Dean's chair

BH thought to take over the dean's throne in the large but rather odd chapter house of Canterbury Cathedral. Not octagonal or circular which is often the case, perhaps with echoes of the round table, with an unusual wagon vault and reminding me of the similarly stark lady chapel at Ely.

We can only suppose that the deans of Canterbury of old - probably not the proper title for the CEO of the priory or abbey that the cathedral then was - were very large men, or at least very wide men.

Digressing, the lady chapel at Ely was badly knocked about during the Commonwealth. There, arcades of elaborately carved niches, far more elaborate than those left, go around the walls and once contained lots of small statues: these have nearly all either been ripped out or (literally) defaced, although beasts domestic and fantastic were largely left alone. While at Canterbury, the carving is much less florid and while a lot of statues are missing, we only came across two which had been defaced. On the other hand, there was a story that the Commonwealth authorities invited bids from builders' merchants to recycle the stone and the timber of the cathedral, an invitation which, in the event, attracted no bids and the cathedral was not recycled. Unlike the abbey next door which, in large part, was. An abbey, on the same scale as the cathedral and which co-existed with it for some hundreds of years - this being new to me. I had known about the abbey but not about the co-existence - co-existence which must have resulted in some tension and in some competition for the purses of the faithful.

PS: note the canopy, on roughly the same lines at those mentioned in the post that follows.

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