The
current Hereford Cathedral, located at Hereford
in England,
dates from 1079. Its most famous treasure is
Mappa Mundi, a
mediæval map of the world
dating from the 13th century. The cathedral is a Grade I
listed building.
Origins
The cathedral is dedicated to two
patron
saints, namely
Saint Mary the Virgin
and
Saint Ethelbert the King. The
latter was
beheaded by
Offa, King of Mercia in the year 792. Offa
had consented to give his daughter to Ethelbert in marriage: why he
changed his mind and deprived him of his head historians do not
know, although tradition is at no loss to supply him with an
adequate motive. The execution, or murder, is said to have taken
place at Sutton, four miles (6 km) from Hereford, with
Ethelbert's body brought to the site of the modern cathedral by 'a
pious monk'. At Ethelbert's tomb miracles were said to have
occurred, and in the next century (about 830)
Milfrid, a Mercian nobleman, was so moved by the
tales of these marvels as to rebuild in stone the little church
which stood there, and to dedicate it to the sainted king.
Before this, Hereford had become the seat of a
bishopric. It is said to have been the centre of a
diocese as early as the 6th century.
In the 7th century the
cathedral was refounded by Putta, who settled here when
driven from Rochester
by Ethelbert. The cathedral of stone, which
Milfrid raised, stood for some 200 years, and then, in the reign of
Edward the Confessor, it was
altered. The new church had only a short life, for it was plundered
and burnt in 1056 by a combined force of
Welsh and
Irish
under
Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, the
Welsh prince; it was not, however, destroyed until its custodians
had offered vigorous resistance, in which seven of the canons were
killed.
Norman period
Hereford Cathedral remained in a state of ruin until
Robert of Lorraine was consecrated to the
see (made
Bishop) in 1079 and undertook its reconstruction. His
work was carried on, or, more probably, redone, by Bishop
Reynelm, who was next but one in the succession, and
reorganized the college of secular canons attached to the
cathedral. Reynelm died in 1115, and it was only under his third
successor,
Robert de Betun, who was
Bishop from 1131 to 1148, that the church was brought to
completion.
Of this
Norman church, little
has survived but the
choir up to the spring of
the
clerestory, the south
transept, the arch between the north
transept and the choir aisle, and the
nave arcade. Scarcely 50 years after its completion
William de Vere, who occupied the
episcopal chair from 1186 to 1199, altered
the east end by constructing a retro-choir or processional path and
a
Lady Chapel; the latter was rebuilt
not long while afterwards - between the years 1226 and 1246 -
during the early English style- with a
crypt
beneath. Around the middle of the century the clerestory, and
probably the vaulting of the choir, were rebuilt, having been
damaged by the settling of the central tower. Under Bishop
Aquablanca (1240-68), one of
Henry
III's foreign favourites, the rebuilding of the north transept
was begun, being completed later in the same century by Bishop
Swinfield, who also built the aisles of the nave and eastern
transept.
Bishop Aquablanca
One of the most notable of the pre-reformation Bishops of Hereford,
who left his mark upon the cathedral and the diocese, was
Bishop Aquablanca who rebuilt the
north transept. Aquablanca came to this country in the train of
Eleanor of Provence. He was
undoubtedly a man of energy and resource; though he lavished money
upon the cathedral and made a handsome bequest to the poor, it
cannot be pretended that his qualifications for the office to which
Henry III appointed him
included piety. He was an unblushing
nepotist, nor was he afraid to practise gross fraud
when occasion called for it.
When Prince
Edward came to Hereford to deal with Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd
, the Bishop was away in Ireland on a tithe-collecting expedition, and the dean and canons
were also absent. Not long after the Bishop's return, which
was probably expedited by the stern rebuke which the King
administered, he and all his relatives from Savoy were seized
within the cathedral by a party of barons, who deprived him of the
money which he had extorted from the Irish.
14th to 16th century: completion of the fabric
A plan of the Cathedral published in
1836.
In the first half of the 14th century the rebuilding of the central
tower, which is embellished with ball-flower ornaments, was carried
out. At about the same time the
chapter
house and its
vestibule
were built, then
Bishop Trevenant,
who presided over the Bishopric from 1389 to 1404, rebuilt the
south end and groining of the great transept. Around the middle of
the 15th century a tower was added to the western end of the nave,
and in the second half of this century Bishops
Stanbury and
Edmund
Audley built three chantries, the former on the north side of
the presbytery, the latter on the south side of the Lady Chapel.
