Interior beneath the Octagon, engraving (probably by Joseph Pennell)

Interior beneath the Octagon, Ely Cathedral

Restored by George Gilbert Scott

1847 onwards

Ely, Cambridgeshire

Other Views

Ely Cathedral from the south-east

Octagon and Lantern, Lady Chapel at left

St Catherine's Chapel, rebuilt by Scott

The nave, looking east

The nave ceiling, painted 1858-65

Victorian scrollwork on the West Door

An example of early brick diapering on the Bishop's Palace

Ely from under the Railway Bridge, by Jospeh Pennell

Photograph, caption, and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee

[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.]

This illustration is the frontispiece of the cathedral handbook listed below. It is not named, but is very likely to have been by the illustrator Joseph Pennell, who worked extensively in the area, did many other sketches of the cathedral, and sketched in this style, with architectural exactness and small figures perfectly illustrating the scale.

Nikolaus Pevsner mentions the Octagon along with the nave as making the cathedral "unforgettable" (348), and this illustration certainly shows the wonderful sense of space in the transept beneath it. Shafts of light come in from the unusual Lantern above, and the whole effect here relieves the somewhat oppressive narrowness of the nave with its very tall Norman pillars. It feels exactly like coming into a sudden clearing in a forest. The illustration also shows, slightly to the left, the delicately carved oak screen and the pulpit, both designed by George Gilbert Scott.

While the structure of the cathedral was being strengthened and restored, its spiritual life also underwent a revival at this time, to the extent that Gladstone described it in the 1870s as "a pattern for the cathedrals of England" (qtd. in Carey 18).

Sources

Brooks, Michael W. John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1989.

Carey, M. S. Ely Cathedral. Crawley: Pitkin, 1973.

Handbook to the Cathedral Church, with Some Account of ther Monastic Buildings, &c. at Ely. Ely: T. A. Hills and Son, 11th ed. 1880. Available here.

Pevsner, Nikolaus. The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2nd ed. 1970.

Last modified 29 July 2008