Part 11

St. Cuthbert is said to have had a more than usual monastic dislike to women--though some of his most intimate friends were women--and therefore to have built the Lady Chapel at the east end of the choir, the ordinary position, which was close to his shrine, would have been most distasteful to him. No woman, indeed, was allowed to approach farther eastward in the church than as far as a line of dark-coloured Frosterley marble, forming a cross with two short limbs at the centre, which stretches across the nave between the piers, just west of the north and south doors. The Chapel of the Blessed Virgin,[9] commonly called the Galilee, was therefore placed where we now see it. It rises almost directly from the edge of the river-bank, and is built against the west front of the church. It is of an oblong form, of five aisles divided by four arcades, each of four bays, the aisles being all of the same width. The middle aisle is higher than those adjoining, and these again are higher than the extreme north and south ones. The arches, richly decorated with zigzag, are supported upon columns, originally composed of two slender shafts of Purbeck marble, but now of four shafts, alternately of marble and sandstone, the latter, added by Cardinal Langley when he repaired the Galilee in which he placed his tomb in front of the altar, having capitals of plain volutes, which are very characteristic of the Transitional period. The chapel was entered from without through a doorway on the north side, which has been restored, the old one, however, having been exactly copied to the minutest parts. The doorway is deeply recessed, the wall being increased in thickness on both sides in the manner usual at that time, and is a fine example of the style in use when it was erected. Access to the church from the Galilee was also obtained through the great west door, which was probably not blocked up until Bishop Langley placed the altar of the Blessed Virgin there, and made two doors, one at the north and the other at the south end of the west wall. The chapel was at first lighted by eight round-headed windows, placed high in the wall above the arches of the outer arcade on the north and south sides, and no doubt had other windows at the west end. The three windows in the north wall and the four in the south, originally inserted about the close of the thirteenth century, when the walls were raised in height, have all been renewed, so far as the mullions and tracery are concerned. It is probable that at the same time five similar windows were placed in the west wall, of which only two are now left, the others having given place to three fifteenth-century windows. At the time when these important alterations were made, the original windows in the wall above the arches were probably blocked up. Their outline, however, is still to be traced quite distinctly.

It must not be overlooked that the shrine containing the bones of the Venerable Bede were ultimately placed in the Galilee in 1370, in front of his altar. The bones are now placed in a plain tomb, having upon it the well-known inscription, which, however, was only engraved on the covering slab in 1830:

HAC SUNT IN FOSSA BEDÆ VENERABILIS OSSA.

There are some beautiful and well-preserved fresco paintings on the east wall at its north end. They are contemporary with the building, and comprise a King and Bishop, probably St. Oswald and St. Cuthbert, and some tasteful decoration of conventional leaf forms, very characteristic of the art of the period. The lower part of the back of the recess, on the sides of which the figures occur, is filled with a representation of hangings, the middle of which is now defaced, but where, before the Dissolution, was a picture of our Lady with the dead Christ. It is not impossible that the principal altar of the Blessed Virgin originally stood there, and was transferred by Cardinal Langley to the position it afterwards occupied when he probably built up the great western doorway of the church. The site in question was, up to the time of the Reformation, devoted to the altar of Our Lady of Pity, or Piety, which may have been removed thither by Langley from the recess to the north of it, which is surmounted by an arch with the dentel moulding of a date apparently not later than the commencement of the thirteenth century--a removal necessitated by his making there one of the two new doorways into the Galilee. These paintings are not only of great interest in themselves, but they possess a further one of being the only specimens of fresco decoration in the cathedral which are now anything more than mere fragments. The arches and capitals in the Galilee have also been enriched by colour, among the designs being a zigzag and spiral pattern. It does not appear that this kind of decoration had ever been used to any great extent throughout the church, for very few remains of it were discovered when the modern whitewash was lately removed.

