Chapter III: The Interior (1)

The cathedral is best entered through the handsome porch in Tom Quad which was cut by Mr. Bodley through one of the canonical houses; in order, perhaps, to announce that the old _régime_ had passed away, and the time at last arrived when "the teachers of theology no longer dwell on the ruins of the church they should protect," as a writer fifty years back had half-despairingly foretold. This porch is a happy compromise between the old heart-breaking descent into a half-ruined nave, and the rather impossible scheme of continuing the church into the middle of the Quad. The former spoilt the cathedral, the latter would have spoilt the college; but by the present arrangement the church serves very creditably for both its purposes, and one may well spend a day there without remembering what Wolsey did to the nave.

On entering the cathedral itself the visitor finds himself in a kind of narthex which is in fact the ante-chapel of a college chapel. Before him is the organ-screen, the entrance under which is veiled by a curtain at service time; on either side he has a glimpse of the aisles. The effect is peculiar, but not unpleasant, although the ante-chapel is a bare bit of modern restoration, wisely left unsculptured, and unrelieved except for some monuments, of which one may gratefully say that they are best where they are. But passing under the screen, all is changed. We find ourselves in one of the most charming and distinctive interiors of a country of interesting churches. The curious and happy arrangement of the great pillars and triforium, the variety and originality of the sculptured capitals, the rich pendent vaulting of the choir, and the touch of mystery in the further chapels, all combine to give to this creation of a long and chequered history an attraction peculiarly its own.

Yet the same bluntness of aspect which impresses one in the spire is the leading characteristic of the interior also. Only in this case the effect is not part of the original plan, but is due to the destruction by Wolsey of the three Western bays. Things must have seemed far worse before the new western bay added twenty feet to the nave, and brought the church right back to the cloister around Tom Quad, for though it only serves as an ante-chapel, it yet helps considerably to break the enclosed appearance, which must have been almost oppressive before.

As it is, Christ Church is the smallest of our cathedrals; for even with the new ante-chapel it measures but 175 feet in length. Instead of being of the usual cruciform plan, it is now almost square,--in fact, the length from the reredos to the organ-screen is 132 feet, while the breadth across from the Latin Chapel to St. Lucy's Chapel is 108 feet. The church is made up of the shortened nave with its two aisles, and ante-chapel, the central tower, the north transept with its one aisle, the south transept, and the eastern half of the church, which itself contains no less than six divisions,--the choir, with its two aisles, the Lady Chapel on the north, and the Latin Chapel (or St. Catherine's) on the north again of that, while on the south is the small chapel of St. Lucy.

If the unusual appearance of the cathedral is partly due to Wolsey's destruction, it is partly due also to its being used as a college chapel, and partly to the fact that in general plan, and to some extent in detail, it is Ethelred's design, commenced seventy years before the great developments of Norman architecture began. Ethelred himself probably only completed the choir and adjacent parts, and even there the work was very much altered in late Norman times; while the nave itself seems to be principally Norman (though built in imitation of Ethelred's work), with the exception of the pillars, which must be earlier than the Norman restoration, and may be of Saxon date, though we have no documentary clue as to what happened from the reign of Canute to that of Henry I., except that the church was, during the latter part of the time, in a very bad way.

The following are Mr. Park Harrison's conclusions as to the general plan of the church, which he set before the British Archæological Association in 1892:--"The design of the building is clearly derived from the original pre-Norman church. The uniformity of plan throughout affords a remarkable instance of the way in which early church-builders imitated previous work, the process being, at Oxford, slow enough to make stages in the construction, that must have occupied instead of thirty years, as stated in the explanatory cards suspended in the cathedral, and quoted in some of the guide-books, at least 160. There were three changes in the profiles of the bases, and three in the abaci, all before the years 1170 or 1180."

Thus the cathedral is a most important evidence of the high state of civilisation at which our Anglo-Saxon forefathers gradually arrived after the landing of St. Augustine. It is some satisfaction to our national pride to discover that they did not owe their culture to the Norman settlement, nor worship in wooden sheds before the arrival of the Conqueror, as was till recently supposed; but that the people who produced poets like Caedmon, artists like Dunstan, and scholars like Alfred and Bede, were also able to build churches worthy of such great names. More will be said about their workmanship when we come to discuss the capitals in the choir, but here we may refer the reader to a drawing in Mr. Harrison's pamphlet, "The Pre-Norman Date," of the apse of a church from the "Dunstan" MS., which shows at what elaborate architecture the Anglo-Saxons had arrived by the year 1000, and illustrates the curious foliage found on the cathedral capitals.

=The Nave= was probably completed during the priorate of Robert of Cricklade (c. 1160-1180), the restoration being begun shortly after 1158, when the Pope's charter was secured. The clerestory, which is transitional, may therefore have been still unfinished at the time of his death.

