Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City and its Vicinity

Volume 33

Linda Monckton

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351570879
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The British Archaeological Association's 2007 conference celebrated the material culture of medieval Coventry, the fourth wealthiest English city of the later middle ages. The nineteen papers collected in this volume set out to remedy the relative neglect in modern scholarship of the city's art, architecture and archaeology, as well as to encompass recent research on monuments in the vicinity. The scene is set by two papers on archaeological excavations in the historic city centre, especially since the 1970s, and a paper investigating the relationships between Coventry's building boom and economic conditions in the city in the later middle ages. Three papers on the Cathedral Priory of St Mary bring together new insights into the Romanesque cathedral church, the monastic buildings and the post-Dissolution history of the precinct, derived mainly from the results of the Phoenix Initiative excavations (19992003). Three more papers provide new architectural histories of the spectacular former parish church of St Michael, the fine Guildhall of St Mary and the remarkable surviving west range of the Coventry Charterhouse. The high-quality monumental art of the later medieval city is represented by papers on wall-painting (featuring the recently conserved Doom in Holy Trinity church), on the little-known Crucifixion mural at the Charterhouse, and on a reassessment of the working practices of the famous master-glazier, John Thornton. Two papers on a guild seal and on the glazing at Stanford on Avon parish church consider the evidence for Coventry as a regional workshop centre for high quality metalwork and glass-painting. Beyond the city, three papers deal with the development of Combe Abbey from Cistercian monastery to country house, with the Beauchamp family's hermitage at Guy's Cliffe, and with a newly identified stonemasons' workshop in the 'barn' at Kenilworth Abbey. Two further papers concern the architectural patronage of the earls and dukes of Lancaster in the 14th century at Kenilworth Castle and in the Newarke at Leicester Castle.

The Gothic Architecture of Coventry Cathedral and Priory: Keeping Up Appearances?

RICHARD K. MORRIS

The Phoenix Initiative excavations of 1999–2003 produced extensive new physical evidence for the buildings of the lost cathedral priory of St Mary, Coventry, and this paper is a brief account of the main findings relating to the Gothic architecture. In the cathedral, the picture was a fairly typical one of keeping up appearances in an ageing Romanesque great church — piecemeal new fenestration of the nave through the 14th century, structural problems with the crossing tower (perhaps newly built) in the mid-14th century, and a new transept vault around 1400. However, investigation of the conventual buildings revealed a much more pro-active story. Most of the accommodation around the cloister was reconstructed in the second and third quarters of the 13th century, as evidenced by the partial survival of a fine series of undercrofts, including one with the earliest known tierceron rib-vault in Coventry. Then, in the next century, two impressive new ceremonial rooms were created with the rebuilding of the chapter-house (c. 1310–30), later to be embellished with a cycle of Apocalypse paintings, and of the refectory (c. 1340) with a polychromed stone pulpit of the same date. In the early 15th century, an ambitious renovation of the cloister was undertaken on the model of that at Gloucester, but by then more limited resources would not stretch to vaulting its alleys in stone.

WHEN my preliminary assessment of ‘the Cathedral Priory church’ was published in 1994,¹ little could I have imagined that so much more of the physical evidence for St Mary’s cathedral priory would be discovered so soon afterwards, primarily as a result of the Phoenix Initiative excavations (1999–2003).² So the opportunity has been created for this second paper, providing a review of the Gothic architecture of the cathedral church and conventual buildings in the light of this new evidence.³

THE CHURCH

The account of the cathedral priory church in my 1994 paper now requires some updating. The available evidence from the fabric up to 1994 was relatively modest and much of it derived from poorly documented excavations.⁴ However, the excavation of the nave in 1999–2000 proved more fruitful, even though relatively little evidence for later medieval work was found because the rubble had been almost entirely removed between after 1545 (see Plant, Fig. 1), in contrast to the rich deposits of worked stones which survived on the terraced site of the conventual buildings (Fig. 1). Over 100 fragments of window tracery were recovered which provide evidence for the modernisation of the 12th-century nave.⁵ At least seven different designs of mullion profile can be identified amongst the tracery pieces, all of which seem to belong to the 14th century. Eight pieces of type T579⁶ employ the design of an axial roll-and-fillet with lateral hollow chamfers (Fig. 2A),⁷ generally comparable to the mullion profiles of the chapter house (c. 1310–30, see below). In another related design, T586, one half of the profile includes a small hollow and demi-roll-and-fillet (Fig. 2B),⁸ an unusual feature for a mullion and with a distribution at sites in the east and south-east of England from the late 13th century to the mid-14th century.⁹

FIG. 1. Coventry Priory site: excavations in Trench 10, April 2002. Demolition rubble, mainly from the chapter-house, fallen into the eastern part of the east–west undercroft; note the respond for the undercroft vault, right of centre

