Philip A. Robson

The Cathedral Precincts.—The wall of the Close, which extends to almost a mile, dates from 1330, but of the four Gateways only one remains. This, to the south-east of the cathedral, is the main entrance to the Close from the secular part of the city. It is about 60 feet high, and the gateway is flanked on the north by an early Decorated (or Transitional) octagonal tower—once the janitor’s lodge—and on the south by a semicircular tower of an earlier character. This latter was probably a detached bell-tower and contained a prison. It also formed a Record Office and Consistory Court. The Precentor’s house abuts on the southern enclosure; the Chanter’s orchard is to the south-west; the Archdeacon has his residence to the west, and north of this is another for the Archdeacon of Brecon; beyond this again are the Chancellor’s, the Archdeacon of Cardigan’s, and the Treasurer’s houses. Adjoining the bridge is a prebendal house.

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PLAN OF ST. DAVID’S, 1806, BY JOHN CARTER.

A. Tower Gateway; B. City Wall; C. Cathedral; D. Bishop’s Palace; E. St. Mary’s College; F. Garden; G. Great Hall; H. Kitchen; I. Bishop’s Hall; K. West Chapel; L. Cloister Garth; M. God’s Acre (graves); O. Subordinate Cathedral Buildings.

On the north side of the Nave and parallel with it, but separated by the Cloister garth, are the remains of the College of St. Mary; to the north of its dignified tower are traces, possibly, of the infirmary, and to the north and east of this again are the remains of the houses of the Master and seven Priest-fellows of St. Mary’s, forming three sides of a quadrangle, on the north side of which was an entrance gateway tower. Across the Alan to the north-west are the attractive ruins of Bishop Gower’s once splendid palace.

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TOP OF TOWER (S.W. ANGLE) AND TENOR BELL.

The Church.—An important feature in the general exterior appearance of St. David’s is the walling material. Greys, reds, and purples, and mottle-blends of all three, lend a peculiar richness and warmth to the building on a sunny day, and the converse in wet weather. The quarries from which the cathedral stone was obtained are at Caerbwdy, in the immediate neighbourhood, and as these are almost the oldest sedimentary rocks known, it is conjectured that some part of this locality existed as an island in more than one primÆval sea.[2] This ancient cathedral, then, of the British Church has the distinction of being built of more primitive stone than any other important building in the country. Many things combine to render the general character of the exterior architecturally uninteresting. There is a decided feeling of dignity, but not of the grandeur with which one is apt to associate the idea of a cathedral. It lies low; the roofs are of a flat pitch, with the exception of those of the transepts; the highly picturesque and exquisite ruin of Bishop Gower’s palace to the west, with its chequered rampart, and the immense amount of new material used in the very necessary restoration, at present combine to mask the real age of the cathedral; and, finally, there is no hint of the gorgeous work within.

The Tower.—Few Norman towers, situated on the crossing of the nave, transepts, and choir, have not fallen[3] or been in extreme danger of doing so owing to the early architects having a very limited knowledge of the weight of superimposed masses and of the thrust of arches, which, as the orientals declare, “never rest.” The central tower of St. David’s was no exception; it fell in 1220. But it can hardly be that any tower has suffered worse than has this one from injudicious attentions even till the general restorations under Sir G. Scott in 1862. After the fall of 1220 the western piers and arch were allowed to remain, and the other three arches and piers were rebuilt from the ground. This, however, did not deter Bishops Gower and Vaughan adding, the first a Decorated and the latter a Perpendicular stage on to the same faulty substructure. In the rebuilding after the disaster of 1220 apparently but little effort was made towards fully introducing the new style in vogue. In fact, it is one of the most curious features of the whole of the details of the building that all the work is behind the accepted contemporary types in the matter of architectural advancement.

Internally the one old arch remaining is, of course, more or less semicircular, but the three new ones are pointed and consequently the string-course above them is carried at a higher level. Over this string-course on the west side is an arcade of pointed arches with slender shafts and foliated capitals. A corbel composed of a fox’s head carries the centre shaft. Altogether these form a graceful combination of shafts, corbels, and large bowtells with shaft-bases. Above is the characteristic Norman billet string-course.

CEILING OF CENTRAL TOWER.

Bishop Gower’s stage, above a string with the ball-flower ornament, contains on each face a tall two-light window, having pointed arches opening to a wall-passage, and externally a niche on either side. The third storey (of Bishop Vaughan, c. 1515) has a top-heavy effect and a most unusual parapet, with polygonal angle-shafts and a set of eight pinnacles. There are at present three bells, and the one that is used most and strikes from the clock is outside on the tower roof under a wooden diminutive belfry. There are two bells at the west end on the nave floor. Apparently there was an octave in the middle of the fourteenth century, when the bells were recast and the largest was lost at sea. About 1690 there were five (some cracked), and in 1748 the Chapter ordered that the four large bells should be taken down as they were both useless and dangerous, and in 1765 two were sold. The upper part of the interior of the tower consists of an elaborate wooden vault, which was raised by Scott and finely emblazoned. As the roof of the tower must obviously have been raised at least twice before, it seems hardly necessary for Scott to apologise (vide Report, 1869, Appendix) for doing so again. His success, however, is very patent.

