century, and one has a 500-year-old door with studs and strap hinges. Above the arcades are remains of Saxon windows made with Roman bricks.
The 13th-century clerestory has original lancets, except for three windows of about 1500. Above it is the 15th-century roof resting on old angel corbels. The chancel has a blocked doorway of Roman brick probably built by the Saxons, and windows of all three medieval centuries; one lancet has an oak lintel. The tower and west end were rebuilt in 1898. The altar table is Elizabethan, and two chairs and the fine canopied pulpit were richly carved in Jacobean days. The old hourglass stand is still here. There are three shields in old glass, a 15th-century font, a 14th-century tomb recess in an outside wall (sheltering a coffin lid), and traces of wall painting which include remains of a Doom. A Roman coffin and part of a Roman pillar are under the tower. One of three fine old brasses is a cross with the small figure of a man in the head; he wears a long gown buttoned at the throat, and a sword hangs from his girdle. A knight in armour and helmet, with a dog at his feet, is about 600 years old and another brass of the same age is of John Peacock and his wife; John has a scrubby beard and a long robe with a cape, and Maud has a fine draped headdress. Three peacocks are on the shield.
No visit to St Albans is complete without a visit to St Michael’s, for here in the chancel sleeps Francis Bacon, and here, sculptured in marble by someone unknown, he sits in a chair, resting his head on his hand, wearing the elaborate dress of his time — puffed breeches, fur-lined mantle, and a big ruff, a wide hat on his head and rosettes on his shoes. From the lodge gates near the church, the fine tree lined Gorhambury Drive brings us to what is left of his old home, a sad ruin now, with roofless walls of brick and flint. The present house, a few hundred yards away, is the seat of Lord Verulam, and was built in 1778 by the third Viscount Grimston. An imposing house with a balustraded parapet, it has been much altered, but keeps its grand 18th-century entrance at the head of a flight of steps, with ten Corinthian columns.
It would take a volume to tell the story of Verulamium, the rich legacy of our past bequeathed to St Albans. The result of the excavation of its three ancient sites (one prehistoric and two Roman) have made St Albans a Mecca for student and layman alike. Though the great importance of the neighbourhood has long been known, the systematic digging with spade and trowel was not begun till our own time, the work being started in 1930 under the guidance of Sir Mortimer Wheeler with the help of students and volunteers from near and far.
What it has gained by recent research into its past more than compensates St Albans for an old belief which now appears to have been unfounded. For long it was supposed that the old settlement in Prae Wood was the stronghold of Cassivelaunus, whose heroic defence against Julius Caesar was defeated in 54 BC. Sir Mortimer’s discoveries have led him to believe that the headquarters of Cassivelaunus were at Wheathampstead, and that Prae Wood was a daughter-city, capital of south-Eastern Britain till the capital moved to Colchester.
About two years after their submission to the Roman invasion of AD 43, the people moved from their plateau to the shelter of the lower slope of the valley, and thus was established the first Roman city of Verulamium, covering about 150 acres. For a time all was well with this diamond-shaped city of wooden buildings, for it was the only British town to which the Romans gave the high rank of Municipium, and its people had all the rights of Roman citizenship; but in 61 the Queen of the Iceni, Boadicea, indignant with the people for having submitted to the Romans, descended upon it in the absence of the Governor and destroyed it with great slaughter.
Out of the ruins rose the second Roman city. Built early in the 2nd century, it included part of the earlier site, and extended southward along the Watling Street. It was the third and final Verulamium, the city in the shape of a rough oval, its 200 acres enclosed by two miles of massive walls of flint with courses of the bricks we see in the cathedral tower. There were half-round towers at intervals in the walls, and four gateways north, south, east, and west. Its buildings were of stone, including temples, arches, houses, and public buildings with mosaic floors; the Forum was almost in the middle of the city, and the theatre fronted Watling Street.
The 3rd century saw the city fall into decay, and though there was an attempt at restoration at the end of the century, the glory of Verulamium had departed never to return.
Not only has the story of Verulamium been unfolded so that we may read, but there is much of intense interest actually to be seen - The site is one of the green and pleasant places of our land, sloping up to fields and deep woods. It has some of the most impressive Roman walling to be seen in Britain, the only Roman theatre (as distinct from the amphitheatre) yet discovered in England, some of the finest mosaic pavements in existence, and a fine museum in which are housed the wonderful array of relics which lay hidden in the ground from the time of the Romans till our day.
Nearly a quarter of a mile of the massive walls (from two to about six feet high) and two of the bastions are now cared for by the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Crossing the river by the silk mill and the lake we come to St German’s Block, a great length of wall so called from a vanished chapel of that name. Following the Lane to Verulam Woods, the wall of the southern boundary of the city rises on one hand, and on the other is the old rampart, now a shady glade of trees. There are patches of walling on the right of King Harry Lane as we travel to Bluehouse Hill, down which a charming ride brings us across the old city to St Michael’s Church. North-west of the site is the great mass known as the Gorhambury Block. The little that was left of the Chester gate has been filled in; so has the smaller Silchester gate, with its single roadway and square towers. The unexcavated gate on the north-east lies under the road and houses of St Michael’s Street, but the foundations of the London Gate have been laid out, showing its two roadways for wheeled traffic and two for pedestrians, flanked by boldly projecting round-fronted towers. A hundred feet broad, it was one of the finest of the gateways built by the Romans, and must have resembled a triumphal arch.
Carrying on the illustrated story of Verulamium are foundations of houses whose walls have helped to build the great pile on the other hill, the cellar of a wine shop, Roman streets, and a mosaic pavement lying as the Romans laid it. It is like a great carpet in colours of black, grey, green, red, pink, white, and ochre, and its 16 square panels have individual designs set in circles. It was the floor of the warm room of a private bathing establishment, and at one side of it is the entrance to the hypocaust by which it was heated. Of the Forum, which is said to have been 400 feet long, there is the foundation of a corner where the two ancient roads bisected the city.
Apart from its unique interest to the antiquarian, the site of the Roman theatre is charming for us all, with banks of smooth lawn and the grey outlines of its plan. As we stand here with the open green spaces about us, we see across the river a fine picture of the modern city clustering about its cathedral, while behind us are the trees of Prae Wood, where the first chapter of this long story began. Though the site of the theatre was discovered in 1847 by a local antiquary, Mr Grove Lowe (who cleared the walls and laid out the plan), its complete excavation was not undertaken till our time, being made possible by the generosity of the late Lord Verulam, under the direction of Miss Kathleen Kenyon.
Thought to have been built between AD 140 and 150, the theatre fell into decay with the rest of the city during the 3rd century, and shared in its temporary revival about 300. After being for long a ruin, this fine building had fallen from its high estate to suffer the indignity of being a rubbish-tip before the end of the 4th century.
The Roman amphitheatre familiar to us all was devoted to sport and had seats all round the arena; the theatre at Verulamium is thought to have been used for plays, as well as for cock-fighting and animal-baiting, and herein is the reason for its unusual plan. It consisted originally of a circular central space, with a sloping auditorium round two-thirds of it, and a small stage joining its remaining portion. In a few years the size of the stage was increased by the building of a straight wall in front of the original curve, and before the end of the century a second wall was built four feet still farther forward. The purpose of this may have been either to increase the stage again, or to provide a slot into which the curtain could be dropped.