Photo, author

Generally, the surviving pieces are too fragmented to permit the reconstruction of tracery patterns, but T586/1 shows that this tracery included a light with an unframed trefoiled head, perhaps with an impaled foiled figure above as part of an intersecting tracery composition typical of some early Decorated windows of c. 1290–1325 (e.g. Old Arley, Warks., east window). In contrast, the cusping on T585, which has a diCerent mullion profile (Fig. 2C), is ogee-foiled and indicative of a later date probably in the 1320s or 1330s.¹⁰ Ogee foils originate in various delicate tracery designs developed in the Kentish court style of south-east England in the 1290s,¹¹ and which seem to have found their way into masons’ pattern books elsewhere by the high Decorated period. At Coventry it is a possibility that the designer was the royal mason, Master Hugh de Titemersshe (Tichmers), who was granted a corrody at the priory in 1312.¹²

FIG. 2. Coventry Cathedral Priory: 14th-century mullion profiles from the nave. All moulding profile Figures are at ¼ scale, unless indicated otherwise

Drawing, author

The impression is gained that the cathedral church had a variety of new windows introduced at various dates in the first half of the 14th century, which is in tune with the Decorated aesthetic for invention, as famously exemplified in the windows of Exeter Cathedral (c. 1280–1340). However, in contrast to the uniformity of the mullions at Exeter,¹³ the number of different mullion profiles at Coventry suggests a more piecemeal succession of works,¹⁴ some of which probably occurred in the time of Prior Henry Irreys (1322–42), when indulgences were granted to contributors to the fabric.¹⁵

More information can be gleaned from piece T632/1 than from any other tracery piece found on the nave site. It is a ‘V-shaped’ springing stone, almost 3 feet high (850mm max.), which sat on top of the centre mullion of a large window with a sub-arcuating tracery pattern (Fig. 3A).¹⁶ The best-preserved face incorporates three successively larger mullion profiles, each with an axial polygonal moulding (Fig. 2, XYZ respectively). A similar hierarchy formerly existed on the other face (Fig. 2).¹⁷ In the midlands, large axial polygonal mouldings for window tracery first made a significant appearance in the Perpendicular remodelling of Gloucester Cathedral (then St Peter’s Abbey) from c. 1330, and the profiles which approximate most closely to T632 are those of the second phase of Gloucester cloister (1381–1412)¹⁸ and comparable mullions at Worcester Cathedral chapter-house (c. 1390) and Tewkesbury Abbey cloister (c. 1400, Fig. 2). Therefore, overall, T632 seems to belong to the second half of the 14th century, perhaps to the decades c. 1370–90, and was part of a major window or set of windows probably at the west end of the church.¹⁹ The size of springer T632/1 and the large curvatures implied by its major mullion profile suggest a sub-arcuated window of at least six lights (3+3), so the main west window must be a possibility.²⁰ The south window in the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral is an important early exemplar of a sub-arcuated window in an end elevation (c. 1335, 4+4 lights),²¹ and prominent later examples in Coventry include the apse windows of St Michael’s, c. 1400 (2+2; see Monckton, Fig. 13), and the 15th-century south transept window at St John the Baptist’s (4+4, heavily restored).

Towards the middle of the 14th century, a structural problem had evidently developed with the central crossing, such that one or more of the Romanesque piers required reinforcement. The main evidence comes from the north transept pier, which had received a massive ashlar abutment against its south face, presumably reciprocated in the lost north face of the north-east crossing pier (Plant, Figs 2, 5). The second or third quarter of the 14th century is the most likely date for the reinforcement, on the basis of the style of the part-polygonal stoup T486,²² integral with the west face of the new masonry. It is impossible to know for certain whether other areas of the crossing received...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Plans
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Editors’ Introduction
• Colour Plates
• An Introduction to the Archaeology of Medieval Coventry
• Recent Archaeological Work in Medieval Coventry and Future Opportunities
• The Built Environment and the Later Medieval Economy: Coventry 1200–1540
• The Romanesque and Early Gothic Cathedral of St Mary, Coventry
• The Gothic Architecture of Coventry Cathedral and Priory: Keeping Up Appearances?
• The Redevelopment of the Cathedral Priory Site from the Dissolution to the Present Day
• St Michael’s, Coventry: The Architectural History of a Medieval Urban Parish Church
• The Development of St Mary’s Hall, Coventry: A Short History
• Made in Coventry? Seals from Coventry as Evidence of Local Craftsmanship in the Late Middle Ages
• Coventry: A Regional Centre of Glass-Painting in the 14th Century? The Glazing of Stanford on Avon Church, Northamptonshire, and the Taxonomy of English Medieval Stained Glass Studies
• The Doom in Holy Trinity Church and Wall-Painting in Medieval Coventry
• John Thornton of Coventry: A Reassessment of the Role of a Late Medieval Glazier
• The Charterhouse of St Anne, Coventry
• A ‘bodi ful of woundis’: The 15th-Century Mural at St Anne’s Charterhouse, Coventry
• Combe Abbey: From Cistercian Abbey to Country House
• The Chantry Chapel at Guy’s Cliffe, Warwick
• The College of St Mary in the Newarke, Leicester
• Kenilworth Abbey Barn: Its Construction and Uses
• Sidelights on the 14th-Century Architecture at Kenilworth Castle