The remarkable arrangement of the triforium is characteristic of all the four main divisions of the church. From the large pillars spring circular arches worked with heavy round mouldings. _Underneath_ these arches, not above them, is the triforium which is a blind arcade of two arches set in the tympanum beneath the main arch. The reason why there is this space under the main arch is because corbels in the form of half-capitals are set on the further side of the great pillars, a good way below the true capitals, to support the vaulting of the aisles. In this way, says Scott, "the pillars and arches have been divided, as it were, into two halves in their thickness, the half facing the aisle retaining its natural height and proportions, but that facing the central space being so raised as to embrace the triforium stage, the openings of which appear between the two ranges of arches; the clerestory ranging above." Of course, by this arrangement, the pillars avoid the low and stumpy proportions they would otherwise have, and the general effect of height in the nave (which is actually only 41 feet 6 inches) is considerably increased; for, were the triforium in the usual place above the main arches, the main pillars would not come any higher than the lower half-capitals. The arrangement is very unusual in England; though it is found in Italian Gothic, and even in Renaissance work in that country, as in St. Petronio, Bologna. It occurs in the transept of Romsey Abbey, in the choir at Jedburgh, in Dunstable Priory, and in Tewkesbury Abbey. That it existed in Saxon times is proved by a drawing in Cædmon's Paraphrase (c. 1000) in the Bodleian (_c.f._ "The Pre-Norman Date"). Dr. Ingram, who wrote in 1830, thought that this arrangement was made in order to raise the height of the building in the twelfth century, the triforium being the clerestory of the old Saxon church peeping out under the later work. And though his zeal was not according to knowledge (he thought the chapter-house doorway was Saxon), yet there is a possibility that this theory of his may have some truth in it.

Until lately, the church was thought to belong altogether to Prior Guimond's time. Sir Gilbert Scott fixed the date of the rather heavily carved capital over Bishop Berkeley's monument at 1170-80, owing to its close resemblance to certain capitals at Canterbury Cathedral of this period. The others seem to be of earlier date than this, and possibly of Ethelred's time. Strange as they are, however, they do not suggest a Saxon origin so strongly as do those of the choir. They are unique in design, and have neither the massiveness of Norman, nor the crisp severity of Early English work. The light, graceful, and rather fantastic foliage of the three eastern capitals on the south side--almost like iron-work--will be noticed. The third capital on the north side bears some resemblance to two of those in the choir.

The pillars of the nave also present problems of some difficulty. They are alternately circular and octagonal, and the masonry of six of them points with something like certainty to a date considerably earlier than the twelfth century restoration. In the four western pillars the stones are a good deal smaller than those in the two octagonal ones of the next bay: this makes it highly probable that they are of earlier date than the octagonal pillars, which are certainly Norman of the period of the restoration c. 1160. Mr. Harrison believes there is also considerable evidence that the two cylindrical pillars were reduced in girth in order to make them of the same size as the octagonal pillars then introduced; for the lower half-capitals project nine inches on either side beyond the pillars, while in those of the choir, which are unreduced, their projection is only five. There is also reason to suppose that the other pair of octagonal pillars, those by the organ-screen, were cut out of older ones at the same time.

The clerestory windows are transitional, as is proved among other things by their being pointed, for purely æsthetic reasons, and not (as in the case of the north and south tower-arches) from any structural necessity. Each window has a smaller blind arch on either side of it, making a triple opening within to a single window in the wall; and the shafts of this triple opening are made to carry small attached shafts which bear the arches above. The capitals of the larger and lower shafts spread in an unusual manner, having to support a mass of walling.

=The Roof= is a fine example of sixteenth century woodwork, and doubtless replaced a simpler Norman roof of wood; but the brackets which support it were added later to the Norman shafts, in order to carry a Perpendicular vault of stone, which was never carried out. It is divided into small panels, whose ornament, though rich, is rather mechanical.

The nave and choir are used as the College Chapel of Christ Church. In the returned stalls by the organ-screen sit the two censors; most of the undergraduates occupy the benches of the nave (which are modern woodwork carved by Chapman after Sir G.G. Scott's designs), as far as the raised seats where the choir sits; the central benches under the tower are reserved for the freshmen; while the dean, canons, students (_i.e._, fellows), and graduates fill the stalls of the choir, the other seats of the choir being occupied by the Scholars. The public use the aisles, transepts, and chapels on Sundays, but on weekdays are free of the nave for the two special cathedral services.

=Monuments of the Nave=.--Berkeley's monument is attached to one of the north pillars, which it entirely defaces. _George Berkeley_ was Bishop of Cloyne, and died in 1753, during a visit to Oxford; he was as good as he was famous, and his monument is as large as it is ugly. The epitaph, though not altogether untrue, and doubtless well meant, has the unfortunate effect of prepossessing the reader against its subject,--_Si Christianus fueris, si amans patriae, utroque nomine gloriari potes Berkleium vixisse_. Beneath is inscribed the quotation from Pope,--

"To Berkeley every virtue under heaven."