The town has spent £8000 to house the discoveries of Verulamium, and the museum is a sensible building for its purpose, an attractive place in dark brick with flint panels. The museum hall is 75 feet long, and the showcases and fittings are made from Nigerian walnut. As we enter the eye is drawn to three arresting and almost perfect pavements hung like tapestry on the wall. One of these is divided into panels by plaiting and has a great circle round a central flower. Another has a striking head, representing perhaps Neptune or Ocean, with lobster claws protruding from the hair, set in a handsome border of key pattern with roses and vessels, two of which have ladles in them. The third pavement is semi-circular, and has a charming design like a fan. Hardly less interesting than the mosaics themselves is the method by which these floors were lifted from their site and set up here without the disturbance of any of the tesserae. The work was done by Italians, who covered the mosaics first with a sticky substance and then with canvas, then dried them for weeks with stoves, and after chipping away the original cement, rolled them up like carpets, and unrolled them in new cement.
There are coins of gold, silver, and bronze; glass and pottery including rich Samian ware, vessels from the temples, an ox skull which may have been a dedication sacrifice, and a quaint lamp chimney from the triangular temple; a fine amphora for storing wine or oil; tools, spear-heads, daggers, iron axe-heads, spindles, rings, brooches, jet beads, seals, pins and needles of bone and bronze, iron pens which scratched on wax tablets, an oyster shell with pigment from the rouge a painted lady kept in it, and beakers adorned with stags and hounds. From the cemetery on the site of St Stephen’s Church are 12 bronze bracelets and many jet beads, rings and spoons, and many burial urns containing bones. A pathetic fragment is the skeleton of a child, lying on the bit of earth which cradled it so long ago; and a relic of remarkable interest is among the tiles with footmarks of men and animals. From the marks on one of these it would appear that a dog was standing on the tile as it was drying in the sun, when someone threw a stone (which still adheres to the tile) and the deeper paw-marks near by suggest that the startled dog jumped to avoid the stone.
Francis Bacon, lying here at St Albans, was one of the most extraordinary men who have risen to power and fame in England. On her visits to his father’s house at Gorhambury Queen Elizabeth I would speak of the boy as her young Lord Keeper, but when, after his brief career at Cambridge, he was left poor and fatherless, she steadily declined to help him. Thrown on his own resources, he took up law, entered Parliament, and attached himself to the Earl of Essex.
Essex in vain sought a wealthy wife for him, vainly begged the queen to help him, and finally gave him a Twickenham estate. But Bacon continued poor; he was once imprisoned for debt. As a Queen’s Counsel he absented himself from the Star Chamber proceedings against Essex, and was blamed by the queen for his remissness. He risked no second reproval when the earl was tried for rebellion. It was nothing to him that Essex had been his friend. The blustering Coke, who led the prosecution, so bungled the case that Essex might have escaped had not Bacon, by magnifying the enormity of his patron’s offence, made the death penalty inevitable.
After Elizabeth’s death Bacon, by flattering King James I, steadily advanced his position, declaring the king’s right divine and above the law. He held that the law could be altered by the sovereign at will regardless of judges. When he was 41 he married, for money, succeeded to the Gorhambury estate, and after 25 years of striving became Solicitor-General.
His power in the Courts was now unrivalled; his oratory and knowledge of the law were without parallel. Ben Jonson, who heard him argue a case, recorded that “the fear of every man who heard him was that he should make an end.” At 56 he followed his father as Lord Keeper, and was next made Lord Chancellor. On the bench his conduct seemed perfect. He disposed of acute legal problems with ease. While he would witness unmoved the torture of a prisoner he planned wise reforms of the criminal laws. All the time he was busy in his scanty leisure with his scientific and philosophic writings.
He kept his 60th birthday in almost regal state, the occasion celebrated by Ben Jonson in a poem, but within a few months of this proud day his fortunes were in ruins and he himself a prisoner in the Tower under a fine of £40,000, banished for ever from Court and Parliament for having accepted bribes. He admitted the crime, but denied having sold justice; it actually seems true that, with incredible cynicism, he took the bribes but decided against the givers. It should be remembered that England was rank with corruption in those days, and Bacon was only a guilty scapegoat, but he knew the depth of his sin.
His fine was remitted and, his imprisonment ended, he returned to the writings which ensure his fame. Distrusting the permanence of the English language, though he wrote it magnificently, he produced most of his chief works in Latin. In addition to important legal works, and his history of Henry VII, he formulated a philosophy in Novum Organum. With the confidence of true genius he took “all knowledge for his province,” but was prevented by the multiplicity of his labours from fully exploring his domain. While fertilising the mind of the world, Bacon was himself singularly fallible. He could believe that the heart of an ape, on being applied to the head, “helped wit” and is good for epilepsy, that a red stone prevents bleeding, and that certain bracelets have magical powers; but he could not accept the teachings of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. He declared that the revelations of the telescope were due to flaws in the lens, and he pooh-poohed the microscope. So limited was the wisest man of his time in those pre-scientific days.
Yet in other ways he was boundless in his outlook. He it was who first hinted at currents in the air, at heat as a form of motion, at the fact that light takes time to travel, at the possibility of transmitting sound to a distance, and at the likelihood that species might not be fixed, but were capable of change, as Darwin was later to discover. From his theory in the New Atlantis, of society governed by men of wisdom, sprang our own Royal Society, and kindred bodies in Europe. Himself achieving nothing in science, he pointed a way which, with all its errors, has led to worlds of wonder undreamed of by him or by his age.
For posterity he lives by his incomparable Essays, which he kept in their native English; he was shrewd enough to see that thus “they come home to men’s business and bosoms.” The essays teem with
treasures of wisdom, and with phrases which have become part of our daily speech and writing.
Flickr.
The city crowns a hill washed by the little River Ver flowing on its way to the Colne. As a bishopric it is not a century old, but its story is linked with the tale of cities which stood across the valley before and after the Romans came, and ended as a city of the Romans on the other bank of the river. The walls enclosed an area of 200 acres, roughly oval in shape, and crossed by Watling Street as well as by the road from Silchester to Colchester.
Though it is the third in a line of cities claiming descent from prehistoric Verulamium, the story of modern St Albans begins with the death of Alban, the first martyr in Britain. Born and educated here as a pagan, he was converted by a Christian priest who had sought refuge in his house from the persecution of Diocletian. For helping him to escape, Alban was condemned to death, led across the ford to the brow of the opposite hill, beaten with rods, and beheaded. That was early in the 4th century. In the 5th, after the decline of Verulamium, the Saxons built a new town on this eastern slope of the valley, which became known as St Albans after Offa founded in 793 a great Benedictine abbey in honour of the martyr, building it on the spot where he is said to have died, and founding it in atonement for his murder of Ethelbert. Offa found Alban’s bones and placed them in the abbey church.
