TREASURES FOUND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 135, 5 December 1938, Page 10

TREASURES FOUND

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

CLEANING SHOWS SECRETS

BEAUTY UNDER GRIME

Mr. Lawrence E. Tanner, Keeper of the Muniments, Westminster Abbey, in a lantern lecture on "Recent Discoveries and Work at Westminster Abbey," which he gave at Kensington Town Hall, described how treasures which have remained hidden, for years ■ and even centuries are revealed . through the work of restoration and cleaning which goes on continuously ; at the Abbey, says "The Times." The ' Dean of Westminster presided. , Mr. Tanner said the increasingly in- . telligent interest taken in our great ' cathedrals and abbeys had been an encouraging feature of the last forty years, but until a few years ago, while - everyone knew that St. Paul's Cathed- < ral was the work of Sir Christopher Wren, most people were content to suppose that the great cathedrals and j abbeys were built by "the old monks." Patient research had now disclosed not only the names of the master masons who designed them but the craftsmen who built them. At Westminster the only side of the Abbey history which had been worked out with any fullness before 1900 was that dealing with coronations, funerals, monuments, and so on, while practically nothing was known of the Confessor's church which preceded the present Abbey, of monastic Westminster [ —and there were monks at Westminster for over 600 years—of the contents of the vast collection of documents preserved in the Abbey muniment room, and much else. BUILDING FOR 600 YEARS. For over 600 years there was almost' i continuous building at Westminster — ] a marvellous attempt to realise a great < ideal and to produce a church dedi- < cated to the glory of God and contain- ( ing the finest work which the mind and hand of the medieval craftsman ] could conceive and execute. About 1 1520 the Abbey church stood complete : in all its incomparable^ beauty. In 1540 came the dissolution'of the monas- 1 teries and all movable treasures were < scattered to the four winds. Henceforth there was no -further building ' until the towers were added 200 years i later. The problem from 1540 had j been to preserve and keep the fabric ; in repair. : Some odd things happened during the >. work of restoration. In the eighties ; there was found, used as a bit of stone ] and presumably put where it was by • one of Wren's workmen, a superb head of an abbot. Its story was for- j gotten, however, and it was only re- ■ cently that he found it and had it ; mounted and placed in the library, where it had been generally recognised as an outstanding work of art. The \ head was possibly that of Abbot Islip, ■■ who died in 1532. Our modern knowledge of the Abbey was due primarily to three men-^-Dr. Armitage Robinson, Dr. E. J. L. Scott, and Professor W. R. Lethaby. Dr. Scott, by patient and unselfish labour day by day for a quarter of a century, brought order out of chaos in the vast collection of MSS. and compiled the great t calendar and index by which they were made available to students. He would take as an example, for its local interest, a little charter of about the ' time of Magna Carta by which Aubrey j de Vere, second Earl of Oxford, con- ] firmed to the almonry of Westminster ; Abbey for the support of the poor two ■ parts of the whole tithing of his lord- ] ship in Kensington—that lordship \ which was still commemorated today , after seven centuries by the familiar ; Earls Court and Barons Court. ; FRENCH INFLUENCE. Lethaby, by his great knowledge of French cathedrals, was able to show how English craftsmen "placed themselves under the most progressive influence of their day and imitated without reserve what was new and admirable in the great churches of France." By the thirteenth century French architects had invented the pointed arch and flying buttresses to take the weight, and they were working out these discoveries with a logic and audacity and with a perfection of proportion which ' had never been surpassed. Lethaby had no doubt that the Abbey was planned and conceived by an Englishman who had deeply studied and then adapted French ideas, and the result was triumphantly English. The whole "feel" of the Abbey was English. You could not imagine Westminster Abbey lin the middle of France or the cathedrals at Rheims or Amiens (from which the Abbey derived) at Westminster. The builders of the Abbey were Henry of Reynes, John of Gloucester, and Robert of Beverley, while Henry Yevele built the nave. The craftsmen were Odo the goldsmith, Alexander the carpenter, and John of St. Albans. whose names he was constantly coming across in the muniments. It was in 1930, when as part of a great cleaning scheme staging was erected across the transept,' that it was possible, with ever-increasing delight, to examine the censing angels, the work of supreme artists of the thirteenth century. They were probably carved by Master John of St. Albans, the King's, sculptor, and his school. This brought him to one of the most remarkable discoveries made at the Abbey for many years. In 1936 in cleaning the south wall on the ground level traces of colour were found, especially behind one of the monu-: ments. The wall itself was a dingy brown, due mainly to dirt and the, shellac preservative put on by Sir Gilbert Scott in the sixties. With infinite care this preservative and the dirt were removed, and to their astonishment two magnificent wall paintings, 9ft high, slowly emerged— one of St. Christopher and the other of the Incredulity of St. Thomas. They were probably by Master Walter of Durham. HENRY VII'S CHAPEL. In 1932 another great work was forced upon them by the falling of a stone from the roof of Henry Vll's Chapel. It was found that the structure of the vault was perfectly sound but that several stones had slipped and many joints were defective. After a difficult and intricate job had been completed and with the vaulting secure, the whole was cleaned and treated with a solution of refined lime, salt, and water. The result was astonishing and those who had watched the progress of the work week by week had felt an ever-growing admiration for the old TUdor masons. All the cleaning' work was done by their own Abbey staff, who worked with an enthusiasm, interest, and pride worthy of their medieval predecessors. In the last ten years there had been cleaned the south transept and aisle, j the lantern, Henry Vll's Chapel and side aisles, St. Faith's Chapel, St. Benedict's Chapel, St. Edmund's Chapel, and (so far only to triforium level) the apse at the east end. Beautiful as the dark colour of the Abbey was, it was in fact sheer dirt and grime, intensified by a preservative put on and over the dirt in the fifties and sixties. This was now being removed and once again we began to see the Abbey in all its beauty and as its builders saw it. It came perhaps as a little