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DOWNSIDE ABBEY, LADY CHAPEL, NORTH TRANSEPT, and GALLERY CHAPELS       Lady Chapel,   Abbey Church

WITHIN the abbey church at Downside, along the north side of the nave, surrounding the choir and above the nave on the south side are many chapels, regularly used for daily masses before the Second Vatican Council.  Among them are the Lady Chapel at the East End, the shrine of St. Oliver Plunkett in the North Transept, and the Gallery Chapels

 

AMBULATORY leading to LADY CHAPEL	ENTRANCE to LADY CHAPEL

LADY CHAPEL (1889)	LADY CHAPEL ALTAR (1898)

LADY CHAPEL ALTAR REREDOS (by Ninian Comper, 1898)

LADY CHAPEL	TESTER

FROM 1882 the North Transept served as the high altar.  With the completion of the nave in 1925 it was incorporated into the shrine of St. Oliver Plunkett.

THE  NORTH. TRANSEPT	SHRINE of  ST. OLIVER PLUNKET

THE abbey church at Downside conveys an architectural history of the growth of English Catholicism in the nineteenth century.  Dom Aidan Bellenger, former abbot of Downside, has written that “the North Transept represented an attempt to marry ‘the Gothic’ (the ‘English’ style) with the demands of an increasingly ‘Roman’ hierarchy ... decoration is heavily applied with an almost Spanish effusiveness” (Downside Abbey, an Architectural History, 18).  The contrast between this and the almost Cistercian simplicity of the nave is striking.

DETAIL of  NORTH. TRANSEPT	DETAIL of  NORTH. TRANSEPT

	Former Reliquary coffin that housed the martyr's relics at Lamspring in Hanover for 250 years.   Text on the Pillars supporting the catafalque-reliquary reads: OLIVER PLUNKET BISHOP of ARMAGH MARTYRED at TYBURN 1st JULY, 1681
RELIQUARY of  ST. OLIVER PLUNKET	FORMER RELIQUARY

ON the south side of the nave are gallery chapels, used daily for private masses prior to the Second Vatican Council, now used less frequently.

GALLERIES on the SOUTH NAVE	CHAPEL of  BL. RICHARD WHITING OSB (Ab.Glastonbury)

CHAPEL of  ALL MONKS	IVORY CRUCIFIX

RELIQUARY of  ST. JOHN LOCKWOOD (m. 1642)	SANCTUARY from GALLERY

→ Abbey Church, Nave, Choir; Cloister; Refectory

→ Chapels of St. Benedict, St. Isidore, St. Sebastian