Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 19, 2025
No man now alive can remember them such; but not so many years back many could. In 1861 we talked with one who remembered the abbey church of Bernay in the full extent of its choir and Lady-chapel. We go back after thirty years to find the church of the Conqueror's grandmother in other things much as it was, still desecrated, but with no more of actual destruction.
He endeavoured to regulate the habits of those clergy who accepted their privileges but were inclined to neglect the duties and responsibilities these involved. His interest in the fabric of the cathedral was expressed principally by the additions that were made to the lady-chapel during his episcopate.
In 1566 a parish church, dedicated to S. Cross, which was situated at the north side of the nave, was found to be so dilapidated that no attempt was made to render it fit for service, and the dean and chapter gave to the parishioners the lady-chapel for a parish church, and it has so remained to this day.
It was the work of an Italian sculptor, lured to England in company of the craftsmen who made the lady-chapel of Westminster Abbey; and the renaissance delicacy of its work was very grateful in the homely English church.
In the fourth bay, above the point of the window arch, the curve of the original apse of the ambulatory is just traceable; but beyond this point eastwards the twelfth-century walling has disappeared until we meet it again in the lady-chapel. There is a small buttress in the fourth bay marking the junction between the two periods of masonry.
The lady-chapel is still resorted to as a place of pilgrimage by the seafaring and fisher folk of the neighbourhood. A modern reproduction of a sarcophagus from the catacombs at Rome forms the tomb of Mgr. Haffreingue .
The choir terminates with the usual apse, which is further elongated by the far-reaching lady-chapel, which adjoins the main fabric in a graceful and unusual manner. The north tower was completed as late as the sixteenth century, and that of the south was left unfinished, as it is to-day. The gable and its portals are highly decorated with statues, niches, and crockets.
During the last half of the nineteenth century several small portions of the building were repaired, restored, or rebuilt. The cloister was carefully restored by the late Mr. Gordon M. Hills. More recently the roof of the lady-chapel, the two eastern pinnacles of the choir as well as those two lower ones to the chapels of S.M. Magdalen, and S. Catherine, have been restored by his son Mr.
It is always taken for granted that the destruction of the beautiful work in the lady-chapel, as well as of the shrines and statuary in the cathedral, was effected very soon after the dissolution of the monastery; but precise authority for this seems not to be forthcoming.
All these windows now have ogee arches, and are of three lights. The tracery is unimposing. About the middle of the wall can be distinctly seen the marks of the door and covered way that led from the cathedral to the Church of S. Cross. It was accordingly destroyed, and the lady-chapel assigned, in lieu of it, to the parishioners for their parish church.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking