Archaeological Journal

ISSN: 0066-5983 (Print) 2373-2288 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raij20

Salisbury Cathedral. Perspectives on the

Architectural History. By Thomas Cocke and Peter
Kidson

Eric Cambridge

To cite this article: Eric Cambridge (1995) Salisbury Cathedral. Perspectives on the
Architectural History. By Thomas Cocke and Peter Kidson, Archaeological Journal, 152:1,
478-479, DOI: 10.1080/00665983.1995.11021463

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00665983.1995.11021463

Published online: 22 Dec 2014.

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 478 REVIEWS

To single out any particular chapter is difficult since they are all well researched and presented. I
did particularly enjoy Margaret Gibson's chapter on the Normans and Angevins, which brought the
activities of the monastic community to life. Jeremy Gregory's coverage of I66o-I828 put this
extremely B.uid period in the cathedral's history into perspective. Christopher Wilson's account of
the medieval monuments is at first sight daunting, because of the quantity and length of the footnotes.
These do distract one from the B. ow of the text which left me wishing for more detailed photographs
of the monuments and a visit to the cathedral to look at them in greater detail.
Appendices of office holders at Canterbury and a listing of the estates are a very welcome reference
point.
The figures and plates are of good quality, covering a wide field from contemporary illustrations
through to details of the monuments. The only figures that were disappointing were figs. I and 2,
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locating the monuments. These should have been professionally redrawn for a book of this quality.
Very few mistakes have crept into the text. I must note three minor points of fact. Nicholas Brooks
mentions that the B.oor of the nave is of marble (p. 33); it is in fact of Portland stone. The provisional
phasing of the excavated remains of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral (provided by myself and Paul Bennett
during the early stages of excavation) has now changed a little (fig. 4, p. 36): Phase II has been
integrated with phase III, and is perhaps a mausoleum rather than part of the bapistry; and an
intermediate phase of building has been inserted between phases III and IV. Margaret Gibson notes
that Lanfranc's Norman crypt started beneath the western piers of the crossing (p. 53). In fact, it
extends eastwards from beneath the eastern piers of the crossing.
This book provides a readable history of the cathedral's community. In doing so it also sets the
cathedral into context and provides the reader with a much wider view of political and monastic life,
and the development of cathedrals from the time of Augustine through to the present day. This book
is an absolute must for the shelf of any historian or archaeologist interested in ecclesiology. Priced at
only £25 it's a bargain!
KEVIN BLOCKLEY

WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. NINE HUNDRED YEARS I093-I993· Edited by JoHN

