Our cathedrals are 'by far the most important works of architecture in Britain', and Exeter is a perfect 21st century update to a medieval masterpiece

This is part two of John Goodall's look at Exeter Cathedral — read part one.

On April 21, 1871, The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette carried a detailed report of a lecture delivered two days previously by Archdeacon Philip Freeman to the Exeter Literary Society. The lecture, titled ‘The History and Architecture of Exeter Cathedral’, was chaired by the Bishop and the auditorium was packed. One novelty was the illustration of the talk with ‘nearly four dozen’ diagrams and photographs ‘reflected on a white screen by the aid of the oxyhydrogen light, magnifying them 15ft. in diameter’. During the course of what must have been a marathon presentation, the audience was ‘highly delighted’ with these images, ‘testifying their pleasure by frequent applause’. There was another reason, however, for this good attendance.

The Dean and Chapter were on the point of commencing a massive restoration of the cathedral interior on the advice of the celebrated Gothic Revival architect George Gilbert Scott. One proposed physical aspect of the work had generated particular controversy. This was Scott’s determination — expressed first in a preliminary report of 1866 — to preserve the medieval screen dividing the nave from the choir. As described last week, this was erected in 1318–25 as part of the rebuilding of the church. Scott correctly recognised it to be 14th century in date and declared that it would be the ‘height of vandalism to remove one of the most marked of the original features of the Cathedral’ (Fig 1).

Others had different views. One of these was the Archdeacon, a noted scholar, liturgist and High Churchman. Not that he used the lecture as an opportunity to focus on the subject. Rather, he set out his analysis of the whole cathedral fabric, rooted both in observation and the evidence of the medieval fabric rolls.

When the lecture came to be published in June, however, the screen was discussed in an appendix. In it, he adduced the existence in the 1320s of an iron grille that offered a clear view of the whole church interior. The present screen, he argued, had been inserted in the 15th century and was a ‘departure, in many important respects, from the arrangements of the best period of the Cathedral’. ‘And while the facts,’ he continued, ‘constitute no sufficient plea for the removal of a feature of such rich and beautiful character… they are, nevertheless, such as to take away all grounds for leaving the screen unaltered.’

Liturgical concerns aside, the screen seemed so important because it was then much harder to look through, the side arches having framed long-demolished altars and being filled with solid masonry. The Archdeacon, therefore, proposed ‘opening the arches… and reducing the obstructiveness of the organ as much as possible’ to restore the grand vista of the interior. His was a moderate voice. Others — including members of the very active and vocal Diocesan Architectural Society — argued that the whole structure should be swept away. Scott, however, was dogged in his defence of the screen and entered into an open exchange of analysis with the Archdeacon. To his credit, the latter eventually acknowledged his error. Scott, meanwhile, agreed to open up the arches of the screen, a change he conceded in his Personal and Professional Recollections (1879), that was undertaken ‘without [the] sacrifice of any architectural feature’.

As the controversy over the screen was being thrashed out, Scott’s wider restoration got under way. Work began in the Lady Chapel in May 1871, a week after the Archdeacon’s lecture. Here, the interior was refurnished and the medieval painted decoration exposed and then renewed. It continued in the choir, then largely fitted out with 18th-century furnishings. The walls that created the choir enclosure were rebuilt using the medieval copings and new canopied stalls, made by the London firm of Farmer and Bridley at the huge cost of £6,000, were erected against them. The new stalls incorporated some surviving 13th-century misericords. At the same time, Scott carefully restored the great 14th-century canopy over the bishop’s throne and installed a large reredos of the Ascension behind the high altar at a cost of £2,000.

No sooner had the reredos been installed in 1873 than the Archdeacon of Cornwall, the son of a former Bishop of Exeter, presented a petition denouncing its imagery as illegal. Judicial proceedings, which hinged on the proscription of images by Edward VI in 1547, progressed through the ecclesiastical courts. Work was suspended until February 1875, when a decision decreed that, because the imagery of the reredos was not being created to be venerated, it was neither superstitious nor illegal. The effects of a contrary judgement are hard to imagine. When Scott resumed work, he took the opportunity to raise up the altar yet higher within the interior. His reredos was removed in the 1930s and is now in the neighbouring parish of St Michael and All Angels, Heavitree.

The last important element of the 1870s choir restoration was a new floor, which replaced a predecessor in black-and-white marble laid in 1763. Scott’s creation was richly coloured, combining encaustic tiles with different polished stones from across the diocese (which at the time extended into Cornwall). The idea of using stones from particular areas or regions in decorative schemes reflects a growing interest in geology and was anticipated in other projects from the 1850s. These include the Museum of Natural History in Oxford, which has a series of 126 columns made of different polished stones from across the British Isles, and the Museum Building at Trinity College, Dublin.

Scott’s new floor was laid in three sections. West of the altar dais were two pavements divided by a step that incorporated multiple square panels with foiled patterns in contrasting colours. One of these pavements extended across the area of the sanctuary and the other between the facing side doors of the choir enclosure. Framing them to the margins were stone slabs interlaid with a fretwork of tiles.

