Friday, 27 October 2023

Hereford Cathedral (Cathedral Of Saint Mary The Virgin And Saint Ethelbert The King). (Part Two).



The Choir, Hereford Cathedral.
Photo: 9 July 2014.
Source: Own work.
Attribution: Photo by DAVID ILIFF.
Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Author: Diliff
(Wikimedia Commons)


Text from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia,
unless stated otherwise.

Hereford Cathedral remained in a state of ruin until Robert of Lorraine was Consecrated as the Diocese’s Bishop in 1079 and undertook its reconstruction. His work was carried on, or, more probably, re-done by Reynelm, who was the next but one Bishop and who re-organised the College of Secular Canons attached to the Cathedral.

Reynelm died in 1115 and it was only under his third successor, Robert de Betun, who was Bishop from 1131 to 1148, that the Church was brought to completion.

Of this Norman Church, the surviving parts are the Nave Arcade, the Choir, up to the Spring of the Clerestory, the Choir Aisle, the South Transept and the Crossing Arches.


Hereford Cathedral.
Available on YouTube


Scarcely fifty years after its completion, William de Vere, who occupied the See from 1186 to 1199, altered the East End by constructing a Retro-Choir, or Processional Path, and a Lady Chapel.

[Editor: In Church Architecture, a Retro-Quire (also spelled Retro-Choir), or Back-Choir,[1] is the space behind The High Altar in a Church or Cathedral, which sometimes separates it from the end Chapel. It may contain seats for the Church Choir.[2]]


The Lady Chapel, Hereford Cathedral.
Photo: 9 July 2014.
Source: Own work.
Attribution: Photo by DAVID ILIFF.
Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Author: Diliff
(Wikimedia Commons)


Between the years 1226 and 1246, The Lady Chapel was rebuilt in the Early English Style—with a Crypt beneath. Around the middle of the 13th-Century, the Clerestory, and probably the Vaulting of the Choir, were rebuilt, having been damaged by the settling of the Central Tower.

Under Peter of Aigueblanche (Bishop 1240–1268), one of King Henry III’s foreign favourites, the rebuilding of the North Transept was begun, being completed later in the same Century by Swinfield, who also built the Aisles of the Nave and the East Transept.

PART THREE FOLLOWS.

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