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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
During repair work to the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral carried out in 1979-83, a survey was made of the whole of the south elevation (including the Great South Window, the earliest extant example of the Perpendicular style). Examination of some 5,500 stones revealed that a great number of the original Norman stones had been reused in various positions during a major programme of conservation dated by documentary evidence to 1331-36, which was designed to modernize the poorly lit eastern arm and transepts. The structural problems involved included taking down the south and west walls of the transept to one-third of their original height while keeping the south-west turret intact, and dismantling and re-erecting the high-pitched gable between the two staircase turrets during the insertion of the new window. The structural problems and the solutions adopted are discussed, and a probable building sequence is suggested.
1 Harvey, J., Conservation of Buildings (London, 1972).Google Scholar
2 Hart, W. H. (ed.), Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, 3 vols., Rolls Series 33 (1863–1867), 1, 11–12.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 29.
4 Records of Gloucester Cathedral (Gloucester, 1885–1897)Google Scholar, III Pt. I: Notes on the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter, Gloucester, by Hope, W. H. St John, 108–10.Google Scholar
5 Hart, , op. cit. (note 2), 44.Google Scholar
6 Hutchinson, H. E., Edward II: the Pliant King (London, 1971), 141.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., 143.
8 Stone, L., Sculpture in Britain: the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1955), 161.Google Scholar
9 Masse, H. J. L. J., Gloucester. The Cathedral and See, Bell's Cathedral Series (1898), 79Google Scholar. It was erected at the expense of Ralph de Wylington and Olympias, his wife, and is believed to have contained the sarcophagus of Osric, who founded the first church on the site c. 681.
10 Clapham, A., English Romanesque Architecture, 11: After the Conquest (Oxford, 1934), 56 n.I.Google Scholar
11 Hart, , op. cit. (note 2), 46.Google Scholar
12 At the west end of this beam can still be seen the end of a second beam laid on top of the first, which has since been cut off. It disappears into the masonry of the south-west turret. There may therefore have been two beams tying the turrets together while the work was going on.
13 It is not without interest that Frederick Sandham Waller (the first of three successive cathedral architects of that name), made a report on the cathedral dated 2nd July 1862 (but ordered by the Chapter on 23rd June 1855). About the south transept he stated inter alia: ‘The exterior stonework is more dilapidated especially the south front, the ashlar of which as well as the window tracery, parapets etc. and other moulded work is much perished. The oldest work is in the best state of preservation’.
14 See note 13.
15 It is not pretended that this is the definitive survey. Perhaps in the twenty-first century, when the transept is again scaffolded, it may be possible to carry out scientific tests rather than rely on a visual survey. In the meantime the drawing will go into the Chronicle of Repairs which records all major work carried out from 1953 onwards.
16 It seems at least possible that William Ramsey III had an influence on the work, in particular the south window, but he was not the executive Master (Harvey, J., The Perpendicular Style 1330 to 1485 (London, 1978), 51)Google Scholar.
17 From 1089 onwards building seemed to have been carried on continuously, almost to the Dissolution on the 2nd January 1541. In the twelfth century the nave and aisles were completed, as well as the chapter house, the abbot's camera and the abbey wall (Abbot Peter, 1104-13). In the thirteenth century the Lady Chapel (c. 1224), the vaulting of the nave (1242), and the rebuilding of the south-west tower, all in the church, were supplemented by very large additions to the claustral buildings. These included St Mary's Gateway, a new refectory (begun in 1246), the infirmary, a new water supply by Elias the Sacrist, and perhaps a lead-covered spire on the crossing tower (also by Elias). To what has already been described in the fourteenth century must be added the Great Cloister (c. 1370-1412) and new dorter (and presumably rere-dorter) started in 1303 and completed in 1313. The library may well have been built in the fourteenth century and a new camera for the abbot was built while John Wygamore was prior between 1316 and 1329; the original abbot's camera reverted to the prior. In the fifteenth century additions were made to the prior's lodging, the chapter house was given a new east end, and in the church the two west bays of the nave were rebuilt with a new south porch (Abbot Morwent, 1420-37). The central tower was completed in the third quarter and the new Lady Chapel in the fourth. In the first few years of the sixteenth century Osric's tomb and Abbot Parker's cenotaph were erected on the north side of the presbytery, while the Little Cloister may well date from that time. Even though spread over a little more than four and a half centuries, this is still a vast building programme and surely justifies the term ‘the Gloucester school of masons’. (Hart, , op. cit. (note 2)Google Scholar, Hope, St John, op. cit. (note 4)Google Scholar, and the writer's own observations.)