United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The two arches leading into them were built up, but the geometrical east windows of the chapels were inserted in them, and now give light to the retro-choir. The ends of the choir aisles are apsidal within, but flat without. This arrangement leads to great thickness at the corners of the walls. At one time there was a detached campanile for the bells of Romsey.
We shall see presently that all the real beauties of this most interesting work were the outcome both of the needs of practical structure and the requirements of ritual and a ceremonial expression of the liturgy. Present Elevation. Two Bays of Retro-choir.
A fess dancette Vavasour. 2. A blank shield. #North Side.# 1. A fess between three cross crosslets Beauchamp. 2. Three escallopes Dacres. The stone carving of the retro-choir, as the earlier work cast of the transepts is generally called, was greatly injured by the fire.
The choir itself, with the retro-choir or Lady Chapel, is divided into nine bays. It is considerably the largest and loftiest in England, being over 100 feet high and 99 wide. The altar is three bays from the east end, and one bay west of the altar are the eastern transepts. The choir was begun at the east end in 1361, and finished in 1405.
The #Presbytery#, Ambulatory, or retro-choir, is the space between the back of the reredos and the entrance to the lady-chapel. The design in detail of these two bays is very different in character from the three in the choir, which are like those in the nave. The two piers of Purbeck marble are circular, and about them are grouped four detached shafts of the same material.
*The South-east Transept*, lying between the retro-choir and the chapter-house, into which it opens, is in the main Decorated, though its window tracery is perhaps somewhat later, being almost flamboyant in character. It was altered from the original Norman apse, and in the walls bases of the earlier work remain. It has an eastern aisle, separated from it by a single octagonal pillar.
The upper halves of the three central panels are filled with niches with rich canopies, each canopy being divided into three parts. The east end below the windows is now chiefly filled with uninteresting monuments of the later archbishops. There is no doubt that the aisles of the choir and the whole of the retro-choir could be better without the greater part of the monuments in them.
At any rate Bishop Seffrid replaced them with the exquisite retro-choir we have, and square eastern chapels. He did the same with the old apses of the transepts, and he recased the choir with Caen stone, using Purbeck very freely and with beautiful effect. All this work is very late Transitional, the very last of the Norman or Romanesque.
In my youth I was much impressed in Canterbury Cathedral by the sight of the deep grooves worn by the knees of countless thousands of pilgrims to Thomas a Beckett's shrine in the solid stone of the steps leading from the Choir to the retro-Choir, steps only to be ascended by pilgrims on their knees.
The names printed in ordinary type are taken from a board suspended in the retro-choir, those printed in italics are added from a list given in the "Records of Romsey Abbey," by the Rev. H. G. D. Liveing, 1906, which embodies the result of the most recent research. Whenever the date is uncertain c. for "circa" is prefixed; the date of death when known is added, marked with o. for "obiit."
Word Of The Day