Chichester Cathedral
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Wednesday 6 July 2022
(12.45pm for 1pm start) - Chichester Cathedral, Chichester PO19 1PX
- Leader: John McNeill
Chichester Cathedral is among the least studied of all English medieval great churches. Memorably described by Ian Nairn as ‘a well-worn, well-loved comfortable fireside chair of a cathedral’, Chichester cathedral is essentially a series of rather quirky set pieces woven around an Anglo-Norman core. Chief among these is a superb retrochoir, but there is much else to be teased out – in the laying out of the delightful north transept chapels, the eccentric cloister, the celebrated Romanesque relief carvings, the striking collection of late medieval tombs, the freestanding bell tower and, perhaps most compellingly, the substantial evidence for the cathedral’s late medieval liturgical arrangements. The core remains very much Romanesque, however, and much survives of the building created after the old Sussex see was moved from Selsey to Chichester in 1075.
Leader
John McNeill is an architectural historian. He took degrees in art history at the University of East Anglia and Courtauld Institute, and went on to specialise in medieval architectural history, lecturing at Camberwell School of Art, London University’s Extra-Mural department, Birkbeck College and the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. He lectures regularly to the Society and leads tours for Martin Randall Travel. He was appointed Secretary of the British Archaeological Association in 2000, for whom he also subsequently convened and edited conferences on Medieval Anjou, cloisters, medieval chantries, and King’s Lynn and the Fens. He founded the BAA’s biennial series of International Conferences on Romanesque, and is both a member of its steering committee and a co-editor of its transactions. His most recent effort in this field, Romanesque and the Year 1000 is due to be published at the end of 2024. Besides the BAA Conference Transactions, John has published numerous articles and is author of the Blue Guides to both Normandy and the Loire Valley. He is a Vice-President of the London Art History Society and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
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