Cathedral Church Of Christ And St Mary

This former Benedictine Priory, now Worcester Cathedral, represents nearly a millennium of continuous construction and modification. The crypt dates from 1084, with some remains of the same period surviving in the west transept and the first two bays at the west end of the nave. The west transept and part of these two western nave bays were built around 1175. The choir, east transept, Lady Chapel, and presbytery were constructed between 1224 and 1250. The nave with aisles was built between 1317 and 1377, the central tower dates from 1374, and the north porch from 1386. A substantial restoration was undertaken between 1857 and 1863 by A. E. Perkins and George Gilbert Scott.

Few medieval designers are identified, but records show Alexander the Mason worked around 1224–1240 on the western nave bays, William Shockerwick around 1317–1324 on the nave north arcade, and John Clyve in 1376/77 on the nave south arcade and central tower.

Materials and Construction

The construction is mainly in Highley and Alveley sandstones, with some Cotswold oolite and Purbeck marble. Many of the vault panels are in tufa. The roof is covered in slate, including Penrhyn slate.

Plan

The east end includes substantial remains of the early crypt, which formerly had radial chapels and an outer ambulatory. The principal church comprises a nine-bay nave with aisles, a deep north porch, and a single-bay chapel also on the north side. There are both west and east transepts, neither with aisles, a four-bay choir with aisles, a three-bay Lady Chapel, a two-bay Chapel of St John, and a central crossing tower. South of the nave are the cloister, with the Chapter House and the former frater (now King's School Hall, listed separately).

Exterior

The cathedral's exterior was very largely refaced during 19th-century restoration work, with both the central tower and eastern arm substantially restructured or refaced—the sandstones being relatively soft and subject to rapid weathering. However, original medieval detail remains in most areas. The gables are coped, and parapets are mostly plain with saddle-back weathered copings and a lower string course; the northwest transept is an exception.

West End of the Nave

The central gable has three tall rectangular lights and a very large eight-light Decorated window of the 19th century, flanked by square buttresses surmounted by octagonal turrets with open pinnacles. The large west door, also 19th century but with some remnants of Norman work, has a high gable breaking into the bottom part of the window. On each side, the aisle terminations have square corner turrets rising to octagonal pinnacles, each with a round-arched light with later tracery above a large four-light window.

North Side of the Nave

The first two bays of the clerestory have round-arched lights with tracery in masonry of various dates; the remainder are small three-light windows with stopped drips in flat four-centred arches. The aisle, to the right of the porch, has a three-light pointed window, then a three-light window with stepped transoms and a straight-sided arch. These bays have heavy flying buttresses supporting a wall of early masonry in small blocks. Two further bays have simpler three-light windows with cusped heads in pointed arches.

Bay five features the bold square two-bay porch with almost plain flanks and a rich north front rebuilt by Scott, containing statues by Redfern. The interior is vaulted, and the inner door, flanked by Norman responds, has a narrow Decorated cusped head above 19th-century doors set in plain masonry within a very flat basket arch.

To the left of the porch are two bays with three-light Decorated windows under small rectangular lights, with a deep buttress between, then a single-bay projecting chapel with corner buttresses and a large three-light window in the north wall. Beyond this is a further aisle bay.

South Side of the Nave

The first two bays are similar to those on the north, incorporating older masonry. There are then seven clerestory bays with three-light windows in straight-sided arches and stopped drips, and two flying buttresses. The aisle has two two-light traceried rectangular windows in each bay, except for one three-light window set deep with a broad casement mould and stopped drips. Plain square buttresses divide the bays. At the lower level is the north walk of the cloister.

West Transept

North Arm: The high gabled north wall has three small rectangular lights above a prominent horizontal string, then a large 19th-century Decorated four-light window to a sill string carried round to the returns. On each side is a square turret with nook shafting crowned by tall octagonal turrets with pinnacles. The west and east sides have two four-light windows in Mannerist panelling including ogee heads, with a crenellated parapet. The east side also has a deep four-light window with a transom and four-centred head.

South Arm: This differs greatly in detail from the north arm, having an Early English plate tracery window in the south wall below the high gable with rectangular lights, and heavy octagonal corner turrets without pinnacles. The west side has a small four-light window in panelling as on the north, then a very long four-light window with two transoms, all set in masonry of widely varied dates. The east side has a high rectangular window in a larger four-centred opening with a weathered offset at sill level; below are roofs of ancillary buildings.

Central Tower

The bold crossing tower rises to 59.7 metres (169 feet) and has four identical faces. It is in two stages, with a lofty eight-bay Perpendicular blind arcade below two large two-light windows in each face. Corner buttresses with pinnacles rise to tall octagonal main pinnacles, linked by seven-bay traceried parapets to a horizontal coping. Although substantially rebuilt in the 19th century, the medieval detail has been convincingly retained.

