Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral Part 1

Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral.

by George Worley.

PREFACE

The numerous authorities, ancient and modern, which I have been obliged to draw upon, are acknowledged, where necessary, in the text.

Those who wish to pursue the study of St. Saviour's Cathedral in greater detail and completeness than is here possible, must be referred to some of the larger works to which I have had recourse; _e.g._, those by Moss and Nightingale (1817-1818), F.T. Dollman (1881), and the Rev. Dr. Thompson (1904). The Surrey Archaeological Society's "Collections" are also to be recommended for the valuable subsidiary matter they contain, in the shape of original doc.u.ments, selected and carefully edited from sources not easily accessible to the public.

For facts not elsewhere recorded I am under special obligations to Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons, architects for the restoration, who have not only afforded most useful information, and given access to drawings, which they alone possessed, but have been good enough to draw up the plan, showing the most recent work at the Cathedral, expressly for this volume.

I am scarcely less indebted to their Clerk of the Works, Mr. Thomas Simpson, who superintended the whole restoration of 1890-1897, and has generously placed his exceptional knowledge at my disposal.

Others to be thankfully remembered are Mr. Harry Lloyd, of "The Daily Chronicle," and the Proprietors of "Church Bells," who have kindly contributed the ill.u.s.trations bearing their names; Mr. C.A. Webb, Private Secretary to the Bishop of Southwark; Mr. A.W. Dodwell Moore, Chapter Clerk; the Rev. W.W. Hough and Mr. S.C. Lapidge, Secretaries to the Diocesan Society; Mr. F.C. Eeles, Secretary to the Alcuin Club; and the Rev. Dr. Thompson, Rector and Chancellor of St. Saviour's, each of whom has added something within his special province.

Most of the photographs have been taken by Mr. G.o.dfrey P. Heisch, direct from the fabric. The specification of the organ comes from the builders, Messrs. Lewis and Co., Limited.

To all these thanks are due: also to the Cathedral authorities for facilities of access, and to the Vergers of the Cathedral and Chapter House for their services during my examination of the buildings.

G.W.

SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL

CHAPTER I

HISTORY OF THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. SAVIOUR, FORMERLY ST. MARY OVERIE, SOUTHWARK

The history of St. Saviour's takes us back to those distant days when Southwark was but a marsh, and when there was no bridge across the Thames. John Stow, historian and antiquary (1525-1605), was acquainted with Bartholomew Linstede, the last of the Priors, and gives the following account of its origin on his authority:

East from the Bishop of Winchester's house, directly over against it, standeth a fair church, called St.

Mary-over-the-Rie, or Overie; that is, over the water. This church, or some other in place thereof, was, of old time, long before the Conquest, a house of sisters, founded by a maiden named Mary; unto the which house and sisters she left, as was left to her by her parents, the oversight and profits of a cross ferry, or traverse ferry over the Thames, there kept before that any bridge was built. This house of sisters was after by Swithun, a n.o.ble lady, converted into a college of priests, who in place of the ferry built a bridge of timber, and from time to time kept the place in good reparations; but lastly, the same bridge was built of stone; and then in the year 1106 was this church again founded for canons regular by William Pont de la Arch, and William Dauncey, Knights, Normans.

Stow's account has been disputed in several particulars. Although it may be taken for granted that there was a cross-ferry before there was a bridge, it does not follow that the bridge immediately superseded it; and it has been suggested, as more likely, that both means of transit were used for some time simultaneously, as is the case to-day at other places.

If the first London Bridge was built by Roman engineers during the Roman occupation, it may be a.s.sumed that the bridge existed before the church. That the first bridge was a Roman structure has been almost proved by the discovery of Roman coins and other relics among the _debris_ of the original work during the erection of later bridges. We have an evidence of the antiquity of the site in some Roman _tesserae_, discovered in 1832, while a grave was being dug in the south-east corner of the churchyard, and still preserved in the pavement, near the entrance, in the south aisle of the choir. These _tesserae_, with the pottery, tiles, coins, lachrymatories, sepulchral urns, etc., excavated from time to time in and about the church, are clear indications of an important Roman settlement.

