CATHEDRAL CHURCH
1. HISTORICAL
Durham Cathedral
stands on a rocky height
bounded on the east,
south, and west by a
bend of the river Wear.
To the north and south of the cathedral the
level space is considerable, but the building
occupies the whole extent of the level ground
from east to west, the buttresses of the westernmost portion actually descending the face of
the cliff some forty feet, whence the thickly
wooded slope descends rapidly to the river. The
position is one of the most commanding of any
in England, and the view of the cathedral from
the west and south-west is extremely impressive.
The site has been continuously occupied by a
church from 995, when the body of St. Cuthbert
was brought hither after many wanderings, and
a temporary structure was erected over it. This
was superseded by a church of stone begun by
Bishop Aldhun in 996, and known as the White
Church. Aldhun's church was standing at the
time of the Conquest, but excavation has failed
to reveal any trace of it. That it had a western
tower is evident from the account (fn. 1) of Reginald
the monk, and that, after the fashion of the larger
churches of the time, it was cruciform with a
second tower over the crossing.
Certain crossheads of late style, taken from
below the chapter house, must be relics of the
period between 995 and the Norman Conquest
and may have commemorated members of the
community of secular priests who served the
church from the time of Aldhun to that of
William of St. Calais. The discovery in 1874,
below the graves of the bishops Ranulf Flambard, Geoffrey Rufus and William of St. Barbe,
of the skeletons of men, women and children, and
of an iron spear head with a gold-plated socket,
believed by some to be attributable to this period,
probably points to a pre-Christian settlement
of considerably earlier date. (fn. 2)
The church which stands to-day was begun,
as Simeon of Durham tells us, in 1093 by Bishop
William of St. Calais (1080–1096). During his
lifetime an agreement was in force between the
bishop and the monks, by which the former
undertook to bear the cost of building the church,
and the latter that of the monastic buildings.
There are indications that the replacement of
the Saxon buildings other than the church had
already been taken in hand before this time, the
east and south ranges of the cloister having been
worked upon during the time of Walcher (1071–1080), and doubtless in the first thirteen years
of William's episcopate, before he was in a
position to start work on the new church. It is
possible that the site of the earlier church was a
little to the south of the present building and
that Walcher's work, of which mention will be
made in the description of the monastic buildings, was joined directly to the south side of
Aldhun's church.
With regard to the church of William of St.
Calais, it may be said that if the Chapel of the
Nine Altars at the east and the Galilee Chapel
at the west end be imagined absent, and if for
the former be substituted a termination consisting of a great central apse semicircular both
inside and out, and two side apses with a square
external termination, one at each of the ends of
the quire aisles, the present building follows the
lines of the plan laid down in 1093.
Comparatively little, however, of this great
design was actually completed in the lifetime of
its originator; yet, even so, the rapidity of the
work must have been remarkable.
The death of Bishop William in 1096 did not
interrupt the work, which was carried on continuously but more slowly, and we are told that
the monks devoted themselves to the church,
leaving for the time their work on the monastic
buildings. The see was vacant till 1099, and in
this time the work of the church was carried on
usque navem. Ranulf Flambard, on his appointment as bishop in that year, did not continue
the arrangement made by his predecessor, but
used the funds arising from the oblations
altaris et cemiterii, and carried on the building
of the church as the money came in, 'so that at
one time little was done and at another much.' (fn. 3)
This went on till Flambard's death in 1128,
when the see again remained vacant, this time
for five years. The nave, we are told, was complete up to the vault in 1128, and by 1133 the
monks had finished the nave vault.
Although the building of the fabric was one
continuous work, occupying a period of forty
years from 1093, there was a slight break about
1110 when the work had been carried from the
east end of the church usque navem. The
whole was brought to completion, except for the
upper stories of the western towers, in 1133.
