Bells Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle | Page 5

in the steeple-house, so that the people trembled and shook, and they thought the steeple-house shook: and some of them feared it would fall down on their heads. The magistrates' wives were in a rage and strove mightily to be at me: but the soldiers and friendly people stood thick about me. At length the rude people of the city rose, and came with staves and stones into the steeple-house crying, 'Down with these round-headed rogues'; and they threw stones. Whereupon the governor sent a file or two of musketeers into the steeple-house, to appease the tumult, and commanded all the other soldiers out. So those soldiers took me by the hand in a friendly manner, and said they would have me along with them. When we came forth into the street, the city was in an uproar, and the governor came down; and some of those soldiers were put in prison for standing by me, and for me, against the town's-people.
"The next day the justices and magistrates of the town granted a warrant against me and sent for me to come before them. After a large examination they committed me to prison as a blasphemer, a heretic, and a seducer: though they could not justly charge any such thing against me."
Fuller, about 1660, describes the building as "black but comely, still bearing the remaining signes of its former burning."
Further mischief was also done to the building by the Jacobite prisoners who were lodged in it after the defeat of the Young Pretender.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century some attempts were made at restoring the cathedral, but they for the most part consisted of hiding the beautiful choir roof with a stucco groined ceiling, and plentifully whitewashing the building.
"The roof was 'elegantly' vaulted with wood. But this failing by length of time, together with the lead roof, the dean and chapter some few years ago new laid the roof, and the ceiling being totally ruined and destroyed they in the year 1764 contracted for a stucco groined ceiling, and for cleaning and whitening the whole church. And finding the new lead much torn and broken by wind for want of a ceiling underneath, the upper tire of that was done again, and a coping added to the rigging. And thus proceeding from one repair to another the whole expence hath amounted to upwards of �� 1300."[1]
[1] Nicholson and Burn, page 249.
Eastward of the stalls the choir was formerly separated from the aisles by screens of elaborate tracery work. When the cathedral was "repaired and beautified" as just described, they were removed to outbuildings, and by far the greater part lost or destroyed.
The cathedral was restored 1853-7, in good taste, at a cost of about �� 15,000. Mr. Ewan Christian, the architect of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, undertook the work, and happily succeeded in counteracting the "repairing and beautifying" of 1764.
Carlisle is not a large or notable cathedral, but its delightful Early English choir with its magnificent east window will ever redeem it from being insignificant or uninteresting.
CHAPTER II
THE EXTERIOR
On examining the north side of the cathedral, it is apparent that more than one plan has been followed in the construction of the building as it stands.
There are the remains of a Norman nave whose roof is lower than the choir roof. The choir is Early English with clerestory windows, and the easternmost bay (the retro-choir) Late Decorated; while the tower is Perpendicular. In the north window of the north transept we have a specimen of work of the nineteenth century. Thus the cathedral supplies examples of architecture from the Norman period down to the present time.
The moderate height of the #Nave# (65 ft.), and the treatment of its details, are quite characteristic of the best work of the period when it was erected.
The bays of the aisle are separated by flat buttresses about five and a half feet wide projecting nearly one foot beyond the wall, and the parapet wall in which they terminate is supported above the windows by a corbel table of shields and trefoil heads.[2]
[2] These date from about 1400.
Upon the string-course which runs along the wall unbroken by the buttresses there is in each bay a window with a circular head, flanked by single columns. A ring-like ornament is used as a decoration for one of the mouldings of the arch.
These windows, except the one above the doorway, are restorations. The doorway itself, which leads into the nave, is modern, imitated from the Norman window.
The Clerestory in each compartment has a window which differs from the aisle windows in having the billet as decoration of its outer moulding. The string-course at the spring of the round head runs without a break from one to the other.
There is also an unbroken corbel table above the windows,