Chapter VI: Part III: Early Decorated or Geometrical

The chapter-house and its vestibule are the last additions to the fabric, and were added after the chapter had been endowed with the three additional prebends of Eaton, North Leverton, and Beckingham at the end of the thirteenth century, and increased to its final complement of sixteen. The thirteen prebendaries (or such of them as lived in England and were resident) met before in a smaller and earlier chapter-house on the same site as the existing one. In view of the increased number and importance of the college, a more spacious assembly room was felt to be necessary; and, like their brethren of York, Lichfield, Wells, and elsewhere, they built the present fine council chamber for the transaction of business.

This part of the minster belongs to that beautiful style of architecture which some call Early Decorated and others Geometrical. It is a legitimate development of the Early English, and prevailed, roughly speaking, during the last thirty years of the thirteenth and the first fifteen of the succeeding century, gradually verging into the Decorated proper.[22]

=The Vestibule.=--The only parts of this seen from the exterior are the north front and so much of the western as extends beyond the chapel: this projection is of about twenty feet. It is built outwards from the second bay of the choir aisle. At the north-west corner are a pair of buttresses the height of the wall, set at right angles to each other, with square edges and shallow niches at the top, and terminated with acute gable heads with crockets and finials. They are surmounted at the back by other gables standing out from the roof. In the western front is an ogee-shaped window arch, formed of two contrasted curves and sharp-pointed. Owing to the difficulty of construction, this form is not usual for large openings, though common enough over tombs, niches, and small doorways. The solitary window of the north front has the arch more equilateral and sharp-pointed than those of the chapter-house. It is much plainer, and is not sufficiently broad to fill up the entire space. The arch is of two orders, and springs from attached keeled jamb shafts: the lights trefoiled at the head, and above two trefoiled circles with one quatrefoiled under the apex. Generally the greater plainness, as well as the comparative narrowness, of the north window, suggest that the vestibule is slightly prior in date to the chapter-house.

=The Chapter-House.=--On the east side of the vestibule, and at its northern end, this unique adornment was added to the fabric. It is in front of the third and fourth bays and the transept chapel of the choir aisle, completing the enclosure of the open court, and is of such large dimensions as to overlap the projecting chapel, one of the great buttresses actually touching. At Wells, where the chapter-house is in a similar position and on a larger scale, this overlapping does not occur, as the choir is on a relatively larger scale; and it seems a pity that at Southwell the example of Lincoln was not followed, and the chapter-house built on to the end of the vestibule as distinct from the side. There is nothing in the lie of the ground to prevent this; and the beautiful northern front of the choir would not have been so much shut out from view. The only reason that can be assigned is that there was a wish for an enclosed courtyard; and undoubtedly, whether or not we accept the tradition that it was anciently used as a baptistery, it was, as we shall see, used for some purpose of importance.

The building is an exact octagon, each side of 17 feet; and five sides are visible from the exterior. The basement mouldings correspond with those of the vestibule; but the continued string course immediately under the windows is higher, as is the blank stage below. The four corner buttresses which are visible (the fifth is partly hidden) show distinctly a point of difference between the two styles of architecture--the Early English and the Early Decorated. They are divided into stages, as are the Early English, by a string course from the spring of the window arches; but are at once narrower and of greater projection than the corner ones at the east end. The edges are unchamfered; and the buttresses continue with undiminished projection until they terminate at a point some feet below the parapet. As with the vestibule, they have shallow niches at the summit, which are trefoiled at the top under acute-headed gablets. Above the buttresses proper and at the back, rising through the parapet, are square pedestals with rounded edges, with faces sunk concavely to make shallow niches. Like the niches below, these terminate in a trefoil; and the pedestals are crowned with pinnacles, with most elaborate crockets and finials. Some of these really resemble bishop’s _crooks_, from which the name may have been derived, while others show signs of repair not always in the best taste. At the base of the pinnacles are grotesque gargoyle-shaped figures projecting from their feet. As these are not images of saints, they have been spared by iconoclasts; but we have to lament that destructive and ill-regulated zeal which pulled down the statues from their niches, for if the same hands that worked the carving of the interior worked these, the effect must have been glorious to a degree. The buttresses more than any other part suggest York: though it still remains unsettled which of the two chapter-houses is the older. The original parapet has fortunately been spared. Below is a corbel table of trefoil arches springing from heads with the triangular spaces between also trefoiled: next, the hollow cornice moulding with a late variety of the dog-tooth: next, a broad plain face, and over all a series of open quatrefoils. Six of the octagon sides have windows, of which five are visible from the exterior. These occupy the entire breadth from buttress to buttress; and it is doubtful whether anything is gained by this. The arrangement at the east end, where a small blank space is allowed on either side, certainly produces a better effect; and this enlargement of the Decorated style does not cause it to compare favourably with its predecessor, so far as this particular point is concerned. The arches are of three orders; the shafts attached and keeled with mouldings of rounds and hollows.

The windows are of three lights, trefoiled in the heads, with two trefoiled circles above, and a quatrefoil above these under the apex of the arch, very much the same as with the north window of the vestibule. The cusping is largely pierced and springs from the soffit only, not from the sloping sides of the tracery as in later work of the kind; and the mullions have a small shaft in front with base and capital, and with chamfered sides. By comparing these windows with those of the choir the difference of style is brought out still more prominently than by the buttresses or parapets. The roof has been restored to its old lofty pitch; and all whose memories go back to the old flattened one, prior to 1881, will unanimously concur in approval. When the statues were in their places the effect must have been considerably enhanced; as it is, the exterior scarcely prepares us for the culminating glories within.

The document of the date 1294 speaks somewhat vaguely of “the new chapter-house” as either contemplated or building or completed; and this date agrees with the architecture.

=The Open Court.=--The boundaries are the chapter-house, the small transept chapel of the choir, the third and fourth bays of the choir aisle, and the vestibule. The peculiar way in which one of the buttresses of the chapter-house abuts against the chapel so as to complete the enclosure is again noticeable, while those parts of the choir visible from here and from nowhere else suggest regrets that so fine a specimen of pure Early English was ever hidden away. A doorway, now blocked up, with a low segmental arch of wedge-shaped stones or _voussoirs_, at first formed part of the choir aisle. The holy well was closed up in 1764, after a member of the Fowler family had lost his life by falling in. It was this well that probably suggested the tradition of a baptistery standing here.

The north front as seen standing by the Prebends’ Walk or in the adjoining street affords the most picturesque view of the minster, broken, as it is, by the north porch, the Norman transept, and the chapter-house. We have here every kind of architecture from the stern and comparatively rude late Norman to the elaborate and finished Early Decorated--one hundred and eighty years of steady progress and evolution--and this seeming want of unity constitutes an artistic harmony. But, looking at the south-east front from the more distant point of view of the parks, it becomes evident that the restoration is not yet complete, and that the heightening of the nave roof has rendered the corresponding heightening of the choir roof urgent and indispensable.