Prodigy or eccentric?

A monastic church converted to a cathedral at the Reformation is a building of European importance, yet it has twice narrowly escaped destruction, as John Goodall explains

- John Goodall

The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Bristol

ON the evening of Sunday, October 30, 1831, amid three days of rioting sparked by the defeat of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, a large mob gathered outside the Cathedral Close in Bristol. The Bishop, a known opponent of Reform, was absent and his butler unsuccessfully attempted to defend his Palace from attack. It was overrun, sacked and burnt. The cathedral sub-sacrist, William Phillips, managed to bar the door between the cloister and church, saving the building-although not the chapter house-from the fury of the rioters.

Bristol Cathedral was in origin an abbey, founded according to the Newland Roll, compiled between 1481-1515-in 1140, by one Robert FitzHarding, who built the church and all other houses... by the space of 6 years'. FitzHarding was a wealthy Bristol burgess and merchant who gave financial backing to the Empress Matilda and her son, Duke Henry, during the civil war known as the  Anarchy. His foundation was established just outside the walls of this prosperous city and, unusually, was known from the first not only by its location 'beside' Bristol, but also by its dedication to St Augustine, the apostle of the English.

It can't be a coincidence, therefore, that a next-door chapel-now lost-was thought in the Middle Ages to be the burial place of Jordan, by tradition one of St Augustine's companions, who died in Bristol in 603. Presumably, the foundation of the abbey related to Jordan's pre-existing cult. That there was an Anglo-Saxon prehistory to this site is demonstrated by a magnificent 11th-century sculpture of the Harrowing of Hell that was discovered during the 1830s repairs to the chapter house.