Bishops
Richard Mayew and Booth, who
between them ruled the diocese from 1504 to 1535, made the last
additions to the cathedral by erecting the north porch, now forming
the principal northern entrance. The building of the present
edifice therefore extended over a period of 440 years.
Thomas de Cantilupe
Thomas de Cantilupe was the next
but one Bishop of Hereford. He had faults not uncommon in men who
held high ecclesiastical office in his day, however he was a
strenuous administrator of his see, and an unbending champion of
its rights. For assaulting some of the episcopal tenants and
raiding their cattle,
Lord Clifford
was condemned to walk barefoot through the cathedral to the high
altar, and the Bishop himself applied the rod to his back.
Bishop
Cantilupe also wrung from the Welsh
King Llewellyn some manors which he had
seized, and Cantilupe;after a successful lawsuit against the
Earl of Gloucester to determine
the possession of a chase near the Forest of Malvern; dug the dyke
which can still be traced on the crest of the Malvern Hills
. Excommunicated by
Archbishop of Canterbury John Peckham, he went to the papal court in
Orvieto to plead his case with the Pope. He moved with the court to
Montefiascone where, already ill, he died in 1282 before his case
was fully resolved.His flesh was buried in the monastery of San
Severo outside Orvieto and his heart and bones were brought back to
England. His bones were placed in a shrine at Hereford Cathedral
where they became a focus of a huge pilgrimage cult. Rome was urged
to
canonize him, and among the evidences of
his saintliness which his admirers appealed to, in addition to the
miracles of healing wrought at his shrine, were the facts that he
never ceased to wear his hair-shirt, and would never allow even his
sister to kiss him. The testimony was regarded as conclusive, and
40 years after his death, in 1320, the Bishop's name was added to
the roll of saints. His arms were adopted for those of the
See.
Misericords
The choir stalls support forty, 14th century
misericords. These misericords show a mixture of
mythological beasts, grotesques and everyday events, there appears
to be no pattern to the content.
In addition to the misericords in the choir, there are also five
misericords contained in a row of "Judges Seats" It is unclear if
these were used as misericords, or if they are just
ornamentation.
16th to 18th century
South West View with Cloisters
(engraving)
In the war
between King and Parliament (the English Civil War) the city of Hereford fell into
the hands first of one party, then of the other. Once it
endured a
siege, and when it was taken the
conquerors ran riot in the cathedral and, in their fury, caused
great damage which could never be repaired. In the early years of
the 18th century,
Bishop Bisse
(1712-21), devised a scheme to support the central tower. He also
had installed an enormous altar-piece and an oak screen, and
instead of restoring the Chapter House he allowed its stones to be
utilized for alterations to the Bishop's Palace.
It was during this period that his brother, the Rev Dr Thomas
Bisse, was the Chancellor of the Cathedral.
In 1724 Thomas Bisse
organised a "Music Meeting" which subsequently became, with the
Cathedrals at Worcester
and Gloucester
, the Three Choirs
Festival.
1786: Fall of the western tower
On
Easter Monday, 1786, the greatest
disaster in the history of the cathedral took place. The west tower
fell, creating a ruin of the whole of the west front and at least
one part of the nave.
The tower, which, unlike the west tower of
Ely
, was in the west bay of the nave, had a general
resemblance to the central tower; both were profusely covered with
ball-flower ornaments, and both terminated in leaden spires.
James Wyatt was called in to repair the
damage.
Although, as he did at Durham
, instead of
just repairing he made alterations which were (and are) not
universally popular.
19th century restoration and 1904 reopening
In 1841 the restoration work was begun, instigated by Dean
Merewether, and was carried out by
Lewis Nockalls Cottingham and his
son, Nockalls. Bishop Bisse's masonry, which by this time had been
found to be useless, was swept away from the central tower, the
lantern was strengthened and exposed to view, and much work was
done in the nave and to the exterior of the Lady Chapel.
When
Nockalls Cottingham drowned on a voyage to New York
in September
1854 George Gilbert Scott was
called in, and from that time the work of restoring the choir was
performed continuously until 1863, when (on June 30) the cathedral
was reopened with solemn services. The Bishop of the
diocese, Dr. Hampden, preached in the
morning and Bishop Wilberforce preached in the evening. In his
diary, the latter Bishop characterizes his right reverend brother's
sermon as "dull, but thoroughly orthodox"; but of his own service
he remarks (not without complacency), "I preached evening; great
congregation and much interested."
