Chapter V: CURVILINEAR (1315-1360).—But in the fourteenth century a most

wonderful series of great works was carried out in Ely; the noblest works of that or perhaps of any period of mediæval building in England. First of all, it was resolved to give the Blessed Virgin the honour so long withheld from her at Ely. At Ely her rightful position in the presbytery had been usurped by St. Ethelreda, as at Durham by St. Cuthbert. Following the precedent of Bristol and Peterborough, a vast Lady chapel was now built for her on the north side of the choir between 1321 and 1349. Later on, Ely Lady chapel in turn gave birth to King’s College chapel at Cambridge. It is a wonderful piece of mediæval engineering; the vault—a very flat one—being upheld by the mathematical minimum of wall and buttress. But it was more than engineering. It was the product of a time when “Catholic purity in the best natures was still allied to the tenderness of chivalry”—

“When in reverence of the Heavene’s Queene
They came to worship alle women that beene.”

It is said that when Pugin saw the ruins of its arcade, once so glorious in its beauty—wherein are carved, in the spandrils above each canopy, incidents in the scriptural and legendary history of the Blessed Virgin—he burst into tears. He estimated the cost of the restoration of the Lady chapel at £100,000, but said that no workmen could be found competent to do the work.

The year after the Lady chapel was commenced, the central tower fell; and falling eastward, ruined the three western bays of the Norman choir which still remained. Nevertheless, though the monks had suddenly cast on them the vast task of rebuilding both tower and choir, they did not abandon or intermit their work in the Lady chapel. Side by side the different sets of works went on: the Lady chapel, the central tower, and the choir. The tower was finished in 1342, the Lady chapel _c._ 1349, the choir probably not much later. How vast the resources of Ely must have been!

In 1322 Alan of Walsingham, then sacrist at Ely and afterwards Prior, set to work to clear away the _débris_ of the piers of the tower. We may believe that when he saw the great open space in the centre of the cathedral, it may well have occurred to him what a pity it would be ever to close it up again to construct the usual circumscribed square central tower, the width only of the nave, under which one feels as if looking up from the bottom of a well. What was left, when he had cleared away the four tower-piers, was an area three times as large as that of the original crossing. This area was an octagon, with four long and four short sides: four long sides opening into nave, choir, and transepts; four short sides opening diagonally into the aisles. Why not throw four wide and four narrow arches over the piers of the octagon, and on these arches erect, not a small square tower, but a vast octagonal tower? Octagonal central towers were unknown in the English cathedrals; but there are plenty abroad—_e.g._, magnificent examples at Coutances and Siena. The difficulty was how to roof a tower so vast. The noblest course would have been to cover it with a vault of stone. But no English architect ever dared a vault 77 ft. wide. In Spain they might have done it: the vault of the nave of Gerona is 73 ft. in span. In England not so; the York people did not even venture to vault a nave 45 ft. broad.

Some sort of wooden roof, therefore, had to be adopted. That roof could not be a flat wooden ceiling; no beams of the length of 77 ft. could be had; and if put up they would have been unsafe. Instead, then, of a flat ceiling, Alan determined on a conical vault of wood like that of York Chapter-house. But what he wanted was not merely a roof, but a lantern. A roof like the York one would have darkened the whole central area, besides being ugly in appearance and difficult to construct. Instead, therefore, of taking the whole of the York cone, he cut the top off, replacing its sharp spike with an octagonal lantern. In this, or in some such way, Alan got at his design: one of the most original and poetic conceptions of the middle ages; but arising, like all the best things in Gothic architecture, out of nothing but the exigencies of building construction.

The problem was solved on paper, but it proved immensely difficult in execution. Alan finished the stone piers and arches in six years, but the timber-work occupied twelve years more. He had to search all over England before he could find oaks big and straight and sound enough for the eight vertical angle-posts of his lantern. They are 63 feet long, with a sapless scantling of 3 ft. 4 in. by 2 ft. 8 in. Oaks like those do not grow now in England. The eight angle-posts are tied together at top and bottom by collars of horizontal beams, and the whole skeleton lantern rests on the tips of inclined beams, whose lower ends rest on corbels behind the capitals of the great piers below.

