Abbey Church Of St Peter And St Paul

Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul

Abbey church, now serving as a city church. Largely built between 1499 and 1533 with substantial Victorian restorations. The Master Masons were Robert and William Vertue.

The building is constructed in Bath limestone ashlar, with repairs dating from around 1900 in Clipsham stone. The roofs are of lead.

The plan is cruciform, comprising a five-bay nave with aisles, a three-bay choir with aisle chapels, narrow two-bay transepts, a crossing tower, a twentieth-century cloistral range, and an undercroft which opened as a museum in 1994. The Abbey now stands completely freestanding, though in the medieval period it was surrounded by monastic buildings. After the Reformation, various houses and shops attached themselves to the church until the last were cleared during the Manners restoration of 1833.

The exterior displays very consistent Perpendicular Gothic, remarkable for its extensive glazing. The three-bay chancel, two-bay transepts, and five-bay nave with crossing tower feature single-height aisles with five-light traceried windows and pierced parapets with pinnacles. The upper register has five-light traceried windows with flying buttresses between. Clasping buttresses terminate with pinnacles at the angles. The two-stage tower has octagonal corner turrets terminating in pinnacles. The seven-light east window contains four main registers within a straight-headed opening between four-stage piers with pinnacles.

The west front has a central doorway with a four-centred arch, its spandrels carved with emblems of the Passion. The carved oak doors, conserved in 2003, were presented by Sir Henry Montague, Bishop Montague's brother, in 1617. These are flanked by statues of saints with canopies, and topped by a carving of Henry VII by Sir George Frampton from around 1902, with a battlemented parapet. A very large seven-light west window with three transoms is framed by aisles, each with a doorway of three-centred head and four-light window above. The turrets are decorated with ladders featuring angels climbing to heaven, a reference to Bishop King's inspirational dream, and are topped by two-panelled stages. The wall above the west window bears much weathered carving of angels and a statue of seated Christ at the apex, also by Sir George Frampton. The pierced parapet with battlements was added by Jackson in 1906.

The south aisle is partly screened by a low nine-bay range, the War Memorial Cloister, comprising the Choir Vestry and Abbey shop, added by Jackson between 1923 and 1927. It is designed in the form of a monastic cloister on the site of the Norman cloister, which was much larger. Four-centred arches house four-light windows with central king mullions, panelled aprons, and battlemented parapets.

The interior maintains very uniform Perpendicular character despite being built over many years by different hands. A low arcade with four-shafted piers carries tall clerestory above four-centred arches, providing an uninterrupted view to the east end. Fan-vaulted ceilings run throughout, dating from various periods. The chantry chapel of Prior Bird to the south of the chancel dates from 1515 and features intricate fan vaulting. The crypt was converted in the 1990s to form the Abbey Vaults visitor centre. The rere-arch of the east window of the south choir aisle incorporates the sole surviving Norman arch.

The reredos dates from 1875. Stained glass is mainly by Clayton & Bell, with the east window dating from 1873. The font of 1710 retains its 1604 font cover. Numerous monuments are displayed throughout, many of which until 1833 were affixed to piers. The organ and organ loft were designed by T.G. Jackson in 1912.

A church existed here from the eighth century; King Edgar was crowned here in 973 by Dunstan of Canterbury as the first king of all England, as indicated by a plaque on the east end. In 1088 the Bishop of Wells removed his see to Bath and commenced a new church, which extended considerably further to the east than the present building. The present church occupies the nine-bay nave of its Norman predecessor, which stretched almost to the Grand Parade balustrade to the east, as shown by a tablet affixed at the east end. Virtually nothing of pre-1499 fabric remains.

Bishop Oliver King (died 1504), Chief Secretary to Henry VII, commenced a wholesale rebuilding that resulted in one of the last great Gothic churches and one of the most consistently uniform in design. King's vision of rebuilding, showing angels ascending to heaven on a ladder, is depicted on the west front along with his rebus of an olive tree and crown. King's masons were Robert and William Vertue, Master Masons to the crown.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, the Abbey Church was offered to the citizens of Bath for 500 marks but was refused; the unfinished church was left gutted and roofless. It was given to the citizens of Bath in 1560 and became the parish church in 1572, when repair and reconstruction began. Queen Elizabeth I visited Bath in 1574 and authorized a national collection for seven years, from 1574 to 1581, for the rebuilding of the Abbey. The east end was repaired first and the north aisle re-roofed; the transepts were completed in 1603. The nave was not roofed in timber until the early seventeenth century; the west doors of 1617 date from this phase and display the arms of Bishop Montague (died 1618). All work was complete by 1616 when Bishop Montague was translated to Winchester. The exceptionally high concentration of memorial tablets, numbering some 640 in all from the seventeenth century onwards, attests to the church's central place in Bath society. Services were held in the east end only, and the nave became a place for promenades and a short-cut until Wade's passage was formed in 1723.

Restoration work commenced in 1824 to 1833 under G.P. Manners; his interventions have largely disappeared. The major restoration of 1864 to 1874 was undertaken by Sir George Gilbert Scott. The most important aspects comprised the re-roofing of the nave in stone, the removal of Blore's screen of 1835, the removal of galleries, and relocation of the organ to the north transept. The next major restoration campaign was directed from 1895 to 1901 by Sir Thomas Graham Jackson, who restored the west front and installed a new organ, with sculpture by Sir George Frampton. Jackson added the War Memorial Cloister (Choir Vestry) along the south side of the nave between 1923 and 1927. Further restoration of external fabric was carried out around 1970; the west front was consolidated and cleaned in 1992 to 1993.

Despite its protracted construction, the Abbey is of huge importance as a major late medieval great church. The monument-crammed interior is of very considerable note for its historical interest.