The west front was restored by
John
Oldrid Scott over the period 1902 and 1908
Between them these restorations cost some £45,000, a lot in the
1800s (equivalent to some £3,706 683 in 2007
[73238]). Since then much else has been done. "Wyatt's
Folly", as James Wyatt's west front was often called, has been
replaced by a highly ornate façade in commemoration of the
Diamond Jubilee of
Queen Victoria, whose figure
is to be seen at the beautiful
stained
glass which fills the seven-light (i.e with seven main vertical
"lights", or sections of glass) window subscribed "by the women of
Hereford diocese".
Bells
Hereford Cathedral houses 10 bells high in the tower. The tenor
bell weighs 34 cwt (1.7 tonnes). The oldest bell in the Cathedral
is the sixth which dates back to the 13th century. The bells are
sometimes known as the "Grand Old Lady" as they are a unique ring
of bells. The Cathedral is the main tower of the Hereford Diocesan
Guild.
General description of interior
Interior with Norman columns
There is decorative work on the
Norman architecture columns and arches
of the nave built by Bishop Reynelm's
stonemasons. Until 1847 the pavement which had
been laid down in the nave completely hid the square bases on which
the piers rest. Double semi-cylindrical shafts run up their north
and south faces, ending in small double capitals at the height of
the capitals of the piers themselves. In the south aisle of the
nave are two 14th century
church
monument tombs, with
effigies of
unknown ecclesiastics. The tomb of Sir Richard Pembridge,
Knight of the Garter in the reign of
Edward III, is a fine example
of the
armour of that period, and it is one
of the earliest instances of an effigy wearing the garter. A
square-headed doorway gives access from this aisle to the Bishop's
Cloister.
At the northern entrance is a porch and Decorated doorway, a good
general view is at once obtained. There is a modern
rood screen, a spacious and lofty central
lantern, and a
reredos with a carved
spandrel. The Lady Chapel has
lancet windows, foliated ornaments and a
groined roof. The tomb of Bishop Booth, the builder of the porch,
is in the sixth bay of the nave on the north side, guarded by the
only ancient ironwork left in the cathedral. On the south side of
the nave is the Norman
font, a circular bowl
large enough to allow of the immersion of children.
Great transept and choir
The north transept, rebuilt by Bishop Aquablanca in the Decorated
period, and restored by Scott, is remarkable for the
diapering of the triforium arcade, and for the
form of the pointed arches and windows, which have so slight a
curvature as to resemble two straight lines meeting at an angle.
The north window is filled with
stained
glass by Hardman as a memorial of
Archdeacon Lane-Freer, who died in 1863. In this
transept is the tomb or substructure of the shrine of
Bishop Cantilupe, early Decorated work
which has been restored. Of
Purbeck
marble, it is built in two stages, of which the lower contains
14 figures of
Knights Templars in
chainmail armour,
occupying
cinquefoiled niches; the Bishop
was Provincial Grand Master of that Order in England. Between the
north choir aisle and the eastern aisle of the transept is the tomb
of Bishop Aquablanca, the most ancient of the episcopal monuments
in the church. The
effigy is an example of a
bishop in full vestments; the canopy is supported by slender
shafts; the carving throughout is delicate. The south transept is
thought by some authorities to be the oldest part of the cathedral,
and it exhibits some Norman work, notably the eastern wall with its
arcades.
Until its removal in the 1960s there was a
wrought iron choir-screen, painted and gilt.
Designed by Scott, it was executed by Messrs.
Skidmore, of Coventry
, from whose works also came the earlier metal
screen at Lichfield
. After being kept in storage for many years,
the screen was completely restored in the late 1990s and re-erected
at the Victoria
and Albert Museum
in London.
The choir, consisting of three Norman bays of three stages, is full
of objects of beauty and interest. The
reredos, designed by the younger Cottingham,
consists of five canopied compartments, with elaborate sculpture
representing our Lord's Passion. Behind it is a pier from which
spring two pointed arches; the
spandrel
thus formed is covered with rich modern sculpture, representing
Christ in his majesty, with angels and the four Evangelists; below
is a figure of King Ethelbert. Against the most easterly point on
the south side of the choir is to be seen a small effigy of this
king, which was dug up at the entrance to the Lady Chapel about the
year 1700. The Bishop's throne and the stalls, of 14th century work
and restored, and the modern book desks and figures of angels on
the upper stalls, deserve attention. There is also a very curious
ancient episcopal chair.
Organ
On the south side of the choir is the
organ case also designed by Scott. It houses an
instrument built in 1892 by
Henry
Willis, generally considered to be one of the finest examples
of his work in the country.
