Читать книгу Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire онлайн

115 страница из 129

If we pass down the Ritual Choir eastwards, we enter the presbytery, and at once see the origin of the name “Angel Choir” in the thirty figures of angels in the spandrels. It was built to accommodate the enormous number of pilgrims who flocked to St. Hugh’s shrine, and is, according to G. A. Freeman, “one of the loveliest of human works; the proportion of the side elevation and the beauty of the details being simply perfect,” and it would seem to be uncontested that all throughout, whether in its piers, its triforium, its aisles, or its carved detail, it shows a delicacy and finish never surpassed in the whole history of Gothic architecture. One of its large clerestory windows was filled, in 1900, with excellent glass by H. Holiday, to mark the seven-hundredth anniversary of St. Hugh’s death.

The angels sculptured in stone, and mostly carrying scrolls, fill the triforium spandrels in groups of three, five groups on either side. They are probably not all by the master’s hand. The Virgin and Child in the south-west bay and the angel with drawn sword in the north-west seem finer than the rest. The stone inscribed in Lombardic letters “Cantate Hic,” marks the place for chanting the Litany; this is chanted by two lay clerks. There are nine of these, one being vestry clerk; also four choristers in black gowns with white facings (a reminiscence of the earliest dress for the Lincoln choir, and a unique costume in England), eight Burghersh choristers or “Chanters” (lineal descendants of the Burghersh chantry of St. Catherine with its separate band of choristers), and some supernumerary boys and men. There are four canons residentiary, viz., the sub-dean, chancellor, precentor, and Archdeacon of Lincoln, and fifty-three prebendaries.