There is always an air of quietude and restfulness about an ordinary cathedral city. Some of our cathedrals are set in busy places, in great centres of population, wherein the high towering minster looks down with a kind of pitying compassion upon the toiling folk and invites them to seek shelter and peace and the consolations of religion in her quiet courts. For ages she has watched over the city and seen generation after generation pass away. Kings and queens have come to lay their offerings on her altars, and have been borne there amid all the pomp of stately mourning to lie in the gorgeous tombs that grace her choir. She has seen it all times of pillage and alarm, of robbery and spoliation, of change and disturbance, but she lives on, ever calling men with her quiet voice to look up in love and faith and prayer.

But many of our cathedral cities are quite small places which owe their very life and existence to the stately church which pious hands have raised centuries ago. There age after age the prayer of faith, the anthems of praise, and the divine services have been offered.

In the glow of a summer’s evening its heavenly architecture stands out, a mass of wondrous beauty, telling of the skill of the masons and craftsmen of olden days who put their hearts into their work and wrought so surely and so well. The greensward of the close, wherein the rooks caw and guard their nests, speaks of peace and joy that is not of earth. We walk through the fretted cloisters that once echoed with the tread of sandalled monks and saw them illuminating and copying wonderful missals, antiphonaries, and other manuscripts which we prize so highly now. The deanery is close at hand, a venerable house of peace and learning; and the canons’ houses tell of centuries of devoted service to God’s Church, wherein many a distinguished scholar, able preacher, and learned writer has lived and sent forth his burning message to the world, and now lies at peace in the quiet minster.

The fabric of the cathedrals is often in danger of becoming part and parcel of vanishing England. Every one has watched with anxiety the gallant efforts that have been made to save Winchester. The insecure foundations, based on timbers that had rotted, threatened to bring down that wondrous pile of masonry. And now Canterbury is in danger.

The Dean and Chapter of Canterbury having recently completed the reparation of the central tower of the cathedral, now find themselves confronted with responsibilities which require still heavier expenditure. It has recently been found that the upper parts of the two western towers are in a dangerous condition. All the pinnacles of these towers have had to be partially removed in order to avoid the risk of dangerous injury from falling stones, and a great part of the external work of the two towers is in a state of grievous decay.

The Chapter were warned by the architect that they would incur an anxious responsibility if they did not at once adopt measures to obviate this danger.

Further, the architect states that there are some fissures and shakes in the supporting piers of the central tower within the cathedral, and that some of the stonework shows signs of crushing. He further reports that there is urgent need of repair to the nave windows, the south transept roof, the Warriors’ Chapel, and several other parts of the building. The nave pinnacles are reported by him to be in the last stage of decay, large portions falling frequently, or having to be removed.

In these modern days we run “tubes” and under-ground railways in close proximity to the foundations of historic buildings, and thereby endanger their safety. The grand cathedral of St. Paul, London, was threatened by a “tube,” and only saved by vigorous protest from having its foundations jarred and shaken by rumbling trains in the bowels of the earth. Moreover, by sewers and drains the earth is made devoid of moisture, and therefore is liable to crack and crumble, and to disturb the foundations of ponderous buildings. St. Paul’s still causes anxiety on this account, and requires all the care and vigilance of the skilful architect who guards it.

The old Norman builders loved a central tower, which they built low and squat. Happily they built surely and well, firmly and solidly, as their successors loved to pile course upon course upon their Norman towers, to raise a massive superstructure, and often crown them with a lofty, graceful, but heavy spire. No wonder the early masonry has, at times, protested against this additional weight, and many mighty central towers and spires have fallen and brought ruin on the surrounding stonework. So it happened at Chichester and in several other noble churches. St. Alban’s tower very nearly fell. There the ingenuity of destroyers and vandals at the Dissolution had dug a hole and removed the earth from under one of the piers, hoping that it would collapse. The old tower held on for three hundred years, and then the mighty mass began to give way, and Sir Gilbert Scott tells the story of its reparation in 1870, of the triumphs of the skill of modern builders, and their bravery and resolution in saving the fall of that great tower. The greatest credit is due to all concerned in that hazardous and most difficult task. It had very nearly gone. The story of Peterborough, and of several others, shows that many of these vast fanes which have borne the storms and frosts of centuries are by no means too secure, and that the skill of wise architects and the wealth of the Englishmen of to-day are sorely needed to prevent them from vanishing. If they fell, new and modern work would scarcely compensate us for their loss.