On the pier by the pulpit the talented _Dean Aldrich_ is commemorated by a bust, which shows him to have had a very good face, and bears by way of further adornment a winged skull that is quite unnecessarily hideous. Aldrich has been already referred to: he was the architect of Peckwater and All Saints, the composer of many well-known anthems and services, the author of the once standard "Oxford Logic," and "a most universal scholar." He succeeded Massey, the Roman Catholic dean, who had to "make off and retire across the seas" in 1689. Browne Willis says of Aldrich that "as he spent his Days in Celibacy, so he appropriated his Income to Hospitality and Generosity, and, like Bishop Fell, always encouraged learning; as a celebrated Author tells us, 'to the utmost of his Power, being one of the greatest then in England, if we consider him as a Christian, or a Gentleman,' to which give me leave to add that he always had the Interest of his College at heart; of which I may experimentally say, he was an excellent Governor." He was very modest, and desired to be buried without any memorial, a wish which was at first complied with by his "thrifty nephew." Sunk into a pillar opposite is a curious old brass, to the memory of John Walrond, student, who died young in 1602.

A marble slab on the pavement in the midst of the nave commemorates _Dr. Pusey_, who was canon of Christ Church, in virtue of his Hebrew Professorship, and lies buried here. The Latin inscription mentions also his wife and daughter, and of him it speaks as "Professor of the Hebrew tongue, and Canon of this church (_aedis_), who in the peace and pity of Jesus fell asleep, September 16th, 1882, being 82 years and 24 days old."

=The Organ= stands on a fine Jacobean screen, dating from Duppa's time (c. 1635); it was removed here from before the choir during the restoration. The outer casing belonged to a former organ built by Father Schmidt in 1680. The present instrument was built by Willis & Son in 1884. It has four manuals and pedals, thirty-nine speaking stops, nine couplers, ten pneumatic pistons, six composition pedals, and other accessory movements. It has a very fine tone, and is well placed for sound. Its external appearance is much improved by the pretty green _appliqué_ curtain which now hangs in front of the organist's seat.

=The Pulpit=.--Christ Church is fortunate in possessing an old oak pulpit, escaping thus the garish ventures in marble which have been disastrous to so many other cathedrals. This pulpit is Jacobean (c. 1635). It is a remarkable piece of workmanship, elaborately carved, and well designed: the grotesques on the panels should be especially noticed, as well as the light elevated canopy, surmounted by a pelican, which was at one time transferred to the episcopal throne, and has recently been restored to its original use.

=The Tower= is not square, the nave and choir sides being wider than those of the transepts. For this practical reason (and not because of the transitional character of the work, though transitional it is) the north and south arches are pointed, while the east and west are round-headed. The tower arches seem originally to have sprung from the imposts ornamented with trefoil leaves which can still be seen, though they were cut through when the present capitals were introduced at the time of the Norman restoration. The Norman shafts and capitals were attached to the older and ruder piers. Round these piers are the shafts of very firm and graceful proportions, their capitals decorated with foliage. The lower parts of the vaulting shafts of the great piers are cut off and finished with a narrow beading, which shows that the ritual choir originally stood here, and did not correspond with the structural choir.

The lantern, which had been blocked up, was reopened at the time of the recent improvements, and adds considerably to the appearance of the church. Its first stage is ornamented with an arcade of stout Norman shafts, whose capitals are carved with a breadth and simplicity well suited to the height at which they stand: the arcade is bounded above and below by a heavy round string course. The upper stage has another arcade, of four large round arches on each side, the corner ones pierced as windows. Above is an early sixteenth century roof: it is divided into square panels, in most of which marks of the old ornaments (in the form of Maltese crosses like those of the nave roof) can be clearly discerned. At the springing of the main arches Fifteenth Century corbels have been inserted. In the south-east pier of the tower occurs the break in the masonry which marks, it is thought, the cessation of the building operations when Ethelred was driven out of England by Sweyn. It can be clearly seen from the south choir aisle. The tooling of the masonry half way up the tower has also been found to be marked with the cross lines, which distinguish Saxon from Norman mason's work.

During Mr. Billing's restoration in 1856 a remarkable crypt was opened three feet beneath the paving of the choir between the north and south piers of the tower. This crypt, which was covered up again after investigation, was 7 feet long by 5 feet 6 inches, and just high enough for a man to stand upright; its walls were of stone, and contained aumbries or lockers at each end. There were also slight remains of indented crosses on the western side, and at the east enough was missing to suggest a doorway. The entrance to this chamber may have been through a trap-door, or by a passage leading into the east side. It was clearly not intended for sepulture, as its length was from north to south; and the absence of passages giving convenient access on each side seems to prove that it was not intended for the exhibition of relics. The most likely theory is that it was used as a secret chamber to contain the University chest, which was called the Frideswide chest, because it was kept in a secure place in this church, its keys being in the hands of certain canons by appointment of the chancellor. If this seems a very public place for a secret chamber, it must be remembered that originally it was immediately under the rood-loft, and therefore admitted of a trap-door being concealed; though the resting-place of the chest may not have been kept very secret for all we know. This crypt was probably made in Norman times, and is unique of its kind.

