North Tower Research Articles

A Restoration Study of the Southwest Tower at Chartres

No VISITOR or student of Chartres fails to admire the sturdy old southwest tower of the cathedral, but the satisfaction of the more discerning is somewhat diminished by the way in which the nave shoulders and crowds against it on the northern side. We should know, even if we had not explicit evidence,' that it was designed for a smaller building. The two western towers were, in fact, planned to stand a short distance in front of a spacious basilica dating from 1020 and 1031. The north tower, begun about 1134, is the earlier, but by 1150 both towers had reached the second story level; about 1145 a new fagade for the church was undertaken. This was set deep in the recess between the towers, and included the celebrated Royal Portal. Construction continued on the south tower, which was completed about 1190. Meanwhile the church had been lengthened by relocating the fagade at the front plane of the towers. All of this later work survived the wonderful and miserable fire of 1194, which reduced the church proper to ruins and was the occasion for the building of the existing structure. It was my purpose in making the drawing presented here to show what the appearance of the cathedral might be, had the old basilica with its west front of 1145 come down to us, and in particular to show how magnificent was the profile of the southwest tower when it still stood free. The north spire is an invention, merely representing, more or less, what must have been in the mind of the designer of the other; the drawing of the basilica is as non-committal as possible, owing to the limited data, and it must be confessed that two eleventh-century belfries of uncertain location do not appear; but after all, the purpose of the picture is to show the unsurpassed loveliness of the old spire. KENNETH JOHN CONANT, Harvard University.

IX.—The Imagery and Sculptures on the West Front of Wells Cathedral Church

In July, 1902, one of the images on the upper part of the north tower at Wells suddenly fell to the ground and was broken into many pieces. There had not been any reason for supposing that this or any other of the many images that adorn the west front was in a dangerous condition, but the Dean and Chapter at once took the wise and prudent course of ordering an inspection of the images, so far as this could be done without scaffolding. The report of the Surveyor to the Chapter, Mr. Edmund Buckle, was far from reassuring, and he recommended the substitution of proper bronze holdfasts for the decaying iron cramps by which most of the images were then secured. As a consequence of this report the Dean and Chapter ordered a section of the work to be taken in hand, beginning with the north tower, and when this was finished the scaffolding was moved to another section, and so eventually across the whole of the front and to the gable of the nave. All the images have thus as far as possible been made safe, and a deep debt of gratitude is due to the Dean and Chapter for thus helping to prolong the lives of these priceless sculptures, many of which were found to be in a very precarious state.

A New Dome for Equatorials

WITH reference to the note in NATURE of January 12 (p. 257), on “A New Dome for Equatorials,” allow me to point out that a rotary dome without a shutter was, as far as I know, first constructed for the observatory in Strassburg. The late Prof. Winnecke, at the meeting of astronomers in Berlin on September 5, 1879, referred to it as follows (Vierteljahrsschrift der Astronomischen Gesellschaft, 14 Jahrgang, p. 334): “In consequence of the construction of the altazimuth, in which the telescope was placed at the end of the axis, the dome of the north tower had to have an unusually large aperture. This was easily accomplished by employing two separate halves of a hemisphere, which could be rolled back on wheels situated above the circular rail, by which means a complete aperture of 2½ metres could be obtained. The mechanism for the movable parts works easily and surely.”