It is known that after the destruction of Roman London by Boadicea, a great many Romans made their escape into Southwark, where they continued to live, and contributed greatly to the size and importance of the southern suburb. The princ.i.p.al buildings sprang up round the site of St. Saviour's Church, and it has been reasonably conjectured that a temple stood on the very spot that the church now occupies.[1]

It is true that no trace of this temple has been discovered; but the conjecture is not inconsistent with the known principles of the early Christian missionaries, in their contact with paganism, as ill.u.s.trated in the history and traditions of other important churches.

Stow's phrase, "long before the Conquest," though somewhat ambiguous, has been thought to point to a date posterior to the Roman occupation.

Some authorities, therefore, contend that the Romans had erected London Bridge and left the country before St. Mary's was founded, and consequently the bridge the antiquary mentions as built by "Swithun, a n.o.ble lady," was not the first. Again, it is doubtful whether the sub-t.i.tle "Overie" means "of the ferry," or "over the river," or whether the form "Overies," which the word sometimes takes, does not suggest a derivation from "Ofers," "of the bank or sh.o.r.e," a meaning contained in the modern German _Ufer_. John Overy, or Overs, was the father of Mary, but whether the surname was derived from the place, or _vice versa_, is uncertain. In any case, the name, whether by accident or design, includes a reference to the foundress as well as to the locality of her foundation.[2]

Stow is obviously wrong, however, as to the person who converted the House of Sisters into a College of Priests, who was not a lady, but St. Swithun, Bishop of Winchester (852-862), whose devotion to the building of churches and bridges is well known.

The character of the foundation, altered by St. Swithun, was again altered in 1106, under Bishop William Giffard, with the co-operation of the two Norman knights to whom Stow refers. They not only erected the first Norman nave, but made a radical change within by abolis.h.i.+ng the "College of Priests," in whose place they introduced "Canons regular" of the Augustinian Order, governed by a Prior, thus transforming the Collegiate Church into a monastery. Except as regards the s.e.x of the inmates, the change was a reversion to the idea of the foundress.[3]

The Norman work of this period is the earliest of which any traces remain in the present church, unless the doubtful signs on a shaft in the exterior are to be taken as evidence of Saxon workmans.h.i.+p. This shaft is attached to the north wall of the Chapel of St.

John-the-Divine (now used as a clergy vestry), which is perhaps the oldest part of the fabric. The undoubted Norman remains consist of three arches in the same chapel, where their outline is just discernible among the brickwork; the fragment of a string-course, with billet moulding, on the inner wall of the north transept; a portion of the Prior's entrance to the cloisters; the old Canons' doorway; and an arcaded recess. Of these, it may be briefly remarked that the remains of the Prior's door, showing the mutilated shafts and the zigzag moulding of the jambs, are preserved, _in situ_, in the outer face of the north wall to the new nave. The outline of the Canons' entrance, obviously of much simpler moulding, will be seen on the inner side of the same wall, towards the west end. The Norman recess lies still farther to the west on the same side.

Quite recently a valuable relic of the same period has been discovered in the north-east corner within the above-mentioned chapel (by the side of the new Harvard window)--apparently part of the original arcading to the apse.

Early in the thirteenth century London was visited by one of those great fires, which occurred at rather frequent intervals, before the greatest of all, in 1666, led to the rebuilding of the city, and better means for its protection. The date of the particular fire is sometimes given as 1207, sometimes as 1212 or 1213. It is not unlikely that there were several, in one or other of which London Bridge, Southwark, and the church were seriously injured. (_Vide_ Stow and Harleian MSS., No. 565.)