=The Aisles of the Nave and Transepts= show the progress which was made at the end of the twelfth century in vaulting: Mr. Ruskin says of the work here that it is "bad and rude enough, but the best we could do with our own wits, and no French help." Vaulting originally began with square ribs, after wards the ribs became plain half-rounds, and later were moulded Here we find good specimens of the development of all three stages. In the choir aisles the vaulting arches are partly square and the ribs on the groins half-round, of a heavy character. These ribs were inserted at a later period, as is sufficiently clear from the awkward way they are fitted to corbels at the side of the capitals which carry the vault. In the west aisle of the north transept the vaulting is the same, but lighter in character; and there are no corbels, though the fitting is still awkward. In the north aisle of the nave the vaulting is pointed but still with plain half-round ribs, a little lighter than in the transept-aisles. But in the south aisle of the nave, as the builders got on with their work to the westward, their style underwent a further development, and a pear-shaped moulding with a fillet along the edge proclaims that the Early English period had begun. With the completion of this aisle they seemed to have become bolder; for the vaulting shafts in the transepts with their unmistakable Norman capitals, and the solitary ribbed stones resting on those of the south transept, prove that they intended to go beyond the practice of Norman architects and throw a vault across the wider span of the transepts themselves. Perhaps they immediately afterwards discovered that the task was beyond them: at all events the vaulting shafts were left as they are, and the transepts have never been vaulted.

The windows of the nave and transept aisles are uniformly uninteresting. They were originally plain Norman lights, then Perpendicular, then seventeenth century Gothic, and finally "restored" by Scott, in imitation of the Perpendicular work. The windows of Dean Duppa, which they replaced, were certainly not beautiful in their tracery, as may be seen by that at the west end of the north nave aisle, which only the delightful Dutch glass of Van Ling redeems,--but they at least had some character. In the south nave aisle an attempt has been made to hark further back by the introduction of a window in Norman style; but fortunately this has not been persevered with. Only one of the original Romanesque windows remains, by which to judge the effect contemplated by the first architects; it is that containing Bishop King's portrait.

=Glass in the Aisles=.--The glass in the restored Perpendicular windows of the nave aisles (by Clayton and Bell) is very unsatisfactory both in colour and design. Of that in the round-headed window of the south aisle of the nave by an Irish artist (O'Connor) one can only say that it was better conceived than executed. Over the door that leads into the cloister is a half-window by Mr. Wailes.

The "Faith, Hope, and Charity" window next to this (namely, at the west end of the aisle) was Sir Edward Burne Jones' second essay here in this craft. If his first, that in St. Catherine's, the Latin Chapel, was a wonderful success, this one is a not unpleasant failure, but a failure none the less. None of the figures are very graceful; the firing seems to have gone wrong in the most important places, especially in the faces, which are coarse and expressionless, though one cannot help admiring the fortitude of Charity in carrying the bulky infant who presents his vast back to the spectator. The colour is strong, and free from the miserable timidity of the work in the Perpendicular windows,--for the whole thing is of course a work of art (and not of commerce), though an unsuccessful one,--still it fails to harmonise. The window as a whole, however, is saved by the beautiful foliage which forms the background, and by the four slender figures in the tracery.

Others have admired it more. Here, for instance, is an appreciative description from the columns of "The Builder" for April 1888:--"The figure of Hope has a greyish-blue drapery, varied in tint, and diapered with the pattern of a flower in stain. The scarf floating round the figure is sky-blue in tone and lighter than the dress. The figure of Charity has a ruby over-mantle, with a white dress underneath; while the figure of Faith has a blue dress beautifully and richly diapered, the upper portion with a sumptuous Venetian design familiar on the brocades of the sixteenth century, and the lower portion with a sprig of foliage. The tone of the backgrounds is a rich, warm green, and is very carefully painted with foliage, and the contrast yielded by the pale blue of the drapery, and the rich, warm green of the background in the two outside windows, is most harmonious and striking. The detail in this window is very elaborate, and every part of it bears traces of care and thought."

In a corner of this window is an inscription,--_In Memoriam Edwardi Denison hujusce Aedis commensalis Curâ amicorum, A.D. 1870._ Edward Denison, nephew of the Speaker, and son of the Bishop of Salisbury, was the pioneer of those who have since founded the numerous settlements in the neglected parts of London. At a period of acute distress he convinced himself that no good could be done by sending money from the West End unless educated people could be found who would give up their lives to making friends with the poor. Accordingly he took the novel step of going to live in the East End; there he founded a club, and lived apart from the brilliant society to which he was accustomed. Besides teaching and organising, he studied carefully the social conditions of his neighbours, and many of the methods now universally practised date from his experience. Shortly after he had been elected M.P. for Newark he died, at the early age of twenty-nine, and there was "hardly a home within his district that had not some memory left of the love and tenderness of his personal charity."

In the west end of the north aisle of the nave is the last remaining relic of the glass which the Dutchman Van Ling painted in Dean Duppa's time. The rest, which filled the aisle, was removed about twenty-five years since, on the ground that it made the church too dark. There are various opinions about this window, which represents Jonah sitting under his gourd, and the town of Nineveh in the distance. We must confess to a great admiration for it; the foliage is fine and rich, and if it is a little over-strong in its green, that only makes it more characteristic of its age. And, however that may be, there cannot be two opinions as to beauty of the town in the background, which reminds one irresistibly of Dürer; and, with its rich brown houses, bluish roofs, touches of greenery, and fair purple hills beyond, makes the right-hand light of the window a picture of which one never wearies. The whole is leaded in rectangular panes, like Bishop King's window.

