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A. F. Kendrick:
The Cathedral Church of Lincoln

You have reached a section of my site under construction.

As almost always, I retyped the text rather than scanning it: not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise which I heartily recommend. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if success­ful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

This transcription has been minutely proofread. In the table of contents above, the sections are therefore shown on blue backgrounds, indicating that I believe the text of them to be completely errorfree. As elsewhere onsite, the header bar at the top of each chapter's webpage will remind you with the same color scheme. Should you spot an error, however . . . please do report it.

Right this minute then — early Jun 03 — the text is complete and proofread; but only a few of the many engravings and photographs have been included: the rest are on the way.

PREFACE

The literature on the subject of Lincoln Minster is considerable, but scattered. The valuable researches of the late Precentor Venables, published chiefly in the Archaeological Journal, claim the first place among authorities consulted in the preparation of the present handbook. The works of Freeman, Scott, Rickman, and Parker have also been referred to. For the Episcopal Visitations, Prebendary Perry's account in the thirty-eighth volume of the Archaeological Journal has been followed; and for the Inventories of the Treasures, that of Prebendary Wordsworth in the fifty-third volume of the Archaeologia. Holinshed's "Chronicles," Bright's "Early English Church History," and the topographical works of Leland, Dugdale, Camden, and Stukeley, contain useful information on the subject. In the Rolls series, the chronicles of Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew Paris, Roger de Hoveden, and Giraldus Cambrensis, as well as the annals of various reigns and the "Magna Vita" of St. Hugh, have been consulted. A number of old guides in the Library of the British Museum contain useful MS. notes. Some of the other works referred to have been acknowledged in the pages of this book.

The author has to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr J. Shillaker and Mr G. H. Palmer for kind suggestions. Mr P. G. Trendell has prepared the list of the Bishops, and has given valued help in other ways. The illustrations are largely taken from photographs reproduced by the kindness of the Photochrom Co., Messrs S. B. Bolas & Co., Mr F. G. M.Beaumont, and Mr H. C. Oakden; others are from the Lincoln volume of the Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute (1848).

A. F. K.

May 1898.

The present edition of this handbook is a nearly verbatim reprint of that of 1917. Since that date serious defects have made themselves manifest in the fabric of the Cathedral, and call urgently for costly and immediate repairs. Further reference to these must be deferred for the next edition, but in the meantime it is to be hoped that visitors who are capable of appreciating this magnificent flower of the finest gothic art will contribute as liberally as possible to the fund for its sustentation.

E. B.

June 1922.

The History of the Building

The Exterior

The Interior

List of Bishops

Table of Illustrations

Edition Used

The work was first published in 1898, and was reprinted with corrections in 1899, 1902, 1908, 1911, 1917, 1922, 1925, and — the edition used here — that of G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., London, 1928, from which I keyed the text by hand.

Photographs and Engravings

The 1928 edition includes 30 black-and‑white photographs and 16 line-art images.

As we would expect, the quality of the photographs is not high by today's standards, and I've therefore had to trade off size for quality: the finished product on this website is usually a rather small image.

The line art is much better; but here on the Web we need not be bound by the scale decisions that the editors of the pocket-size guidebook were forced to make: I was able to undo them for the most part, and the plans and drawings in this online transcription are actually much more readable and useful than those in the print edition. In a few cases I made further adjustments: redoing captions to make them fully readable, rotating plans that no longer need to be presented vertically to match the format of the book, etc.

The illustrations are also sprinkled thru the printed edition on aesthetic grounds rather than with an eye to accompanying the text; I have not been reticent in moving them to more useful locations, but have indicated their original placement in the sourcecode.

The flawed images are to a large extent remedied by the other Lincoln Cathedral material on this site: the many wonderfully clear engravings of the chapter of King's Handbook, and some very good photos donated to this site by Libbie Griffin, which I've assembled as a little photographic tour. Where appropriate, Kendrick's text links directly to many of those images.link to King's Handbook to English Cathedralslink to Libbie Griffin's photo tour

Plan

Kendrick's plan is provided as an appendix at the end of the print edition, and in this Web transcription, for convenience, I give it in both Chapter II and Chapter III, and again here. When this site is complete, clicking on any active area will take you directly to the text that describes it.

There is link to King's Handbook to English Cathedrals a second plan of the church in King's Handbook, and not only does it show (and link to) different monuments, the plan itself is slightly different: the world is never quite as simple as we might like.

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Plan of Lincoln Cathedral

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Site updated: 7 Feb 22