The repairs were soon taken in hand by Peter de la Roche, otherwise de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester (1205-1238), who altered the nave into the Early English, which was then generally superseding the heavier Norman work, and shortly afterwards built the choir and retro-choir in a still lighter and more ornate style. The architecture gives us the approximate date of de la Roche's work as the early part of the thirteenth century, which is about as near as we can get to it in the absence of a more precise record than that it was "begun after the fire." In consequence of this, or some previous fire, the Canons were led to found a hospital close to the Priory for the relief of the distress and disease caused by the disaster. During the restorations by Peter de Rupibus, in or about 1228, he had the hospital transferred to a more favourable site in the neighbourhood, where the air was fresher and water more abundant, and dedicated it to St. Thomas of Canterbury, to whom the chapel on London Bridge was also dedicated.[4]

In addition to all this excellent work, Bishop de Rupibus built a chapel for the paris.h.i.+oners, the conventual church being reserved for the Prior and monks. This chapel stood in the angle between the walls of the choir and south transept, and was called St. Mary Magdalene Overy.

In the reign of Richard II there was another fire, involving repairs; and then, as well as in the reign of Henry IV, Perpendicular features were introduced by Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester (1405-1447), aided by John Gower, the "Father of English Poetry." The Cardinal is said to have restored the south transept at his own expense, and is there commemorated in a sculptured representation of his hat and coat of arms affixed to a pier by the door. The difference in style between the two transepts shows that on the north to be of somewhat earlier date, though it was probably not left untouched by the restorers. The poet Gower founded a chantry in the Chapel of St.

John Baptist, in the north aisle, where he was eventually buried, and where daily ma.s.ses were said for the repose of his soul before the Reformation. His monument was transferred to the south transept during the "repairs and beautifications" of 1832, but is now restored to its original place over the poet's remains in the fifth bay (from the west), of the north aisle of the nave. The chapel and chantry have unfortunately disappeared.

In 1469 the stone roof of the old nave fell down. The accident has been attributed to the removal, in the reign of Richard II, of the flying b.u.t.tresses by which the vault was originally supported, as is still the case with the choir walls. Another roof of groined oak was soon subst.i.tuted, as less likely to suffer from its own weight. That it was not a specially light structure, however, may be inferred from the ma.s.sive bosses preserved from it, and now to be seen on the floor of the north transept.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORMER WESTERN DOORWAY.

_From Moss and Nightingale's "History"_ (1817-18).]

The crowning piece of work, which very shortly preceded the ruin brought about by the Dissolution, was set upon the Priory Church by Bishop Fox in 1520, in the magnificent altar-screen, which through all its mutilations has borne witness to his work in his favourite device of the "Pelican in her piety," and the humorous allusion to his name, in the figure of a man chasing a fox, among its sculptured ornaments.

The west end of the church was considerably altered, and a new western doorway inserted, with a six-light window above it, at about the same time; when also the upper stages of the tower were erected. The window is said to have been altered for the worse in the seventeenth century, and in its last phase the whole facade presented what Mr.

Dollman describes as "a heterogeneous ma.s.s of masonry and brickwork,"

not worth preserving when the modern restoration was taken in hand.

The flying b.u.t.tresses have been reproduced in the new nave, and the chief doorway placed in the south-west corner, which the architect was led to believe was its original position.

It is generally admitted that by the sixteenth century the monastic inst.i.tutions had so far departed from the ideal of their founders, and outlived their usefulness, as to call for some drastic measures for their improvement. Steps had been taken from time to time with this object, before the reign of Henry VIII, when a combination of circ.u.mstances, into which we need not now enter, enabled the King to carry out his scheme for the Dissolution of the monasteries, comprising the two chief cla.s.ses of abbeys and priories into which they were divided. The coming storm was heralded at St. Mary's on 11th November, 1535 on which date, "by command of the king," a solemn procession was held in the church to inaugurate its downfall by a Litany, in which the Prior and Canons took part, "with their crosses, candlesticks and vergers before them," as if in mockery of the state of which they were so soon to be deprived. The "Act of Suppression,"

pa.s.sed in 1536, sealed the fate of the smaller foundations, to be followed three years later by the "voluntary surrender" of their property by the larger monasteries, thus making a clean sweep of the whole. The last Prior, Linstede, has been blamed for so far acquiescing in the measure as to accept a pension from the royal bounty; but with the fate of the last Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry before him, who had been hanged for his resistance, he probably thought that his own opposition would only have led to a useless martyrdom without averting the fall of his priory. It may be mentioned, as having some bearing on our history, that part of the wealth released by the Act was applied to the foundation of six new bishoprics, thus by a strange coincidence bringing up the English dioceses to the number of twenty-four, originally fixed upon by Pope Gregory the Great, while his successor was set at defiance by the measures through which they were created.