=Monuments of the Nave Aisles=.--In the south aisle there are two monuments of interest; that of _Corbet_ (1688) for the characteristic decoration of cupids and wreath work; that of _Pococke_ for further reasons. Edward Pococke (1604-1691), whose bust was moved here from the north aisle by Scott, is represented with pointed beard and wearing the old tufted college cap. He was the great Arabic scholar of his day; the first text in Hebrew characters printed at Oxford was published by him, and his 420 oriental MSS. were bought by the University. Yet he was condemned, under the Commonwealth, by the Berkshire "Committee of Scandalous Ministers," on the ground of "insufficiency," his real offence being that he had used part of the Prayer Book in the public service. There are two portraits of him in the Bodleian, representing him with light hair and dark eyes; and a fig-tree which he planted still flourishes on the south side of the Professor of Hebrew's house. A striking biography of him has come down to us in a sentence--"His life appeared to me one constant calm."

=The North Transept= has the unnoticeable peculiarity, that it turns slightly westward. This is because the choir (into which it is built at right angles) turns a little to the north, to symbolise, it is said, the droop of our Lord's head upon the cross. The western aisle of this transept still remains; the eastern aisle has been lost in the chapels, of which it now forms the respective western bays.

The north bay of this transept bears the marks in its clerestory of late Perpendicular restoration; the carved heads on the string-course above the arch afford an interesting comparison with the Norman heads above the capitals, and are vigorous sketches of contemporary life. The capitals in this transept and those in the north aisle of the nave are strong and varied. The wooden roof of both the transepts was made in the early sixteenth century, earlier than that of the nave.

The tracery of the great north window had been altered and made ugly by the seventeenth century restorers; it was accordingly restored back to its original design by Sir Gilbert Scott.

Under this north window is a panelled tomb belonging to Henry VII.'s time. It is attributed to _James Zouch_, a monk of the priory, who died in 1503. In his will, dated October 16, 1503, and preserved in the Prerogative Office in London, he directs that he shall be interred under the window of the north transept, and a tomb be erected for him in the midst of the same window. He also bequeathed £30 to the convent for vaulting that part of the church, in consideration of his being there buried.

On each of the shields in the quatrefoil compartments of the tomb is an inkhorn and pen-case, indicating, it is said, that the monk was a notary or scribe by profession, though Dr. Ingram speaks of "the pen-case and inkhorn of Zouch" as an heraldic blazonry.

In the north transept aisle there are curious thin, wavy scrolls of brasses, commemorating "Leonardus Hutten," and hard by are two pleasant kneeling figures also in brasses.

Some of the monuments that disfigured the church have fortunately been removed; of these is Chantrey's great sitting figure of Cyril Jackson, which took up most of the north transept, but is now removed to the Library. Of these sequestrated monuments some have been placed in the ante-chapel; among them are the large and simple memorial of Bishop Fell, and those of Dean Gaisford (d. 1855) and Bishop Lloyd (d. 1829).

One cannot but admire the spirit which has caused so many brasses to be set up in recent years to deceased members of the House; and yet it has become an abuse which calls for serious protest. It is now so much a precedent that every member of the foundation should have a brass set up to his memory at his death, that the tribute is become mechanical, and indeed it would now be a marked slight if any don should die without a memorial brass being erected. At this rate the cathedral will in a few generations be entirely defaced unless the tradition be interrupted. As it is, the brasses are all the reverse of beautiful; and, after a period of lacquered obtrusiveness, they become leprous, and afterwards black. A modern brass, indeed, defaces a wall as much as a modern tablet. Surely some more beautiful form of memorial could be devised. The cathedral is in need of many things, of colour, and hangings, and furniture. Could not those tributes of respect take in the future this more honourable form? Then, when an inscription is necessary, the enamelled tablet, with its endless possibilities of jewel-like colour, might be used in place of brass or marble. Something has already been done by the erection of the beautiful eastern windows, and the cathedral has been fortunate in escaping an eruption of episcopal tombs; but latterly there has been an epidemic of brasses, which makes one fear that the artist's work is being forgotten in the temptation to set off an epitaph with a display of Latinity.

=Glass in the Transepts=.--The great window of the north transept is by Clayton and Bell. Mr. Tyrwhitt says of it that it "glows with all the fires which a fervid fancy can bestow upon the inwards of the Dragon."

The glaring glass in the clerestory of the north and south transepts is by Henri and Alfred Gérente (1854), artists famous in their day. It was originally in the great east window (now destroyed), and must have thrown the members of the House into a stupor when in that prominent position. As it is, the clerestory windows are a very inappropriate place for colour, violent enough to "scare a chameleon"; though the glass was evidently put there as the least conspicuous position. It might now be taken out and buried, on the chance that time and the earth may have a mellowing effect.

The half-window above the vestry in the south transept is filled with glass, coloured to look as if it were old, by Clayton and Bell, and given in memory of Dr. Liddon.