And as the inclined beams spread to right and left from the great piers below, it follows that the eight sides of the lantern are not placed above the eight arches below. This engineering necessity, also, is wrought into a new source of beauty. For advantage is taken of it to pierce the wall-space above the narrow low arches with four tall windows, so that the central area, so gloomy at Winchester, Lincoln, and Wells, is irradiated with a flood of light from twelve vast windows; four below, eight above. There is not such a lantern church in the world, and certainly there is no such interior as Ely in England. To the west, dark nave; to the east, darker choir; the centre all light and atmosphere. The views from the aisles across the octagon into the choir are veritable glimpses into fairyland. Externally, too, the octagonal lantern groups marvellously with the great western tower; in height, in bulk, in shape they are in perfect ratio.

Side by side with the octagon went up the choir, as was necessary, that the octagon might have abutment to the east. The choir is “a little over-developed and attenuated in detail”; the windows are squat and ungraceful in proportion, and their flowing tracery wiry and unlovely. Window tracery is the one weak point in the Curvilinear work at Ely. Nevertheless, this choir is one of those works whose delicate loveliness disarms criticism. It even disarmed Mr. Fergusson, who says that the proportions of the presbytery are reproduced in the choir, “with such exquisite taste that there is perhaps no single portion of any Gothic building in the world which can vie with it in poetry of design or beauty of detail.”

But the monks had not finished even now. They were dissatisfied with the lighting of the older part of the cathedral. So they took out the thirteenth-century lancets, not only those of the aisles but those of the outer wall of the triforium of the presbytery, and replaced them by broad windows of flowing tracery. Even this was insufficient, and so they substituted a flat roof for the steep sloping roof of the two western bays of the presbytery aisles, and glazed the openings of these two bays of the triforium. Thus more light was obtained for St. Ethelreda’s shrine, which then stood between these two bays; its exact position is marked by the elaborate boss in the vault of the choir. Externally, the result is hideous, a big hole being left in the choir aisles, where the lean-to roof formerly extended continuously. All this piercing of the walls with bigger windows weakened the supports of the vaults, and the builders therefore took the precaution to weight the buttresses with heavy pinnacles, and to add flying-buttresses.

Beautiful stalls were then put up under the octagon—the panels are modern—and above the ancient white marble tomb of St. Ethelreda a stone canopy and watching-loft were erected. It now stands between the south piers of the presbytery, in the fourth bay from the west. On this was placed the Norman silver reliquary, “embossed with many figures, with a golden majesty blazing in its centre, with countless jewels of crystal and pearl, onyx and beryl, and amethyst and chalcedony.”

Nor was this all. Alan designed for his friend Prior Crauden a little chapel which would be the cynosure of any other cathedral, but which passes almost unnoticed amid the glories of Ely.

VI. PERPENDICULAR (1360-1485).—In this period the monks continued their improvements in the lighting of the cathedral, treating the Norman nave very much as they had treated the Lancet choir—_i.e._, putting bigger windows in the aisles, and also raising the aisle-walls so as to get space for an upper range of windows, in the hope that some light might filter through across the triforium into the nave.

Moreover, they added another storey to the great west tower, making it octagonal, in order to bring it more into harmony with Alan’s lantern. The additional storey threw more weight on the Norman arches below, under which new strengthening arches had to be built. This saved the tower; but the northern half of the western transept collapsed, and has never been rebuilt.

The great east and west windows of the new Lady chapel also soon showed signs of weakness, and Perpendicular was substituted for flowing tracery.

To this period also belong the hammer-beam roofs of the transepts, the cloisters, and the Ely Porta or Walpole Gate.