Organists
- 1581 Thomas Mason
- ???? John Hodge
- 1582 John Bull
- 1586 Thomas Warrock
- 1589 Thomas Mason
- 1592 John Farrant
- 1593 John Ffidow
- 1595 - Gybbs
- 1596 John Ffidow (re-appointed)
- 1597 William Inglott
- 1630 Hugh Davis
- 1661 John Badham
- 1678 John Badham
- 1688 Henry Hall
- 1707 Henry Hall, junior
- 1713 Edmund Tomson
- 1721 Henry Swarbrick
Assistant organists
- F.J. Livesey 1883 - 1884
- Allan Paterson 1884 - 1889
- Ivor Atkins 1890 - 1893
- Percy Clarke Hull 1898 - ????
- W. R. Carr ca. 1912
- Reginald Harry West 1924 - 1935 (later organist of Armagh Cathedral)
- Edgar C. Broadhurst
See also the
List of Organ Scholars at Hereford Cathedral.
Mappa Mundi
In the north choir aisle is Bishop Stanbury's late Perpendicular
chantry, a charming little structure with fan-vaulted roof and
panelled walls, lighted by two windows on the north side. The
alabaster effigy, although slightly mutilated, is a valuable
example of mediæval vestments. On the wall of the opposite choir
aisle, the celebrated Hereford "
Mappa
Mundi", dating from the later years of the 13th century, hung,
little regarded, for many years. It is the work of an ecclesiastic
who is supposed to be represented in the right-hand corner on
horseback, attended by his page and greyhounds. He has commemorated
himself under the name of Richard de Haldingham and Lafford in
Lincolnshire, but his real name was Richard de la Battayle or de
Bello.
He
held a prebendal stall in Lincoln Cathedral
, and was promoted to a stall in this cathedral in
1305, afterwards becoming Archbishop of Reading. During the
troublous times of Cromwell the map was laid beneath the floor of
Bishop Audley's Chantry, beside the Lady Chapel, where it remained
secreted for some time.
In 1855 it was cleaned and repaired at the
British
Museum
. It is certainly one of the most remarkable
monuments of its kind in existence, being the largest but one of
all the old maps, drawn on a single sheet of stout
vellum. The world is represented as round, surround
by the ocean. At the top of the map (the east) is represented
Paradise, with its river and tree; also the
eating of the forbidden fruit and the expulsion of
our first parents. Above is a remarkable
representation of the
Day of
Judgment, with the
Virgin
Mary interceding for the faithful, who are seen rising from
their graves and being led within the walls of heaven.
There are numerous
figures of towns, animals, birds, and fish, with grotesque
creatures; the four great cities, Jerusalem
, Babylon
, Rome
, and
Troy
, are made very prominent. In Great Britain
most of the cathedrals are mentioned. In the 1980s, a financial
crisis in the diocese caused the Dean and Chapter to consider
selling the Mappi Mundi. After much controversy, large donations
from the
National
Heritage Memorial Fund,
Paul Getty
and members of the public, kept the map in Hereford and allowed the
construction of a new library to house the map and the chained
libraries from the Cathedral and All Saints' Church. The centre
opened in 1996 on
May 3.
The east transept
In the north-east transept, of which the vaulting is supported by a
central octagonal pier, a large number of monumental fragments are
preserved, forming a rich and varied collection. There is also a
beautiful altar-tomb of alabaster and polished marbles erected as a
public memorial to a former Dean, Richard Dawes, who died in 1867.
The effigy, by Mr. Noble, is a good likeness of the Dean, who was
an ardent supporter of the education movement about the middle of
the 19th century. The south-east transept contains memorials of
several
Bishops of Hereford.
The
remains of Bishop Gilbert Ironside (1701), together with his black
marble tombstone, were removed to this place in 1867 m, when the
Church of St. Mary Somersetm in Upper Thames Street, London
, was taken
down. Here also may be seen a curious effigy of
St. John the Baptist, and a fine marble
bust, believed to be the work of
Roubiliac. The handsome
canopied Perpendicular tomb of Bishop Mayo (1516), with effigy
fully vested, is on the south side of the altar. In the south-east
transept, again, is a doorway that opens into the Vicars' Cloister,
an interesting piece of Perpendicular work which leads to the
college of the vicars choral.
Lady Chapel
Crypt underneath the Lady Chapel
Across from the retro-choir or ambulatory, is the spacious and
beautiful Early English Lady Chapel, which is built over the
crypt and approached by an ascent of five
steps.
