NORTHUMBERLAND. NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. ONE of the principal objects embraced in this view of the town, from the land side, is the singularly elegant tower of St. Nicholas's Church, which an enraptured architect once pronounced "the pride and glory of the northern hemisphere." This really beautiful tower exhibits an originality and boldness in its lofty termination, where solidity of construction and lightness of appearance are so happily displayed, as to excite universal admiration. It is one hundred and ninety-three feet six inches in height, and forty feet wide; consisting of five stories to the battlements, having a door-way in the first story, and one window to each front of second, third, and fourth story; on the fifth, or upper story, are two windows. Eight turrets, finished with pinnacles and vanes, rise from the angles and sides of the tower; the angular turrets being considerably larger than those at the sides, from the abutment of four flying buttresses, bearing at their intersection an open lantern surmounted by a spire, and terminated by a noble vane. The steeple is plainly a superstructure raised upon the original tower, which appears to have had a battlement of open stonework. The style of architecture in which it is constructed, evinces all the distinctive characteristics of the mode which obtained in the time of Henry VI.; and it is supposed by Brand, to have been raised at the expense of Robert Rhodes, a most munificent friend of the churches in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he resided. His arms are upon the groined ceiling, underneath the belfry, with this inscription, Orate pro anima Roberti Rhodes." 66 St. Nicholas's Church, founded in 1091, by Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, is said to have been rebuilt about the year 1350. It long surpassed all other churches in the north, both in the number and superior richness of its chantries; there were no less than ten at the time of the suppression. In 1617, when the council of the north were at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Lord Sheffield, K.G. the president, celebrated the feast of St. George, in the north transept of the church, called St. George's Porch. |