In the aisle, however, of the north transept, where the altars of St. Benedict and St. Gregory and that of St. Nicholas and St. Giles once stood, there are some portions of the pictures which adorned the wall behind them, including, in connection with St. Gregory’s altar, the upper part of a figure vested with the pallium. There are also some scanty remnants of colour left behind the altars of Our Lady of Houghall and Our Lady of Bolton in the aisle of the south transept. The site of the Neville Chantry in the south aisle of the nave still contains sufficient remains of the delicate and tasteful pattern to enable one to judge what the design has been, and slight traces of colour are to be found upon the arches of the arcade behind the altars in the Chapel of the Nine Altars. It is probable, indeed, that the walls behind all the altars in the church have been more or less decorated with painting, though certainly it had not been used generally on the church itself.

The point of junction between the Norman choir and the thirteenth-century work which connects it with the eastern transept may be placed at the fourth pier from the eastern tower arch on each side. The arch of the triforium next these piers comes close up to them, whereas in the corresponding piers to the west there is a space between the arch and the pier. The same feature is to be seen in the triforium arch, which is next to the piers of the tower arch, which have five shafts, the others having only three. It is very probable that the piers at the entrance of the apse supported a larger transverse arch than the others, corresponding in this to the great tower arch, and that the supporting piers had, like those at the entrance of the choir, five shafts. These piers, the body of which forms a part of Carileph’s Norman work, untouched where they face into the aisles, have been encased on the choir face with very rich and tasteful decoration of about the middle of the thirteenth century. Above, upon each side of the choir, is a figure of an angel under a canopy, that on the south side holding a crown in the left hand, the other having lost the uplifted hand and what it once held. They are the only two left out of a numerous host of statues once decorating the church, and their beauty makes the destruction which has befallen the others the more to be regretted.

After the Nine Altars was finished and the connecting part between it and the choir completed, a new vault was put on to the choir, and the whole of the original Norman vault was taken down. The reason for this was almost certainly an artistic one: the sumptuously decorated vault of the Nine Altars being of a pointed form, while the original plain vault of the choir was semicircular, it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, when the great transverse arch was taken down, to bring these two forms into harmonious combination. It was replaced by one which to a great extent in its mouldings and decoration corresponds with that of the Nine Altars. This vault is in five compartments, and has four richly moulded transverse arches in addition to the eastern arch of the crossing. These arches are supported alternately on the main vaulting-shafts, which rise from the floor, and on triple shafts, which rise from the level of the triforium floor, and originally received the diagonal ribs of the Norman vault. The diagonal ribs spring from the outer shafts of the three semi-shafts and from the corresponding outer shafts next to the main vaulting-shafts. The vault is quadripartite, but in the eastern bay is an additional rib on each side--a quasi ridge-rib, which runs north and south from the spandrils between the clerestory arches, and unites at the intersection of the diagonal ribs. The additional rib on the north side springs from a draped male seated figure, on each side of which is a lacertine creature with its back to the figure, and its head turned so that the mouth touches the hair, while the tail curves towards the feet; that on the south side springs from an angel. The wall ribs spring from shafts of Frosterley marble, resting on inserted corbels or on the capitals of the Norman vaulting-shafts. In the eastern angle of the eastern bay the wall rib on each side springs from the head of a small canopy, which contains a sculptured figure; that on the north side a demibishop blessing; that on the south the upper half of a male figure.

Whatever difficulty, however, there may have been in collecting the necessary funds for the erection of this noble addition to the church of Bishop William of St. Carileph, first projected by Bishop Poore, no expense or pains has been spared in its being carried out to perfection, and the vault of the Nine Altars and choir, the last part of this great work, with its enrichment of dog-tooth ornament of various and graceful forms, and bosses of foliage and figure subjects, fitly completes the building in a style no less beautiful and effective than the walls which support it. It may be asserted without fear of contradiction that no more effective or majestic vault crowns any church in our country.

The cloister occupies a considerable space of ground left open at the centre, where the lavatory was placed, and was enclosed on the north side by the church, and on the other sides by those various structures which had relation to the household economy of the monastery and to its domestic and political life. Around it, in the dormitory and refectory, the monks slept, lived, and ate. They studied in the library and in the small wooden chambers--carells, as they were called--one of which was placed in front of each compartment of the windows of the north alley, which, like the east one, was glazed, the latter containing in its windows the history of St. Cuthbert. In the west alley the novices had their school, where they were taught by the master of the novices, "one of the oldest monks that was learned," who had opposite to them "a pretty seat of wainscot, adjoining to the south side of the treasury door."