Of
the five beautiful lancet windows at the east end, each with a
quatrefoil opening in the wall above it, Fergusson remarked that
"nowhere on the Continent is such a combination to be
found"; and he brackets them with the Five Sisters at York
Cathedral
and the east
end of Ely
Cathedral. They
are filled with glass by Cottingham as a memorial of Dean
Merewether, who is buried in the crypt below, and is further
commemorated here by a black marble slab with a brass by Hardman,
recording his unwearied interest in the restoration of the
cathedral. In the Lady Chapel are
church
monuments of
Joanna de Kilpec
and
Humphrey de Bohun, her
husband.
The former Countess of Hereford was a
14th-century benefactress of the cathedral who gave to the Dean and
Chapter an acre (4,000 m²) of land in Lugwardine
, and the advowson of the church, with several
chapels pertaining to it. On the south side of the Lady Chapel,
separated from it by a screen of curious design is the chantry
erected at the end of the 15th century by Bishop Audley, who, being
translated to Salisbury
, built another there, where he is buried.
His chantry here, pentagonal in shape, is in two storeys, with two
windows in the lower and five in the higher.
Crypt and library
Though
the crypt is small, it is of special interest,
as the solitary example of a crypt in an English cathedral built
after the Norman period until we come to Truro Cathedral
- for the crypt of St. Paul's is only a
reconstruction. To its use as a
charnel house it owes the name of
Golgotha.
The library contains mainly old books in
manuscript chained to their places, some of them
fine specimens of ancient handwriting, containing beautiful
illustrations in gold and colour. Two of the most valuable are a
unique copy of the ancient Hereford antiphonary of the 13th
century, in good preservation, and a copy of
the Gospels at least a thousand years old, in
Anglo-Saxon characters. Another treasure
is an ancient reliquary of oak, bequeathed to the cathedral by
Canon Russell, who is said to have obtained it from a Roman
Catholic family in whose possession it had long been. It is covered
with copper plates overlaid with Limoges enamel representing the
murder and entombment of
St. Thomas of
Canterbury.
Other buildings
Between the
cloisters, the Bishop's and
Vicars', both on the south side of the cathedral, are the remains
of the Chapter House. In the troubles of 1645 the
lead was stripped from its roof, and we have already
recalled how Bishop Bisse most inexcusably completed its ruin.
The
Bishop's Palace, the Deanery, residences for the canon, and cathedral
school
are in close proximity to each other. The
College, the residence of the vicars choral,
forms a picturesque
quadrangle.
Dimensions
The exterior length of the church is , the interior length , the
nave (up to the screen) measuring and the choir . The great
transept is in length, the east transept . The nave and choir
(including the aisles) are wide; the nave is high, and the choir 62
1/2 feet. The lantern is high, the tower 140 1/2 feet, or with the
pinnacles .
Eminent persons
Among
eminent men who have been associated with the cathedral - besides
those who have already been mentioned - are Robert of Gloucester, the
chronicler, prebendary in 1291; Nicholas of Hereford, chancellor in
1377, a remarkable man and leader of the Lollards at Oxford
; John Carpenter, town clerk
of London who baptized there on December 18, 1378; Polydore Vergil, prebendary in 1507, a
celebrated literary man, as indeed with such a name he ought to
have been; and Miles Smith, prebendary
in 1580, promoted to the See of Gloucester - one of the translators
of the Authorized King
James Version of the Bible.
Another famous prebendary was
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, who was
appointed to a stall in 1510. The list of post
English Reformation prelates includes
Matthew
Wren, who, however was translated to Ely in the year of his
consecration (1635);
Nicholas Monck,
a brother of the
George Monck, 1st Duke of
Albemarle, who died within a few months of consecration (1661);
and two bishops around whom ecclesiastical storms raged,
Benjamin Hoadley and
Renn Dickson Hampden. Hoadley, by his
tract against the Non-jurors and his sermon on the Kingdom of
Christ, provoked the
Bangorian
Controversy and so led to the virtual supersession of
Convocation from 1717 to 1852; the appointment of Hampden to this
see by
Lord John
Russell in 1847 was bitterly opposed by those who considered
him
latitudinarian, including the
Dean of Hereford, and was appealed against in the
Court of Queen's Bench. Dr. Hampden
went his way, which was that of a student rather than that of an
administrator, and ruled the diocese for 21 years, leaving behind
him at his death, in 1868, the reputation of a great scholar and
thinker.
Magna Carta
Hereford is fortunate to possess one of only four 1217
Magna Carta to survive, which in turn is one of
the finest of the eight oldest that survive. It is sometimes put on
display alongside the
Mappa Mundi in the
cathedral's
chained library.
See also
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