Gloucester Cathedral cloister

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"cloister, n. A covered walk or arcade connected with a monastery, college, or large church, serving as a way of communication between different parts of the group of buildings, and sometimes as a place of exercise or study; often running round the open court of a quadrangle, with a plain wall on the one side, and a series of windows or an open colonnade on the other. (Often in pl.)"
from the Oxford English Dictionary

When I came to title today's photograph I couldn't decide whether to use "cloister" or "cloisters". Both are commonly heard, and, whilst I know what is meant by the words, I began to wonder whether the singular referred to just a part of the structure - say one side of the quadrangle - and the plural was reserved for more than this or perhaps for the whole of it. I needn't have concerned myself; the Oxford English Dictionary tells me that the singular and plural are used interchangeably and have been used in this way for centuries.

I was in Gloucester cathedral one recent early evening and immediately gravitated to the cloister(s). Why? Because they are my favourite part of this building. And not only mine; Pevsner says, "The cloisters at Gloucester are probably the most memorable in England. One of the greatest achievements of the Perp(endicular) style, they have the earliest surviving fan vaulting, other than on small-scale monuments; this must have been conceived in the 1350s, though all four walks were only completed at the beginning of the C15." It's possibly that this uniquely English, and very beautiful architectural form originated in Gloucester, but the charms of the fan vault were such that it quickly spread and they continued to be built right through into the early seventeenth century. Notable examples can be seen at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, at Bath Abbey and in the retrochoir at Peterborough Cathedral. At Gloucester the east walk of the cloister is the oldest. The three other walks were not started until 1381 and though very similar are not identical, being slightly simpler. Fan vaults differ from the many kinds of earlier vaulting that comprise ribs with infill by being constructed of large, jointed and carved pieces of masonry that are fitted together to form the inverted conoid shapes.

The daylight was fading and the cathedral's lights had been switched on when I took my photograph. The warm glow of the uplighters show off the delicacy of the vaulting's surface tracery and contrast nicely with the colder blue of the light from an overcast and rainy sky.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13.4mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Red Mount Chapel, King's Lynn

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"...one of the strangest Gothic churches in England."
Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983), architectural historian

The Red Mount Chapel in King's Lynn is a small pilgrimage chapel built in 1483-5 by Robert Curraunt for William Spynke, the Benedictine prior of Lynn. It was designed to be a stopping point for people travelling to Walsingham, England's second most important pilgrimage shrine after Canterbury. It provided religious support as well as material comforts for the travellers, and doubtless provided significant sums for the coffers of the priory church of St Margaret.

It is a brick built, octagonal structure with stone dressing, topped by a cruciform stone chapel with fan vaulting and panelled, pointed tunnel vaults. The building has three entrances, the main one giving access to the ground floor chapel. Above that is the priest's room, with the second chapel at the top. Two stairways run in opposite directions in the space between the outer brick walls and the inner rooms. The mound on which it was built may have been a Norman motte, but in later medieval times it was known as "the hylle called the Lady of the Mounte." The life of the chapel was quite short: it ceased to be a place of worship in 1530. In subsequent centuries it was used for water storage, as a study, an observatory and a stable. During the English Civil War it was a gunpodwer store! It's a wonder that it still exists, but the people of the town had it restored by public subscription in 1828, with further work in the 1920s and 1930s. Major repairs were undertaken in 2007 and today it is regularly open to the public. I saw it on a day when the town's medieval South Gate was also open.

When The Walks was created in the eighteenth century, and further extended as a public park in the nineteenth century (see previous post), the designers of this open space had no need to add a ruin, an eyecatcher or any other focal point around which to arrange their trees, water feature, seating and walks because it already existed in the form of this unique medieval chapel.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 1250
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cathedrals and a fan vault

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The cathedral that I was most familiar with in my younger years was York Minster. From my position of ignorance, I took it as the yardstick against which I measured others. As I came to realise in later years, this was very unfair. Its importance as the seat of one of England's two archbishoprics, its enormous size and wealth, and the setting among the medieval walls, churches, and streets of York, gave it an advantage that few could match. It was only after I moved to the East Riding of Yorkshire, became interested in church architecture, and travelled around England looking at other cathedrals that I realised this. But by then, my eye had been trained and my understanding enlarged, and the subtleties that I began to see in other buildings became as important as York's imposing magnificence.

If, today, I were to list the cathedrals (and I include minsters under that heading) that I like best, then I would have to say that my absolute favourite is the often overlooked Beverly Minster in the East Riding for its superb details but also for the uniformity of the nave. This was partly brought about by the conscious decision of medieval builders to carry on with an "outdated" style for the sake of continuity, a practice also followed at Westminster Abbey. Then I would list Durham and Lincoln for the high quality of their details from all periods, but especially for their high and very visible sites that show them off to great advantage, and yes, York for its majesty and the white stone that makes it look, in certain lights like a great ocean liner. Finally I would add Peterborough, a cathedral with which I wasn't very familiar until relatively recently, but one which displays the grandeur of the Norman to perfection in its nave, and has new interest and beauty to be discovered with each visit.

