Peterborough Cathedral is just one of England’s finest buildings, an virtually full Romanesque church on an amazing scale sitting at the rear of a single of the most one of a kind and eccentric Gothic facades uncovered anywhere in medieval Europe. The church we see currently is minor altered considering the fact that its completion in the 13th century aside from unavoidable 19th century restorations and the critical depradations of Civil War injury 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 unique flat picket ceilings of nave and transept. The nave ceiling retains its early medieval painted decoration with an assortment of figures established in just lozenge shaped panels (mainly overpainted in the 18th and 19th hundreds of years but the over-all result is preserved). The 13th century west facade is the most spectacular and unforgettable characteristic of the building, with a few vast Gothic arches forming a big porch in entrance of the building, a exceptional layout, flanked by tiny spires and intended to be surmounted by two pinnacled towers mounting just powering the facade, although only that on the north side was completed (and originally surmounted by a wood spire which was eradicated c1800). The central tower is a astonishingly squat composition of 14th century date (with a hanging vaulted ceiling inside) and along with its counterpart at the west end makes shockingly minimal existence on the city’s skyline for this sort of an great building. The closing addition to the church prior to the Reformation is the ambulatory all around the apse, a exceptional example of late medieval perpendicular with a amazing supporter-vaulted ceiling.
Offered the extensive scale of the creating it is most likely shocking to learn that it has only had cathedral position given that 1541, prior to that it had been basically Peterborough Abbey, but it was one particular of the most effectively endowed monastic residences in the region, as witnessed by the architecture. It was as soon as the burial spot of two queens, Katherine of Aragon lies on the north aspect of the choir and Mary Queen of Scots was initially interred below just before her son James I had her entire body moved to the far more prestigious surroundings of Westminster.
Regrettably the cathedral suffered miserably in the course of the Civil War when Parliamentarian troops ransacked the church and former monastic properties in an orgy of destruction, significantly of which was overseen by Cromwell himself in particular person (which aids make clear its thoroughness). Tombs and monuments ended up brutally defaced, and approximately all the unique furnishings and woodwork were being wrecked, alongside with each bit of stained glass in all the wide windows (only the merest fragments remain these days in the substantial windows of the apse). Worse still, the delightful cloisters on the south facet, once famed for the splendor of their painted windows, were demolished leaving only their outer partitions and some tantalising reminders of their previous richness. The impressive 13th century Woman Chapel attached to the north transept (an abnormal arrangement, identical to that at Ely) was another major casualty, demolished immediately immediately after the war so that its materials could be bought in order to elevate cash for the restoration of the cathedral subsequent the Cromwellian rampage.
In the following centuries substantially was performed to repair the creating and carry it back into buy. There were being major restorations through the 19th century, which provided the dismantling and rebuilding of the central tower (adhering to the same structure and reusing first content) owing to impending structural failure in the crossing piers.
What we see today is hence a marvel of architecture, a church of wonderful natural beauty, but a rather hollow just one owing to the misfortunes of record. One consequently isn’t going to uncover at Peterborough the same clutter of the centuries that other cathedrals frequently possess (in conditions of tombs and furnishings) and there are number of home windows of real notice, but for the grandeur of its architecture it is one of the pretty greatest churches we have.
For far more background see the connection under:-
www.peterborough-cathedral.org.united kingdom/history.aspx
Posted by Aidan McRae Thomson on 2017-06-06 23:28:21
Tagged: , Peterborough , Cathedral , Cambridgeshire , ceiling , architecture , medieval , Gothic , vaulting , vault
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