Eastern Arm

The eastern arm externally is mainly 19th-century work. It has plain coped parapets carried on a continuous corbel-table of tri-lobed arches. Windows are generally formed in pale limestone contrasting with the sandstone walling. The east end has five lancets above five lancets, the upper row stepped, and a large open trefoil in the gable. These are flanked by square buttresses crowned by open octagonal turrets with plain pinnacles, repeated on the gable ends of the east transept.

The east end has a single-bay return with a single lancet at two levels, then the ends of the Lady Chapel aisles. The main body has triple lancets stepped in a containing arch at aisle level, with triple lancets to the two-bay chapel on the south side. On the north side of the choir is a very large ground-level flying buttress below the original flying buttress.

The transepts have triple lancets at two levels, the upper stepped, and on the returns a similar configuration in the first bay with a single small lancet above the aisles. Square buttresses with weathered heads have small nook shafts.

Interior

The Crypt

The central vessel is in four aisles with an apsidal end. Small monolithic columns with square bases and cushion capitals carry plastered groined vaults with broad transverse arches, with a central and two outer rows. This is contained within thick walls with attached half-columns in bedded stone and arched doorways to outer aisles, also with a central row of columns and responds. Remains of a south-side chapel are at the west end, with early stairs to the west transept, and a 20th-century stair flight gives access at the east end, adjacent to Prince Arthur's Chapel. Here also are some excavated remains of a former pentagonal chapel, including some early wall painting.

General Interior Features

The church is stone-vaulted throughout, principally ribbed quadripartite, and neither plastered nor painted except in the east arm. Floors are generally 19th-century black and white marble. The nave, choir, and Lady Chapel are in three storeys with aisles.

East Arm

The east arm makes extensive use of Purbeck marble. Main arcades carry richly moulded arches, those to the choir with some embellishment and wider than in the Lady Chapel. The triforium, above a Purbeck string, is in paired double lights with varied carved spandrel figures, in front of a simpler continuous blind arcade carried through in an independent rhythm. The clerestory, also above a Purbeck string, has a triple stepped opening with Purbeck shafts and a wall passage. The vault, with a longitudinal ridge rib, retains the 19th-century Hardman painted decoration and is carried on Purbeck shafts taken down to the level of the arcade capitals.

The shallow single-bay sanctuary to the Lady Chapel has tall lancets at two levels on three sides. The aisles have simple quadripartite vaulting and wall arcading in the eastern half and east transept. In the east transept, the three-storey treatment is carried into the first bay, with two-level lancets in the outer bay and the end walls, all with an inner Purbeck screen and wall passage. The east crossing piers have banded Purbeck shafts to the full height.

Main Crossing

The main crossing has tall unbroken multi-shaft piers carrying pointed arches in four orders and crowned by an unusual lierne vault, plastered and painted.

West Transept

The west transept reflects continuous growth and alteration from the time of Wulfstan to the 19th century, with a mix of masonry and occasional remnants of detail built into the walls. Both arms have ribbed vaults with diagonal and ridge ribs, with some liernes in the south arm; the joints in the severy panels are very prominent.

In each arm, the east wall retains a bold Norman arch with the two-bay St John's Chapel, which was part of the great 1224 extension. The upper parts of these walls include rectilinear inner screening to windows. The west walls have much plain masonry with sharply cut rectilinear blind panelling above the aisle arches.

In the northwest corner of the north arm is a prominent circular stair turret from early work, but the large window is 19th century. This arm contains many wall monuments. The south arm has a triple lancet in its south wall.

Nave

The nave vaults have a single tierceron rib in addition to the diagonals and ridges, and also have prominent joints to the panels. Arcade piers are multi-shafted, some of these taken full height on the south side, and detail varies slightly between the two arcades, the south being completed some decades later than the north.

Triforia have paired double lights with very varied carved spandrel figures. There is no wall passage in the normal way, but bays are entered from doorways in the roof spaces. The clerestory has a wall passage and stepped triple inner arcade. In the first bay adjoining the crossing there are prominent flying buttresses carried through clerestory and triforium levels, inserted to stabilise the central tower.

The two west bays have a lower arcade and transitional detail, with paired triple round-arched openings embellished with chevron and rosettes under pointed arches, and mixed pointed and round arches to the clerestory inner screen. At the pier junction between old and new bays is some two-coloured stonework of Wulfstan's original build. The large west window is richly glazed in small-scale biblical stories.

The nave north aisle has simple vaulting, but the south has an unusual combination of quadripartite design plus sets of longitudinal and transverse lierne ribs, except for the two west bays. The walls are almost filled with monuments, including in the south side some deep recesses. On the north side, the single-bay Jesus Chapel is enclosed by a decorative stone screen of the late 19th century. The entrance from the north porch is provided with a large internal draught lobby.

Above the south aisle for its full length is the Cathedral Library, with heavy roof timbers adjusted when new shelving was inserted in the 18th century. Parts of two flying buttresses show within the space, and at the west end the floor is lower, over the Norman bays.