We will take Wells as a model of a cathedral city which entirely owes its origin to the noble church and palace built there in early times. The city is one of the most picturesque in England, situated in the most delightful country, and possessing the most perfect ecclesiastical buildings which can be conceived. Jocelyn de Wells, who lived at the beginning of the thirteenth century (1206-39), has for many years had the credit of building the main part of this beautiful house of God. It is hard to have one’s beliefs and early traditions upset, but modern authorities, with much reason, tell us that we are all wrong, and that another Jocelyn one Reginald Fitz-Jocelyn (1171-91) was the main builder of Wells Cathedral. Old documents recently discovered decide the question, and, moreover, the style of architecture is certainly earlier than the fully developed Early English of Jocelyn de Wells. The latter, and also Bishop Savaricus (1192-1205), carried out the work, but the whole design and a considerable part of the building are due to Bishop Reginald Fitz-Jocelyn. His successors, until the middle of the fifteenth century, went on perfecting the wondrous shrine, and in the time of Bishop Beckington Wells was in its full glory. The church, the outbuildings, the episcopal palace, the deanery, all combined to form a wonderful architectural triumph, a group of buildings which represented the highest achievement of English Gothic art.

Since then many things have happened. The cathedral, like all other ecclesiastical buildings, has passed through three great periods of iconoclastic violence. It was shorn of some of its glory at the Reformation, when it was plundered of the treasures which the piety of many generations had heaped together. Then the beautiful Lady Chapel in the cloisters was pulled down, and the infamous Duke of Somerset robbed it of its wealth and meditated further sacrilege. Amongst these desecrators and despoilers there was a mighty hunger for lead. “I would that they had found it scalding,” exclaimed an old chaplain of Wells; and to get hold of the lead that covered the roofs a valuable commodity Somerset and his kind did much mischief to many of our cathedrals and churches. An infamous bishop of York, at this period, stripped his fine palace that stood on the north of York Minster, “for the sake of the lead that covered it,” and shipped it off to London, where it was sold for L1000; but of this sum he was cheated by a noble duke, and therefore gained nothing by his infamy. During the Civil War it escaped fairly well, but some damage was done, the palace was despoiled; and at the Restoration of the Monarchy much repair was needed. Monmouth’s rebels wrought havoc. They came to Wells in no amiable mood, defaced the statues on the west front, did much wanton mischief, and would have caroused about the altar had not Lord Grey stood before it with his sword drawn, and thus preserved it from the insults of the ruffians. Then came the evils of “restoration.” A terrible renewing was begun in 1848, when the old stalls were destroyed and much damage done. Twenty years later better things were accomplished, save that the grandeur of the west front was belittled by a pipey restoration, when Irish limestone, with its harsh hue, was used to embellish it.

A curiosity at Wells are the quarter jacks over the clock on the exterior north wall of the cathedral. Local tradition has it that the clock with its accompanying figures was part of the spoil removed from Glastonbury Abbey. The ecclesiastical authorities at Wells assert in contradiction to this that the clock was the work of one Peter Lightfoot, and was placed in the cathedral in the latter part of the fourteenth century. A minute is said to exist in the archives of repairs to the clock and figures in 1418. It is Mr. Roe’s opinion that the defensive armour on the quarter jacks dates from the first half of the fifteenth century, the plain oviform breastplates and basinets, as well as the continuation of the tassets round the hips, being very characteristic features of this period. The halberds in the hands of the figures are evidently restorations of a later time. It may be mentioned that in 1907, when the quarter jacks were painted, it was discovered that though the figures themselves were carved out of solid blocks of oak hard as iron, the arms were of elm bolted and braced thereon. Though such instances of combined materials are common enough among antiquities of medieval times, it may yet be surmised that the jar caused by incessant striking may in time have necessitated repairs to the upper limbs. The arms are immovable, as the figures turn on pivots to strike.

An illustration is given of the palace at Wells, which is one of the finest examples of thirteenth-century houses existing in England. It was begun by Jocelyn. The great hall, now in ruins, was built by Bishop Burnell at the end of the thirteenth century, and was destroyed by Bishop Barlow in 1552. The chapel is Decorated. The gatehouse, with its drawbridge, moat, and fortifications, was constructed by Bishop Ralph, of Shrewsbury, who ruled from 1329 to 1363. The deanery was built by Dean Gunthorpe in 1475, who was chaplain to Edward IV. On the north is the beautiful vicar’s close, which has forty-two houses, constructed mainly by Bishop Beckington (1443-64), with a common hall erected by Bishop Ralph in 1340 and a chapel by Budwith (1407-64), but altered a century later. You can see the old fireplace, the pulpit from which one of the brethren read aloud during meals, and an ancient painting representing Bishop Ralph making his grant to the kneeling figures, and some additional figures painted in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

