[This is the tenth of a series of articles giving a brief
dscription of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch
of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]
St Albans Cathedral,
about 20 miles North of London in Hertfordshire is certainly large – its length
only a little shorter than Winchester – and it
has a fine elevated position near to the remnants of the Roman city of Verulamium. Sadly an unlucky
history and botched renovations have resulted in a building only good in parts
and the overall verdict must be that, whatever its charms, it is not an
artistic success.
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| St Albans Cathedral, "The Abbey" |
The Cathedral (always known locally as The Abbey) has a
connection with the first English martyr, Alban, executed by the Romans in the
3rd Century. A Benedictine Abbey was founded in the 8th
Century but the building we see was started in 1077 in the French Norman style
and consecrated in 1115. It had 15 bays and its fine tower survives. An extra 3
bays were added in the 1190s. The Abbey was always rather stark and unadorned,
depending on mural paintings and rich tapestries for colour.
Abandoned Roman Verulamium was looted for its materials
until the 18th century and the Abbey incorporates many Roman bricks
and quarried stones in its fabric. The local stone is flint, rather unpromising
compared to Norman Caen limestone, but much used. Various extensions and
repairs were necessary in medieval times and the Abbey displays a mixture of Norman with Early English
and Perpendicular Gothic styles.
An earthquake (sic!) in 1250 destroyed 3 apses and 2 bays,
the collapse of 2 piers in 1325 damaged much of the roof and 5 bays and the
Abbey was in decline even before the Dissolution, when the remaining plate and
valuables were looted, windows smashed and graves opened. The monastic buildings, excluding the church,
were demolished and the Civil War saw it used as a prison, vandalising it
further. The Great Storm of 1703, cracks in walls and rotting timber beams
later in the 18th century added to the Abbey’s vicissitudes and
demolition was seriously considered. In 1832 part of the clerestory wall
collapsed through the roof, leaving a 30-foot gap and this crisis forced
rebuilding to begin in earnest.
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| The Wallingford Screen 1480 |
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| Lord Grimthorpe |
First LN
Cottingham and then the famous George Gilbert Scott worked on restoring the
Abbey, with much success. However on Scott’s death in 1878, the renovation
project came into the hands of Edmund Beckett, whose great family wealth
derived from banking in Leeds, and who became
the 1st Baron Grimthorpe.
Pevsner is scathing about Grimthorpe, who fancied himself as
an architect, “a pompous, righteous bully”. But money talks and Grimthorpe
provided the bulk of the then immense sum of £115,000 spent on restoration. He
inserted a banal Rose window, now thankfully reglazed, in the North transept.
He had a hatred of Perpendicular Gothic and tore down some examples. He
usefully raised the pitch of the nave roof but his worst effort was the new
West front, misproportioned and unsympathetic. As the critic put it: “His
impoverishment as a designer ... [is] evident"; "this man, so practical
and ingenious, was utterly devoid of taste ... his great qualities were marred
by arrogance ... and a lack of historic sense". Since he died in 1905 much
time and treasure has been spent on repairing Grimthorpe’s errors – his cement
was too strong and has cracked and his beloved ironwork has corroded. The Abbey
was unfortunate in its benefactor.
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| Rosalind and Robert Runcie |
The Abbey became a Cathedral in 1877 and one of its most
attractive bishops was
Robert Runcie, a liberal High Churchman, who became
Archbishop of Canterbury 1980-91. He worked hard for more ecumenical unity with
the Orthodox (fruitful) and the Catholics (John Paul II intransigent) and
conducted the ill-fated marriage ceremony of Charles and Diana in 1981. He
predictably clashed with Mrs Thatcher on the problems of poverty. Runcie and
his lively pianist wife Rosalind were a civilised couple: he is buried in the Abbey churchyard.
---------------------------------
Francis Bacon,
Baron Verulam and 1st Viscount St Alban (1561-1626) was a polymath
philosopher, jurist, essayist and scientist. He is often referred to as “The
Great Bacon” in recognition of his manifold talents but also to distinguish him
from the medieval philosopher and Friar Roger Bacon (1214 – 94).