Fittings, Monuments, and Stained Glass

Fittings

Most internal fittings are of the later 19th century, many by George Gilbert Scott, including the bishop's throne, choir reredos, choir stalls (incorporating late 14th-century misericords), choir screens (including the main open ironwork screen under the crossing arch), organ cases, and the nave pulpit. The chancel pulpit is an octagonal design of 1642, much restored by Scott. There is a three-bay repositioned 15th-century stone screen on the north side of the retrochoir, and two openwork iron screens by Skidmore. The nave lectern with gilt angel is a Hardman design, and the font, at the west end of the nave south aisle, is by G. F. Bodley.

Stained Glass

Although fragments of 14th-century glass remain in some windows of the nave south aisle, most is of the 19th century, principally by Hardman, including the great west window and the main lancets. The large window in the north wall of the west transept is by Lavers and Barraud, as is that in the east bay of the nave north aisle (1862), which according to Pevsner is "the best Victorian glass in the cathedral".

Of special historic interest is a fine memorial three-light window to Sir Edward Elgar in the second bay of the nave north aisle, above a 16th-century monument of the kneeling figure of Lady Abigail, mother to Bishop Goldisburgh.

Monuments

The cathedral is very rich in commemorative monuments, both free-standing and wall-mounted, including work by Nollekens, Robert Adam, Chantrey, and Westmacott Junior. They are too numerous to be detailed fully here.

Outstanding is the chantry chapel to Prince Arthur (should be Prince Henry), of 1504, a very elegant fine stone "casket" on the south side of the main sanctuary in lacy open stonework with delicate cresting and pinnacles. It has a complex flat lierne vault with pendants and a very rich stone reredos with many figures and complex canopies. These were defaced and plastered over, but when rescued, much of the detail is seen to remain. On its south side, towards the east transept, the chapel is on two levels, with an intermediate band of shields and other devices in blank panelling, above two recesses containing earlier recumbent figures of the Giffard family.

Other major monuments include: - The splendid recumbent effigy to King John, centred below the sanctuary steps - Bishops Walter de Cantelupe and William de Blois in the Lady Chapel sanctuary - The chest tomb to Sir Griffith Ryce, 1523, with very fine in-situ brass top, in the southeast transept - Sir John Beauchamp (executed by the "Merciless Parliament" in 1388)—a splendid painted chest tomb on a medieval base, in the north arcade of the nave, fourth bay from the crossing - Robert Wylde, 1607/08, a large multi-coloured chest tomb, in the south arcade of the nave, fourth bay from the crossing - In the eighth bay near the west end, the large free-standing early Renaissance monuments to Bishop Thornborough, 1641 (north side) and Dean Eades, 1596 (south side)

In the north chancel aisle, opposite the Prince Arthur chantry, are two early monuments, both of early design with recumbent figures in recesses, of interest since they, with adjacent walling, were left "unrestored" by Scott to demonstrate the general state of the building before that action.

Among wall monuments, some of the more striking are: - Bishop Isaac Maddox (1697–1759), in white and grey marble with a great urn and weeping supporters over an extended inscription, in the northwest transept - Bishop Hough, a Roubiliac design of 1746, in the choir aisle - Dean Stillingfleet, 1599, in white marble on a gadrooned base, in the north wall of the northwest transept - Nicholas Billington, 1576, with an esoteric selection of elements, to the right of Jesus Chapel - John Moore, 1615, with his wife Ann and six kneeling figures, with late gothic vaulting over an early Renaissance design (nave north aisle, to left of porch)

The nave south aisle has a whole series of interesting monuments, including: - Bishop Blandford, 1675, a bold Baroque design - A recessed tomb chest of 1428 to Judge Littleton - In the next bay, Bishop Henry Parry, 1616, under a medieval canopy with cusping and mouchettes

Of special local interest is the modest white marble tablet on the west wall of the northwest transept to Mrs Henry Wood (1814–1887), author of the Victorian bestseller East Lynne.

Historical Context

Worcester in the Middle Ages was an unusually large diocese, including both Gloucester and Bristol. It was also unusual in that its Saxon Bishop, Wulfstan, remained in power after the Norman takeover, and it was during his episcopate that the earliest extant parts of the current cathedral—the crypt, nave, and west transept—were established.

Subsequent Gothic phases were conditioned by the pre-existing work, but the east arm was greatly extended, including a second transept (peculiar to English cathedrals), in the 13th century, so that the central tower lies almost exactly halfway along the 130-metre (425-foot) length of the structure.

Rich in architectural detailing and containing a large number of monuments, both free-standing and wall tablets, the building has frequently undergone restoration or reconstruction because the soft sandstone used weathers so quickly. Substantial new work, including replacement of window designs, was undertaken in the 17th and 18th centuries, much damage having been caused also by Parliamentarians. A major restoration, including replacement of window designs of appropriate type, was effected in the 19th century.

The location is enhanced by its setting by the River Severn, but in the 20th century the town has been cut off visually and practically by the principal traffic route passing diagonally across the north and east sides of the building.

The Pevsner description was written before later excavation revealed the details of radial chapels to the crypt.