In the treasury, situated at the north end of the crypt under the dormitory, and which is still divided by its ancient iron grating, were kept the title-deeds and other muniments of the church, in themselves no small treasure. At the other end of the same crypt was the common house, the only place where there was a fire for ordinary use, and which was frequented by the monks as their room for converse and recreation, and which had in connection with it a garden and a bowling alley.

In the chapter-house on the east side the monks met the Prior between five and six o’clock "every night there to remain in prayer and devotion" during that time. Here also at other times they assembled in chapter to regulate all matters connected with the life within the body, and to order the many transactions which as a great corporation the convent necessarily had with the world without. Close by, on the one side of the chapter-house, out of which it opened, was the prison, where for minor offences a monk was confined; and on the other side was the passage through which his body was conveyed to his last home in the cemetery beyond.

Opening out of the dormitory to the east, at its south end, where a modern doorway has replaced the earlier one, is a room which was called by the monks "the loft," and which forms, in connection with the refectory, the south side of the cloister. It was the place where the monks, with the Subprior presiding, ordinarily dined, having beneath it what was once the cellar of the convent. Beyond this, to the east, was the refectory, or frater-house, standing above the early crypt which has already been described, where the Prior and monks dined together on March 20--St. Cuthbert’s Day. Whatever it was before then, though possibly the original building still remained, in part at least, unaltered, it was entirely reconstructed by Dean Sudbury (1662-84), who made it into the library, transferring the books from the old library adjoining to the chapter-house, and filling it with the handsome and commodious oak cases which now furnish it. Near to it, on the south-west, is the kitchen of the monastery, now attached to the deanery, an octagonal building which well deserves examination.

Returning to the cloister, there may still be seen at the centre of the garth what is left above ground of the lavatory. It was originally an octagonal structure, the upper part being occupied as a dovecote. The basin was begun in 1432, and completed the next year. The marble stones of the basin, which still exists, were brought from Eggleston-on-the-Tees, of the Abbot of which monastery they were bought. The basin is not _in situ_, but has at some time been removed from its original situation, "over against the frater-house door," where the foundations of a circular, or octagonal, building were discovered in 1903, and with them those of an earlier building, square in form, with the substructure of an earlier basin.

Before concluding the description of the church, it is necessary that a few words should be said about the exterior. It has charms of its own which, in spite of the disasters it has undergone in the shape of paring down and refacing, still makes it one of our noblest churches.

It must be admitted that, on account of the removal of some inches from the surface of the stone,[10] and the consequent curtailment of mouldings in their projections and hollows, there is a want of light and shade which much detracts from its effect when seen near at hand.

Indeed, the first impression made is perhaps one of disappointment. The east end is especially flat and bald, and with its ill-designed modern pinnacles forms but a poor clothing to the wondrous beauty which is to be seen within the Nine Altars. But with all these drawbacks, when viewed as a whole, and when distance has lent its compensating power, the cathedral, its lofty central tower rising in harmonious combination with the two western ones, stands sublime in its grand outline, and fitly crowns the hill of Durham.

FINCHALE PRIORY

BY J. TAVENOR-PERRY

After the Romans had completed the subjection of the Brigantes they constructed a great military road through the centre of their country from Eburicum, which became the capital of the province, to the Tweed and the country beyond. This road intersected the county of Durham from north to south, and much of its course can still be traced from its point of entry at Pierce Bridge, through Vinovium or Binchester in Auckland, Epiacum or Lanchester, and Vindomora or Ebchester where it passes over the Derwent into Northumberland. From Binchester a branch road led by way of Chester-le-Street to the Pons Ælii or Newcastle, which was continued by another branch to Jarrow and South Shields passing along the south bank of the Tyne. This great military road and the branch to Newcastle were cut through the dense forest which then covered the whole of Durham and which continued through Saxon times to form an almost impassable boundary, save by these roads, between the closely associated provinces of Deira and Bernicia. The considerable remains of the Roman towns still standing after the conquest of Northumbria by the Angles were no doubt occupied by them as settlements; and we find it stated in the life of St. Cuthbert that when he was crossing the wild country of Durham and was like to be starved he found succour from someone residing in the buildings still remaining at Chester-le-Street. Along the sides of the roads, between the towns, would be the ruins, not then entirely destroyed, of villas and other buildings which may have formed places for rest or refuge to those who like the saint traversed these dangerous forest paths, from which may have been derived the names of localities still in use although the ruins after which they were called have long since been forgotten. The monks who were conveying the body of St. Cuthbert to its final resting-place were directed to take it to Dunholm, and an accident revealed to them the obscure place which then bore that name; and when St. Godric was directed to repair to Finchale and there build himself a hermitage, he only discovered there was a place so called by a chance conversation he had with a monk at Durham.

