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

The Hereford Cathedral Choir Screen after conservation 

and restoration at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Illustration: VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

The following two paragraphs are from

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

The Hereford Screen was a star exhibit at the 

1862 International Exhibition in London, and 

was praised as “the grandest and most triumphant achievement of modern architectural art”, before its installation in Hereford Cathedral.

In 1967, this masterpiece of Victorian ironwork 

fell victim to fashionable prejudice and, despite a 

national outcry, was dismantled. The once rusty, disintegrated pieces have now been carefully conserved by 

the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, returning this magnificent Screen to its former splendour.

The Hereford Cathedral Web-Site can be found

HERE

Hereford Cathedral Choir Screen in place in Hereford Cathedral 1890-1900. [Editor: It is beyond belief that anybody in authority got rid of this masterpiece in the 1960s, when it was removed, dismantled, and left to rot. Thank God that the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, eventually possessed it and restored it to its former magnificence (see, above).]

Description: Forms part of: Views of the British Isles, in the Photochrom print collection. Print No. “10810”. Title from the Detroit Publishing Co., Catalogue J-foreign section, Detroit, Mich. Detroit Publishing Company, 1905. More information about the Photochrom Print Collection is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.pgz

Photo Credit: This image is available from The United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsc.08439.

Source: Library of Congress 

Catalog: http://lccn.loc.gov/2002696800

(Wikimedia Commons)

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

The Choir Stalls support forty 14th-Century Misericords. These Misericords show a mixture of mythological beasts, grotesques, and everyday events, there appears to be no pattern to the content.

In addition to the Misericords in the Choir, there are five others contained in a row of “Judges’ Seats”. It is unclear if these were used as Misericords, or if they are just ornamentation.

In the North-East Transept, of which the Vaulting is supported by a Central Octagonal Pier, a large number of monumental fragments are preserved, forming a rich and varied collection. 

Hereford Cathedral.

Photo: 19 August 2013.

Source: Hereford Cathedral

Author: Michael D Beckwith

(Wikimedia Commons)

There is also a beautiful Altar-Tomb of Alabaster and Polished Marbles erected as a public memorial to a former Dean, Richard Dawes, who died in 1867. The effigy, by Mr. Noble, is a good likeness of the Dean, who was an ardent supporter of the education movement about the middle of the 19th-Century. 

The South-East Transept contains memorials of several Bishops of Hereford. The remains of Gilbert Ironside (☩ 1701), together with his Black Marble tombstone, were removed to this place in 1867, when the Church of Saint Mary Somerset, in Upper Thames Street, London, was taken down. 

Here, also, may be seen a curious effigy of Saint John the Baptist, and a fine Marble bust, believed to be the work of Roubiliac. The handsome canopied Perpendicular tomb of Richard Mayew (☩ 1516), with effigy fully vested, is on the South Side of the Altar. In the South-East Transept, again, is a doorway that opens into the Vicars’ Cloister, an interesting piece of Perpendicular Work which leads to the College of the Vicars Choral.

Hereford Cathedral. 13th-Century Early-English Arcaded Triforium and Clerestory.

Photo: 29 May 2012.

Source: Hereford Cathedral

Author: Hugh Llewelyn

(Wikimedia Commons)

Across from the Retro-Choir, or Ambulatory, is the spacious Early-English Lady Chapel, which is built over the Crypt and approached by an ascent of five steps. 

Of the five Lancet Windows at the East End, each with a Quatrefoil opening in the wall above it, Fergusson remarked that “nowhere on the Continent is such a combination to be found”; and he brackets them with the Five Sisters at York Cathedral and the East End of Ely Cathedral. 

They are filled with glass by Cottingham as a memorial of Dean Merewether, who is buried in the Crypt, below, and is further commemorated here by a Black Marble slab, with a Brass by Hardman, recording his unwearied interest in the restoration of the Cathedral.

Hereford Cathedral’s Nave Ceiling.

Photo: 3 January 2008.

Source: Own work.

Author: Mattana

(Wikimedia Commons)

In the Lady Chapel, are Church Monuments of Joanna de Kilpec and Humphrey de Bohun. Joanna was a 14th-Century benefactress of the Cathedral, who gave to the Dean and Chapter an acre (4,000 m2) of land in Lugwardine, and the advowson of the Church, with several Chapels pertaining to it.

On the South Side of the Lady Chapel, separated from it by a Screen of curious design, is the Chantry, erected at the end of the 15th-Century by Edmund Audley, who, being translated to Salisbury, built another there, where he is buried. His Chantry, here, pentagonal in shape, is in two storeys, with two windows in the lower storey and five windows in the higher storey.

PART NINE FOLLOWS.