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September 17, 2005
Medieval Glass
Gloucester Cathedral boasts one of the greatest expanses of medieval glass in England, if not the biggest. The East Window fills the entire East End of the Cathedral and has recently been lovingly restored. This Cathedral is where the style of late medieval architecture known as "English Perpendicular" was invented and this window is the epitomy of the style's descriptor of "more glass than wall". East of this is preserved the medieval lady chapel, used as a school post dissolution of the monastery and reformation, but now restored to its original use and used daily. It too, is a glorious example of the full English Perpendicular art and we are fortunate indeed that it survived the dissolution.
The great East Window rises above the High Altar in Gloucester Cathedral.
The great East Window fills the entire wall at the East End, it's tracery and stonework holding together panels that depict kings, prophets, angels, patriarchs and Our Lord and the disciples and Apostles. Created in the 13th and 14th Centuries it is an amazing set of glass and art, which has survived iconoclasts, puritans, sieges, civil war and the bombing of the second World War. While it was being cleaned and releaded, it has also had minor repairs done to it and hopefully it will still be here for many more centuries as a reminder of the beauty that humanity is capable of creating even in unsettled and violent times.
Many readers will know parts of Gloucester (founded as a Benedictine Monastery in 615 AD) from the Harry Potter films, the most familiar bit being the glorious enclosed Cloister which appears in a number of scenes with Harry and his chums going to and from classes in Hogwarts. The magic of the movies has transformed some parts giving them access to places that do not exist at Gloucester, but many do, and they are recognisable to those of us who know the building.
It is also the last resting place for two members of the "modern" Royal lineage, King Edward II and Robert Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror's eldest son. Robert was deprived twice of his father's throne, first by William Rufus (William II) and then by Henry I who locked him away in Cardiff Castle until he died. He now rests in a fine wooden coffin shrine on the South side of the ambulatory near the High Altar. Ironically, he and his tomb were removed to the undercroft during WW2 and rested on top of a large crate from Westminster Abbey throughout. In 1946, when the Westminster crates were collected, it was discovered that he had lain on the throne he never occupied - the Coronation Chair!
Another Royal Tomb at Gloucester is that of it's founder, the one time King of Mercia who endowed the monastery with land and funds to build the original. He was reburied in a magnificent tomb in medieval times on the North of the High Altar. Never one of the richer foundations, Gloucester today mixes the great drum pillars of a Norman nave, with the late medieval English Perpendicular of the East Quire and Transepts, it's glorious Lady Chapel and the the wonderful cloisters. Many of the monastic buildings also survive as they found other uses when Henry VIII made it a Cathedral in 1540.
Robert Wakeham, the last Abbot of Tewkesbury, became the first Bishop of Gloucester and it is possibly to his astute management that we owe the preservation of so much of the monastic establishment as he swiftly found uses for as many of the structures surrounding the cloister as he could. Even the Lady Chapel becoming a school is down to his shrewd management.
A living legacy and one still giving praise to the Lord in all its guises and uses.
Posted by The Gray Monk at September 17, 2005 12:05 PM
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