Offa’s abbey was rebuilt soon after the Normans came. The 38th of its 40 abbots was Cardinal Wolsey. Matthew Paris and Roger Wendover were among its famous monks and chroniclers. Lawn and field have taken the place of most of its buildings, for, except for slight traces here and there, only the splendid church and the fine 14th-century gatehouse are left today. Built largely with material from the ruins of the Roman city, the church was bought by the people of St Albans for their own after the Dissolution, and carries on as the cathedral; second to Winchester in length, it stands at a greater height above the sea than any other English cathedral, and is a landmark for miles with its tower rising 144 feet. Imposing with three storeys and a vaulted roof with carved bosses, the gatehouse was built about 1363 by Abbot de la Mare as the entrance to the abbey court. It served as a prison for French soldiers in the Napoleonic wars; the dungeons are still below. Since 1870 it has helped to accommodate the flourishing school which is said to have had its origin in the 11th century, or even earlier, and Matthew Paris recorded that in his day it had more scholars than any other school in England. After Edward VI’s charter had given it a new lease of life the school was housed for three centuries in the lady chapel. Among its famous men were Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman to become Pope; Sir John Mandeville, the 14th-century man of travel and mystery, who was born in the town and has an inscription in the cathedral; Francis Bacon, and his father Sir Nicholas, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, who obtained from Elizabeth I a charter for the town to grant licences for the sale of wines, the proceeds of which were to go to the school. St Albans still has this privilege, which is possessed in England by only two other towns, Oxford and Cambridge. During the peasant revolt of 1381 the gatehouse was besieged in a riot led by John Ball, who was executed in the town. A proud memory of St Albans is that the third printing press in England, following those at Westminster and Oxford, was set up here about 1479, and that on it the Chronicle of the monastery and the famous writings on heraldry and hawking by Dame Juliana Berners were printed. She lived here at Sopwell Priory in the 15th century. Another press was set up here in 1534., and in the Old Library of the school are books from these early presses.
Printing has become one of the chief industries of this city in which old and new are intermingled, as is to be expected in a place which has more than doubled its population since the beginning of our century. Its 50,000 people live on more than 5000 acres, traversed by four old highways which meet almost at right angles near the Clock Tower, where traffic is for ever streaming by. As we travel these roads and the network of narrow ways between them, old houses and inns come constantly into view, though many have had their ground floors converted into shops. Some have Georgian dignity; others have Tudor timbering, plasterwork, mellowed brick, old roof tiles, gables and dormers, and overhanging storeys. The four-storeyed Clock Tower facing the High Street is one of our few medieval belfries ; it was built early in the 15th century and restored in the 19th, and the city clock now strikes the hour on a bell which is older than the tower itself, a curfew bell cast 600 years ago. It weighs a ton and on it is the Latin inscription, I have the name of Gabriel sent from Heaven. It used to ring at four in the morning to summon apprentices to work, and at eight in the evening to close the market and the shops. Till 1702 an Eleanor’s Cross stood in front of the tower, for Edward’s queen passed this way on her last journey to Westminster, resting for a night in the abbey church.
The spirit of the old country town is vividly alive in the neighbourhood of the Clock Tower, for about it is a conglomeration of old buildings of all styles and at all angles. The tower is at one end of an island of them; at the other end is a charming gabled storey of 1637. To the west of the tower is the quaint narrow street called French Row, reminding us that the French troops occupied it in 1216. Next to a tilting gable-fronted storey projecting over shops is the Fleur-de-Lys inn with a roof of old tiles and overhanging eaves. Though it is much restored, the inn has its old timber frame, and is part of a larger house built in the 14th century, in which King John of France was imprisoned after the battle of Poitiers in 1356.
French Row brings us from High Street to the little marketplace and the 19th-century town hall, its pillared front facing the spacious St Peter’s Street. Ending the fine vista along this busy street is the memorial to over 600 men who fell in the Great War, standing in a Garden of Remembrance, with the church of St Peter rising behind it. Shaded by limes, and bustling with the business life of the city, St Peter’s Street was the setting for two of the three most important battles in the Wars of the Roses. The Clock Tower was young when the alarm for the first battle rang out from it in 1455, a battle in which the king’s forces were crushed with great slaughter. Three noblemen who fell lie in nameless graves in the lady chapel of the cathedral: Henry Percy, Earl ofNorthumber1and, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and John, Lord Clifford. Henry VI was found sheltering in a cottage, and was imprisoned in the abbey. The second battle of St Albans, in 1461, was a victory for the Lancastrians, the army of Queen Margaret defeating the forces of the Earl of Warwick with great loss. It is said to have been fought for the most part on Bernard's Heath, to the north of St Peter’s Church, and many of the slain were buried here. The day after their victory the king and queen gave thanks at the abbey.
Facing the town hall is a fine old house which keeps its own balcony, dormers in its old tiled roof, an old lion knocker on the door, and massive beams within. Near by, at the corner of the marketplace and Dagnal Street, is the old Moot Hall with its timbered storey overhanging one of W. H. Smith’s fine shops. Leading from St Peter’s Street, Catherine Street brings us to the Daltons, known locally as Bleak House because it claims to be the original of Dickens’s book. Modern building has encroached on its grounds, but it is still a very pleasant place with a beautiful copper beech among its embowering trees, and a drive round its circular lawn. The passage by which it was approached (Gombards) is still here, but the avenue of trees is gone. Charles Dickens was often at St Albans, and Dickens Close, north of Bleak House, keeps his memory green.
By the Clock Tower, a narrow passage leading from High Street to the east end of the cathedral marks the site of an old gate of the monastery. Continuing from High Street, George Street (on the north side of the cathedral) is rich in old houses and inns, serving chiefly as shops but keeping their rambling old rooms upstairs. At the top is a 15th-century block with a projecting storey; part of it was once a tallow factory, and now accommodates the wares of an antique dealer, but the rest was till our time the George Inn which gave the street its name, famous in days gone by as a resting place for the pilgrims to St A1ban’s shrine. After the Reformation its private chapel was turned into stables. Turning from George Street into Spicer Street we come to the Congregational chapel of 1797, facing the Tudor almshouses. At the opposite corner, in College Street, a boot factory has taken the place of the house where the poet Cowper stayed with Dr Cotton during the worst of his periods of insanity; the doctor sleeps in St Peter’s churchyard.
From George Street we drop down Romeland Hill and the narrow Fishpool Street to the mill by the Ver, which is here crossed by a bridge as well as by the ford which was so important centuries ago. Among the old houses we pass is a charming one with a gabled tilting storey and plaster decoration. Farther down is St Michael’s Manor House, with little in the street front to remind us of its 16th-century origin; the site was given by an abbot of St Albans, and on a fine plaster ceiling is the date 1586. Across the river the road continues as St Michael’s Street, quaint with gables and dormers in the low-roofed old dwellings, entering the site of the Roman city on its way to St Michael’s church. This is one of the three churches of St Albans founded in the 10th century.
The public spirit of St Albans has been vigorous enough to buy over half of the site of ancient Verulamium, which it has made into a charming addition to its parks and open spaces, turning the fishpond into a lake. We come to it down Abbey Mill Lane, at the foot of which silk is made in the 18th-century mill now standing on the site of the old abbey mill. Here, too, is one of the smallest inns and one of the oldest houses in St Albans. A pointed roof crowns its eight sides of 16th-century timber and plaster, on a medieval stone base which is said to have belonged to a fishing lodge of the abbey. It has been an inn only since the Dissolution, and was for a time a centre for the cruel sport which gave it its name of Fighting Cocks. On the other side of the city are the 25 acres of Clarence Park. Batchwood Hall, the home of Lord Grimthorpe, has become the club house of a municipal golf course. What is known as the ruin of Sopwell Nunnery, a mass of walls buried in ivy, is really the remains of the house built by Sir Richard Lee after the Dissolution of the Monasteries on the site of a nunnery.
