The links above supplement information provided on the second of three displays in the Friends’ Cloister Gallery.
Work After 1342
The west front with its screen of statues followed the completion of the nave to provide a fitting entrance. The initial form of this ‘image screen’ with two rows of figures is considered the work of William Joy in 1342-47. His screen contains a hidden space. In 1369, Bishop John Grandisson was buried in the chapel set within the depth of the west front, to the south of the central doorway. We might think of him as eternally welcoming visitors to his great architectural achievement.
But Joy’s design was not completed by 1347, and some of the medieval figures in the lower two rows were later additions. The entrance porch of the north doorway was finished only in 1377, attributed to Robert Lesyngham who was appointed master mason that year. It contains the sole example of fan vaulting at Exeter, one of the earliest in the country.
Robert Lesyngham was also responsible for major work on the cloisters which took 20 years to complete. Archaeological evidence strongly suggests it was a full four-sided cloister. From 1414, the cathedral library was housed in the north cloister walk.
In 1390-91 the great east window above the high altar was described as ‘ruinous and shaky’. While the bottom lights and glass were retained, Robert Lesyngham replaced the upper wheel-shaped tracery with a more vertical Perpendicular style for which Robert Lyen provided new glass.
The chapter house, accessed from the east cloister walk, was described as a ruin in 1412, possibly from a fire. The early 13th-century lower walls with arcades were retained when the upper parts were rebuilt much taller with larger windows containing Perpendicular style tracery during the middle of the 15th century.
The west front image screen had a third upper level added in 1450-80 with another row of figures fronting an external gallery likely used by the choir to accompany processions into the west doors, such as on Palm Sunday. The west front was originally painted in vivid colours, a heavenly host of saints as a backdrop to the hundreds of burials in the grounds surrounding the cathedral.
The last building additions in this period were of two burial chapels between the buttresses of the easternmost bays of the south and north quire aisles. They were constructed before 1513 as chantry chapels in which priests prayed for the souls of Bishop Hugh Oldham (d. 1518) and Sir John Speke (d. 1519).
