Norwich Roof Boss #21

[poliphilo]

Four goblin faces with their tongues touching- creating a vortex of malevolence. I don't suppose it means anything. I think it's just the mason having fun.

Norwich cathedral is rich in medieval survivals. It probably helped that Norfolk is so far away from everywhere else. Like Lancashire and Sussex- two other out of the way counties- it retained its catholic sympathies (they're still strong today) and the iconoclasts (with their Bibles in their boots) were unwelcome and worked without encouragement and were therefore less thorough. We were in Peterborough Cathedral on Monday- a similar building of a similar vintage- but in the East Midlands- which were the Puritan heartlands- and it got much more radically smashed up. For starters the cloisters have gone- and their bosses with them. Actually, it's a wonder it survived at all- because it was an abbey church- and could have gone the way of most of the others- only its abbot was a canny man who managed to get on the right side of Henry VIII. Seeing that dissolution was inevitable, he lobbied for his church to become a cathedral- and Henry said "What a good idea- and why don't you be its first bishop?" Lucky man; many of his peers wound up on the scaffold. Perhaps he was not merely canny, but charming.

Comments

[shewhomust]

I wonder whether the tomb of Catherine of Aragon weighed in Peterborough's favour, or against it? (I think I've got the sequence of events right...)

While I'm here, may I say how much I'm enjoying this sequence of posts?

[poliphilo]

Catherine's tomb got smashed up- and the ledger stone she lies under is modern. I guess the 17th century Puritans did that; the Tudor reformers would have baulked at destroying anything with royal connections.

The present tomb is unshowy and actually rather touching. People leave little tributes, as at a contemporary roadside shrine.

[cmcmck]

I like this one! :o)

[poliphilo]

Me too. It has a timeless quality...

[hhunt]

‘A rosette from the tomb of Bishop de La Wich, Chich-ester, has four animal faces in an excellent design.’ "The grotesque in church art" (1899)

[poliphilo]

Thanks.

There must be other examples out there.