For a selection of archaeological reports concerning this, see www. An energetic, charismatic and devout man, Serlo built up the wealth of the monastery to the point where in he was able to start building the magnificent abbey church which so impresses the visitor today. A wealthy and powerful institution with extensive landholdings in Gloucestershire and South Wales, the Abbey of St Peter as it was known had significant royal associations.
In , Henry III, who had succeeded to the throne at the age of only nine, was crowned here. Major building works in the 13th century included a first Lady Chapel and new Tower and refectory.
Most importantly for the subsequent history of this place, in , King Edward II who had died in Berkeley Castle in suspicious and, traditionally, gruesome circumstances was buried here.
The Abbey received extravagant gifts and donations from pilgrims and royals alike, the results of which kickstarted 20 years of new construction beginning in It was during this period that the Abbey was redone in the Perpendicular Gothic style, making it the earliest and best example of the style in England.
Thankfully, the mayor and burgesses of the city of Gloucester saved it. Since then, the cathedral has undergone restorations and repairs, survived World War II, and become a popular filming location for British movies and TV shows.
Not surprisingly given its beauty, many notable TV shows and movies have used Gloucester Cathedral as a filming location. Learn about the Harry Potter scenes filmed in the cloisters in this guide. We spent about one hour wandering around Gloucester Cathedral, but I easily could have spent longer there. It has so many highlights that make it a must-visit cathedral in England. The East Window was installed in Gloucester Cathedral in the s, possibly to commemorate the Battle of Crecy in It measures 22 meters in height and 12 meters wide, making it as big as a tennis court.
At the time, it was the largest window in the world. At the bottom are commoners, followed by nobility, bishops, abbots, saints, and apostles, and angels as you move up the window, with Mary and Jesus at the top.
An image at the bottom of the window even depicts one of the earliest images of golf over years older than the earliest images from Scotland. The labels they had used on the glass got mixed up, so restorers after the war had to piece the window together using old black and white postcards to figure out where everything went.
The Lady Chapel was the last addition to the cathedral. Constructed in the 15th century, this chapel is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The cathedral is aligned approximately west to east, with the cloisters on the north side, a relatively uncommon position since they were usually placed to the south, to receive more sunlight.
The buildings are mostly surrounded by lawns and trees, with a more formal space to the west College Green , lined by various old houses. Entry to the cathedral is through the south porch, at the southwest corner of the building, opening to the nave. The cloisters are entered through doors on the opposite side of the nave and extend all around the perimeter of the square central garden, or garth.
The nave links with the choir and the north and south transept, which in turn connect to the presbytery, enclosed by a semi circular aisle, the ambulatory, which also leads to the lady chapel at the far east end.
Four smaller chapels St Paul's, St Andrew's, St Philip's and Abbot Boteler's adjoin the two transepts and the two corners of the ambulatory, while two small, unobtrusive doors access stairways that descend to the crypt. Other sections include the Norman-era chapter house, and the abbots cloister or slype, both leading off the main cloister.
The presbytery. History The first Christian institution in Gloucester, a monastery, was established in by an Anglo-Saxon nobleman named Osric, though few details are known about its buildings or practices. Nearly years later, shortly after the Norman conquest, King William I installed a French monk, Serlo, as abbot, and it was he who a few years later started construction of the abbey church, from which period some elements remain including the crypt and the huge round pillars supporting the roof of the nave.
It was raised on a vaulted undercroft with a central row of piers. The tower was separated from the north side of the nave by a vaulted ground-floor passage above which an abbot's chapel was built c. The guest range was possibly destroyed by a fire fn. Another fire destroyed some of the monastic offices on the west side of the precinct in Making good that damage must have been a great expense but the early 13th century was a period of considerable new building. Beginning in the sacrist, Ellis of Hereford d.
The new tower carried a spire and had corner turrets. Like its predecessor the refectory was raised on a vaulted basement and close to its north side one of the contemporary buildings, which is a also on a vaulted basement, may have been the misericord.
Separated from the north-east corner of the refectory by a small cloister was the 13th-century infirmary, an aisled hall of six bays which included a chapel dedicated to St. Bridget, fn. A fire which began in the great court of the abbey in destroyed a great chamber, the cloister, and a small bell tower. In work began on a new dormitory, and the building was completed in It was aligned east-west, perhaps so that it could be longer than its predecessor and so that a new reredorter could be located further away from the infirmary.