St Albans has no more delightful scenes than those about its remarkable cathedral, and few cathedrals look out on a fairer aspect than this green valley. High on one slope stands the great pile raised by the Normans and those who came after them; on the other side of the shining river the site of the Roman city climbs gently to Verulam Woods by King Harry Lane, and green fields carry the eye to Prae Wood on the western horizon.
We come to the cathedral from George Street along a road fragrant with lilac and wallflowers in spring, bounding one side of a burial ground known as Romeland, where George Tankerville, a baker, was burnt at the stake in 1556. Old and new are about us here. Looking on to the plot is Abbot de la Mare’s gatehouse, charmingly grouped with the modern buildings of the school, and only the space of a lawn away rises the cathedral’s stately front with flanking turrets, arcaded walls, and a great west window with rose and wheel tracery, and three gabled porches with vaulted roofs and splendid doorways with clustered shafts. Except for some of the vaulting and other traces of medieval work seen inside, this west front is entirely the work of Lord Grimthorpe’s restoration; he is said to have spent over £140,000 on the cathedral last century.
For the rest, the exterior is impressive rather for its size than its beauty. It is gigantic, a cross 550 feet long and 177 feet from north to south of the transepts, covering an area of about 40,000 square feet. The walls are largely of flint and brick and stone taken from the Roman city, so that those great walls might have in them the oldest materials in any cathedral in the land. Many windows have been renewed, two of Lord Grimthorpe’s spectacular alterations being the great round window in the north wall of the north transept (with 37 roundels filled with leaded glass looking like spider’s webs), and the five lancets (called the Five Sisters) in the south transept, so tall that the middle one is said to be the longest in the country, 60 feet.
The cathedral is an arresting spectacle outside, with its nave 285 feet long, the longest in the world; the pinnacled transepts still looking much as the 11th-century Normans built them with the Roman material; and the enormous central tower. Except for the later parapet, and the fact that Sir Gilbert Scott stripped off the plaster to expose the Roman brick, this unique tower, higher than any other Norman tower in England, stands as it stood when the Normans built it after the Conquest. Two of its four stages are open inside, and the arches on which it rests are 55 feet from the floor. In the triforium arcading of both transepts (seen inside) are some of the Saxon baluster shafts from King Offa’s church; they were used by the Normans, and are said to have been turned on a lathe. There are no other remains of the Saxon church. Some of the plaster has been removed from the triforium wall in the south transept to show the construction of Roman brick. In the outside wall of the south aisle are remains of the handsome 14th-century traceried bays of the vanished cloister, of which the site is laid out on the grass.
It was Paul de Caen, the first Norman abbot, who rebuilt Offa’s monastery. It took him 11 years, and when completed in 1088 it was one of the finest in the land, unique with its Roman material and destined to become in the 13th century the wealthiest English shrine. It had the simple plan we see today, except that the nave was only about three-quarters of its present length, and the vestibule and lady chapel at the east end did not exist. St Albans is rich in its early Norman work, for, in addition to the tower and transepts, Abbot Paul’s church still exists in the western portion of the presbytery and its aisles, and in 12 bays of the nave—nine on the north side and three on the south. The western end of the nave (four bays on the north and five on the south) was begun about 1195, and completed in about 30 years.
Mounting the five steps from the west end we enter the nave, striking, lofty, and long, though the handsome 14th-century stone rood screen (enriched with canopies, arcading, and doorways) breaks into the vista. The three periods of the nave’s architecture are plain. The richly moulded arches of the main arcading in 13th- and 14th-century work rest on piers with four attached shafts. The lovely arcading of the 13th- and 14th-century triforium has ornament in the arches, between the clusters of shafts. Crude in comparison with this medieval work is that of the Normans. Their plain round-headed arches are on massive piers, and their bays are divided by flat buttresses; the simple severity of the style relieved by some of the old wall-painting for which the cathedral is notable.
On the underside of the arches is a gay medley of the brick, zigzag, and lattice pattern dear to the Normans, but the figure-work on the piers and elsewhere is chiefly 13th and 14th century, including Crucifixions, scenes in the life of the Madonna, St Christopher, Thomas Becket, and other saints. Remains of three 15th-oentury figures are high up in the choir, and the 15th-century ceiling of this part of the nave has its original painting of the Coronation of the Virgin. The rest of the nave roof is modern, except for the old brackets, on which are some figures holding shields and some at prayer. The north aisle is plain and much changed; the south aisle keeps some of its old vaulting. The beautiful 14th-century cloister doorway remains at the eastern end with a cornice of trailing leaves and rich cresting, and spandrels with painted shields. In it hangs an old door with exceedingly fine tracery. It is one of several old doors the cathedral has preserved, two of them 500 years old being in the north transept. Near the cloister doorway is a handsome tomb recess which is said to be the resting-place of two hermits.
Passing to the choir we have one of the most impressive views of the cathedral, dominated by the magnificent stone screen behind the altar. It comes from the time of Abbot Wallingford, about 1484,and ranks with Winchester’s great screen as one of the finest in England. For three centuries after the Reformation this beautiful thing stood battered and broken, but thousands of pounds were spent on it by Lord Aldenham last century, and the exquisite canopies of its three tiers of niches are restored to their original beauty, and all the statues (about 70) are new. Under a fine Crucifixion in the centre of the screen is Our Lord with the Disciples in a dainty row of alabaster figures, and below this row we see Him rising from the tomb in a panel sculptured by our famous Alfred Gilbert, whose Eros in Piccadilly Circus the whole world knows. On each side stand three saints, the six being St Alban and the priest he died for defending (St Amphibalus), the venerable Bede, Hugh of Lincoln, St Edmund, and Pope Adrian IV (the Englishman Nicholas Breakspear). On the eastern side of the screen is a lovely Madonna and Child, and over the two doorways are figures of John the Baptist and St Stephen.
All about us as we stand in the choir is Norman work of the Conqueror’s own century—the choir itself, the transepts right and left, the mighty tower in front of us with its fine lantern, and the west end of the presbytery. The ceiling of the tower, 100 feet from the floor, has 16th-century painting of red and white roses, with shields of the arms of England and St George, St Alban and the Confessor. The roof of the presbytery, carrying our eye eastward from the choir, has a 13th-century timber vault with floral bosses; the painting on the moulded ribs, and the leafy roundels with the lamb and eagle, are 15th century. There is much of this old colour still left in the cathedral. In the south transept is an angel with outspread wings still with its 13th-century colour, and in the north transept is vine pattern enriching window splays and a picture of St Thomas touching the wound to satisfy his incredulity; it is all 15th century. From the same time comes the picture of King Offa crowned on the west wall of the presbytery aisle. The red-and-blue figure of William of York in St Alban’s Chapel is 14th century, and shows him in his archbishop’s robes giving blessing. A big painting on wood in the south aisle here has come down from the transept roof; it shows the martyrdom of St Alban, the head of the saint (just struck off with the sword) having wide open eyes. It is said that the roof from which it came in the north transept covers the spot where the saint was killed.
