The Cathedral Church of St. Ethelreda, Ely.

ELY, SOUTH-WEST.

“The vast and magnificent cathedral of Ely,” says Mrs. Van Rensselaer, “looms up on the horizon, as we come westward from Norwich, like a great solitary ship at sea. As we draw nearer it preserves its isolated clearness of outline, lifted visibly above the plain, yet so little lifted that its bulk seems all the greater from being nearer the eye. As we enter the little town from the south-west we realise its enormous length, the grace of its octagon, and the stern majesty of the tall tower, which rises like a great cliff in a land where men might well build cliffs, since Nature had built none. But there is in truth no spot whence the great monarch of the fenlands may not be admirably seen, until we get so far off that it drops behind the horizon’s rim. Wherever it may reveal itself it is always immense, imposing, majestic: only upon the plains of Egypt or Mesopotamia has Nature assisted the effect of man’s work by such entire suppression of herself.”

Ely, like Peterborough, Ramsey, Thorney, and Crowland, and like Glastonbury, the greatest of all the English monasteries, goes back to early Anglo-Saxon days, when communities of monks and nuns sought solitude and safety in the recesses of far-spreading marshes and fens. In the beginning the monastery was founded as a nunnery, in 673, by Ethelreda, who became the first abbess and Ely’s patron saint. From the nuns it passed to secular canons, and in Dunstan’s time to Benedictine monks. In 1109 the abbot gave way to a bishop, and the Benedictine church became a Benedictine cathedral.

The Bishop of Ely in his island, like the Bishop of Durham in his hill-fortress, possessed powers which no other English ecclesiastic was allowed to share. His territorial possessions included the whole Isle of Ely: and this, “the Liberty of the Bishops of Ely,” was subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the bishop. It is in these two facts—the possession of a local saint, St. Ethelreda or St. Audrey, of high repute through all England; and in the enormous revenues derived from the Isle of Ely—that the explanation lies of the vast scale on which the abbey-church was planned in the eleventh century, of the unparalleled richness of its thirteenth-century presbytery, and of the enormous works undertaken and rapidly carried out in the fourteenth century.

CHOIR

I.Norman.—The present cathedral was commenced in 1083 by Abbot Simeon, brother of Bishop Walkelin of Winchester, where Simeon himself had been a monk. Earlier still he had been a monk at St. Ouen, Rouen; so that he would be well acquainted with the contemporary architecture of Normandy. As was to be expected from the relationship of the founders of the two cathedrals, Ely and Winchester have many points of resemblance. Both are vast in scale, far surpassing the Abbaye-aux-hommes at Caen, or Lanfranc’s copy of it at Canterbury. Both indulge in the luxury of aisles to the west as well as to the east of their transepts. Both had return aisles in the transepts—a feature borrowed fromthe Abbaye-aux-hommes. Those of Winchester remain; those of Ely have been pushed back to the walls. The nave of Ely had no less than thirteen bays, its transepts three, its choir five. The choir-aisles had square ends; the choir ended in a semicircular apse. The stalls were placed in the crossing and in the two eastern bays of the nave up to 1770, when Essex removed them to the presbytery; Scott placed them in their present position in 1847. There was a central tower; and, instead of two western towers, there was one tower with four flanking turrets. From the lower stories of these turrets, of which only the southern one is left, apses projected eastward. Externally the western transept gave the church great breadth and dignity; and the plan of Bury and Ely was speedily copied at Peterborough, Lincoln, and Wells. Internally it is the most picturesque bit of Norman work in the country. The two towers “riding tandem” may be paralleled at Wymondham and Wimborne, and formerly at Bury and Hereford. Of Abbot Simeon’s eleventh-century work little is left now except the vaulting-shafts in front of his apse, to the east of the organ; the exterior of the west windows of the south transept, which alone have the nail-head moulding; and the lower part of the eastern walls of the transepts, which have the Ionic capital. “The masonry is rude and tooled with a large cross-stroke: the abaci and the soffits of the arches are square andunmoulded.” The choir and the lower part of the transepts are said to have been completed in 1106.