The scale and magnificence of the design would
alone set Durham in the first rank of the
great Romanesque churches of the north, but
an exceptional value is added to it by the
complete structural evidence of the intention
to cover the whole building with stone rib-vaults
as part of the original scheme. There is no
surviving church in Normandy which can show
so early a use of this construction, but that it is
of Norman origin is equally certain. So much of
the building energy of the Normans was transferred to English soil after the Conquest that an
advance in development on this side of the
Channel is not a matter for surprise. Certain
features, however, which do not occur in Normandy at this date, must be noted. The long
eastern arm of four bays, as at St. Albans, has
no existing counterpart in Normandy, where a
presbytery of two bays is normal, and the
cushion capital, practically unknown in Normandy, is used everywhere in Durham to the
exclusion of the Norman volute capital, so that
it may be said that the Norman designer of
Durham Cathedral did not come direct from
Normandy to Durham, but had had previous
experience of building in England.
It is not possible to say exactly how far the
work had advanced between August 1093 and
Bishop William's death in January 1096, but the
first design continues unaltered through the
eastern arm and as far as the top of the triforium
on the east side of both transepts. The west
walls of the transepts are of simpler character
and suggest that lack of funds after the bishop's
death may have affected this part of the design,
but a more impressive witness to a modification
of the original scheme is seen in the temporary
abandonment of the intention to vault the
transepts. The clearstory of the south transept, with its continuous arcade of tall arches, is
clearly designed for a wooden ceiling, and since
no hesitation was shown in vaulting the eastern
arm, it is reasonable to conclude that this alteration was due to lack of funds.
A landmark in the progress of the work is
made by the record of the translation of St.
Cuthbert to his shrine in 1104; the details of
the story make it clear that the stone vault over
the eastern arm was finished by this date, and
it may be suggested that the south transept
with a wooden ceiling was completed by that
time. The two eastern bays of the main arcade
of the nave, and of its aisles, together with one
bay of the triforium, belong, with certain small
modifications, to the earlier work of the church,
and it is reasonable to suppose that the north
transept was finished and its stone vault built
as part of this work. The limit of date may be
c. 1110. At the continuation of the building
of the nave a new feature appears, namely the
cheveron ornament, introduced in the arcade
arches and the ribs of the aisle vaults. It also
occurs in the vaults of the south transept, which
must have been undertaken while the continuation of the nave was in progress. It must be
assumed that the lack of funds which followed
on Bishop William's death had been overcome,
and possibly the translation of 1104 brought a
new era of prosperity.
The last stage of the work, the building of the
stone vault over the nave, falls within the five
years 1128–1133, and it is a matter of much
interest to note, as a landmark in the story of
vault construction, that the springing stones of
the great transverse arches are designed for a
semicircular curve. The weakness which by
then may have been evident in the presbytery
vault, owing to the flatness at the crown of the
diagonal ribs, must have suggested the use of a
higher trajectory in the nave, and the substitution of pointed transverse arches for the semicircular arches was the result.
Geoffrey Rufus (1130–40), then, found the cathedral church practically complete, together with
the greater part of the monastic buildings. The
slype between the south transept and the chapter
house, with its barrel vault, had been built in
the time of William, or in the interval between
his death and the appointment of Flambard, but
the chapter house was still incomplete, though
there can be no doubt that its plan had long been
settled, and probably the walls had been set
out to the level of the string below the wall
arcading. Rufus completed the chapter house,
with a very rich doorway in whose capitals the
centaur occurs, together with mermaids and other
monsters carved in spirited fashion.
Hugh Pudsey (1153–1195) began to build a
Lady Chapel at the east end of the church, but,
taking the failure of his work as the result of
divine prohibition, abandoned it and built the
Galilee Chapel at the west end, c. 1175. He also
enriched the exterior of the south-east doorway
of the nave. His work, which can be identified in
many places throughout the diocese, is always
characterised by boldness and originality.
Richard de Marisco (1217–1226) probably
completed the western towers.
Richard Poore was translated from Salisbury
in 1229, and by 1235 the serious condition of
the quire vault seems to have decided him to
substitute for the then existing triapsidal eastern
termination of the church a building which is
now represented by the Chapel of the Nine
Altars. The work was not actually begun till
1242, (fn. 4) under the direction of Prior Melsonby
(1233–1244), but there can be no doubt that the
ground plan was influenced by Bishop Poore,
whose connexion with the building of Salisbury
testifies to his interest in the task. There is
evidence that the design was altered in several
details more than once during the progress of
the building, especially in the earlier stages,
and an interesting feature of these changes is a
departure from and subsequent return to the
original design for the use of detached marble
shafts on the piers, which are built on the arc
of the former apse. A change in the design of
the feretory platform of St. Cuthbert between
these piers is also to be suspected. The chapel
was not finished until 1280, and here again the
problems of vaulting seem to have occasioned
difficulty and delay, and possibly more than one
accident. The work was probably continuous,
and the south-east corner appears to have been
the point of completion, for there are indications
here that the southernmost pier in the east wall
had been standing unroofed for some time, and
needed repair before the vault was built.