Two chantry tombs face each other in the presbytery, one built for himself by John of Wheathampstead in the 15th century, the other the tomb of Robert Ramryge. The Wheathampstead tomb has stout iron grilles, a traceried stone roof, and a cornice of shields, ears of wheat, and vines growing from heads of lions. The Ramryge tomb is rich enough in decoration to look like a wing of the screen; it has charming window tracery on its two storeys, shields borne by rams, and a fine oak door with linenfold opening to reveal a lovely stone roof with a pendant boss.
Facing the eastern side of the great screen is the Saint’s Chapel, drawing us to it as it drew pilgrims long ago. Here they came in great numbers to kneel at St Alban’s shrine, and here by a miracle of restoration still stands the pedestal on which the shrine rested. Set on a base of quatrefoil panels is a series of ten niches with leafy gables under a rich cornice of foliage, and carved in relief is King Offa holding his church, St Alban being martyred, and a company of angels and saints. There are touches of the original red-and-blue paint in the tracery still clear after 600 years. It is surprising that this rich piece of work is here for us to see, for it was found last century in more than 2000 fragments which have been marvellously pieced together again.
Filling a bay of the north side of the Saint’s Chapel is a captivating Watching Chamber, like a little wooden house with an upper storey overhanging an elaborate vaulted canopy. It has been here since 1400, and in its upper room, enriched with traceried panels and reached by a tiny staircase with steps of solid oak, a monk was always on guard to see that no harm befell the shrine. In the cupboards below relics and treasures were kept; now their carved doors open to show us fragments of wood, stone, and tiles, and a wreath of holly leaves and yew which is said to have hung in the church for over 200 years in memory of a bride who died on her wedding day. In the cornice over the vaulting is a gallery of quaint carvings of huntsmen with hounds, a chained bear, a pig and its litter, the shepherd playing pipes to his sheep, a dog, and a boar, a wolf with a lamb in its mouth, and a milkmaid milking a cow. (We noticed that she is sitting on the wrong side.) Near the back of the watching chamber, in the north aisle of the presbytery, are the battered remains of the 14th-century pedestal of the shrine of St Amphibalus, the teacher who converted St Alban; the cathedral is fortunate in its possession of fragments of these ancient shrines.
A rare treasure is the beautiful grille of hammered iron on the south side of the Saint’s Chapel, made in Sussex about 1275. Fashioned in a charmingly simple design and painted blue and gold, it has 4.2 panels of square and diamond lattice with studs, and served as a protection for the shrine. Now we see it only from the aisle, for in the bay across which it extends is the 15th-century two-storeyed monument of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, magnificent with its triple arch, the traceried roof with pendant bosses, the traceried panels with fine canopies, and the shields. The Good Duke Humphrey (called so for his patronage of learning) sleeps beneath his monument. A son of Henry IV, he lives in Shakespeare and is remembered for having given the first books for a library at Oxford. At the east end of the Saint’s Chapel, is a fine group of 13th-century arches on clustered shafts, with fragments of tracery above the capitals.
Beyond the chapel is the vestibule leading to the lady chapel, both much changed since they were built 600 years ago. The modern stone vault of the chapel has fine bosses of vines, fruit, and flowers, and springs from exquisite cone-shaped corbels carved with passion flowers, hazel nuts, and leaves of the vine, sycamore, and oak. Also modern is the rich arcading on the walls, and here again are foliage, flowers, and fruit enriching capitals and spandrels. But the windows are original, and arresting for their beautiful tracery, the strings of trailing ballflowers edging their splays, and the dainty niches with statuettes in the splays and on the mullions. Among these figures are kings, queens, bishops, evangelists, prophets, martyrs, the Madonna, and St Anne. In the tracery of the east window is a crescent of five leafy arches.
It is a memorable view that is presented to us as we stand in the lady chapel and look across the vestibule to the Saint’s Chapel, seeing the three pointed arches as frames for three fine pictures - the shrine (with the lovely Madonna for a background), the Duke of G1oucester’s chantry tomb, and the Watching Chamber. In the vestibule hangs a beautiful bronze candelabra copied from one of Cromwellian days, now lit by electric candles; and on each side is a modern oak screen with linenfold base, dainty shields in tracery, a cornice of vine and lace-like cresting. Beyond the screens are the eastern chapels of the aisles of the vestibule, the south chapel restored by the Mothers’ Union for their own, the north chapel of St Michael restored in memory of men and women who have worshipped here or been associated with the cathedral. In it stands a delightful figure of the Archangel on a serpent; he has silver armour, a green mantle, and purple wings, and he holds a sword with his hands on his breast. On an oak lectern in the vestibule, surmounted by a golden St George with the dragon, are the illuminated Books of Remembrance with the names of more than 12,000 men in the Diocese who fell in the Great War.
Under the great lancets in the south transept is Norman arcading from the 12th century; below it is an elaborately carved doorway of the same time. In the blocked arches in the east wall are two 14th-century doorways. The west wall has two 13th-century lancets, and a blocked 11th-century doorway which opened to the cloister. In it are three beautiful little cupboards with baluster fronts (two Elizabethan and one Jacobean) from which bread is given on Sundays to 20 poor women from a 17th-century bequest. In one cupboard are three old wooden bosses, the biggest carved with foliage coming from the face of a grotesque. On the same wall hangs Frank Salisbury’s impressive painting (15 feet long and 5 feet high) of the Passing of Queen Eleanor. King Edward in his crown (his hands at prayer) sits astride his horse, which is draped in black; behind the abbot in his white robes trimmed with gold are the red-robed monks; figures in black robes and hoods are bearing torches, and Eleanor, lovely with auburn hair, lies on her bier. We read that the panel represents the honour paid at St Albans to Queen Eleanor by the king, and links his efforts as the last great Crusader of 1272 with the deliverance of Jerusalem by British arms in 1917. It was given to the cathedral as a thankoffering for the men of Hertfordshire who offered their lives in the Great War, but years before the war broke out the picture had been in the Royal Academy. It was this picture, we believe, which resolved Mr Salisbury’s career as a historical painter, for at the end of the Academy Exhibition the Committee of the House of Lords desired the artist to paint one of the frescoes in the Peers’ Corridor. He painted the Trial of Catherine of Aragon.
From the 17th century come several chairs, a settle, and a chest in the south presbytery aisle—the chest having locks and a slot for alms, for which a little wooden man with a stick is holding out his wide-brimmed hat on the wall above. The capitals of the stone arcading in this aisle are exquisitely carved with hawthorn, nuts, primroses, and vine. In the north transept are some medieval tiles, and four fine old shields in a window, with arms of Edward III and three of his sons. Rich glass in the lady chapel has the Nativity, Simeon with Jesus, the Flight into Egypt, and saints. Two beautiful windows in the north aisle of the nave have the Annunciation and scenes from Our Lord’s life. Glowing red and blue, Sir Ninian Comper’s glass in the great west window is a memorial to the 12,778 men and three women of the diocese who fell in the Great War. In the crowd at the foot of the Cross are the holy women, soldiers, sailors, nurses, warrior saints, Joan of Arc, and shields of the dominions, the allies, and the towns of the diocese.