EAST END.

All the rest of the work as far as the west end was designed towards the end of the Norman period:c.1130. The lateness of the work is seen in the tall, slender, graceful shafts of the triforium and clerestory, and in the substitution of mouldings for carved ornament in the orders of all the arches. It is much nearer Gothic than the contemporary work at Peterborough and Norwich. The proportions are unusually good, both the pier-arches and clerestory being taller than usual in proportion to such a lofty triforium. Accordingly, the proportions of the Norman choir, then standing, were copied in the presbytery added to the choir in the thirteenth century; and the proportions of the presbytery were reproduced in the fourteenth-century choir. It is this, doubtless, which gives such a feeling of unity in Ely, as at Worcester, in spite of the fact that the present cathedral consists of three blocks built in three different centuries in entirely different styles. At Canterbury, Rochester, Ripon, Chester, nave and choir quarrel; at Winchester and York, nave and transept; Ely has evolved harmony out of discord. The work seems to have been done in four sections: first, the completion of the transepts and the crossing and the eastern bays of the nave; second, the western bays; third, the three lower stories of the west transept; fourth, the monks’ and prior’s doorways.

II.Transitional.—The upper stories of the western transept, the western turrets, and the upper arches of the crossing, were not completed till about 1170. About the same date are the Infirmary chapel and the Refectory; the former east, the latter south of the cloisters.

III.Lancet (1190-1245).—Early in the thirteenth century the Galilee porch was added, in the same position as at Durham. Externally the design is commonplace; internally, “with its rich outer and inner portals, its capitals carved with delicate curling leafage, its side arcades in double rows of trefoiled arches, and the profuse dog-tooth enrichment of its mouldings, it is one of the loveliest things ever built, and one of the most English in its loveliness.” The early date of 1200 is assigned to this and to the equally beautiful western porches of St. Alban’s. If so, Gothic must have advanced with lightning speed from the jejune work of Lincoln choir and Winchester retro-choir.

Next, about 1234, the Norman apse was pulled down—partly, perhaps, because it had become unsafe, its foundations not having been carried down to the solid rock, but, much more from the need to provide more accommodation for the crowds of pilgrims to St. Audrey’s shrine. The apse was replaced by a presbytery of six bays: a presbytery of inexpressible loveliness. “Nowhere,” says Mr. Freeman, “can we better study the boldly clustered marble pier with its detached shafts, the richly floriated capitals, the yet richer corbels which bear up the marble vaulting shafts, the bold and deftly cut mouldings of every arch, great and small. Lovelier detail was surely never wrought by the hand of man.” The piers are closely spaced; and the arches, therefore, as at Beverley, are sharply pointed—in beautiful harmony with the Lancet windows. On the other hand, the trefoiling of the triforium arches contrasts delightfully with the pointed arches of pier-arcade and clerestory. Only at Beverley can the beauty of Ely presbytery be paralleled; but at Beverley the design owes everything to the architect; at Ely thesculptor may claim half the credit. Worcester choir may be placed next in order; its proportions, indeed, are very similar to those of the Ely work. The presbytery was completed in thirteen years, and cost what is equivalent to £120,000 of our money—£20,000 per bay.

OCTAGON AND CHOIR.

IV.Geometrical.—With this superb eastern extension the monks remained satisfied for some seventy years. Nothing was done in the cathedral except the insertion of large Geometrical windows to give more light to the chapels in the eastern aisle of the south transept.

V.Curvilinear (1315-1360).—But in the fourteenth century a most wonderful series of great works was carried out in Ely; the noblest works of that or perhaps of any period of mediæval building in England. First of all, it was resolved to give the Blessed Virgin the honour so long withheld from her at Ely. At Ely her rightful position in the presbytery had been usurped by St. Ethelreda, as at Durham by St. Cuthbert. Following the precedent of Bristol and Peterborough, a vast Lady chapel was now built for her on the north side of the choir between 1321 and 1349. Later on, Ely Lady chapel in turn gave birth to King’s College chapel at Cambridge. It is a wonderfulpiece of mediæval engineering; the vault—a very flat one—being upheld by the mathematical minimum of wall and buttress. But it was more than engineering. It was the product of a time when “Catholic purity in the best natures was still allied to the tenderness of chivalry”—

“When in reverence of the Heavene’s QueeneThey came to worship alle women that beene.”

