The Beginnings
The story of Durham Cathedral really begins further up on
the East coast of England, on the little island of Lindisfarne. This site is important
in the history of art, for it was here that the Benedictine community produced
the Lindisfarne Gospels (before 721), one of the great illuminated manuscripts
of the world. Less happily, Lindisfarne was also the first part of England to
be attacked by Vikings (793) and in 875 further attacks led them to leave the
island. Carrying with them the remains of their venerated Saint Cuthbert (died
687), the monks led a peripatetic existence until they settled in Durham in
995. There they built a church of some kind, the ‘white church’ of the tenth
century, of which no trace remains.
The next significant date is 1066, the year of the Norman
invasion led by William the Conqueror. Under the Normans, the Church in England
was reconstructed: dioceses were redrawn, and bishoprics and other top jobs
were, in many cases, given to Norman nobles. This colonial occupation also put
Saxon England in close touch with international currents of thought and
culture. And so churches and castles based on Norman models were constructed,
and earlier Saxon constructions were destroyed to make way for them. The style
of architecture the invader-occupiers brought with them was Romanesque (known
as Norman in England), characterised by massive, heavy constructions,
monumental and grave. The churches had much in common with fortresses, prompting
the art historian Ernst Gombrich to call the style ‘Church Militant’. For
churches were indeed conceived as fortresses, from which religious communities
fought against the forces of evil.
Bishops
Durham now fell under the control of the new bishop Walcher
(1071-80), a Lotharingian appointed by William I. The first great building was the Bishop’s
castle (which survives; Rochester in Kent is another example of castle and
cathedral close together, and in both cases the castle looks over a river). The
church was at this time run by secular canons, and Walcher planned to replace
them with Benedictine monks from the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow.
In 1080 Bishop Walcher was killed by native Northumbrians,
apparently angered with him and his entourage at their ineffective response to
invasions by Scots. The next Bishop was William of Calais (1080-96; also known
as William of St Carilef), who installed Benedictines to run the church and set
about the construction of communal buildings for them around a cloister (these
were on the south side of the present Cathedral and very little remains). In
1092 the Saxon church was demolished and in 1093 work began on what was to
become one of the great Romanesque cathedrals of Christendom, the Cathedral we
see today. Bishops in those days were expected to raise the funds for such
projects themselves, and often ended funding them personally. William – who was
exiled for political reasons for some years – was succeeded as Bishop by
Ranulph Flambard (1099-1128), who oversaw building to its completion ‘usque
testudinem’, up to the roof. The entire building, then, took forty years, a
timespan comparable to Cluny (1088-1130, 42 years) and Santiago de Compostela
(1078-1122, 44 years).
Durham
Like any other cathedral, Durham served several purposes. It
was the seat, or cathedra of the
Bishop, the church where the monks sang their offices, and the shrine of the
relics of St Cuthbert, whose great reliquary-coffin was placed behind the high
altar upon nine columns, tall enough to allow prayers to be conducted below.
Unlike churches on the pilgrim route, like St Sernin of Toulouse,
pilgrim-tourists do not seem to have been encouraged: there was no ambulatory
to allow easy access to the relics, and no crypt to accommodate popular
devotion. Vistors and congregants found themselves shut off from the choir, the
space reserved for the monks, by a great screen and would have seen very little
of the hours of the day celebrated by the community.
Design
Durham’s design was based on the great churches known to the
conquerors, like Jumièges and St Etienne at Caen. But it is significantly
larger than these, and the same length as Old St Peter’s in Rome, which was
clearly used as a distant model. Its plan is typical of the period: a West End,
flanked by two towers, leads to a nave and two aisles. There are eight bays,
marked by a stately rhythm of alternating compound piers and simpler
cylindrical columns. These lead us to the Crossing, the central space where the
nave meets the choir, marked by a central tower. To either side of the Crossing
are the arms of the Latin Cross, the north and south transepts. Beyond the Crossing the choir stretched for
four bays, leading to the Eastern apse. The aisles on either side of the choir
also led to eastern apses. The Elevation
is in three parts: an arcade, a gallery over the aisles (also sometimes called
triforium or tribune), and an upper clerestory, to let in the light.
Characteristic of the Norman style (as the Romanesque is called in England) is the
absolute clarity with which all the modules, stories and sections are
articulated. That is to say, it is immediately clear where one section ends and
another begins, and how they are related to each other.
Main Features
There is much to marvel at in Durham Cathedral, which, seen
on its rocky promontory from the river
Wear below, has the most stunning exterior of any of England’s cathedrals.