There is fine modern craftsmanship in the oak stalls and the bishop’s throne. The stalls are vaulted, and the tracery of the panels is tipped with angels playing instruments. Those across the west end form a screen and have rich canopies; the entrance arch has pelicans and leaves; and the finial is a pedestal for a statue of St Alban. Minstrel angels stand in niches at each side. The bishop’s throne is exceedingly rich. Built in our own century, it is a mass of carving from the floor to the tip of its soaring spire. On the finial in front of its canopy St Alban stands with a sword and a cross, and at the back of the throne is the Crucifixion. There are angels on pillars, and on the cusping, the desk has poppyheads of roses and pomegranates, and at each side of the seat are panels of pierced carving of birds among vines and berries. The font has a white marble bowl set on a stem of black marble, and its striking cover is like a coloured spire with three tiers of Corinthian columns, adorned with figures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in golden robes.
In the presbytery and its aisles are many stones which have lost their brasses of abbots and monks, knights and ladies, civilians, priests, and family groups. One has remains of a border engraved with quaint animals and grotesques, and one has three canopies left. The brass of Master Robert Fairfax, doctor of music, was renewed in 1921, 400 years after his death; the dainty portraits are of Robert in his fur-edged gown and his wife in a headdress embroidered with roses, a dog at her feet; with them are two sons and two daughters. Ralph Rowlatt of 1543, a merchant of Calais, is a civilian with six little daughters in kennel headdress, but he has lost his wife and sons. Another wool merchant, Thomas Faryman of 1411, is with his wife. Brother Robert Beauner, who served the abbey for over 40 years before he died in 1460, is a tall monk holding a heart. Near him in the floor of the presbytery is a charming brass of a Yorkist knight, Sir Anthony de Grey, of 1480; his armour has curious elbow guards like leaves; he has a sword, a tiny waist, long hair, and a crown at one side of his head. He was Elizabeth Woodville’s brother-in-law.
Mounted on a board in the Wheathamstead chantry are four complete brass portraits, a headless figure, half of a figure with hands at prayer, and halves of a man and a woman. On the floor of this chantry lies one of the finest brasses in existence, brought here for safe preservation from its stone in the presbytery. It is of Abbot Thomas de la Mare who died in 1396, and was the work of a Flemish craftsman about 1375, made under the supervision of the abbot himself. His vestments are exceedingly rich. His hands are crossed, and he has his crook. The background is diapered with leaves and heraldic beasts, and at each side and above his figure are a score of saints, angels, and prophets in canopied niches.
On an unknown tomb in the south presbytery aisle is an altar stone with five crosses. High on the wall we see Radulf Maynard of 1613 kneeling in cloak and ruff. In the north transept the first Bishop of St Albans, Thomas Legh Claughton, lies on his tomb, and Bishop Blomfield, the first suffragan bishop, has a slab of black marble on a tomb with rich open tracery and canopied figures of the Evangelists.
A charming picture to keep in our memory of a visit to the cathedral is seen as we stand outside its eastern arm. Here a fine cedar reaches out to the cathedral wall and the garden of the deanery, which hides in its lofty trees, and ending the vista along the quiet little retreat called Sumpter Yard (where packhorses with supplies for the abbey were unloaded) is the timbered White Hart Inn on Holywell Hill and near it the Saracen’s Head, both 17th century.
The cedar was one of two brought from Lebanon; the other is on the lawn of the almshouses founded by Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough. Facing these is the County Museum, a small place rich in its collection of local antiquities from prehistoric, Roman, and medieval days. Stone Age implements and tools are here in fine array, and of the Bronze Age there are celts, palstaves, daggers, and spear blades. There are necklaces, bangles, and brooches of the Iron Age, Roman pottery, urns, lamps, tear-vases, plates, and a fine glass bowl; a good collection of English silver and copper coins and Hertfordshire tokens, coins from Verulamium, old books and illuminated manuscripts, and a collection of swords and daggers and helmets from the 15th century. We see an old loom that was making bonnet trimmings 100 years ago, a quaint fire engine with leather buckets, an exquisite piece of coral, beautiful chalices, an ivory sceptre with four rows of cherubs, ivory plaques with Bible scenes, and the Yard of Ale glass, a yard high. Among the old domestic objects typical of the county are toys, utensils, dress, and straw hats in the process of making. The foot of the stairway is set out as a period room, with a settle, cradle, and spinning-wheel.
From the museum we are soon at St Peter’s Church, which, like those of St Michael and St Stephen, was founded in the 10th century by the sixth abbot. Standing in a green churchyard, it is a fine picture outside with its massive tower rising between the nave and chancel, the transepts having been destroyed last century. Except for the nave arcades and the south aisle (which are medieval), the church was largely rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The striking feature of the bright interior are the lofty arcades of seven bays, with arches on clustered shafts reaching the low wide windows of the clerestory. The coloured angel corbels of the roof may be 15th century. The north aisle has medleys of old glass with figures and faces. Capronnier’s bright glass in the south aisle illustrates the parables and the Ascension, and the rose window at the west end has the Annunciation and Bible scenes. A chest is Jacobean.
Part of Roger Pemberton’s brass of 1515 was used in 1627 as a memorial to John Ball. Roger in fur-trimmed gown is with his wife in draped headdress, three sons and two daughters and a babe in swaddling clothes. Roger was Sheriff of Hertfordshire, and founded the simple row of almshouses almost facing the church. The iron arrow pointing upward on the archway in front of them reminds us of the story that Roger founded the hospital because he accidentally killed a widow when he was shooting in the woods.
A small monument has the bust of Edward Strong of 1723 in a long curling wig. He was Wren’s master-mason in the building of St Paul’s, and in his epitaph we read:
In erecting the edifice of St Paul’: several years Qf his life were spent, even from the foundation to‘ the laying of the last stone. He shared the felicity equally with the ingenious architect Christopher Wren and pious Bishop Compton, of seeing, beginning, and finishing that stupendous work.
He sleeps in the church, and lived in the house facing it. One of the houses he built is now the electricity show-rooms, and has its original staircase.
Nearly a mile from the city centre, St Stephen’s Church stands at the top of St Stephen’s Hill, at its meeting with King Harry Lane and Watling Street, which continued north-west through Verulamium. It is on the site of a Roman cemetery, and things brought to light in recent digging are in the Verularnium museum. In the churchyard of fine trees and hawthorn avenues is a Roman milestone, and there are Roman bricks in the oldest parts of the church. This is a charming picture, with its porch of stone and timber, and its quaint shingled tower and spire. The Saxon church almost vanished with rebuilding and alterations in Norman and medieval days, and most of the old work is 15th century, but some Norman masonry remains, and a blocked arch in the north wall of the nave is part of a 12th-century arcade which led to a lost aisle. Two small Norman lights are in the west wall. The south arcade is 13th and 14th century. On the pillars are old inscriptions and drawings and mason’s marks. One inscription tells of Edward Pearse, who was crushed under one of the stones, and another is said to have been cut by a Royalist soldier imprisoned here; there are men fighting, and a Crusader’s head. There are 13th-century lancets in the south chapel, whose interior, with leaning walls and a roof of old timbering, reminds us of a ship. It has a tiny peephole.