“When in reverence of the Heavene’s Queene

They came to worship alle women that beene.”

It is said that when Pugin saw the ruins of its arcade, once so glorious in its beauty—wherein are carved, in the spandrils above each canopy, incidents in the scriptural and legendary history of the Blessed Virgin—he burst into tears. He estimated the cost of the restoration of the Lady chapel at £100,000, but said that no workmen could be found competent to do the work.

The year after the Lady chapel was commenced, the central tower fell; and falling eastward, ruined the three western bays of the Norman choir which still remained. Nevertheless, though the monks had suddenly cast on them the vast task of rebuilding both tower and choir, they did not abandon or intermit their work in the Lady chapel. Side by side the different sets of works went on: the Lady chapel, the central tower, and the choir. The tower was finished in 1342, the Lady chapelc.1349, the choir probably not much later. How vast the resources of Ely must have been!

In 1322 Alan of Walsingham, then sacrist at Ely and afterwards Prior, set to work to clear away thedébrisof the piers of the tower. We may believe that when he saw the great open space in the centre of the cathedral, it may well have occurred to him what a pity it would be ever to close it up again to construct the usual circumscribed square central tower, the width only of the nave, under which one feels as if looking up from the bottom of a well. What was left, when he had cleared away the four tower-piers, was an area three times as large as that of the original crossing. This area was an octagon, with four long and four shortsides: four long sides opening into nave, choir, and transepts; four short sides opening diagonally into the aisles. Why not throw four wide and four narrow arches over the piers of the octagon, and on these arches erect, not a small square tower, but a vast octagonal tower? Octagonal central towers were unknown in the English cathedrals; but there are plenty abroad—e.g., magnificent examples at Coutances and Siena. The difficulty was how to roof a tower so vast. The noblest course would have been to cover it with a vault of stone. But no English architect ever dared a vault 77 ft. wide. In Spain they might have done it: the vault of the nave of Gerona is 73 ft. in span. In England not so; the York people did not even venture to vault a nave 45 ft. broad.

LADY CHAPEL.

Some sort of wooden roof, therefore, had to be adopted. That roof could not be a flat wooden ceiling; no beams of the length of 77 ft. could be had; and if put up they would have been unsafe. Instead, then, of a flat ceiling, Alan determined on a conical vault of wood like that of York Chapter-house. But what he wanted was not merely a roof, but a lantern. A roof like the York one would have darkened the whole central area, besides being ugly in appearance and difficult to construct. Instead, therefore, of taking the whole of the York cone, he cut the top off, replacing its sharp spike with an octagonal lantern. Inthis, or in some such way, Alan got at his design: one of the most original and poetic conceptions of the middle ages; but arising, like all the best things in Gothic architecture, out of nothing but the exigencies of building construction.

The problem was solved on paper, but it proved immensely difficult in execution. Alan finished the stone piers and arches in six years, but the timber-work occupied twelve years more. He had to search all over England before he could find oaks big and straight and sound enough for the eight vertical angle-posts of his lantern. They are 63 feet long, with a sapless scantling of 3 ft. 4 in. by 2 ft. 8 in. Oaks like those do not grow now in England. The eight angle-posts are tied together at top and bottom by collars of horizontal beams, and the whole skeleton lantern rests on the tips of inclined beams, whose lower ends rest on corbels behind the capitals of the great piers below.

