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In Hoc Signo: The West Front of Lincoln Cathedral

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Anthony Quiney
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Extract

‘A bicycle shed is a building: Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture.’ With that certainty Nikolaus Pevsner opened his Outline of European Architecture, and with such certainties many of John Newman’s generation began their studies of architectural history. A cathedral was a cathedral, a castle a castle; but bicycle sheds were for bicycles, not historians.

Type
Section 6: Cathedrals, Abbeys, Churches and Chapels
Information
Architectural History , Volume 44 , 2001 , pp. 162 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

1 Pevsner, Nikolaus, An Outline of European Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1942), p. 10 Google Scholar.

2 The current discussion began when Richard Gem presented a paper on the subject to the Society of Antiquaries of London in February 1978, subsequently revised and published as: ‘Lincoln Minster: Ecclesia pulchra, Ecclesia Fortis’, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions for 1982, 8, Medieval art and architecture at Lincoln Cathedral (Leeds, 1986). Fernie, Eric, ‘Lincoln Cathedral, The Façade’, Annual Conference Notes, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (1999), pp. 13–17 Google Scholar, appraises the west front and also gives a comprehensive bibliography. Dorothy Owen, ‘The Norman Cathedral at Lincoln’, Anglo-Norman Studies (Proceedings of the Battle Conference), ibid., 6 (1983), pp. 188–99, examines the circumstances behind the cathedral’s foundation.

3 Pevsner, Nikolaus and Harris, John, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire (Harmondsworth, 1964), p. 82 Google Scholar: ‘The middle recess represents the nave, the side recesses the aisles’; repeated in Nicholas Antram’s revised edition (Harmondsworth, 1989), p. 446.

4 Fernie, Eric, ‘Archaeology and iconography. Recent developments in the study of English Medieval architecture’, Architectural History, 32 (1989), pp. 18–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Wood, Margaret, The English Medieval House (1965), pp. 377-88Google Scholar.

6 Gem, ‘Lincoln Minster’, pp. 17–19.

7 See ibid., pp. 19-21.

8 Ibid., p. 9.

9 During the last two decades a number of castle keeps have been shown to be less impregnable than symbolically strong. Castle Hedingham in Essex is the classic case: see Dixon, Philip and Marshall, Pamela, ‘The great tower at Hedingham Castle, a reassessment’, Fortress, 18 (1993), pp. 16–23 Google Scholar. Similar views now embrace the Conqueror’s White Tower, Henry II’s keep at Dover and other keeps. For the White Tower see Parnell, Geoffrey, ‘The White Tower, the Tower of London’, Country Life, 192 (9 July 1998), pp. 86–99 Google Scholar; for Dover see Goodall, John, ‘The Key of England; In the Powerhouse of Kent’, Country Life, 193 (18 and 25 March 1999), PP. 44–47, 110-13Google Scholar.

10 Gem, ‘Lincoln Minster’, pp. 21-25. This was recognized as a source in Bilson, John, ‘The plan of the first cathedral church at Lincoln’, Archaeologia, 62 (1911), pp. 543-64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note too, for instance, the similarity in the Corinthian-like capitals at Caen and elsewhere in contemporary churches in Normandy and at Lincoln and also at Canterbury.

11 Op. cit., p. 12.

12 This was suggested in Clapham, Alfred and Saxl, Fritz, ‘Lincoln Cathedral: the eleventh century design for the west front’, Archaeological Journal, 103 (1946), pp. 105-18Google Scholar; but see McAleer, P., ‘The eleventh-century façade of Lincoln Cathedral: Saxl’s theory of Byzantine influence reconsidered’, Architectura (1984), pp. 1–19 Google Scholar.

13 Kidson, Peter, ‘Architectural history’, in Owen, Dorothy (ed.), A History of Lincoln Minster (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 14–46 Google Scholar, particularly pp. 16-21.

14 Kidson, ‘Architectural history’, pp. 16 and 21; and see Owen, ‘Norman Cathedral’, p. 193.

15 Stocker, David and Vince, Alan, ‘The early Norman castle at Lincoln and a re-evaluation of the original west front of Lincoln Cathedral’, Medieval Archaeology, 41 (1997), pp. 223-32Google Scholar.

16 Owen, ‘Norman Cathedral’, p. 190.

17 Ibid., p. 196.

18 Stocker and Vince, ‘Norman castle’, p. 230.

19 Conant, K. J., Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture 800-1200, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1959), pp. 18–19 Google Scholar.

20 Audouy, M., Dix, B. and Parsons, D., ‘The tower of All Saints’ Church, Earls Barton, Northamptonshire: its construction and context’, Archaeological Journal, 152 (1995), pp. 73–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Dictionary of National Biography, 48, pp. 8-9.

22 Conant, Carolingian and Romanesque, pp. 18-19; p. 297 n. 21 interestingly states: ‘Richbod, a member of the Palatine School at Aachen, friend and pupil of Alcuin, archbishop of Trier from 798, served as Abbot of Lorsch 784-804, the period of Charlemagne’s epic struggle of conquest against the Saxons (788, 804), the Avars (805), and the Bavarians. . . It is easy to see how the idea of triumphal arch could arise under these circumstances.’

23 Recorded by Eusebius, , Life of Constantine, 1, p. 28 Google Scholar, differently in Greek as τούτῳ ν¯κα.

24 Scamozzi’s, edition of 1584, published in seven volumes as Tutte l’opere d’architettura di Sebastiano Senio, 3 (Venice, 1600), pp. 114-17Google Scholar.

25 Ullmann, Walter, The growth of papal government in the Middle Ages (1955), pp. 59–66 Google Scholar.

26 And indeed Remigius’s own victory over Thomas of York.