=The South Transept= was originally on the same plan as the north, but its aisles have disappeared: that on the west to make room for the cloister; while that on the east is now represented by the chapel of St. Lucy. Its appearance has also been much altered by the division of its southern bay into two stories, which reduces its length, since the lower story is the slype or passage that leads from the cloister to the cemetery, and is therefore to all intents and purposes outside the church. The upper story is reached by steps from the transept floor. The whole of this curious structure, which has the appearance of a small house built into the transept, is a modern restoration, its immediate predecessor having been literally a house where dwelt the verger and his family. In earlier times, however, there had been some kind of erection here, which was used as a sacristy, and of this traces were found by Gilbert Scott which led to the present restoration. As these traces, however, consisted principally of some fragments of a staircase, the present Early English restoration is only conjectural. On the whole it is tolerable, though the heavy and unnecessary central buttress one may well suppose not to be part of the old design. Why the slope of this buttress, which stands in the middle of the transept, should be so stoutly protected against the weather, it is hard to imagine. The carving on the tympanum over the door that leads into the slype is stiff and repulsive. Just to the right of this door is a holy water stoup, very simply cut into the pillar, which proves that this entrance from the slype was usual in old times, when the monastic buildings lay on that side of the church; at present, however, the door is commonly kept locked.

The chamber above the slype, representing the old sacristy, is now used as a vestry. It is reached from the transept, and a staircase in it leads to the gallery above, whence in all probability a door led straight into the dormitory of the monastery. A similar arrangement to this existed at Bristol, which was also an Augustinian house; and there are traces of a door in the wall of Canon Sanday's house which further substantiate the conjecture. Some direct access to the church from the dormitory was a great convenience in the days when matins was said in the middle of the night.

The gallery is now used as a kind of museum for any odd fragments that are discovered in the precincts. Among them is the quaintly carved base of a Norman cross, which before the Reformation stood, together with a pulpit, at the west end of the nave, near the place now occupied by the fountain. The subjects represented are the Fall, Abraham's Sacrifice, the Giving of the Law.

The open triforium directly over the Lyttleton monument in this transept is an important relic of the second Saxon church, and a good instance of the slight things which sometimes turn the scales in antiquarian disputes. Professor Willis had in 1840 pronounced (as against Dr. Ingram, whose pet theory it was that the triforium was the clerestory of Ethelred's church) that the triforium must be of Norman design, because no grooves could be found for the insertion of glass in the shafts, as would be the case if it were Saxon.

Mr. Harrison accordingly, in December 1891, made a close examination of the shaft and small arches in the open triforium which had struck him as of Saxon character, with the result that the grooves for glass were discovered to exist beyond a doubt, but so neatly stopped with mortar as previously to have escaped notice. They can be clearly discerned inside the arches, by anyone with good sight, from the floor of the church. The base of the shaft which carries these arches is equally decisive, for it is "pudding shaped," entirely different from the other bases, and most unmistakably Saxon: it also can be seen from the floor, but is worth an inspection from the gallery over the choir-vestry, whence there is also an impressive view of the church. With this exception, the triforia and clerestories of the transepts are similar to those of the nave, though Saxon tooling has been found on the wall, and there is a break in some of the masonry on the angle shaft near the vestry door, which possesses a Saxon base. The principal arches of the clerestories are not pointed, which proves that the transepts were rebuilt earlier than the nave. Two corbels on the east side of the transept mark the site of a musicians' gallery which once projected beyond the triforium.

=St. Lucy's Chapel= in the second bay of the old south transept aisle was used as a vestry in the days when the transept was devoted to domestic purposes. It must have ruined the effect of this part of the church, and formed an extremely inconvenient vestry. Now the chapel is used, not very appropriately, as a baptistery; it contains a font, well designed and carved, which was executed in 1882. It is Norman or earlier, with the exception of the eastern wall, which was rebuilt in order to hold the present beautiful window. This window is of an uncommon type; the three lights, less than half the height of the tracery above them, commence considerably below the spring of the arch. The tracery, which reminds one of that in Dorchester Abbey, a few miles away, is flamboyant in character, suggesting the form which the decadence of Gothic architecture took in France; only in this case it is a decadence that is vigorous as well as graceful.

The chapel recalls the time when King Charles held his court in Christ Church, at the time of the Civil War, many cavalier knights being buried here.

=Monuments of the South Transept and Chapel=.--There are the tombs of several prominent royalists in the transept as well as in St. Lucy's little chapel, most of which might well be spared were it not for their historic interest. That of Viscount Grandison, for instance, consists of an urn on a pedestal, altogether huge and hideous; yet Grandison was a brave and doubtless a graceful cavalier, who died in Oxford of wounds received in the attack on Bristol in 1643. Another ugly, big monument is that of Sir E. Littleton, keeper of the Great Seal, who took up arms "for the royal majesty, during the execrable siege of this city." Sir John Smith is also buried here: he "redeemed the banner royal" at the battle of Edgehill, was knighted on the field by the King, and died of his wounds in 1644, at the early age of twenty-eight.

A very odd monument is that to Viscount Brouncker, who died in 1645, having been chamberlain to the young Charles, then Prince of Wales. A smartly dressed gentleman and his wife are represented seated in meditative attitudes, each with an elbow on the table, while between their two elbows is propped a skull.