And as the inclined beams spread to right and left from the great piers below, it follows that the eight sides of the lantern are not placed above the eight arches below. This engineering necessity, also, is wrought into a new source of beauty. For advantage is taken of it to pierce the wall-space above the narrow low arches with four tall windows, so that the central area, so gloomy at Winchester, Lincoln, and Wells, is irradiated with a flood of light from twelve vast windows; four below, eight above. There is not such a lantern church in the world, and certainly there is no such interior as Ely in England. To the west, dark nave; to the east, darker choir; the centre all light and atmosphere. The views from the aisles across the octagon into the choir are veritable glimpses into fairyland. Externally, too, the octagonal lantern groups marvellously with the great western tower; in height, in bulk, in shape they are in perfect ratio.

Side by side with the octagon went up the choir, as was necessary, that the octagon might have abutment to the east. The choir is “a little over-developed and attenuated in detail”; the windows are squat and ungraceful in proportion,and their flowing tracery wiry and unlovely. Window tracery is the one weak point in the Curvilinear work at Ely. Nevertheless, this choir is one of those works whose delicate loveliness disarms criticism. It even disarmed Mr. Fergusson, who says that the proportions of the presbytery are reproduced in the choir, “with such exquisite taste that there is perhaps no single portion of any Gothic building in the world which can vie with it in poetry of design or beauty of detail.”

ALCOCK’S CHAPEL.

But the monks had not finished even now. They were dissatisfied with the lighting of the older part of the cathedral. So they took out the thirteenth-century lancets, not only those of the aisles but those of the outer wall of the triforium of the presbytery, and replaced them by broad windows of flowing tracery. Even this was insufficient, and so they substituted a flat roof for the steep sloping roof of the two western bays of the presbytery aisles, and glazed the openings of these two bays of the triforium. Thus more light was obtained for St. Ethelreda’s shrine, which then stood between these two bays; its exact position is marked by the elaborate boss in the vault of the choir. Externally, the result is hideous, a big hole being left in the choir aisles, where the lean-to roof formerly extended continuously. All this piercing of the walls with bigger windows weakened the supports of the vaults, and the builders therefore took the precaution to weight the buttresses with heavy pinnacles, and to add flying-buttresses.

Beautiful stalls were then put up under the octagon—the panels are modern—and above the ancient white marble tomb of St. Ethelreda a stone canopy and watching-loft were erected. It now stands between the south piers of the presbytery, in the fourth bay from the west. On this was placed the Norman silver reliquary, “embossed with many figures, with a golden majesty blazing in its centre, with countless jewels of crystal and pearl, onyx and beryl, and amethyst and chalcedony.”

Nor was this all. Alan designed for his friend Prior Crauden a little chapel which would be the cynosure of any other cathedral, but which passes almost unnoticed amid the glories of Ely.

VI.Perpendicular (1360-1485).—In this period the monks continued their improvements in the lighting of the cathedral, treating the Norman nave very much as they had treated the Lancet choir—i.e., putting bigger windows in the aisles, and also raising the aisle-walls so as to get space for an upper range of windows, in the hope that some light might filter through across the triforium into the nave.

Moreover, they added another storey to the great west tower, making it octagonal, in order to bring it more into harmony with Alan’s lantern. The additional storey threw more weight on the Norman arches below, under which new strengthening arches had to be built. This saved the tower; but the northern half of the western transept collapsed, and has never been rebuilt.

The great east and west windows of the new Lady chapel also soon showed signs of weakness, and Perpendicular was substituted for flowing tracery.

To this period also belong the hammer-beam roofs of the transepts, the cloisters, and the Ely Porta or Walpole Gate.

VII.Tudor.—In 1488 was erected the chantry of Bishop Alcock at the east end of the north aisle of the choir; and in 1534 that of Bishop West in a similar position in the south aisle. They are perhaps the two most superb chantries inEngland, of marvellous richness and delicacy and vigour. That of Bishop West is of exceptional interest for its Renaissance vaulting and scroll-work. One so rarely sees in an English cathedral the delicate art of the early Italian Renaissance.

VIII. In 1539 the monks were expelled; secular canons took their place. In 1699 Sir Christopher Wren contributed a classical doorway to the north transept. The roofs of the nave and the lantern were paintedc.1862 by Mr. Le Strange and Mr. Gambier Parry. To Sir Gilbert Scott is due the gorgeous reredos.

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