When we study the cathedrals of England and try to trace the causes which led to the destruction of so much that was beautiful, so much of English art that has vanished, we find that there were three great eras of iconoclasm. First there were the changes wrought at the time of the Reformation, when a rapacious king and his greedy ministers set themselves to wring from the treasures of the Church as much gain and spoil as they were able. These men were guilty of the most daring acts of shameless sacrilege, the grossest robbery. With them nothing was sacred. Buildings consecrated to God, holy vessels used in His service, all the works of sacred art, the offerings of countless pious benefactors were deemed as mere profane things to be seized and polluted by their sacrilegious hands. The land was full of the most beautiful gems of architectural art, the monastic churches. We can tell something of their glories from those which were happily spared and converted into cathderals or parish churches. Ely, Peterborough the pride of the Fenlands, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, Westminster, St. Albans, Beverley, and some others proclaim the grandeur of hundreds of other magnificent structures which have been shorn of their leaden roofs, used as quarries for building-stone, entirely removed and obliterated, or left as pitiable ruins which still look beautiful in their decay. Reading, Tintern, Glastonbury, Fountains, and a host of others all tell the same story of pitiless iconoclasm. And what became of the contents of these churches? The contents usually went with the fabric to the spoliators. The halls of country-houses were hung with altar-cloths; tables and beds were quilted with copes; knights and squires drank their claret out of chalices and watered their horses in marble coffins. From the accounts of the royal jewels it is evident that a great deal of Church plate was delivered to the king for his own use, besides which the sum of L30,360 derived from plate obtained by the spoilers was given to the proper hand of the king.

The iconoclasts vented their rage in the destruction of stained glass and beautiful illuminated manuscripts, priceless tomes and costly treasures of exceeding rarity. Parish churches were plundered everywhere. Robbery was in the air, and clergy and churchwardens sold sacred vessels and appropriated the money for parochial purposes rather than they should be seized by the king. Commissioners were sent to visit all the cathedral and parish churches and seize the superfluous ornaments for the king’s use. Tithes, lands, farms, buildings belonging to the church all went the same way, until the hand of the iconoclast was stayed, as there was little left to steal or to be destroyed. The next era of iconoclastic zeal was that of the Civil War and the Cromwellian period. At Rochester the soldiers profaned the cathedral by using it as a stable and a tippling place, while saw-pits were made in the sacred building and carpenters plied their trade. At Chichester the pikes of the Puritans and their wild savagery reduced the interior to a ruinous desolation. The usual scenes of mad iconoclasm were enacted stained glass windows broken, altars thrown down, lead stripped from the roof, brasses and effigies defaced and broken. A creature named “Blue Dick” was the wild leader of this savage crew of spoliators who left little but the bare walls and a mass of broken fragments strewing the pavement. We need not record similar scenes which took place almost everywhere.

The last and grievous rule of iconoclasm set in with the restorers, who worked their will upon the fabric of our cathedrals and churches and did so much to obliterate all the fragments of good architectural work which the Cromwellian soldiers and the spoliators at the time of the Reformation had left. The memory of Wyatt and his imitators is not revered when we see the results of their work on our ecclesiastical fabrics, and we need not wonder that so much of English art has vanished.

The cathedral of Bristol suffered from other causes. The darkest spot in the history of the city is the story of the Reform riots of 1831, sometimes called “the Bristol Revolution,” when the dregs of the population pillaged and plundered, burnt the bishop’s palace, and were guilty of the most atrocious vandalism.

The city of Bath, once the rival of Wells the contention between the monks of St. Peter and the canons of St. Andrews at Wells being hot and fierce has many attractions. Its minster, rebuilt by Bishop Oliver King of Wells (1495-1503), and restored in the seventeenth century, and also in modern times, is not a very interesting building, though it lacks not some striking features, and certainly contains some fine tombs and monuments of the fashionable folk who flocked to Bath in the days of its splendour. The city itself abounds in interest. It is a gem of Georgian art, with a complete homogeneous architectural character of its own which makes it singular and unique. It is full of memories of the great folks who thronged its streets, attended the Bath and Pump Room, and listened to sermons in the Octagon. It tells of the autocracy of Beau Nash, of Goldsmith, Sheridan, David Garrick, of the “First Gentleman of Europe,” and many others who made Bath famous. And now it is likely that this unique little city with its memories and its charming architectural features is to be mutilated for purely commercial reasons. Every one knows Bath Street with its colonnaded loggias on each side terminated with a crescent at each end, and leading to the Cross Bath in the centre of the eastern crescent. That the original founders of Bath Street regarded it as an important architectural feature of the city is evident from the inscription in abbreviated Latin which was engraved on the first stone of the street when laid:

It is actually proposed by the new proprietors of the Grand Pump Hotel to entirely destroy the beauty of this street by removing the colonnaded loggia on one side of this street and constructing a new side to the hotel two or three storeys higher, and thus to change the whole character of the street and practically destroy it. It is a sad pity, and we should have hoped that the city Council would have resisted very strongly the proposal that the proprietors of the hotel have made to their body. But we hear that the Council is lukewarm in its opposition to the scheme, and has indeed officially approved it. It is astonishing what city and borough councils will do, and this Bath Council has “the discredit of having, for purely commercial reasons, made the first move towards the destruction architecturally of the peculiar charm of their unique and beautiful city."

