Interior of Winchester Cathedral, showing the Great Screen

Winchester Cathedral, showing the Great Screen

Various, including G. Bodley, Thomas Nicholls and Farmer & Brindley

Restoration completed 1899

Stone

Winchester

Other Views and Related Material

Winchester Cathedral

Exterior of nave and transept

Detail of Great Screen (St Hedda)

Interior with Scott's Choir Screen

Scott's Choir screen

Detail of wood carving in choir

Jane Austen's gravestone in the nave

Monument to Bishop Wilberforce

Monument to Bishop Brownlow North

Memorial to Charles Berkeley Pigott

Photograph, caption, and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee, 2009.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Apart from Sir George Gilbert Scott's choir screen, and some of the monuments, the main Victorian work in this cathedral was the restoration of the Great Screen, a complicated collaborative effort involving a number of big names. These include G. F. Bodley, who designed the crucifix; Thomas Nicholls (William Burges's trusted sculptor), who sculpted eight of the central statues, including the Virgin Mary; and the London firm of Farmer & Brindley, which executed the crucifix. Two of the statues were sculpted by Mary Grant. Amongst the grand total of fifty-six statues is one of Queen Victoria. The Great Screen was finally dedicated in March 1899, several years after John Colson's death. Like other Victorian work in the cathedral, this part of the restoration was controversial, but no one would now call it "a flagrantly artless device" (qtd. in Sergeant 61); on the contrary, it is widely recognised as a "magnificent structure" (Brandwood 11).

References

Brandwood, Geoff. "'Unlucky Experiments in Statues': Restoring the Winchester Great Screen." Ecclesiology Today, Issue 31 (May 2003): 3-13.

Sergeant, Philip W. The Cathedral Church of Winchester: A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See. London: George Bell, 1903.

Last modified 30 November 2009.