The Cathedral Church of Peterborough | Page 9

church than had before been contemplated. This idea included a dignified western transept, the dimensions of which, from north to south, should exceed the entire width of the nave and aisles. This would of necessity involve the lengthening of the nave, because the monastic buildings came close to the south aisle of the nave, at the point where the original termination of the church was to have been, as may be seen by the old western wall of the cloister, which is still standing.
The two next abbots were Andrew (1193-1200), and Acharius (1200-1210). To one or both of these may be assigned the western transept. By their time the Norman style was giving place to the lighter and more elegant architecture of the Early English period, the round arch was beginning to be superseded by the pointed arch, and the massive ornamentation which marks the earlier style was displaced by the conventional foliage that soon came to be very generally employed. Most wisely, however, the Peterborough builders made their work at the west end of the nave intentionally uniform with what was already built. Very numerous indications of this can be seen by careful observers. The bases of the western pillars, the change in the depth of the mouldings, characteristic changes in the capitals in the triforium range, and especially the grand arches below the transept towers, which are pointed, but enriched with ornamentation of pronounced Norman character, all point to the later date of this western transept.
At the west wall of the church all trace of Norman work disappears. The arcade near the ground, the large round arch above the door, the great west window and its adjacent arches (not, of course, including the late tracery), are all of distinct Early English character. The whole of this wall may be held to be an integral part of the west front, and not of the transept which it bounds.
When we come to the most distinctive feature of the cathedral, the glorious west front, we find we have no help whatever from the chronicles. Nowhere is there the smallest reference to its building. Other works raised by the Abbots of the period are named, but the noble western portico is never once mentioned. Perhaps the rapid succession of abbots after Acharius may account for this. The building must have taken some years, and the credit of the whole cannot be given to one. There were four Abbots after Acharius before the church was dedicated. They were Robert of Lindsey (1214-1222), Alexander (1222-1226), Martin of Ramsey (1226-1233), and Walter of S. Edmunds (1233-1245). During the abbacy of this last the church was dedicated on the 4th of October 1237, (according to the _Chronicon Angli? Petriburgense_), or on the 28th of September 1238, according to Matthew Paris. The Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grost��te, took the chief part in the ceremony, assisted by William Brewer, Bishop of Exeter. The other chronicle calls the second bishop suffragan of the Bishop of Lincoln, which may mean no more than that he assisted on the occasion. The dedication took place in accordance with the provisions of certain constitutions which had been drawn up at a council held in London. No doubt the building had before this been completed. This date agrees well with the period which all architectural experts accept as the probable date of the erection of the west front. It may have been, and probably was, finished some few years before the dedication. The very fine gables at the north and south ends of the western transept are of the same date as the west front.
Considerable changes in the fabric, as well as additional buildings, belong to the latter part of the thirteenth century. The documents mention two of these. In the time of Richard of London (1274-1295), but before his election to the abbacy, while he was still sacrist, the bell-tower was erected, in which were hung the great bells which were called Les Londreis, because he was himself a Londoner, and had caused them to be brought from London. A previous abbot, John of Calais (1249-1262), had contributed a great bell to the monastery, which he had dedicated to S. Oswald. On it was inscribed the rhyming hexameter Jon de Caux abbas Oswaldo consecrat hoc vas. The other great work of this period was a magnificent Lady Chapel, since destroyed, begun in 1272 by William Parys, then Prior, who laid the first stone with his own hand, and placed beneath it some writings from the gospels. He lived to see it completed, and at last his body was interred within it. Its altar was consecrated in 1290, as is recorded in the register of Bishop Oliver Sutton. It is described as having been built of stone and wood, with a leaden roof, and