The South Side.—Beginning at the west end, the first noticeable feature is the South Porch in the second bay, with the parvise or first floor chamber. The inner doorway has been, as Freeman[4] justly says, “one of the most magnificent displays of ornament in the whole building ... and, contrary to the common rule, the original Norman doorway has given way to a later successor.... The present doorway is Decorated (Bishop Gower, 1328-47), without shafts, but with a superb display of sculptured decoration, besides crockets and the ordinary four-leaved flower. The arch is adorned with a series of sculptures, which are sadly mutilated, but in which we may still trace the familiar representation of the Root of Jesse. The position, however, necessarily involves some singularities, and, as in the better known example of the Dorchester window, the genealogy is by no means easy to follow. The western impost is occupied by what appears to be a figure of Adam, with Eve issuing from his side; the other supports the recumbent figure of Jesse, from whom springs the branch, along which the figures are introduced, somewhat after the manner of the Norman medallions at Iffley. Some of the figures may still be discerned reading at desks; David with his harp may also plainly be seen, as well as a representation of the Crucifixion. Over the apex is an effigy of the Holy Trinity, with angels on each side bearing censers. The doorway has pinnacles at the sides, but they are cut off by the vaulting of the porch, which is plain quadripartite, springing from corbels,

among which we may observe the ornament called the mask, the only example of that form to be found in the cathedral.” This porch is the work of Gower, and the peculiar mouldings are readily traceable to the same artist who designed the rood-screen. Scraps of the previous Norman doorway, which was done away with by Gower, are still to be seen in the plinth. At one time there were five steps in the porch, but these were removed in 1885. The entrance to the upper chamber (added by Vaughan, c. 1515) is obtained from the nave by a turret-stair, and the room is now used as a clerk-of-work’s drawing office.

In 1849 Butterfield renewed the tracery of the aisle windows as it originally was in Decorated times, but it is not very attractive.

The Clerestory is Norman, of ashlar work, and the windows are rather wide, stumpy, and round-headed, with flat pilaster-like buttresses between each pair. But the restoration has deprived the exterior of much of its interest, although one can easily imagine that those of the next century will enjoy a very pleasing contrast between the purples of the Caerfai buttresses and the yellows of the window dressings, which are of Somersetshire oolite.

The South Transept still retains the outline of the arch of the great south window which was blocked up when the four existing Perpendicular windows of four lights each were inserted. A double buttress supports the south-east corner of the transept, and behind this is the present Chapter House.

The East End.—The south Presbytery aisle was put into proper repair at the time of the general restoration, and new windows were inserted. The upper tier of windows at the east end of the Presbytery have been well restored also by Scott, and his own description[5] may well be given:

On the east wall of the tower the various weather-courses of previous roofs are visible, which make a not unnatural appeal to the imagination of the spectator. For the great defect of the exterior generally is that the roofs are of such a very flat pitch.

The Ruined Chapels—on the south King Edward’s, on the east that of Our Lady, on the north of St. Nicholas, and the Ante-Chapel—will be described later, as it is only by an unfortunate chance that they are now roofless (except the last), and will, we hope, shortly be correctly regarded as part of the interior if the proposed restoration takes place.

Not far from the east end of the Lady Chapel is the spring which St. David is credited with creating. Giraldus[6] has a very pretty legend concerning this spring, which was known as St. Mary’s Well. It seems to have been of somewhat variable quality, as its waters were sometimes changed into milk and at others into wine. Sir G. Scott, however, with scant respect for its saintly origin, caused it to be drained!

The North Side is much the more interesting of the two. After passing the chapels we come to a very curious three-storied building, the roof of which is higher than that of the cathedral. On the ground-floor was the Chantry of St. Thomas, now a vestry, entered from the east side of the north transept, and above this the turret stair from the north aisle of the presbytery leads to the old Chapter House, now the Library, and above this again is a disused room, once the Treasury.

No parallel has yet been found for this remarkable building, which Freeman (1856) very accurately describes thus:[7]

Butterfield is responsible for the large Decorated window in the North Transept, and Scott raised the roof to its original pitch and rebuilt the north-west angle turret. In the west wall are two Transitional windows (but the northern one has long been filled in), and above is a corbelled parapet. Below, but at a lower level than the transept floor, is a doorway to the cloisters, with a semicircular outer arch having a solid tympanum and segmental head within. At a contemporary period half, and much later the whole, of this entrance was built up, and in the recess thus formed was placed a lavatory and drain.

The east wall of the cloisters connects St. Mary’s College with the north transept. An imposing view is obtained on going through the door at the north-east corner of the cloisters. We now see the north side of the nave, with flying buttresses supported on huge masses of masonry, the ruins and graceful tower of St. Mary’s and, in the distance across the Alan, the magnificent ruins of the episcopal palace.

The North Doorway (see p. 80) corresponds in position to the south porch, and is a good example of a Transitional (Norman to Early English) doorway, but it is much decayed. The principal ornament is, like those in the arcade, a kind of hybrid composed of the Norman chevron and the Early-English dog-tooth ornaments. There is a depressed arch to this doorway, which, with other evidence, leads us to suppose that it has been higher. Another feature which calls for comment—it is the same in the arcade but in less marked degree—is that no matter what the size of the stone, a complete part of the ornament has been carved upon it, thus obtaining an irregular but not unpleasing effect.

The present West Front is from a design by Sir G. G. Scott, who based it upon a drawing which he found in the library of the Society of Antiquaries showing the church as it was before Nash’s alterations.

The illustrations on pages 2 and 7 show Nash’s design of 1793, which seems to have received the sanction of the Society of Antiquaries. The figures that appear in the first are Bishop Jones, Professor Freeman, the authors of the best history of St. David’s, Dean Allen, and Sir G. G. Scott. This execrable composition was a hopeless conglomeration of Norman, Decorated, and Perpendicular, with a couple of heavy-arched buttresses, which were apparently standing as recently as 1887.[8] The rebuilding of the West Front was undertaken at a cost of about £4,000 as a memorial to Bishop Thirlwall, who first seriously began to restore the church in 1864, and his statue stands over the west door. The material is Caerfai stone from the neighbouring quarries of Caerbwdy, and suffers from its newness in appearance. In fact the design and the purple stone combine to give the whole front a very heavy appearance, which only years of exposure to the sea air will partially remedy.