The name of Finchale must have been well known in the ninth century if we accept the common and reasonable belief that it was a place of meeting of two or three important councils concerned with the affairs of Northumbria. Its position in reference to the great road passing to the South, its accessibility to the neighbouring town of Chester-le-Street only three or four miles distant, and its comparative seclusion in the great surrounding forest made it particularly suitable for such meetings, which were held, as Bishop Stubbs says in his _Constitutional History_, generally on the confines of states whence those assembled might easily retire at nightfall to safer places. The councils held in Northumbria during the latter part of the eighth century met at a time when the country was not only disturbed by internal troubles, but already threatened by the Danish pirates along the coast; and the forest depths of Durham were safer for such meetings than the more open lands of Northumberland or Yorkshire. The affix of "hale," the Saxon "hal," signifies the existence of a hall or some building, perhaps the remains of a Roman villa, which would have served as a temporary shelter for the members of a council, of which all traces have long since disappeared; but, taking all the circumstances together, we may fairly assume that Finchale was the place in which these Northumbrian councils met, and the name still lingered in the locality when St. Godric established himself within its glades on the banks of the rushing Wear.

This Godric, whose name is indissolubly associated with Finchale Priory, although he was in no sense the founder of it, was as selfish and dirty an old anchorite as ever attained the brevet rank of sainthood. Born about 1065, the first thirty years of his life were spent as a pedlar and sailor, during which he travelled far and wide, and met with many adventures; and the remainder he spent in pilgrimages or a hermit-life of penance and prayer. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ gives a very complete history of him, compiled from all available sources, the most important being the MS. life by his contemporary Nicholas of Durham. While he was leading the roving life of a pedlar he was nearly drowned in trying to catch a porpoise, and afterwards made a pilgrimage to Rome, presumably in thankfulness for his rescue. But the time was unfortunate, for it appears to have been about 1086, when Gregory VII., Hildebrand, had just died in exile, when the Anti-Pope Clement III. was in possession of the Vatican, while the newly elected Pope Victor III. was afraid to enter Rome, which then lay sunk in the most frightful anarchy. The spectacle he beheld could scarcely then have induced him to accept a religious vocation; and we find that for sixteen years afterwards he led a seafaring life, trading between England, Scotland, Flanders and Denmark, presently going so far afield as the Holy Land, where the Chronicler’s description of him as "Gudericus pirata de regno Angliae" sufficiently indicates the character of his occupation. Returning thence, he paid a visit to the shrine of St. James of Compostella; and when he reached home he accepted a menial position in the house of a countryman, which suggests that he had not made much money by his ventures. But with a restless spirit on him he went two more pilgrimages to Rome, and the second time he took his mother with him carrying her, it is said, on his shoulders where the way was difficult. It was on this journey that he was accompanied by a lady of wondrous beauty, whom he met on his way in London, who left him there again on his return, and who nightly washed his feet; a story which perhaps grew out of the custom of noble ladies, and which became more common later on, of washing the feet of pilgrims in penance for some special sin, in the manner described by Charles Reade in _The Cloister and the Hearth_. On his return, somewhere about 1104, he settled for a time at Carlisle, and then went to share his cell with a hermit named Aelrice, by Wolsingham, and perhaps learn the lessons which were to guide him in his future life. After a stay here of only seventeen months the hermit died, and directed, he believed, by St. Cuthbert, Godric went again on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, after which he was instructed to return and take up his residence at Finchale. Not knowing the locality by name he returned to Durham where he resided for some time until a chance conversation disclosed the whereabouts of the place.