Gilded roof boss in the 15th century ceiling of the choir at Peterborough Cathedral. The painted decoration was restored in the 19th century.
Peterborough Cathedral is 1 of England’s finest properties, an nearly full Romanesque church on an impressive scale sitting down driving just one of the most unique and eccentric Gothic facades located any where in medieval Europe. The church we see currently is very little altered because its completion in the 13th century aside from unavoidable 19th century restorations and the critical depradations of Civil War damage in the mid 17th century.
The bulk of the church is 12th century Norman, retaining even its apse (a rarity in England) and even the authentic flat wood ceilings of nave and transept. The nave ceiling retains its early medieval painted decoration with an assortment of figures established within lozenge shaped panels (typically overpainted in the 18th and 19th centuries but the over-all influence is preserved). The 13th century west facade is the most dramatic and memorable attribute of the building, with a few extensive Gothic arches forming a giant porch in front of the constructing, a one of a kind design and style, flanked by small spires and intended to be surmounted by two pinnacled towers climbing just powering the facade, nevertheless only that on the north aspect was completed (and initially surmounted by a picket spire which was taken off c1800). The central tower is a amazingly squat framework of 14th century day (with a putting vaulted ceiling in just) and together with its counterpart at the west conclusion helps make surprisingly very little existence on the city’s skyline for such an great developing. The closing addition to the church prior to the Reformation is the ambulatory all around the apse, a fantastic illustration of late medieval perpendicular with a spectacular supporter-vaulted ceiling.
Given the vast scale of the setting up it is potentially shocking to master that it has only had cathedral status considering the fact that 1541, prior to that it had been basically Peterborough Abbey, but it was one of the most nicely endowed monastic residences in the nation, as witnessed by the architecture. It was once the burial location of two queens, Katherine of Aragon lies on the north facet of the choir and Mary Queen of Scots was originally interred in this article ahead of her son James I experienced her human body moved to the more prestigious environment of Westminster.
Regrettably the cathedral experienced miserably in the course of the Civil War when Parliamentarian troops ransacked the church and former monastic properties in an orgy of destruction, much of which was overseen by Cromwell himself in individual (which assists describe its thoroughness). Tombs and monuments ended up brutally defaced, and almost all the first furnishings and woodwork had been destroyed, along with each bit of stained glass in all the extensive home windows (only the merest fragments continue being nowadays in the higher home windows of the apse). Worse continue to, the pleasant cloisters on the south facet, the moment famed for the splendor of their painted home windows, were demolished leaving only their outer walls and some tantalising reminders of their previous richness. The superb 13th century Woman Chapel hooked up to the north transept (an strange arrangement, very similar to that at Ely) was yet another big casualty, demolished instantly after the war so that its materials could be bought in get to elevate resources for the restoration of the cathedral following the Cromwellian rampage.
In the next hundreds of years considerably was carried out to fix the creating and carry it again into order. There have been key restorations through the 19th century, which bundled the dismantling and rebuilding of the central tower (subsequent the very same layout and reusing primary substance) owing to impending structural failure in the crossing piers.
What we see these days is consequently a marvel of architecture, a church of fantastic beauty, but a fairly hollow a person owing to the misfortunes of historical past. One thus will not discover at Peterborough the similar muddle of the hundreds of years that other cathedrals typically have (in terms of tombs and furnishings) and there are few home windows of authentic take note, but for the grandeur of its architecture it is 1 of the incredibly best church buildings we have.
For more history see the connection beneath:-
www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/background.aspx
Posted by Aidan McRae Thomson on 2017-06-11 09:11:37
Tagged: , Peterborough , Cathedral , Cambridgeshire , roof boss , bosses , medieval , carving , ceiling , angel , gilded
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