CROOK. Pp. x and 365. Dean and Chapter ofWinchester Cathedral and Phillimore & Co. Ltd,
Chichester, I993· Price: £40.00. ISBN o 85033 8522.
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. PERSPECTIVES ON THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY. By
THOMAS CocKE and PETER KmsoN. Pp. x and I04 and detached folded plan. HMSO, London,
I993· Price: £I2.95· ISBN 0 I I 3000 405.
The most memorable feature of these monographs is without doubt their photographic illustrations.
Both should earn a place on one's shelves simply by virtue of providing superb records of what these
buildings, their fittings and contents, actually look like. The good print quality (sadly an increasing
rarity these days) certainly has something to do with this, but there can be no doubting the sheer
quality of the prints used. In the case of the Salisbury volume, with the Royal Commission archives
to draw on, such high standards are only to be expected; but Winchester is in no way inferior, and
the credit for that is almost entirely due to the skills of its editor with the camera. What is more, this
unusual dual role has the considerable advantage of enabling the shots to be tailored to illustrate the
specific points being made in the text. Salisbury is less satisfactory here, a book designer having
apparendy been allowed to slip the editorial leash. Many of the photographs are of only marginal
relevance to the text and inadequately integrated with it, often placed far from the text to which they
most obviously relate.
What, then, of the content of these volumes? Salisbury is the less comprehensive, and the two parts
of the text sit oddly together. Cocke's chapter is a concise and lucid account of the history of the
fabric and fittings, guiding the reader through the primary sources, and quite properly avoiding any
period bias by bringing the account up to the present day. It provides a reliable introduction for the
general reader and a useful synopsis for the specialist. In contrast, Kidson's contribution is quirky,
stimulating, self confessedly controversial, an unexpected approach for the sober journal of record
 REVIEWS 479
one generally expects from the Royal Commission and not one which will be accessible to the
uninitiated.
The case Kidson makes for seeing Salisbury cathedral's Romanesque predecessor at Old Sarum as
determining its plan, proportions and appearance in several key respects is an intriguing one (though
pp. 61-62 seem to me to be in danger of equating the perceptions of later generations with the
intentions of the thirteenth-century patrons and designers). If the evocation of continuity with the
previous cathedral was indeed their aim, the question of why key features of the latter's design
(notably transepts with eastern as well as western aisles) were nevertheless avoided should perhaps
also have been addressed. He is also surely right to stress the importance of getting to grips with the
aesthetic aspects of the architecture. Whether one agrees with him or not, Kidson will have
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performed a major service to scholarship if he prevents Salisbury from being cited in textbooks as the
'typical' English early Gothic great church. It was clearly anything but.
Kidson has made the study of the geometrical principles used to generate the forms of medieval
buildings peculiarly his own, and his analysis of this exceptionally complex building is the core of his
contribution. The results reveal much about the (evidendy extensive and sophisticated) training the
designer brought to bear in generating ad hoc solutions to particular problems in the design (the
precise placing of the piers supporting the east gable on p. 75 being a good example). On the other
hand, the apparent lack of coherent and pervasive geometrical principles underlying the generation
of the design as a whole is striking: contrast the analyses of the eastern arm (pp. 67-71) and the nave
(pp. 71-72). Was this unabashed large scale pragmatism peculiarly English?
Winchester is both fuller and wider in scope, rather in the tradition of Aylmer and Cant's York
Minster. There are the inevitable occasional weak links among the twenty-three papers, but sound
and substantial contributions are happily in the majority. Several summarize the results of much
recent work and make it more accessible to a wider public; others break new ground and will
therefore also be of particular interest to specialists. Birthe Kj0lbye-Biddle's concise summary of the
archaeological and documentary evidence for the pre-Conquest churches exemplifies the former
approach. It includes a reconstruction drawing of the Old and New Minsters not previously
published, whetting one's appetite for the long-awaited publication of the full report which will
provide the evidential basis for it all. Meanwhile, the unwary may need to be reminded that the
reconstructed heights of the westwork (given to the centimetre on p. 16) are ultimately based on
inference from an excavated sequence of foundations and robber-trenches. Crook provides an
equivalent summary of our state ofknowledge of the Romanesque cathedral. On the historical side,
Brooke sketches a characteristically deft context for the Romanesque cathedral, and Greatrex gives a
useful summary of the institutional history of the later medieval priory.
Outstanding among the contributions containing substantial (and often not previously published)
research are: Crook again on the shrine of St Swithun; Lindley on the (nationally important)
collection of medieval sculpture; Park and Welford on the medieval polychromy (including
interesting comments on the original Romanesque decoration on p. 125); the formidably heavy
artillery of Draper and Morris is combined to sort out the exceptionally complex (and recendy
controversial) architectural history of the east end, while the ubiquitous Crook, this time in
combination with Kusaba, sheds important new light on the Perpendicular remodelling of the west
end. Among the more important fittings, Tracy provides helpful accounts of the choir and Lady
Chapel stalls, and Jervis describes an important and litde known armoire, while Biddle (characteristi-
cally, the longest paper in the volume) gives a magisterial account of the important early renaissance
tombs and fittings. Bowers provides an important and carefully researched analysis of the music,
(professional) choir, and liturgy, of the medieval Lady Chapel.
Papers devoted to matters after the Reformation tail off rather, and the nearer one approaches the
present day the closer to 'All Gas and Gaiters' it becomes. But this in itself is an important pointer to
the historiographical perspective of this book. The characteristic 'continuity' of the Ecclesia Anglicana
is all too apparent as we observe one of its great institutions appropriating and reconstructing its (in
fact frequendy alien and contradictory) past with a frankness and vigour which would have won
respect, admiration and sympathy from its medieval predecessors.
ERIC CAMBRIDGE