WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. T HAT the mediaeval builders were excellent workmen sometimes
turns out to be only half a truth. They were very great artists, and where the object was to create a thing of beauty they were quick in answering to the call. But when the matter was one of science rather than of art—when, for example, they had to consider, not how a church would please the eye or excite the devotion of a worshipper, but how it would stand—their skill seems at times to have deserted them. It was the skill, that is to say, of the instinct rather than of the reason. They knew how to raise their columns and vault their aisles. So far they could be trusted to make no mistake. But in the matter of foundations there was no such certainty. They made them as secure as they could, subjected them probably to such rude tests as regards strain and pressure as occurred to them, and if the walls seemed safe, and the site was what they were seeking for in other ways, they were content. And in fairness it must be admitted that for long periods their confidence was justified. Centuries have in many cases passed without any shortcoming disclosing itself. Recently, how- ever, defects of all kinds have come to light with alarming frequency. A Cathedral is no longer a type of solidity. Its walls may be out of the perpendicular. Its towers may incline at an angle which suggests a speedy fall. Its mighty stones may be parted from one another by cracks which threaten to become chasms. Then the architect begins his search for the cause of these faults, and before long he discovers that they have their common origin in the soil, or substitute for soil, on which the building rests. If that has sunk or changed its character, the greatest Cathedral in the world may be no more secure than a wooden shanty. Indeed, the danger of a catastrophe increases in proportion to the size which to the eye makes it immovable. The greater the superincumbent weight, the more unfit may be the soil on which the foundation rests to bear the burden laid on it. Sometimes the builders were plainly wrong in their choice of a site. The ground which they thought would serve their purpose was never really suited to it, and the wonder is, not that this fact has at last been discovered, but that it has remained so long undetected. Sometimes the ground they picked out would have done its work for many more centuries if it had been let alone. But to let things alone is just what civilisa- tion is unable to do. New theories about health come into vogue. The land in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral is wanted for building, and to make building wholesome it must be thoroughly drained. But drainage may alter the level of the water underneath the surface, and where this is the case the level of the subsoil may alter also. When that sinks the foundations it supports naturally try to follow it, with the results with which we are becoming sorrowfully familiar.
The upshot of all this is that we suddenly find ourselves face to face with the possible destruction of some of the Cathedrals which are among the foremost triumphs of European architecture. The newest instance of this disastrous prospect is Winchester. The need of replacing the foundations, and the danger of postponing their replace- ment, are terribly evident. It is no question of doubtful restoration. The choice to be made is not between keeping the Cathedral as it is, and attempting to give it once more the aspect which it wore at. its consecration. If it were so, we might well feel uncertain on which side the risks were greatest. Again and again the hand of the restorer has been in truth the hand of the destroyer. But the £86,806 which the custodians of the Cathedral—or, rather, the experts they have called in to advise them—tell us must be found at once is wanted for no purpose of this kind. What they have to avert is not the slow decay of the Cathedral from the operation of time and weather, but its absolute ruin from the want of any foundation firm enough to bear its vast weight. We shall not be left with the building as we have known it, and be able to console ourselves with the thought that it has at least escaped the degradation of new capitals and new traceries which bear only a general resemblance to those whose place they have taken. What we have to face is the absolute fall of the Cathedral we know,—the disappearance, that is to say, of one of the great landmarks of English history, of the building in which much of English history was made. This is the impending calamity, and our first thought is that it needs only to be put into words to be at once made impossible. Who can believe that Englishmen will allow Winchester Cathedral to become a ruin for the want of less than £90,000? But when we remember how many similar appeals are to be heard all around us, appeals which have, it may be, greater local claims, and when we remember further how urgent has been the appeal already made, and that, urgent as it has been, it has only brought in a third of the sum now asked for, the comfortable assurance with which we set out begins to grow less confident. There are so many things on behalf of which money is now asked, and some of them come home with so much force to the very people who but for this would be cheerful givers to the fund it is now sought to set on foot, that we cannot feel sure that private liberality will prove adequate to the demand made on it. And what then ? If, after every possible effort has been made, a considerable part of the necessary sum remains unpromised, what is to be done ? It is not a case in which part of the work can be taken in hand and the remainder left to another genera- tion. Where the existence of a building is at stake all that is necessary must be done, and done at once.