In the tracery of St. Lucy's chapel is to be found the finest old glass in the cathedral. It belongs to the year 1330, or thereabouts, and enables one to imagine what the church must have looked like when glass of this magnificent description abounded, and hangings and altar-pieces and wall-paintings, hardly less rich, filled every conspicuous position. In the uppermost compartment of the tracery is a figure of our Lord seated in glory; below there are angels with censers, and next two Augustinian monks in blue and white robes, kneeling with outstretched arms; then come coats of arms, and various grotesque beasts, all most richly coloured in ruby and blue and green and gold. Below, in the principal spaces, are (1) St. Martin on horseback giving his coat to the beggar; (2) the martyrdom of St. Thomas à Becket: St. Thomas' head has been knocked out by some fanatic, and replaced with white glass; the armour and shields of the knights should be noticed; (3) St. Augustine, who holds a pastoral staff, is teaching his monks and others. In the next four spaces are:--The head of a king; St. Cuthbert, carrying the head of St. Oswald, and wearing a green chasuble; St. Blaise, in a mulberry-coloured chasuble; the head of a queen. The glass in the three main lights was destroyed, and then replaced by some of seventeenth century work, but this too is now gone, all except a portion of the upper part, which shows that the design was architectural in character, and the colour that of fog-smitten stone-work.

=The Choir= is in four bays with a presbytery; it is in the same style as the rest of the church, with the exception of the Perpendicular alterations in the upper part. It was formerly filled with heavy, ugly woodwork, and half way up all the pillars may be traced the modern stone-work which had to be inserted when the stalls and panelling that had encased the pillars were removed. Not a wreck of the old wood remains, and the choir is now seated with walnut-wood stalls by Farmer and Brindley, along which runs a light iron screen, very carefully wrought by Skidmore of Birmingham in 1871. It is copied from Queen Eleanor's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The pavement relaid in 1871 contains representations of the cardinal virtues, copied from the church of the Knights of St. John at Malta. Yet there were original artists to be found twenty-five years ago!

The pillars of the choir are larger than those of the nave, which appear to have been reduced in girth (see p. 54). They are (according to the theory of p. 9) part of Ethelred's church, dating from the first decade of the eleventh century; but their bases belong to the Norman restoration, and were probably put in by Cricklade. The triforium is also Late Norman, here as throughout the church, with the single exception of the one window in the south transept.

It is in the capitals of the choir that the most striking evidence of Saxon work in the church is said to lie. Thus they are of remarkable interest, besides being very fine specimens of stone-carving. If the visitor sits in a stall in the middle of the south side of the choir he will have the three most important capitals before him, and can study them at leisure. One striking feature common to them all is that they bear very evident traces of having been worn by the weather. It has been found by Mr. Drinkwater that the stone of which they are made is too durable to have been affected by the atmosphere while under cover; which would prove that they must have been in their present position exposed to the driving rains from the south, during the long period when the church was in ruins, that is to say, before the restoration of the twelfth century.

Another significant feature which these three capitals have in common, not only with each other but with all the others in the choir, is that their abaci are extremely thick, just twice as thick as those in the transepts and nave; and thick abaci are a mark of early work.

Their ornamentation is remarkable, partly Saxon and partly Oriental in character, and said to be unlike Norman work. Sir Gilbert Scott himself noticed the latter characteristic of these and other capitals in the church. "The foliated ornament," he wrote, "assumes a noble character, evidently evincing a study of the ancient Greek, which was effected through a Byzantine medium." We have already seen, in the History of the Cathedral, how this Byzantine influence is to be accounted for by the fact that Greek clergy flocked to the court of Ethelred's brother-in-law Richard; and further, it must be noted that many illuminated MSS. of Saxon date show that Greek ornament was admired and studied at the time. Professor Westwood, in his "_Lapidarium_," points out that in Saxon art the designs of stone-carving are so completely identical with those in the MSS. as to lead us to suppose that the artists of the illuminated drawings were also the designers of the architecture. So much is this the case that, "the age of a particular MS. being ascertained, we are able approximately to determine also the age of the carving." Professor Westwood was, in fact, among the first to be convinced of the Saxon origin of the capitals we are discussing.

It is worth while to give a few illustrations of this very important point. The first capital from the tower on the north side of the choir is ornamented with that curious _spuma_ or wave-shaped work which has just the dip and swing of a wave of the sea as it curls over before breaking.

In a Psalter of the beginning of the eleventh century (B.M. Har. 2904) is to be found precisely the same vivid conventionalism.[2]

The second capital is the most curious one in the church, and is also the most strikingly Saxon, the stalks issuing from pipes or tubes being as characteristic almost of Saxon as interlaced work is of Celtic art.

Standing immediately under this capital, one is able clearly to discern the faces on the corner volutes, which have each a crown of leaves like one found in the famous tenth century "Dunstan" MS. in the British Museum. One of these faces is that of a man, very heavy and stupid-looking; the other that of a comely woman. It is hardly fanciful to suppose that they are portraits of the blundering Ethelred and his wife Emma.

The third capital is decorated with some branching work hardly less curious, and above it is a head wearing the unbifurcated mitre, which dropped out of use in the eleventh century. Of the three capitals on the south side of the choir, which do not bear the same signs of weathering, one has branching work, and the other two reworked leafage, such as is found also in one on the north side of the nave.

