How to Visit the English Cathedrals

MANCHESTER

Dedication: St. Mary the Virgin, St. George and St. Denis. Formerly served by Secular Canons.

Special features: Choir-Stalls; Gordon Window.

Manchester was built for a parish church and only became a cathedral in 1847. It is a very fine specimen of Perpendicular Gothic of the early Fifteenth Century, though there are some remains of older work here and there. The oldest is the arch leading into the Lady-Chapel. This shows some influences of the Decorated style.

The choir, aisles and chapter-house date from 1422-1458; the nave was built in 1465-1481; Chapel of the Holy Trinity, 1498; Jesus Chapel, 1506; St. James’ Chantry (Ducie Chapel), 1507; St. George’s Chapel, 1508; Ely Chapel, 1515; and Lady-Chapel in 1518. The Cathedral suffered during the Civil Wars and has been much restored.

The exterior is not particularly impressive. The walls are grimy with smoke and there is no emerald sward, nor are there ivy-covered walls.

The one tower (built in 1864-1868) rises above a still more recent Western porch, designed by Basil Champneys and ornamented with a parapet and a single crocketed turret, which gives it a very unsymmetrical appearance. The square tower contains a clock in the first stage, soars 140 feet and is finished with a pierced battlement with pinnacles at the corners.

Turning round the corner, we come to the South porch, two bays and two stories (modern) and elaborately carved. Next comes the Jesus Chapel; then the octagonal Chapter-House; then the Fraser memorial chapel; and then we turn the corner and come to the Lady-Chapel, unusually small and projecting only about eighteen feet. The windows are Eighteenth Century, though the tracery is Decorated in general character.

Passing the window of the north-choir-aisle and the eastern end of the Derby Chapel, we again turn the corner. The first projection is the Ely Chapel and the next and smaller one is an engine room used for working the organ. The small door next opens into the ante-chapel of the Derby Chapel. Finally we reach the north porch.

“It is a dimly lighted building; this is due chiefly to two causes: first to the fact that it is enormously wide, and the aisle windows are therefore far from the central nave, and secondly to the fact that almost all the windows both of aisles and clerestory are filled with painted glass, in many cases of a deep colour, and rendered still more impervious to light by the incrustation of carbon deposited on their outside by the perpetual smoke of the city. So dark is the church that in the winter months it has generally to be lit with gas all the day long, and even in the summer, in comparatively bright weather, some gas burners will generally be found alight. The mist also of the exterior atmosphere finds its way into the building, and hangs beneath the roof, lending an air of mystery to the whole place, and giving rise to most beautiful effects when the sunlight streams through the clerestory windows. The tone also of the nave arcading and clerestory rebuilt in recent years, of warm, rose-coloured sandstone, is very lovely.”—(T. P.)

The Nave is wider than it is long. With its double aisles it measures 114 feet; its length is only 85 feet. The choir is about the same proportion. The Lady-Chapel, at the extreme east, is very small. The sides of the nave and choir are still further extended by chapels, partitioned off by screens. On the south side of the nave we have first St. George’s Chapel (founded in 1508) and St. Nicholas’s Chapel (founded in 1186, before the present church was built); and on the north side the space once occupied by the Holy Trinity Chapel (1498) and St. James’s Chapel (1507).

“This church differs from most of our cathedral and abbey churches in having no triforium.[8] And the clerestory is not lofty, so that the church is rather low for its width, though the height of the arches of the main arcade prevents this being felt. The roofs of the aisles are all modern, but that of the nave, though extensively repaired, has much of the original work in it, and, with the exception of a few bosses, the choir roof is old. All the roofs are of timber; in the nave the intersections of the main beams are covered by beautiful bosses carved out of the solid wood. On either side, at the points from which the main cross beams spring, is a series of angelic figures splendidly carved in wood: those on the south side playing stringed instruments, those on the north side wind instruments.

“The pillars of the main arcade of the nave are modern work built in imitation of the original ones. They are light and graceful, and, like many other pillars of fifteenth century date, are formed of shafts of which only half have separate capitals, the other mouldings running round the arch. The spaces between the arches are elaborately carved with heraldic shields.”—(T. P.)

In the nave we find the one interesting window in the Cathedral (the most eastern one in the Ducie Chapel), a memorial to General Gordon killed at Khartoum in 1888. It consists of five lights. Gordon is in the centre, his hand on the head of a native boy. Natives and angels occupy the other lights.

Towards the east end of the nave stands the

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Manchester: South

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Manchester: Nave, east

modern pulpit and then an ancient rood-screen with three wide openings and double doors.

Passing through the screen, we enter the Choir, sometimes called the Radcliffe Choir, because members of this family were buried here.

The Choir-stalls date from the early Sixteenth Century and resemble those in Ripon Cathedral and Beverley Minster.

“There are twelve stalls on either side, and three on each side of the entrance through the rood-screen facing east. The stalls are furnished with misereres, which, in common with many others both in England and on the Continent, represent all manner of quaint subjects, monsters, animals, hunting scenes, etc.

“The carved elbows of the stalls and the end of the book desks are also worthy of careful examination, especially the Eagle and Child and general carving of the Dean’s Stall, which is a marvel of beautiful workmanship, and said by high authorities to be unequalled.

“Between the stalls the floor is one step higher than that of the nave, and at the east end of the stall, there is a further rise of two steps as we pass into the presbytery. Here, on the south side, we see the bishop’s throne—modern work, carved with a view to be in harmony with the stalls, but comparing unfavourably with them in execution. There is a rise of two more steps into the sanctuary, and the altar itself is raised two steps higher; this gives a good effect. Behind the altar is an elaborately carved wooden reredos of modern work, richly painted and gilt.”—(T. P.)

A fine ancient screen runs across the arch at the opening of the Lady-Chapel.

Along the south side of the south-choir-aisle we first come to the vestry, then to the Jesus Chapel (now a library), separated from the aisle by a handsome screen of the Sixteenth Century. Then we reach the fine entrance to the Chapter-House, beneath a large arch. At the end is the Fraser Chapel, with an altar cenotaph to the second Bishop of Manchester, James Fraser (died 1885), buried elsewhere.

On the north aisle of the choir the space is occupied by the Derby Chapel, dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It was the private chapel of the Stanley family, to which the Earls of Derby belong. It was begun by James Stanley (1485-1509), who became Bishop of Ely. He died in 1515 and was buried near the Ely Chapel, where the original tomb and brass are still to be seen.

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