There was, in addition, a stone fretwork floor running between the facing choir stalls. Sections of this floor were subsequently removed. First to disappear were parts of the altar dais, which were replaced in the 1930s when the reredos was removed. Then, in 1963, the floor around the choir stalls began to fail. At this time, all but the sanctuary pavement were removed and replaced with Purbeck slabs laid on concrete.

When this, in turn, recently began to fail, the decision was taken to renew the 1963 elements with a new floor designed by Camilla Finlay of Clews Architects after the example of Scott. This re-creates the foiled ornament and hatching of the 1870s design and relates visually to the surviving sanctuary. As prelude to laying the new floor, the choir was excavated by Oakford Archaeology with the oversight of the cathedral archaeologist, John Allan. This work revealed the Romanesque plan of the building for the first time. In order to limit the impact of the work, the whole internal volume of the choir enclosure to the level of the stall canopies was tented.

The nine new roundels were assembled in panels off-site, but the other stones were laid individually by Andy French, a local mason. Incorporated in the floor are hatches and underfloor ducts for running cables and services through the choir. Many of the stones used in the 1870s by Scott are now rare or unobtainable, so the present floor employs a poetically named list of available Devon marbles: Ashburton, Petit Tor, Fossil Petit Tor, Kitley Green, Radford Rose, Dove Happaway, Ipplepen and Silverleigh. There is also Cornish Lizard Serpentine and Dorset Purbeck from the Blue Marble and Wetson beds. This project has transformed the appearance of the choir, but will leave most visitors guessing as to the cause of its improvement (Fig 7). In the entrance passage of the choir screen is an inscription celebrating Elizabeth II’s 2022 Platinum Jubilee, when the work first began.

In conjunction with this work, Mrs Finlay, as cathedral architect, has undertaken another project to improve the facilities of the site. This has involved linking the church to the adjacent buildings to the south with a new eastern cloister walk (Fig 2). Planning has again been informed by exemplary research and archaeology, now published as Archaeological Studies at Exeter Cathedral. Volume 1 The cloister and Chapter House (2024) edited by Mr Allan. A second volume is in production that will focus on the cathedral church as a whole.

As described in the first article, a chapter house was constructed beside the south transept in 1225 and connected to the church with a pentice walk. This walk became the east range of a full cloister, vaulted in stone throughout, which was completed over the course of the 14th century. It would seem that the north walk came to accommodate the cathedral library, an unusual arrangement. In 1412–13, meanwhile, the chapter house was described as being ruinous. Soon afterwards, its vault was demolished and the whole structure reared up with a tall clerestory and richly ornamented timber roof (Fig 5). The present painted decoration of the ceiling incorporates the arms of Bishop Bothe, who ruled from 1465–78.

During the Commonwealth, probably in 1655, the cloister walks and several adjacent buildings were demolished. Then, in 1657, the cleared area was redeveloped by the city as a market for the wool fabric called serge. The Serge Market building — which still partly survives — was of timber-frame construction and originally comprised an open colonnade at ground level (now enclosed) supporting a first-floor range. It was erected against the south and west sides of the medieval cloister. Other buildings soon encroached elsewhere. These changes effectively left the chapter house as a stand-alone building, its main door facing the cleared cloister garth and with an awkward link to the church through the transept and the small intermediary Holy Ghost Chapel.

In 1887, a decade after Scott’s restoration was completed, plans were drawn up by the architect John Loughborough Pearson to clear and rebuild the cloister in its entirety. His was a rigorous attempt at an academic reconstruction and made use of bosses rediscovered during demolition work to re-create the form of the original vaults. In the event, however, only the south-east corner of Pearson’s cloister, as well as a library building over it, were realised. The present project, called the Friends Cloister Gallery, which opened this year, has completed the east walk and can be entered from the nave through a long-blocked door (Fig 4). A temporary café now operates in the chapter house and the library serves as a newly furnished exhibition space (Fig 6). Presented within the latter are some of the cathedral’s treasures, such as the celebrated Exeter Book. Compiled in about 970, it claims to be the earliest anthology of Old English verse.

The new section of cloister is in sympathy with the surrounding fabric, but aims to be visually distinct from it. It is constructed in Doulting stone with Marnhull detailing and is restrained with plain mouldings, intersecting tracery and an oak ceiling (Fig 3). Vaulting was considered, but would have damaged the existing buildings and created problems of additional weight. The floor, which uses recycled paving from the choir, is inlaid with slabs that mark the position of excavated graves beneath. Underfloor heating has been installed throughout the cloister and in the chapter house, the door of which has also been provided with an internal porch. As well as improving the present facilities, the scheme offers the future potential for redeveloping the Serge Market.

No alteration to a great cathedral is ever the last word. These magnificent buildings — which are by far the most important works of architecture in Britain; longer in use, more intensively worked and more generally loved than any others — ceaselessly continue to evolve in response to the ever-changing needs of the communities they serve.

Visit www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk

Acknowledgements: Camilla Finlay and John Allan

This feature originally appeared in the December 24, 2025 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.