Our Lady of the Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral

The Chapel of Our Lady of the Undercroft is part of that marvellous assemblage of chapels and spaces both great and small, of grandeur and intimacy that makes Canterbury so distinctive and memorable amongst the historic cathedrals of England.

Beneath the shrine chapel of St Thomas in the crypt lies the chapel and it already existed as such by 1242. This was one of two Lady Chapels in the cathedral, the other being the eastern chspel of the main north transept, adjoining the Martyrdom. 

These days it is reserved as a place for private prayer and quiet. The gentle faded quality of the surviving wall painting is attractive and a reminder of what was once common to such churches. The sense of discovering a perhaps unexpected and enclosed treasure in the centre of the crypt columns is profound - it does have a very real sense of being a special, holy, place.

The cathedral website says of it:

The chapel itself has beautiful medieval designs, restored in the 1920s by W.D Caröe and wall paintings, which whilst not in perfect condition, still survive and show how the Chapel once was, depicting heraldic shields and stars and moons. The paintings were thought to have incorporated silverfoil that would have acted as mirrors and made the whole chapel twinkle. It has the feeling of a grotto about it, sat almost directly beneath the altar and almost entirely enclosed by screens, it is easy to lose oneself in its atmosphere of historic quietude.

Unfortunately there appear to be no suitable online photographs to download of the chapel and statue, but three good ones can be accessed on the website of the Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society at undercroft - Canterbury History

The history of the chapel is set out in excellent detail in an article by C.E.Woodruff in Archaeologia Cantiana from 1926. This can be read online here This has fascinating and insightful detail as to the administration of the shrine, especially from the surviving 1510-11 accounts of the monk-warden Dom Thomas Anselm OSB.

The stone screens which surround the chapel have been attributed to both Edward 

Prince of Wales and to Joan Lady Mohun. Woodruff discusses this in the article cited. The Prince first visited Canterbury as a pilgrim in 1373 when his health was declining and he stated in his will his desire to be buried in the chapel. When he died in 1376 however his burial was to be in the shrine chapel of St Thomas above. Lady Mohun, from a Kent family was also visiting Canterbury in 1373, built her tomb as part of the chapel screens and endowed a chantry for her soul there in the 1390s, before dying in 1404. There is more about her monument at Lady Mohun’s tomb

It may be that both contributed or encouraged the cult and its furnishings, and this period was when it was at its most popular.

By the time Cardinal John Morton was buried in the chapel in 1500 offerings were in decline at the altar - as elsewhere in the cathedral - but it was still the place chosen by the statesman-primate for his grave. As Woodruff shows his bones were to have little rest however.

The tomb of Lady Mohun in 1726

Image: Canterbury Cathedral

To quote from the cathedral website again:

The niche that the statue is placed in, appears to be original to the Chapel and most probably made by Henry Yevele, Master Mason. The plinth is canopied in a decorative gothic style, the inside is painted in red and gold with a spotted pattern almost making the niche itself look as if it is adorned with gems. The columns are patterned with barley sugar twists alternating with red and charcoal grey. At the foot of each column is a carved face, the right hand one has been worn beyond recognition but the left hand carving is in remarkably good condition depicting an impish looking face.

Pilgrim badges were available for this who visited the chapel. This is one of the most elaborate:

Image:digital.kenyon.edu

From the US based website Feminae there is this commentary on the iconography of the piece:

On this badge, the figure of the Virgin is crowned and seated on a throne that is barely visible beneath her robes and mantle. Over her right shoulder, she holds a long sceptre with a fleur-de-lys top, and in her other arm, she supports the infant Christ, who stands barefoot on her knee. In an elegant, swaying pose, the Child reaches to touch the brooch securing his mother’s mantle. The Virgin’s face is depicted in half profile as she gazes down at Christ whose head is encompassed by a cruciform nimbus. The inclination of her head to the right marks the beginning of her S-shaped body pose, and it ends at the point of her right shoe, which is turned in the opposite direction. The Virgin and Child are set against an openwork background of delicate lattice-work and are framed by an architectural canopy. Beneath the arches on the side shafts are two niches each containing the figure of a saint. In the left shaft is a crowned and bearded king holding a royal scepter, and in the right shaft is an archbishop wearing the pallium and raising his hand in blessing. Both saints adopt the same swaying S-pose as the principle figures, and the bases of the niches are angled backwards in order to increase the prominence of the Virgin.

This image of the Virgin celebrates a combination of motherhood and queenship, of compassion and power, which underscores her position as an intercessor for humanity in heaven. This badge possesses stylistic and iconographic ties to some of Canterbury’s finest and largest pilgrimage badges, such as the badge of the martyrdom or a version of the standing figure of St. Thomas.

Following the theft of a seventeenth century Portuguese statue from the central niche a new figure was commissioned from Mother Concordia Scott OSB of Minster Abbey  and installed in 1982. The cathedral website describes it as follows:

The statue is made of bronze and represents the figure of Our Lady on a throne, wearing a jewelled crown. Her arms are to Her side and Her hands hold a half-standing figure of the Infant Christ. On the Madonna’s chest, there is a Canterbury cross in gilt, positioned immediately behind the Infant’s head. The Infant Christ has one of his palms turned upwards, potentially depicting a form of prayer that was popular before that of clasping ones hands together.

For those who are not familiar with it the Canterbury Cross is an Anglo-Saxon carving found in the precincts and adopted as a badge by the cathedral 

On the pilgrimage we shall encounter other examples of Mother Concordia’s work. There is an introduction to her life at Concordia Scott

Our Lady of the Undercroft Pray for us