St. Mary Overy now enters on a new phase of existence. We have seen that it had become a double church, by union with the church, or chapel, of St. Mary Magdalene, the one a conventual, the other a public, place of wors.h.i.+p. In the immediate neighbourhood there was a third church, dedicated to St. Margaret, which had been founded by Bishop Giffard in 1107, and granted to the fraternity at St. Mary's by charter of Henry I. By an Act of 1540, the year of Linstede's surrender, the whole were united into a single parish, under the t.i.tle of St. Saviour's, thenceforward the official designation of the Collegiate Church and surrounding district. The new dedication was suggested by, and intended to perpetuate the memory of, the convent of that name in Bermondsey (founded by Alwin Child, a London citizen, in 1082), which shared the fate of its companions at the Dissolution.

Soon after the amalgamation, St. Margaret's Church was secularized, and divided into three portions for use respectively as a Sessions'

Court, a Court of Admiralty, and a prison. It stood on the ground where the old Southwark Town Hall was afterwards built, itself a perpetuation of the secular uses to which the deconsecrated church was put before it was destroyed. A relic of St. Margaret's survives in the shape of a monumental slab to Aleyn Ferthing, five times Member for Southwark, about the middle of the fourteenth century. The stone was discovered in 1833 during some excavations on the site of the old church, and transferred to St. Saviour's, where it is imbedded in the pavement of the retro-choir. From 1540 the Priory Church and Rectory were leased to the paris.h.i.+oners by the Crown, at a rental of about 50 per annum, till 1614, when the church was purchased right out from James I for the sum of 800.

The Corporation into whose hands the newly const.i.tuted parish of St.

Saviour's pa.s.sed in 1540 consisted of thirty vestrymen, of whom six were churchwardens.[5]

The latter, as representatives of the ancient _Seniores Ecclesiastici_, were charged with the protection of the edifice and church furniture, but the records show that they had no special veneration for either. The Act of 1540, appointing them to St.

Saviour's, had formed them into a Corporation in continuation of the _Perpetual Guild or Fraternity of the a.s.sumption_, incorporated in 1449. This Guild was afterwards merged in the Churchwardens of St.

Margaret's, whence the existing officers were transferred to St.

Saviour's on the amalgamation of the parishes, and others added to their number. With the help of their fellow vestrymen they soon set to work to render the Collegiate Church more convenient. To secure an easy communication between that church and the adjacent chapel of St.

Mary Magdalene, they cut through the south wall of the choir, and constructed four clumsy arches in it, thus opening the way from one building to the other. From that time forward the smaller of the two was used as a vestibule, and the other chapels and chantries pertaining to the larger church were doomed to destruction, as being no longer required under the altered conditions. The proceedings which strike us as most sacrilegious occurred in the Lady Chapel. Perhaps they cannot be better described than in Stow's graphic words:

The chapel was leased and let out, and the House of G.o.d made a bakehouse. Two very fair doors ... were lathed, daubed, and dammed up, the fair pillars were ordinary posts, against which they piled billets and bavens. In this place they had their ovens, in that a bolting place, in that their kneading trough, in another (I have heard) a hog's trough, for the words that were given me were these: "This place have I known a hog-stie, in another a storehouse to store up their h.o.a.rded meal, and in all of it something of this sordid kind and condition."

That the description is not exaggerated is proved by the parish registers, which also show that the state of things went on for some years and did not improve with time. On 15th May, 1576, for instance, a vestry order is recorded in which the lessee of the chapel is called upon to repair certain broken windows and remove nuisances. In the following December, a further entry states that fourteen members of the vestry went in a body to the chapel to see whether their orders had been attended to, having allowed the lessee more than six months to act on the notice. They found the place turned into a stable "with hogs, a dung-heap and other filth" about, and were thereupon empowered to take legal proceedings to keep the tenant up to his contract.[6]