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| Francis Bacon |
Born into a privileged family (Queen Elizabeth’s adviser
Lord Burghley was an uncle) precocious Bacon struggled to make a career in
politics without much initial success. He was MP for 4 constituencies but made
his living as a barrister at Grays
Inn, eventually becoming
Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor in 1618. He was also Clerk to the Court of
Star Chamber and favoured the law of Equity, based on general principles rather
than the Common Law based on precedent. In this he was a precursor of the
Napoleonic Code.
He wrote extensively on scientific method urging
experimentation and the application of discoveries to practical life, unlike
the contemplative mind-set of many in his time. In this he is credited with the
adoption of inductive reasoning and empiricism, strong ingredients of the next
century’s Industrial Revolution. Yet Bacon was also a puritan and assumed a
dualism of the scientific and the divine.
Bacon is famous for his numerous Essays on a wide variety of
subjects, Love, Ambition, Envy, Usury, Gardens, Studies and so on written in an
aphoristic style – “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and
writing an exact man”, “Let not the sun go down upon your Anger” and coined
phrases like “hostages to fortune”. The many classical allusions make them a
little difficult to the modern reader.
Bacon was always short of money; he was disgraced and lost
office in 1621 accused of accepting bribes – a common enough practice then like
that of our contemporary Greek politicians. He died of pneumonia in 1626, after
he experimented in the snow to see if meat can be thus preserved, by
refrigerating a chicken.
A crackpot theory attributing the works of Shakespeare to
Bacon enjoyed a vogue in the 1890s, especially in the US. It was
mainly based on internal evidence in Shakespeare’s works showing knowledge of
the law, of places and the use of words, but there is sparse external evidence
and the theory relies on an unlikely conspiracy to protect Bacon’s anonymity.
Bacon’s memory was invoked by another Lord Chancellor, FE
Smith Earl of Birkenhead (1872-1930) in a
famous exchange with a judge when he was a rising barrister. The judge was
showing partiality to a young man injured by a tram: FE appeared for the tram
company:
- Judge “ Poor boy, poor boy
- F.E. Smith “Would you like to pass him round the jury box?”
- Judge “That is a most improper remark!”
- F.E. Smith “It was occasioned by a most improper suggestion”
- Judge: "Have you ever heard of a saying by Bacon--the great Bacon--that youth and discretion are ill-wedded companions?"
- F.E. Smith: "Yes, I have. And have you ever heard of a saying of Bacon--the great Bacon--that a much-talking judge is like an ill-tuned cymbal?"
- Judge: "You are extremely offensive, young man!"
- F.E. Smith: "As a matter of fact we both are; but I am trying to be, and you can't help it."
- Judge “Why do you suppose I am on the Bench”
- F.E.Smith “It is not for me to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence”.
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| F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead |
Hard-living and hard-drinking Tory Birkenhead was a bosom
friend of Winston Churchill. His maiden speech in the Commons in 1906 was
famously effective, deriding the Liberal front bench as “a row of extinct
volcanoes” He was a busy Lord Chancellor, reforming the divorce laws and the
laws of property. He was on the team for the fraught negotiations creating the Irish Free State in 1921. On signing the Anglo-Irish
Treaty he remarked to Michael Collins “I am signing my political death warrant”
to which Collins replied “I am signing my actual death warrant” .Birkenhead
lost office with the fall of the Lloyd George coalition in 1922 while Collins
was duly assassinated by de Valera’s IRA in the same year.
A final F.E. story; staggering out of his St James’s club,
he was in the habit of relieving himself in the lavatory of the Athenaeum, the
august club in Pall Mall favoured by bishops and academic authors, of which F E
was not a member. The Secretary eventually remonstrated with him as he emerged
and, all innocence, F.E. riposted: “ Oh, I did not understand, is this is a
gentleman’s club too?”
SMD
4.11.12
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012
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