| Southwark Cathedral, London | ||||
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photos to enlarge Notes in italics are from London 2: South by Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner (1983) Yale University Press, New Haven and London. |
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| Tower and south transept - Nave - West end of nave | ||||
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| Choir and Retrochoir | ||||
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St Saviour and St Mary
Overie, London Bridge. An Anglican cathedral since 1905, but in the
Middle Ages the Augustinian priory of St Mary Overie. The priory founded
in the early C12 had been preceded by a pre-Conquest foundation. The C12
church was damaged by fire c.1212 ... |
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In the churchyard, a monument of 2006 to a chief of the Mohegan tribe of New England called Mahomet Wyonomon. He came to England in 1735 to petition for the return of stolen lands, but died of smallpox while awaiting an audience with the king. More details on the plaque above. |
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| NAVE looking east into the choir, and looking west. Except for very few C12 remains, the nave is wholly of 1890-7 ... Blomfield's design (...) was inspired by the choir (C13), but is a little more ornate. ... (The following is Pevsner's description of the choir, which applies equally to the nave which is more clearly seen above). The triple shafts facing the nave run right up to the springing of the vaults, although the imposts of the arcade capitals and the sill course of the triforium are carried round them. This taking down of the vaulting shafts right to the ground instead of resting them on corbels above the piers recall French rather than English practice ... Equally untypical of English Gothic is the neat way in which the vault springs from the clerestory sill level, instead of from just above or below it. Between arcade and clerestory there is not a gallery or tribune (as e.g. at Lincoln, or later at Westminster Abbey), but an arcaded wall passage of four even arches (not a continuous passage, as it is interrupted by solid wall over the piers). ... The clerestory has single lancet windows and a wall passage behind a stepped triplet arch, i.e. a wholly English design. ... | ||||
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| The RETROCHOIR
(C13) has four aisles. Triple lancets at the east end of each aisle.
The six piers have four shafts en délit in the cardinal directions and four
hollows in the diagonals - not a characteristic early C13 type (the use of
diagonal hollows is difficult to parallel until the C14). ... NORTH TRANSEPT, east wall. Blank pointed C13 arches on Purbeck marble shafts above much restored C12 round arches. The vaulting shafts are also of Purbeck marble. The transept is two-storeyed, with no triforium and a clerestory with wall passage and windows of one or two lights. The arch to the N choir aisle, next to the crossing pier, is awkwardly stilted, probably a C14 modification when the crossing piers were strengthened. ... |
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