If the Dean and Chapter of Winchester do not share our scepticism, if from their previous experience of their countrymen they feel no doubt that now that the true condition of the foundations is known the money will come in, and come in quickly, there is no more to be said. We shall rejoice to think that Englishmen set so just a value on one of the very greatest of their Cathedrals. But supposing that those who do set this value on Winchester Cathedral should prove not to be numerous enough, or wealthy enough, to provide £86,000, are there no other steps that can be taken ? We know of only two, and undoubtedly there are objections to both of them. The first, and logically the better of the two, is that we should make the majority of our Cathedrals, and a very few other churches of unusual size and beauty, into monuments historiques. The State would say in effect : " Winchester Cathedral is not merely a great church, it is also a great work of art, and, being so, it is as much the business of Parliament to find £86,000 for its preservation as it was to find £70,000 for the purchase of one of Raphael's Madonnas." England would be poorer by the loss of Winchester Cathedral than she would have been by the non-purchase of a single picture, and if the Government stepped in to prevent the one catastrophe, why should they be less ready to intervene for the purpose of warding off the other? This question seems to us to admit of only one answer. To our mind, that answer is conclusive. A picture is only a work of art. A Cathedral is a work of art and something more, and this additional quality is one which has a remarkable power of exciting polities] passion. To make a grant of many thousands to keep a Cathedral standing would be regarded as a fresh case of religious endowment, and as there are no Nonconformist buildings possessing the same archi- tectural claims, it would not even be concurrent endow- ment. It is not difficult to imagine the reception which such a proposal would meet with alike in the House of Commons and in the Press,—the eloquence of the Noncon- formist Opposition in the one, the length of column and the size of type which wou41 be needed to satisfy Dr. Clifford in the other. It is most unlikely, therefore, that any Government would introduce a measure of this kind.
There is another quarter, however, to which the appeal might be made with more reason and with no similar drawbacks. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners hold very large funds, drawn in a great measure from sources on which the necessary repairs of Cathedrals would naturally have been a first charge. They have taken over the large estates belonging to some bishoprics, and, among others, to the bishopric of Winchester. May not they be held to have taken over with them the liability of contributing towards keeping the Cathedral secure against destruction ? There is a real and great dis- tinction between the spending of money on this object and the spending of it on objects about the necessity or propriety of which there may be two opinions. We have no wish to see the funds of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners go towards the decoration or restoration of Cathedrals. These are matters upon which tastes differ, and the cost of them may properly fall on those who approve of what it is proposed to do in this way, and are willing to find the means of doing it. But when it comes to strengthening tottering foundations, to closing up yawning cracks, to restoring walls to the perpendicular, the case for the intervention of the Ecclesiastical Com- missioners seems complete. Of all the material needs of the Church of England, none can have more claim on such a body than the saving of Cathedrals from the peril which at this moment has come very near to Winchester. It is for no light matter that we would stay the ordinary course of the Commissioners' labours. The augmentation of poor benefices is a most necessary work, and we have no wish to see it abandoned. But in such an exceptional case as that of Winchester Cathedral, and others like it, if any such there be, we would throw the burden of guarding them against irretrievable mischief on the one body which controls and administers the finances of the Church on a great scale. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners alone can command the amount of money that is wanted, and they can do this by simply suspending their customary expenditure for a time. When the very existence of one of the greatest of our English churches is threatened if the money for doing the necessary work on the foundations is not found, what better function can the Ecclesiastical Commissioners discharge than that of filling up the necessary cheque ?
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