Have you ever gazed at a massive medieval building such as Worcester Cathedral and wondered how it could be constructed by people who had no huge cranes, no heavy lifting machinery and only the most basic of hand tools? Even before building could begin, the stone had to be dug from one of the cathedral’s many quarries by hand, no dynamite in those days, and then had to be transported to the cathedral with no lorries, only horses and carts and men’s hands.
Nowadays we talk about the great bishops such as Wulfstan building Worcester Cathedral, but they were not the architects or even the designers of the building and they were certainly not the ones that employed the hammers and chisels, those people were the stonemasons. While stonemasons involved in this work are often mentioned, as are the tools for masons, generally they are anonymous, but luckily for us not always.
Even after the Cathedral was built work would be going on somewhere all the time, and through the medieval accounts, which recorded day to day expenses of the Cathedral and Priory, we know a few names of those who worked on the Cathedral. This blog discusses three of the Master Masons who are recorded in the manuscripts held by Worcester Cathedral Library.
The earliest master mason recorded worked in c1240s, during the time of Bishop Walter de Cantilupe[1]. He was Master Alexander Cementarius (magister = master, cementarius = mason). As master masons could be a highly mobile group travelling to where the jobs were, it is possible that he is the same Alexander who worked on Lincoln Cathedral[2], whose bishop, Robert Grosseteste, was a close friend of de Cantilupe (Worcester Cathedral’s bishop). Although the architectural styles of the two cathedrals are similar, we also have to accept it may be just two master masons with the same name, especially as there was an Alexander the Mason working at Lincoln Cathedral in the same period.
In Worcester, Alexander was responsible for building the retroquire/lady chapel and much of the work on the eastern transept. For his work on the monastery he was allowed two houses, situated in the cemetery[3] area, and the two properties suggest that he had his own workforce. In addition, part of his salary included food from the kitchen[4].
It may be thought that the Cathedral of Worcester was paid for and built solely by the Bishop and Priory, but in fact it was more likely built with donations made by its wealthy patrons. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in one of the spandrels that decorate the wall of the Cathedral retrochoir which shows one of those patrons, almost certainly Margaret de Saye[5], with a mason. You can make out that he is holding a pair of compasses. Is this Alexander depicting himself?
Nearly a century later the master mason at Worcester was William de Schokerwych, who from 1316 oversaw the building of the north side of the nave. De Schokerwych was already an experienced master mason, having previously worked on Salisbury and Exeter cathedrals earlier in his career[6]. He may have been quite elderly by the time he arrived at Worcester, or simply prudent, as he purchased a corrody (a medieval pension plan) for £60 from the Cathedral[7]. This was an expensive purchase, the equivalent of three thousand days’ work for a skilled tradesman[8], and for this corrody, de Schokerwych received a room, stabling for a horse, bread and beer every day for life and fish when this was served to the monks[9].
The room he was allocated had had an interesting previous inhabitant, having been occupied by the sacrist, Nicholas de Norton. Nicholas had been at the centre of a dispute between the Bishop of Worcester, Godfrey Giffard, and Archbishop Winchelsey of Canterbury. He was first sacrist from 1280 to 1288, and again in 1290 but was removed by the Archbishop in 1301. He was immediately reappointed by the Bishop but again removed by the Archbishop. Finally, six years later, for some unknown reason, the Prince of Wales and the Earl of Warwick intervened and de Norton was granted a corrody of a room, two servants and two horses. When he vacated this room for William de Schokerwych, he retired to the infirmary[10].
The years of plague, or black death, in the fourteenth century, stopped all but essential work at the Cathedral. When it recommenced the master mason was John Clyve (magister cementarium), who had worked at Windsor Castle[11] before becoming the master mason at Worcester Cathedral in 1366.
It was John Clyve who completed work on the nave and if you are in the Cathedral look at the north and south sides of the nave and you will see they are quite different. Clyve was also responsible for the north porch, and the monks’ dormitory. Although the dormitory itself no longer survives, the doorway to it can be seen in the west cloister wall.
The reconstruction of the medieval dormitory in the fourteenth century is one of the few major building projects for which a detailed account survives. The work was undertaken in 1376-77 and payments are recorded in the account roll of the cellarer, William Power[12]. Power’s accounts list a large workforce including glaziers, plumbers (it had running water and toilets), carpenters and various general workers hired to work under John Clyve. Power also paid for a ‘roba’ for John Clyve, possibly an outfit or livery to differentiate him from the workers.
During his time as master mason, Clyve also worked on the nave’s south arcade and central tower. It was during the fourteenth century that the Chapter House was strengthened by adding buttresses and changing its vaulting, so he could also be the mason who worked on this.
So, there we have it, three seemingly ordinary stonemasons who were anything but ordinary. They were not only craftsmen but project managers, as well as mathematicians and architects. They would probably be literate, at a time when Latin, French and English were all used, and all their knowledge would have had to have been acquired ‘on the job.’ Starting likely from humble beginnings in boyhood, they rose to become the highly skilled and valued craftsmen that produced the great Cathedral that I work in today and whose complexity and beauty I marvel at daily.
Vanda Bartoszuk
[1] WCM/B921 [172] 1200s [Also WCL/A2 fol 109b]
[2] Engel U, Worcester Cathedral an Architectural History. Phillimore England 2007
[3] WCM/A4 fol. 109
[4] WCM/A4 fol. 128
[5] For more information on Margaret de Saye see the blog https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2020/08/01/the-mystery-of-the-charnel-chapel-lady
[6] Blum Pamela Z, The Salisbury Chapter House and Its Sixty Old Testament Scenes, available at: PZBSalisburyChapterHouse.pdf (virginia.edu) accessed 22/07/2023.
[7] WCM/A5 fol. 76
[8] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result accessed 17/03/2023.
[9] WCM/A5 fol. 76
[10] WCM/ A5 fols. 1,4,13,27, 28, 117
[11] Oxford Reference, available at: John Clyve – Oxford Reference accessed 20/06/2023.
[12] WCM C69
Goodman, Nigel. John Clyve, Worcester’s Great Master Mason. The Shield, v. 29, 2017. Friends of Worcester Cathedral Publication
Knoop, Douglas, and Jones, Gwilym Peredur. The Medieval Mason: An Economic History of English Stone Building in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. United Kingdom, Manchester University Press, 1949.
Worcester Cathedral Library and Archive Blog 
Vanda that was so interesting. Four walls we take for granted, but the magnificence of the cathedral lasting on for centuries. I wish we had something to pass on to the next generation. Thank you for an insight into the Cathedral, I shall be looking with new eyes when I next visit.
LikeLike
You must come and visit us in the library when you do visit
LikeLike