Evesham is entirely a monastic town. It sprang up under the sheltering walls of the famous abbey

A pretty burgh and such as Fancy loves
For bygone grandeurs.

This abbey shared the fate of many others which we have mentioned. The Dean of Gloucester thus muses over the “Vanished Abbey":

“The stranger who knows nothing of its story would surely smile if he were told that beneath the grass and daisies round him were hidden the vast foundation storeys of one of the mightiest of our proud mediaeval abbeys; that on the spot where he was standing were once grouped a forest of tall columns bearing up lofty fretted roofs; that all around once were altars all agleam with colour and with gold; that besides the many altars were once grouped in that sacred spot chauntries and tombs, many of them marvels of grace and beauty, placed there in the memory of men great in the service of Church and State of men whose names were household words in the England of our fathers; that close to him were once stately cloisters, great monastic buildings, including refectories, dormitories, chapter-house, chapels, infirmary, granaries, kitchens all the varied piles of buildings which used to make up the hive of a great monastery.”

It was commenced by Bishop Egwin, of Worcester, in 702 A.D., but the era of its great prosperity set in after the battle of Evesham when Simon de Montford was slain, and his body buried in the monastic church. There was his shrine to which was great pilgrimage, crowds flocking to lay their offerings there; and riches poured into the treasury of the monks, who made great additions to their house, and reared noble buildings. Little is left of its former grandeur. You can discover part of the piers of the great central tower, the cloister arch of Decorated work of great beauty erected in 1317, and the abbey fishponds. The bell tower is one of the glories of Evesham. It was built by the last abbot, Abbot Lichfield, and was not quite completed before the destruction of the great abbey church adjacent to it. It is a grand specimen of Perpendicular architecture.

At the corner of the Market Place there is a picturesque old house with gable and carved barge-boards and timber-framed arch, and we see the old Norman gateway named Abbot Reginald’s Gateway, after the name of its builder, who also erected part of the wall enclosing the monastic buildings. A timber-framed structure now stretches across the arcade, but a recent restoration has exposed the Norman columns which support the arch. The Church House, always an interesting building in old towns and villages, wherein church ales and semi-ecclesiastical functions took place, has been restored. Passing under the arch we see the two churches in one churchyard All Saints and St. Laurence. The former has some Norman work at the inner door of the porch, but its main construction is Decorated and Perpendicular. Its most interesting feature is the Lichfield Chapel, erected by the last abbot, whose initials and the arms of the abbey appear on escutcheons on the roof. The fan-tracery roof is especially noticeable, and the good modern glass. The church of St. Laurence is entirely Perpendicular, and the chantry of Abbot Lichneld, with its fan-tracery vaulting, is a gem of English architecture.

Amongst the remains of the abbey buildings may be seen the Almonry, the residence of the almoner, formerly used as a gaol. An interesting stone lantern of fifteenth-century work is preserved here. Another abbey gateway is near at hand, but little evidence remains of its former Gothic work. Part of the old wall built by Abbot William de Chyryton early in the fourteenth century remains. In the town there is a much-modernized town hall, and near it the old-fashioned Booth Hall, a half-timbered building, now used as shops and cottages, where formerly courts were held, including the court of pie-powder, the usual accompaniment of every fair. Bridge Street is one of the most attractive streets in the borough, with its quaint old house, and the famous inn, “The Crown.” The old house in Cowl Street was formerly the White Hart Inn, which tells a curious Elizabethan story about “the Fool and the Ice,” an incident supposed to be referred to by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida (Act iii. s: “The fool slides o’er the ice that you should break.” The Queen Anne house in the High Street, with its wrought-iron railings and brackets, called Dresden House and Almswood, one of the oldest dwelling-houses in the town, are worthy of notice by the students of domestic architecture.

There is much in the neighbourhood of Evesham which is worthy of note, many old-fashioned villages and country towns, manor-houses, churches, and inns which are refreshing to the eyes of those who have seen so much destruction, so much of the England that is vanishing. The old abbey tithe-barn at Littleton of the fourteenth century, Wickhamford Manor, the home of Penelope Washington, whose tomb is in the adjoining church, the picturesque village of Cropthorne, Winchcombe and its houses, Sudeley Castle, the timbered houses at Norton and Harvington, Broadway and Campden, abounding with beautiful houses, and the old town of Alcester, of which some views are given all these contain many objects of antiquarian and artistic interest, and can easily be reached from Evesham. In that old town we have seen much to interest, and the historian will delight to fight over again the battle of Evesham and study the records of the siege of the town in the Civil War.