A rare feature is the oak chancel arch with traceried spandrels; it is chiefly modern, with some remains of the 15th century. The battered 500-year-old font has angels and shields on the bowl and the Madonna and saints on the stem. The brass eagle lectern, with three lions at the foot and an inscription to a Bishop of Dunkeld 500 years ago, is believed to have belonged to Holyrood Chapel at Edinburgh. It was buried for safety under the chancel during the Civil War, and found 100 years later. William Robins of 1482 is here with his family in brass, William in armour with a dog at his feet, his wife in her butterfly headdress. In beautiful modern glass we see a boy (with a dog at his feet) touching one of the wounds of St Julian, and the Saxon Abbot Ulsinus holding a little church, with the abbey for a background.
A mile as the crow flies from St Stephen’s is St Michael’s church, reached from St Stephen’s by King Harry Lane and Bluehouse Hill, and from the city by the old-fashioned streets on each side of the river. St Michael’s is within the boundary of the Roman city. Together with the churchyard and the vicarage, it is on the site of the Roman Forum, the centre of the municipal life of the ancient city, where, in the Roman law courts, Alban was sent to his martyrdom. Roman brick and flint from the ruins are still in the church walls. There is Saxon walling in the nave and chancel. The Normans gave the nave its first aisles, shaping their arcades in the Saxon walls, and three massive Norman bays still stand on the north side, while four Norman bays of the south arcade are still to be seen - one open to the chapel, the others having doorways built under them. Two of these doorways are 13th century, and one has a 500-year-old door with studs and strap hinges. Above the arcades are remains of Saxon windows made with Roman bricks.
The 13th-century clerestory has original lancets, except for three windows of about 1500. Above it is the 15th-century roof resting on old angel corbels. The chancel has a blocked doorway of Roman brick probably built by the Saxons, and windows of all three medieval centuries; one lancet has an oak lintel. The tower and west end were rebuilt in 1898. The altar table is Elizabethan, and two chairs and the fine canopied pulpit were richly carved in Jacobean days. The old hourglass stand is still here. There are three shields in old glass, a 15th-century font, a 14th-century tomb recess in an outside wall (sheltering a coffin lid), and traces of wall painting which include remains of a Doom. A Roman coffin and part of a Roman pillar are under the tower. One of three fine old brasses is a cross with the small figure of a man in the head; he wears a long gown buttoned at the throat, and a sword hangs from his girdle. A knight in armour and helmet, with a dog at his feet, is about 600 years old and another brass of the same age is of John Peacock and his wife; John has a scrubby beard and a long robe with a cape, and Maud has a fine draped headdress. Three peacocks are on the shield.
No visit to St Albans is complete without a visit to St Michael’s, for here in the chancel sleeps Francis Bacon, and here, sculptured in marble by someone unknown, he sits in a chair, resting his head on his hand, wearing the elaborate dress of his time — puffed breeches, fur-lined mantle, and a big ruff, a wide hat on his head and rosettes on his shoes. From the lodge gates near the church, the fine tree lined Gorhambury Drive brings us to what is left of his old home, a sad ruin now, with roofless walls of brick and flint. The present house, a few hundred yards away, is the seat of Lord Verulam, and was built in 1778 by the third Viscount Grimston. An imposing house with a balustraded parapet, it has been much altered, but keeps its grand 18th-century entrance at the head of a flight of steps, with ten Corinthian columns.
It would take a volume to tell the story of Verulamium, the rich legacy of our past bequeathed to St Albans. The result of the excavation of its three ancient sites (one prehistoric and two Roman) have made St Albans a Mecca for student and layman alike. Though the great importance of the neighbourhood has long been known, the systematic digging with spade and trowel was not begun till our own time, the work being started in 1930 under the guidance of Sir Mortimer Wheeler with the help of students and volunteers from near and far.
What it has gained by recent research into its past more than compensates St Albans for an old belief which now appears to have been unfounded. For long it was supposed that the old settlement in Prae Wood was the stronghold of Cassivelaunus, whose heroic defence against Julius Caesar was defeated in 54 BC. Sir Mortimer’s discoveries have led him to believe that the headquarters of Cassivelaunus were at Wheathampstead, and that Prae Wood was a daughter-city, capital of south-Eastern Britain till the capital moved to Colchester.
About two years after their submission to the Roman invasion of AD 43, the people moved from their plateau to the shelter of the lower slope of the valley, and thus was established the first Roman city of Verulamium, covering about 150 acres. For a time all was well with this diamond-shaped city of wooden buildings, for it was the only British town to which the Romans gave the high rank of Municipium, and its people had all the rights of Roman citizenship; but in 61 the Queen of the Iceni, Boadicea, indignant with the people for having submitted to the Romans, descended upon it in the absence of the Governor and destroyed it with great slaughter.
Out of the ruins rose the second Roman city. Built early in the 2nd century, it included part of the earlier site, and extended southward along the Watling Street. It was the third and final Verulamium, the city in the shape of a rough oval, its 200 acres enclosed by two miles of massive walls of flint with courses of the bricks we see in the cathedral tower. There were half-round towers at intervals in the walls, and four gateways north, south, east, and west. Its buildings were of stone, including temples, arches, houses, and public buildings with mosaic floors; the Forum was almost in the middle of the city, and the theatre fronted Watling Street.
The 3rd century saw the city fall into decay, and though there was an attempt at restoration at the end of the century, the glory of Verulamium had departed never to return.
Not only has the story of Verulamium been unfolded so that we may read, but there is much of intense interest actually to be seen - The site is one of the green and pleasant places of our land, sloping up to fields and deep woods. It has some of the most impressive Roman walling to be seen in Britain, the only Roman theatre (as distinct from the amphitheatre) yet discovered in England, some of the finest mosaic pavements in existence, and a fine museum in which are housed the wonderful array of relics which lay hidden in the ground from the time of the Romans till our day.
Nearly a quarter of a mile of the massive walls (from two to about six feet high) and two of the bastions are now cared for by the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Crossing the river by the silk mill and the lake we come to St German’s Block, a great length of wall so called from a vanished chapel of that name. Following the Lane to Verulam Woods, the wall of the southern boundary of the city rises on one hand, and on the other is the old rampart, now a shady glade of trees. There are patches of walling on the right of King Harry Lane as we travel to Bluehouse Hill, down which a charming ride brings us across the old city to St Michael’s Church. North-west of the site is the great mass known as the Gorhambury Block. The little that was left of the Chester gate has been filled in; so has the smaller Silchester gate, with its single roadway and square towers. The unexcavated gate on the north-east lies under the road and houses of St Michael’s Street, but the foundations of the London Gate have been laid out, showing its two roadways for wheeled traffic and two for pedestrians, flanked by boldly projecting round-fronted towers. A hundred feet broad, it was one of the finest of the gateways built by the Romans, and must have resembled a triumphal arch.
Carrying on the illustrated story of Verulamium are foundations of houses whose walls have helped to build the great pile on the other hill, the cellar of a wine shop, Roman streets, and a mosaic pavement lying as the Romans laid it. It is like a great carpet in colours of black, grey, green, red, pink, white, and ochre, and its 16 square panels have individual designs set in circles. It was the floor of the warm room of a private bathing establishment, and at one side of it is the entrance to the hypocaust by which it was heated. Of the Forum, which is said to have been 400 feet long, there is the foundation of a corner where the two ancient roads bisected the city.