As for the triforium and the rest of the work of the choir, it was all so much restored in the twelfth century that one cannot find in it any sign of pre-Norman work.

The pendent ceiling is one of the most striking features of the cathedral, and is worth careful study. Ferguson considers this work to be the most satisfactory attempt ever made to surmount the great difficulty presented in all fan-tracery by the awkward, flat, central space which is left in each bay by the four cones of the vault. At Gloucester, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster, and other places, various attempts were made to deceive the eye, and hide the unmanageable space; in Henry VII.'s Chapel the well-known pendants were boldly introduced with this object. None were wholly satisfactory, but, says Fergusson:--

"Strange as it may appear from its date, the most satisfactory roof of this class is that erected by Cardinal Wolsey in the beginning of the sixteenth century [this is a mistake, the roof having been built some time before] over the choir of Oxford Cathedral. In this instance the pendants are thrust so far forward, and made so important, that the central part of the roof is practically quadripartite. The remaining difficulty was obviated by abandoning the circular, horizontal outline of true fan-tracery, and adopting a polygonal form instead. As the whole is done in a constructive manner and with appropriate detail, this roof, except in size, is one of the best and most remarkable ever executed."

Fan-tracery is a peculiarly English feature, and was invented, according to Fergusson, in order to get rid of the endless repetition of inverted pyramids which earlier vaulting produced. He therefore considers it an improvement on the vaulting of the early English and Decorated periods; and, as he thinks the ceiling of Christ Church Cathedral to be the best example of fan-tracery, he comes near to pronouncing it the finest in the world.

It certainly must strike every observer as possessing exceptional beauty. At once rich and light, it yet accords wonderfully with the homely Norman work that it crowns, and gives a happy finish to the most important part of the cathedral. Even the lantern pendants seem more graceful than is usually the case with those strange architectural solecisms. Mr. Ruskin calls the ceiling "true Tudor grotesque, inventively constructive, delicately carved, summing the builder's skill in the fifteenth century."

The ceiling is certainly too early in design to have been built by Wolsey, as was supposed. But there are traces in the work which have led some antiquaries to suppose that, though begun about 1480, its western bay may not have been finished till the Cardinal's time, or even till the end of Henry's reign. The head on the large corbel over the Dean's stall certainly wears a Tudor crown, and is bearded. This would lead one to suppose it to be a likeness of Henry VIII.: furthermore, the face is broad but emaciated, with the beard straggling; and we learn from historians that the King did let his beard grow longer at the end of his life, when he was worn and ill, and expressed more penitence for his many misdeeds than he is generally given credit for. The woman's head on the corbel opposite, also wearing a Tudor crown, would probably be the last of his wives, Katherine Parr. The face wears the happy expression of one delivered from great anxiety.

In the arched space nearly above these heads are four canopied figures: on the north, St. Peter with his keys, and St. Mary Magdalen (suggestive of Wolsey's own college in Oxford); on the south St. Luke, over his bull (possibly because of the connection of St. Frideswide's with the healing art), and St. Catherine, holding the remains of a sword in her right hand, and retaining a fragment of the wheel in her left. St. Katherine will be found in the same attitude in a painted window of the Latin Chapel. The central bosses of the roof are interesting. Over the altar is the head of our Lord, surrounded by an aureole, the beard twisted into three points: in the next bay is the Madonna and Child, and next a graceful figure, identified as St. Frideswide by the curious sceptre with heavy foliage at the end, which she is again represented with in the middle window of the Latin Chapel. An angel is on either side of this figure. In the next bay is an archbishop (Augustine?) with his cross; and on the last a bishop (perhaps Birinus), holding his pastoral staff and supported by two figures which may be chaplains or acolytes.

The clerestory of the choir was converted into Perpendicular at the time when the roof was vaulted. The old walls were simply covered with panelling, and the old windows enlarged into Perpendicular ones.

=The East End=, now one of the most characteristic features of the cathedral, is the work of Sir G. Gilbert Scott, and is supposed to be a reproduction of the original twelfth century design: for enough fragments of the old work were said to remain on the walls to leave no doubt as to its original plan. Of course the detail has the usual machine-made look of modern carving; but it is something to have recovered the original effect, especially as the Decorated window which it has replaced had been spoilt in the seventeenth century, when it was altered from its original five lights to three. The design, says Mr. J.H. Parker, is very rare in England, and not common anywhere. It consists of a large wheel-window, with an intersecting arcade under it, and _two_ round-headed windows below: the wheel-window is set in a large round arch that seems to rest on two stout pillars. This round window is an imitation of an old one in Canterbury Cathedral. The arcade has a truer and less mechanical look than most of the restored work. The whole effect of the East End is excellent; dignified and varied, it has something of that refined homeliness which is so strong a characteristic of the cathedral. The stained glass in the windows by Clayton and Bell is not at all unpleasing when seen from a distance. It is in character with the stone-work, and only just fails to be really fine in colour. Dr. Liddon and Sir John Mowbray were the donors of the glass.

It was formerly thought that the Norman presbytery was part of the original choir, and therefore presumably the earliest portion of the church; but Mr. Harrison gives the following technical reasons for holding that it was an addition to an older building with an apse, built by Ethelred:--