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

Page from The Hereford Gospels, circa 780 A.D., 

illustrating The Gospel of John.

This File: 22 June 2010.

Source: Own work.

User: Magnus Manske

(Wikimedia Commons)

Text from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia,

unless stated otherwise.

Work on a new Cathedral Green, with pathways, seating and gated entrance to the Cathedral was undertaken in 2010 to 2011.

In 2015, landscaping and restoration efforts began at the Cathedral, financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund. These efforts involved reburying thousands of corpses, some from 12th-Century to 14th-Century stone-lined graves from the Cathedral burial plot.

Unusually, from The Middle Ages until the 19th-Century, anyone who died on Church Grounds had to be buried within the precinct. Notable among those reburied during the restoration was a Knight, who may have participated in Tourney Jousting, a man with leprosy (it was unusual for lepers to be buried anywhere near a Cathedral due to the stigma associated with the disease), and a woman with a severed hand (a typical punishment for a thief, who would normally be unlikely to receive Cathedral burial).[8]

Hereford Cathedral.
Collection: A. D. White Architectural Photographs,
Cornell University Library. Sir George Gilbert Scott’s
Rood Screen in the background.
Photo: 1865-1885.

Source: Hereford Cathedral (Interior, with Scott's Screen)
Author: Cornell University Library
(Wikimedia Commons)

Among eminent men who have been associated with the Cathedral – besides those who have already been mentioned – are:

Robert of Gloucester, the chronicler, prebendary in 1291; 

Nicholas of Hereford, Chancellor in 1377, a remarkable man and leader of the Lollards at Oxford; 

John Carpenter, Town Clerk of London, who Baptised there on 18 December 1378; 

John Rutter’s “Requiem”.
Hereford Cathedral 1991.
Available on YouTube

HERE

Polydore Vergil, Prebendary in 1507, a celebrated literary man, as indeed with such a name he ought to have been;

Miles Smith, Prebendary in 1580, promoted to the See of Gloucester – one of the translators of the Authorised King James Version of the Bible;

Another famous Prebendary was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was appointed to a Stall in 1510. 

Hereford Cathedral Altar.
Photo: 1865-1885.
Source: Hereford Cathedral
Author: Cornell University Library
(Wikimedia Commons)

The list of Post-English Reformation Prelates includes:

Matthew Wren, who, however, was Translated to Ely Cathedral in the year of his Consecration (1635); 

Nicholas Monck, a brother of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, who died within a few months of Consecration (1661); 

and two Bishops, around whom Ecclesiastical storms raged, Benjamin Hoadley and Renn Hampden. Hoadley, by his Tract against the Non-Jurors and his Sermon on The Kingdom of Christ, provoked the Bangorian Controversy and so led to the virtual supersession of Convocation from 1717 to 1852.

13th-Century Early-English Arcaded Triforium 

and Clerestory at Hereford Cathedral.
Photo: 29 May 2012.
Source: Hereford Cathedral
Author: Hugh Llewelyn
(Wikimedia Commons)

The appointment of Hampden to this See by Lord John Russell in 1847 was bitterly opposed by those who considered him latitudinarian, including the Dean of Hereford, and was appealed against in the Court of Queen's Bench. 

Hampden went his way, which was that of a student rather than that of an administrator, and ruled the Diocese for twenty-one years, leaving behind him at his death, in 1868, the reputation of a great scholar and thinker.

There is decorative work on the Norman Architecture Columns and Arches of the Nave built by Reynelm’s Stone-Masons. 

The Canopied Monument in Hereford Cathedral to 

Bishop Aigueblanche (Aquablanca), 1268. One of the 

earliest and finest of its type in Britain.
Photo: 29 May 2012.
Source: Hereford Cathedral
Author: Hugh Llewelyn
(Wikimedia Commons)

Until 1847, the Pavement, which had been laid down in the Nave, completely hid the square bases on which the Piers rest. 

Double semi-cylindrical Shafts run up their North and South faces, ending in small Double Capitals at the height of the Capitals of the Piers, themselves.

In the South Aisle of the Nave are two 14th-Century Church Monument tombs, with effigies of unknown Ecclesiastics. The tomb of Sir Richard Pembridge in the reign of King Edward III, is an example of the armour of that period, and it is one of the earliest instances of an effigy wearing The Garter. A square-headed doorway gives access from this Aisle to the Bishop’s Cloister.

PART SEVEN FOLLOWS.