Apart from its unique interest to the antiquarian, the site of the Roman theatre is charming for us all, with banks of smooth lawn and the grey outlines of its plan. As we stand here with the open green spaces about us, we see across the river a fine picture of the modern city clustering about its cathedral, while behind us are the trees of Prae Wood, where the first chapter of this long story began. Though the site of the theatre was discovered in 1847 by a local antiquary, Mr Grove Lowe (who cleared the walls and laid out the plan), its complete excavation was not undertaken till our time, being made possible by the generosity of the late Lord Verulam, under the direction of Miss Kathleen Kenyon.
Thought to have been built between AD 140 and 150, the theatre fell into decay with the rest of the city during the 3rd century, and shared in its temporary revival about 300. After being for long a ruin, this fine building had fallen from its high estate to suffer the indignity of being a rubbish-tip before the end of the 4th century.
The Roman amphitheatre familiar to us all was devoted to sport and had seats all round the arena; the theatre at Verulamium is thought to have been used for plays, as well as for cock-fighting and animal-baiting, and herein is the reason for its unusual plan. It consisted originally of a circular central space, with a sloping auditorium round two-thirds of it, and a small stage joining its remaining portion. In a few years the size of the stage was increased by the building of a straight wall in front of the original curve, and before the end of the century a second wall was built four feet still farther forward. The purpose of this may have been either to increase the stage again, or to provide a slot into which the curtain could be dropped.
The town has spent £8000 to house the discoveries of Verulamium, and the museum is a sensible building for its purpose, an attractive place in dark brick with flint panels. The museum hall is 75 feet long, and the showcases and fittings are made from Nigerian walnut. As we enter the eye is drawn to three arresting and almost perfect pavements hung like tapestry on the wall. One of these is divided into panels by plaiting and has a great circle round a central flower. Another has a striking head, representing perhaps Neptune or Ocean, with lobster claws protruding from the hair, set in a handsome border of key pattern with roses and vessels, two of which have ladles in them. The third pavement is semi-circular, and has a charming design like a fan. Hardly less interesting than the mosaics themselves is the method by which these floors were lifted from their site and set up here without the disturbance of any of the tesserae. The work was done by Italians, who covered the mosaics first with a sticky substance and then with canvas, then dried them for weeks with stoves, and after chipping away the original cement, rolled them up like carpets, and unrolled them in new cement.
There are coins of gold, silver, and bronze; glass and pottery including rich Samian ware, vessels from the temples, an ox skull which may have been a dedication sacrifice, and a quaint lamp chimney from the triangular temple; a fine amphora for storing wine or oil; tools, spear-heads, daggers, iron axe-heads, spindles, rings, brooches, jet beads, seals, pins and needles of bone and bronze, iron pens which scratched on wax tablets, an oyster shell with pigment from the rouge a painted lady kept in it, and beakers adorned with stags and hounds. From the cemetery on the site of St Stephen’s Church are 12 bronze bracelets and many jet beads, rings and spoons, and many burial urns containing bones. A pathetic fragment is the skeleton of a child, lying on the bit of earth which cradled it so long ago; and a relic of remarkable interest is among the tiles with footmarks of men and animals. From the marks on one of these it would appear that a dog was standing on the tile as it was drying in the sun, when someone threw a stone (which still adheres to the tile) and the deeper paw-marks near by suggest that the startled dog jumped to avoid the stone.
Francis Bacon, lying here at St Albans, was one of the most extraordinary men who have risen to power and fame in England. On her visits to his father’s house at Gorhambury Queen Elizabeth I would speak of the boy as her young Lord Keeper, but when, after his brief career at Cambridge, he was left poor and fatherless, she steadily declined to help him. Thrown on his own resources, he took up law, entered Parliament, and attached himself to the Earl of Essex.
Essex in vain sought a wealthy wife for him, vainly begged the queen to help him, and finally gave him a Twickenham estate. But Bacon continued poor; he was once imprisoned for debt. As a Queen’s Counsel he absented himself from the Star Chamber proceedings against Essex, and was blamed by the queen for his remissness. He risked no second reproval when the earl was tried for rebellion. It was nothing to him that Essex had been his friend. The blustering Coke, who led the prosecution, so bungled the case that Essex might have escaped had not Bacon, by magnifying the enormity of his patron’s offence, made the death penalty inevitable.
After Elizabeth’s death Bacon, by flattering King James I, steadily advanced his position, declaring the king’s right divine and above the law. He held that the law could be altered by the sovereign at will regardless of judges. When he was 41 he married, for money, succeeded to the Gorhambury estate, and after 25 years of striving became Solicitor-General.
His power in the Courts was now unrivalled; his oratory and knowledge of the law were without parallel. Ben Jonson, who heard him argue a case, recorded that “the fear of every man who heard him was that he should make an end.” At 56 he followed his father as Lord Keeper, and was next made Lord Chancellor. On the bench his conduct seemed perfect. He disposed of acute legal problems with ease. While he would witness unmoved the torture of a prisoner he planned wise reforms of the criminal laws. All the time he was busy in his scanty leisure with his scientific and philosophic writings.
He kept his 60th birthday in almost regal state, the occasion celebrated by Ben Jonson in a poem, but within a few months of this proud day his fortunes were in ruins and he himself a prisoner in the Tower under a fine of £40,000, banished for ever from Court and Parliament for having accepted bribes. He admitted the crime, but denied having sold justice; it actually seems true that, with incredible cynicism, he took the bribes but decided against the givers. It should be remembered that England was rank with corruption in those days, and Bacon was only a guilty scapegoat, but he knew the depth of his sin.
His fine was remitted and, his imprisonment ended, he returned to the writings which ensure his fame. Distrusting the permanence of the English language, though he wrote it magnificently, he produced most of his chief works in Latin. In addition to important legal works, and his history of Henry VII, he formulated a philosophy in Novum Organum. With the confidence of true genius he took “all knowledge for his province,” but was prevented by the multiplicity of his labours from fully exploring his domain. While fertilising the mind of the world, Bacon was himself singularly fallible. He could believe that the heart of an ape, on being applied to the head, “helped wit” and is good for epilepsy, that a red stone prevents bleeding, and that certain bracelets have magical powers; but he could not accept the teachings of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. He declared that the revelations of the telescope were due to flaws in the lens, and he pooh-poohed the microscope. So limited was the wisest man of his time in those pre-scientific days.
Yet in other ways he was boundless in his outlook. He it was who first hinted at currents in the air, at heat as a form of motion, at the fact that light takes time to travel, at the possibility of transmitting sound to a distance, and at the likelihood that species might not be fixed, but were capable of change, as Darwin was later to discover. From his theory in the New Atlantis, of society governed by men of wisdom, sprang our own Royal Society, and kindred bodies in Europe. Himself achieving nothing in science, he pointed a way which, with all its errors, has led to worlds of wonder undreamed of by him or by his age.
For posterity he lives by his incomparable Essays, which he kept in their native English; he was shrewd enough to see that thus “they come home to men’s business and bosoms.” The essays teem with
treasures of wisdom, and with phrases which have become part of our daily speech and writing.
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