PROCEEDINGS FOR 1897 CLXI 



possession. For our special purpose at the present time we may also by- 

 means of these early plans realize how, with its safeguarding river, and 

 its waterways and quays coming up to the doors of its merchants, it was 

 fitted by nature to become the home of commerce and discovery. 



Of all that constituted mediaeval Bristol little now remains beyond 

 the solid ecclesiastical structures, which then, in their comparative fresh- 

 ness, adorned the city. These are still so numerous that I must not 

 attempt to speak of them all ; but must limit myself to a few that stand 

 out either because of their representative importance or because of their 

 special connection with the fifteenth century. 



In Cabot's days, what we now know as the Bristol cathedral, existed, 

 so far as it existed at all, as the Abbey Church of St. Augustine's 

 monastery. The building was then in process of reconstruction, and if, 

 in the course of Cabot's rambles about the city, his eyes had rested upon 

 this monastic-looking structure, he would have found it even then an 

 example of the old order changing. The old Norman choir with its 

 north and south aisles had been destroyed, leaving the Norman chapter 

 room and its vestibule standing on the. south side, and the early English 

 Lady chapel with its beautiful and pure details on the north side ; while 

 between these two remnants of the older building, and incorporated with 

 them, Abbot Knowle and his successors had carried on their work of 

 reconstruction in the subsequent decorated and perpendicular styles. 

 All that it took two hundred years thus to accomplish, may be told in a 

 few moments. From 13i>6 to 1332 Abbot Knowle was busily engaged in 

 re-erecting the choir with its north and south aisles, and these he com- 

 pleted throughout, a very noble life's-work, with which his name will 

 always be reverently associated. For a long period nothing more was 

 done except the construction of the beautiful Berkeley chapel, the 

 second Lady chapel, and the Newton chapel, all on the south side. 

 Then from 1450 to 1470 the builders were occui^ied in remodelling the 

 lower portions of the great central tower, including the carving of 

 decorated mouldings upon the enormous Norman piers, which were not 

 removed, and building afi'esh the upper stages of the tower. From 1481 

 to 1515 Abbot Newland, or Nailheart as he was called, because of the 

 badge which he adopted, — a heart pierced with nails and bleeding, —was 

 busy with the reconstruction of the vaults and windows of the transepts 

 in the third-pointed or perpendicular style, and that was all. Soon after 

 came the dissolution of the monastery, and the Abbey church was left 

 only half completed, and with a ruinous and disused Norman nave still 

 cumbering the ground. Such was the Abbey church in Cabot's time, 

 and when it became the Cathedral church of the new diocese formed by 

 Henry Eighth's Commissioners it was but half a building, ending abruptly 

 with what should have been its central tower. 



Proc. 1897. L. 