Inside, building work extending over four decades leaves its trace, and it is
possible to see where builders altered their plans as they went along: the
design of the vaulting, for example, changes as it extends from the choir
aisles to the transepts and then the naves. The wall passage in the clerestory
seems to have been a later thought, and the decoration increased dramatically
after 1099: by this time the building, which customarily started at the East so
the monks could hold their services as soon as possible, had reached the nave.
But to follow the intricacies of the design as it proceeded a more detailed
guide is necessary.
Two central features in Durham stand out: the ribbed
vaulting and the carved decoration. Of these, the first has received most
attention in histories of architecture as it is a groundbreaking structural
development. It also holds the onlooker’s
gaze, which can follow an engaged shaft up a composite pier, ascending theough
gallery and clerestory and continuing in an unbroken line across the ceiling
and down again, a thrilling drama in stone. From the point of view of
materials, ribbed vaulting is lighter than barrel or groin vaults, and so a
good solution to the great problem of all stone vaulting – how to carry the
immense weight, with its downward and lateral thrust, and yet have some
wallspace available for windows? In a
ribbed vault, instead of a solid mass of stone, a frame of ribs stretching
diagonally between piers carries an infill of light masonry. There is some
reason to believe that initially this vaulting was only intended for the Choir,
to mark it as a space of unusual sanctity (again, Old St Peter’s in Rome could
have been the model, with its stone ciborium over the altar; Kilpeck in
Herefordshire is an example of a Romaesque church where ribs are used only in
the sanctuary). Then at some point, the argument goes (though nothing is
certain), it was decided to extend tibbed vaulting into the transepts and then
into the nave. As the work went westwards, changes were made to the angle of
the arches and the size of the columns. There were other arguments for this
project besides the practical ones. Aesthetically, the ribbed vaulting suits
the design of the rest of the building, with its bold geometrical shapes and
criss-crossing lines. And the stone vault would have increased the value of the
Cathedral as a status symbol for diocese, Church and Crown. The ribbed vaults
and pointed arches of Durham look ahead to the Gothic style of the next
century. Yet oddly builders of the time appeared to be less excited by them
than architectural historians today, since churches with fully ribbed vaulting
do not appear in England until the late twelfth century.
The ribbed vaulting is also part of the second notable
feature of Durham, its decoration. It is a wonderful example of the Norman
style, with its emphasis on repeated geometrical designs, simple, bold and
clear. The engaged shafts, running from the floor to the vault, have already
been mentioned: these add to the vertical thrust of the building, in
counterpoint to the horizontal march from West to East. This horizontal
movement is made more interesting by the alternation of great composite piers,
where a central column has shafts and internal half-columns attached, acting as
internal buttresses, and smaller cylindrical piers. This creates what are
called double bays, with two sets of diagonal rib vaults between each set of
composite piers, which are joined by transverse pointed arches. Decoration renders the great stretches of
stone interesting to the eye, presenting intricacy amidst the vast scale of the
building: the arches have undulating patterns carved on their underside, called
soffit rolls. Columns are carved with spirals, chevrons, lozenges and flutes. Elsewhere
such decoration would have been common in painted walls, but in Durham it is carved
into the local sandstone itself. If this
geometrical design hints at an Eastern or Arabic source, that sense becomes
stronger in the interlocking arches on the inner walls of the aisle, which are
echoed on the exterior. We can see these in Islamic architecture, and in
English gospel books of the period.
Later changes
Durham today is still largely the Norman Cathedral of the
late eleventh century. But there have been some changes. In c.1175-80 the
Galillee Chapel was added at the Western end, a five-aisled building in a more
Gothic style, which served as porch and Lady Chapel. Here is deposited another
relic, the remains of the great Anglo-Saxon monk and historian the Venerable
Bede. In the thirteenth century, the
eastern end of three apses was replaced with a long arm, like a second smaller
transept, known as the Chapel of nine altars. This allowed several monks to say
divine office simultaneously, and would have made it easier for pilgrims to
circulate. The great central tower was not completed until 1500, only 40 years
before Henry VIII dissolved all English monastic communities in the
Reformation. Over time the wooden furnishings of the Norman church have
disappeared, along with the rood screen and pulpitum which would have blocked
the laity off from the clergy. Yet it is still possible to imagine standing in
the great nave, with less light than today, and candles flickering across wood,
textile, stone, paint and metal. The total effect of architecture goes well
beyond the forms laid down in stone.