Peterborough also has, in its retrochoir, some lovely fan vaulting dating from around 1500. Today's photograph of part of it was shot as an experiment with my relatively new camera. The 17-40mm lens that I used is not stabilised, so in order to achieve a realistic shutter speed the image was taken at 3200 ISO, a rating that a few years ago would have been unwise, and in the days of film virtually unthinkable. However, this combination handled the job quite well without recourse to a tripod. For  another shot of this vaulting, taken in better light with an Olympus DSLR at 800 ISO, see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: 7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

South Chapel, St Lawrence, Evesham

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Today's photograph shows the south chapel of the church of St Lawrence in Evesham, Worcestershire. It was built in the early 1500s as a chantry, and today holds the building's font. It is a beautiful, well-lit space, with a fine fan-vaulted roof. The building is no longer in regular use and is in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust. It forms one of an interesting group of three medieval buildings in the centre of Evesham - the other two being the parish church of All Saints and the bell tower of the former abbey. The piece that follows tells something of the history of St Lawrence, and is a transcription of the text on a plaque in its porch.

"The first church built on this site was consecrated by the Bishop of St Asaph in 1295. No feature of this building remains except possibly the crucifixion panel on the north external wall of this porch. It was replaced by the existing Perpendicular building in 1470 and formed part of the conventual buildings of Evesham Abbey which was then the fifth richest in England. The church was erected for the use of the multitude of pilgrims who piously came to worship at the Abbey shrines throughout many years of storm and calm alike. Many diseases being prevalent in these times made it necessary to isolate them from the townsfolk, who exclusively used the adjoining parish Church of All Saints.The bodily needs of the pilgrims were catered for at the Abbey Almonry nearby which is still standing. The church had become sadly dilapidated and in 1730 an extensive and as it proved, disastrous reconstruction took place because owing to faulty construction and poor materials, the new roof collapsed before 1800. The church remained in ruins until 1837 when it was restored and reopened for divine worship in its present form. In 1957 a further minor restoration took place."

photograph and text (c) T.Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.4mm (26mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Green Man

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In my church-crawling I frequently come across the Green Man, a mystical face with foliage sprouting from its orifices. Often they peep out from the stone leaves of the fourteenth century capitals on nave columns. Carved wooden misericords often feature his disturbing visage. And occasionally I see him forming the decorative design of a stone or wooden boss that hides the joins of the roof vaulting, as with this example at Croyland Abbey, in the village of Crowland, Lincolnshire.

The origin of the Green Man is obscure. Many feel that he is of pagan origin, representing a fertility figure or a spirit of the trees, that was adopted and adapted by Christians along with symbols such as the yule log, the fir tree and mistletoe. Such figures are known in England from the eleventh century onwards, and they don't look out of place next to the grotesques and gargoyles that are carved on the inside and outside of old churches. This example, probably dating from the 1400s is high above the chancel of the abbey at Crowland. He is of the variety known as disgorging because he spews the foliage from his mouth. Other variants are the foliate head where the head itself is in the shape of a flower or leaves, often with additional vegetation, and the bloodsucker that has foliage coming out of every hole. The Croyland example seems to be sprouting oak leaves, a not unusual tree to find associated with a Green Man. What is unusual, however, is the gold colour: green is more usual where any colour remains or has been restored. However, gold is certainly very common on bosses, so perhaps that accounts for it.

I took my photograph lying on my back, directly below the Green Man, with my camera clamped to my face. On a dull day, in a dark interior, and without my tripod, I took several shots to be sure of getting one that was reasonably sharp.

photograph & text(c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 102mm (204mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.1
Shutter Speed: 1/5
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The fan vault

click photo to enlarge

The builders of our medieval cathedrals and churches were men of great ingenuity. The structural problems that they had to overcome - spanning ever greater spaces, erecting ever taller buildings, bringing light into the centre of wide buildings - were challenges familiar to architects today. The difference is that now we use computers, man-made materials, electricity and high technology in designing and building: in the middle ages it was muscle power, wood, stone and chisels that did the work.

Go into any major church and look up. The chances are that somewhere in the building you'll see vaulting. Springing from the forest of columns will be arches of stone that spread across naves, chancels, aisles and transepts. Often they will form star-like patterns across the ceiling, and if you look carefully you'll see the spaces between these ribs filled with carefully crafted pieces of stone. From the humble barrels and groins of the eleventh and twelfth century, through the quadripartite, sexpartite, tiercerons, liernes and stellar vaults of subsequent centuries, the progress of English Gothic vaulting is a story of increasing complexity and beauty, the final flowering of which is the stunning fan vault of the late fifteenth century.

This type of vaulting is peculiar to English Gothic architecture, with no parallels on the continent of Europe. It seems to have developed in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral around 1350. The best examples of the fully developed form are to be found in King's College, Cambridge, in Christ Church, Oxford, in Bath Abbey and in the retrochoir of Peterborough Cathedral (seen in today's photograph). Fan vaults differ from earlier vaulting in not comprising ribs and infilling, but rather halved concave cones with blind tracery carved on their surfaces. The organic forms and complexity of the decorative patterns make the experience of walking into a space roofed in this way incomparable!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On