The appearance of the southern side of the church was changed in the earlier 14th century by the rebuilding of the old south aisle wall between and and the remodelling of the south transept, dedicated to St. Andrew, between and The windows of the aisle are richly ornamented with ballflower, fn. The work on the transept was paid for out of gifts by visitors to the tomb of Edward II, buried in the church in , and those gifts also financed an extensive remodelling of the choir begun under Adam of Staunton, abbot —51, and completed under his successor Thomas Horton d.
A great east window was put in, the two eastern piers of the ambulatory were removed, and the inner faces of the other piers were recut or built up and incorporated in the open stone screens which filled the arcades.
The tracery of those screens was carried up into a new and richly decorated vault. Writers on architectural history once saw Gloucester Abbey as the cradle of the perpendicular style.
The style is now thought to have been invented by royal masons in London and transmitted to Gloucester. There, however, the monks and their masons developed it in original and highly ornamental forms which were later a major influence on the growth of the style in England. Work on the other ranges of the cloister continued in a similar style until after the accession of Abbot Walter Froucester in The north range includes a separately vaulted lavatorium opposite the doorway to the refectory stairs and each of the 10 bays of the south range has two carrels beneath its window.
Paul, was reconstructed in the years —73, largely at Horton's expense. At about that time the east end of the chapter house was rebuilt with a large window in place of the former apse, and a vestry and library were built above the slype, which was extended eastwards some distance beyond the line of the transept.
During the 14th century most of the crypt chapels were refitted and chapels were fitted up in the triforium gallery around the choir and transepts. The west front and two western bays of the nave were rebuilt by John Morwent, abbot —37, who was said to have intended to complete the whole nave. Morwent also built a new two-storeyed south porch fn. The building of a great central tower was begun by Thomas Seabrook, abbot —7, and completed before by a monk, Robert Tully. The last major work on the church was the lady chapel, which replaced that of the earlier 13th century; it was begun under Richard Hanley, abbot —72, and completed under his successor William Farley d.
The west end is set back from the great east window of the choir so as not to obstruct the light and the triforium gallery is continued into the chapel on covered bridges which are decorated with re-used chevron arches. Those bridges have the characteristics of a 'whispering gallery', a widely known feature of the church by the early 17th century. Among the principal monuments fn. The effigy was broken up by soldiers in the Civil War but the pieces were preserved by Sir Humphrey Tracy of Stanway and after the Restoration were repaired and replaced in the presbytery.
Fixed to the wall on the south side of the presbytery is the 13th-century stone effigy of a priest, depicted as founder holding a model church; though identified in most early accounts as Eldred, fn. Set in the wall at the east end of the south aisle are the early 15th-century effigies of an unidentified knight and lady. The last abbot of Gloucester, William Malvern d. Malvern also built a founder's tomb north-east of the presbytery for King Osric, and the king's remains were moved there from the lady chapel.
Apart from the great east window of the choir, the main surviving medieval stained glass is in the east window of the lady chapel, where the pieces are disordered and include glass introduced from other windows, and in two north aisle windows where the glass was restored in In there was a ring of eight, as well as a set of chimes which a Gloucester blacksmith contracted to maintain.
The circuit of walls around the abbey was completed in the early 13th century. Mary's gate from the parish and church of St. Mary de Lode which lay outside it. The gateway has a late 12th-century vault and its superstructure appears to be of the early 13th century.
It stands not, as is often the case, in line with the west front of the church but at the centre of the west wall. The southern gateway, which opened on the lay cemetery, where many of the town's inhabitants were brought for burial in the early Middle Ages, fn. Edward's Lane, fn. The surviving portion of the gateway dates from a rebuilding by Abbot Malvern in the early 16th century, fn. Michael's gate in , fn. Their reconstruction may reflect a change in the relative importance and use of the gates into the precinct, the western gate continuing to be the principal entrance to the abbey but the southern ones providing more convenient access for visitors going from the town to the church.
The three gates were apparently the only entrances through the precinct walls in the Middle Ages. The north wall formed part of the town's defences on that side and in a condition of the settlement of a dispute between abbey and town was that no breaches should be made in it.
Within the walls, the south-west part of the precinct was occupied by the great court of the abbey. To the north lay a smaller court divided from the great court by a range of buildings and entered by an inner gateway, which was rebuilt in the 14th century.
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