The junction of the chapel and the quire
was certainly completed in one design with the
rest of the chapel, the whole of this work being
finished between 1242 and 1255, but the details
of the vaulting, both of the chapel and the quire,
are distinctly later in character, and were
probably not considered until, at the earliest,
1270. The vault of the chapel, especially, displays a remarkable series of ingenious makeshifts of construction. The interval of delay
may be traceable to the impoverishment of the
see by the alleged wrongful reservation of certain
lands by Nicholas de Farnham after his resignation in 1249 and the seizure by the king of the
rest of the temporalities. The latter were
probably restored on the consecration of Walter
de Kirkham at the end of the same year, but
Nicholas de Farnham lived till 1275, retaining
the reserved lands. As one of the first acts of
Walter de Kirkham was an attempt to have the
reservation set aside, it seems likely that the
money was needed for building, for, as the pope
pointed out, he had no case for recovery whatsoever. (fn. 5) It is very likely, therefore, that the
vaulting was not begun till the bishopric of
Robert of Holy Island (1274), though the main
lines of the design were probably earlier.
The work of the fourteenth century includes
no structural additions except the cloister, which
was begun about 1390, but was not finished
until 1418. The Jesse window in the west wall
of the nave and the window of the Four Doctors
in the north transept were inserted about the
middle of the century by Prior John Fossor,
who also built the fine kitchen of the monastery
in 1365–70. In the episcopate of Bishop Hatfield the altar-screen or 'French peir' (fn. 6) was
erected by John Lord Neville, and the Bishop's
throne, which incorporates in its design the
chantry tomb of this bishop, was set up by him
c. 1375.
Walter de Skirlaw (1388–1406) contributed
largely to the work in the cloister, and the woodwork of the roof near the chapter house is of his
time, and contains his arms. He also built the
dormitory at the west of the cloister.
In the fifteenth century Thomas Langley
(1406–1437) made the two doorways from the
nave aisles to the Galilee Chapel, erected the
Lady Altar in the old west doorway of the nave,
with his own tomb before it, and also buttressed
the west wall of the Galilee Chapel, inserting
new windows, adding a new roof, and supplementing the twin columns of the arcades by
additional shafts (c. 1420). The Te Deum
window in the south transept is of c. 1430.
About 1470 the rebuilding of the central
tower, which had been long failing, was undertaken and the lower gallery of the lantern and the
arcade above it were completed in the time of
Bishop Laurence Booth, the belfry being added
about 1490, under the direction of Prior Auckland.
From this time no additions were made, and
the church was fearfully despoiled at the
Reformation. Bishop Cosin (1660–72), however,
erected the stalls and tabernacle work of the
quire, and the font-tabernacle is his work, as
were also the destroyed quire screen and a fine
screen about the feretory, now removed.
The church suffered much from the devastations of Wyatt, at the end of the eighteenth
and beginning of the nineteenth century,
when the Galilee Chapel was only saved
from destruction by the vigorous intervention
of Lord Cornwallis, then newly appointed
Dean, who was too late to save the chapter
house, which was pulled down, except its
most westerly portion, in 1796. The exterior
of the building was most horribly scraped, reducing the Norman mouldings to mere shadows,
and a ridiculous 'restoration' of the north
porch was carried out. The great 'rose'
window in the east wall of the Chapel of the
Nine Altars is Wyatt's work, and is perhaps less
disastrous than the rest of his meddling, which
actually included the destruction of the old
stained glass of the eastern windows.
In 1859 the central tower was restored by
Sir Gilbert Scott, who also supervised a restoration (1870–76) in the course of which the quire
screen and pulpit were inserted, and the quire
stalls replaced. In 1895 the chapter house
was rebuilt as a memorial to Bishop Lightfoot,
unfortunately departing, in the vaulting of the
apse, from its original design, although record of
the latter had been preserved.