Bells Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich | Page 8

tower, on the south side, was erected Bishop Goldwell's altar tomb.
His successor, Lane, occupied the see but a short while, 1499-1500, and in turn was succeeded by Bishop Nykke--he is more generally called Nix (snow), sarcastically, as his character appears to have been of the blackest. During his episcopate, the cathedral was again visited by fire in 1509. The sacristy, with all the books and ornaments, was consumed, and the wooden roofs of both transepts totally destroyed.
Bishop Nykke constructed the stone vaulting that, covering both arms of the church, completed the stone vaulting throughout the cathedral. His chantry, which is on the south side of the nave, and occupies two bays of the aisle, was arranged by him before his death, and its richness is inversely proportionate to the degradation of his character.
The tracery in the Norman arch leading from the south aisle of the presbytery into the transept, is of late Perpendicular style, and was added by Robert of Calton, who was destined to be the last prior but one of Norwich: William Castleton was the last prior and the first dean. Bishop Nykke died in 1535-6, and was succeeded by William Rupgg or Repes, who was the last bishop elected by the chapter of the monks of the Benedictine monastery of Norwich. Monasticism was doomed; Wolsey had fallen, and his property had been confiscated in 1529. The smaller monasteries were dissolved in 1536, and in 1538 the greater shared the same fate, among them Norwich.
Most interesting is the parallel which can be drawn between the history of the Church and of that architecture which she especially fostered. Gothic or Christian art was developed from the remains of a Roman civilisation, and so long as it had the healthy organic growth which was consequent on the evolution of a series of constructive problems fairly faced and in turn conquered, and again, stimulated by the growth of the Church, to which it was handmaiden, developed style after style in regular sequence, until the builders, finding they had conquered construction, took to imposing ornament. From that time, instead of ornamenting construction, they constructed ornament; and as the Reformation came to the Church in the sixteenth century so to architecture came degradation. And then the Renaissance of pagan types, from which the Gothic had derived its being by a rational development, was by the revivalists of those days hotch-potched into a more or less homogeneous mass, which even the genius of Wren could leave but coldly pedantic.
The history of the architecture of the cathedral might safely stop with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538, since when it is a mere recapitulation of the doings and undoings of various sets of more or less deeply incriminated fanatics and restorers.
So that we do not feel inclined to enter into more detail, in the few remaining notes on the history of the structure.
Dean Gardiner, 1573-89, was a great reformer, and, as we have already noted, pulled down the thirteenth-century Lady Chapel, and as well the chapter-house.
In 1643 the cathedral was taken possession of by Cromwell's soldiers, and the work of spoliation carried on. The organ was probably destroyed at this time, for Dean Crofts set up a new organ in 1660, the case of which was re-modelled in 1833, and still remains. It is also perhaps needless to state that the cathedral was repeatedly whitewashed during the eighteenth century.
In June 1801 a fire broke out in the roof of the nave, but was extinguished before much damage had been done.
The various works effected during this century are mentioned specifically elsewhere in these notes, under the headings of the parts of the building where they have occurred.

[Illustration: The Cathedral from the South-West Angle of Cloisters.]
CHAPTER II
THE CATHEDRAL--EXTERIOR
Norwich Cathedral does not tell to great advantage from the outside: its chief charm is undoubtedly the interior. It stands in a hollow, on what is probably the lowest ground in the city. The best view of the cathedral is obtained from the low ground to the eastward near the river, and close to Pull's Ferry; here the extreme length of the nave, which Fergusson remarked justified the addition of western towers, is lost partly by foreshortening, and by the projection forward of the south transept, over which the old Norman tower, with its later battlements and spire, rises grandly above the sweep of the apse, with the still remaining circular chapels below.
#The Cathedral Precincts#, or Close, running from Tombland eastward to the river, are entered by two gates to the precincts and one to the bishop's palace.
#The Erpingham Gate#, opposite the west front of the cathedral, was built by Sir Thomas Erpingham, and as an architectural compilation "is original and unique." In elevation it consists of one lofty well-proportioned arch supported on either side by semi-hexagonal buttresses taken