Long known for his incisive and innovatory work on choir stalls, Charles Tracy here turns his attention to episcopal thrones. This handsome volume fills a gap in studies of church furnishings that has, surprisingly, not hitherto caught the attention of anyone since the summary treatment of the topic by Francis Bond back in 1910. As Tracy highlights, only six episcopal thrones survive from the thirty-six medieval cathedrals of England, Scotland and Wales, four in oak and two in stone. This volume explores in considerable detail five of them: Exeter, St Davids, Hereford, Lincoln and Durham. Canterbury, having recently been given a substantial analysis, is not covered here.

Alone among these survivals to have any written record is Exeter, for which the documentation is prodigious if not entirely complete, and which some thirty years ago was painstakingly transcribed by Audrey Erskine and published in two volumes (Erskine Reference Erskine1981 and Reference Erskine1983). The first stage of work on the throne is accounted for in the roll of 1312–13, but there is then a gap until 1316–17, during which time much of the work was done. Such serendipity is fortuitous, for Nikolas Pevsner declared that the throne was ‘a monument of unprecedented grandeur … the most exquisite piece of woodwork of its date in England and perhaps Europe’. It is thus important to date accurately the project undertaken for Bishop Stapeldon (Bp 1308–26), which began with a visit to episcopal woodlands by the Exeter master carpenters in the summer of 1313. They were accompanied by Thomas of Witney, then the master mason at Winchester but soon to take on that role at Exeter. The accounts reveal that, having felled the timber and sawn it into planks, the sawyers immersed the timber in the mill pool at Norton (now Newton St Cyres). Tracy does not explain this process, but eighteenth- and nineteenth-century handbooks indicate that it was believed the practice shortened the time needed to season the wood. The accounts reveal that the main work on creating the throne was completed by midsummer 1316, for the two leading carpenters were paid their fee of £4, over and above their actual day-work costs. In the years that followed further entries reveal embellishment and decoration that included painting. There has hitherto been another lacuna in studies of church furniture, this being any widespread understanding of the extent to which choir stalls and episcopal thrones were painted. An important contribution provided in this volume is the work of Eddie Sinclair, who took full advantage of the presence of a scaffold set up around the throne to carry out a detailed analysis of the polychromy. She concluded her study by noting ‘it becomes possible to envisage a throne clad in a forest of green foliage, defined by brilliant red, crisp white and gold’ (p 168). It is a pity that her study is presented only in summary form here.

Andrew Budge contributes an important chapter that explores the thrones at Wells and Durham, both being stone-built. The throne at Wells was, suggests Budge, created in the 1330s at a time when the bishop’s cathedral was in Bath, which may go some way to explaining its relatively restrained size and ornamentation. By contrast, the throne at Durham is a splendid affair that befitted the prince-bishops of this episcopate. Built between 1362 and 1381, the throne was erected on a platform that stands over the tomb of Bishop Hatfield. This arrangement perhaps encouraged a later bishop of Durham, Richard Fox, to build his chantry chapel above his tomb in a like manner at Winchester where he was translated from Durham in 1501.

A particular feature of the book is the presence of many excellent drawings by Peter Ferguson, who for so long has collaborated with Hugh Harrison, the renowned timber conservationist. Their examination of both the Exeter and St Davids thrones will, for many, be key chapters in this book. It may be noted that several of Ferguson’s drawings have been provided as tip-ins, printed on double-width pages, thus allowing the provision of larger scale drawings and enabling the reader to gain a true measure of the spectacular level of the work involved in the making of these pieces of furniture.

The Exeter throne was presumably arranged en suite with the choir stalls, although these have long since been lost, but, miraculously, the misericords have survived, having been reused again and again. In an addendum to the description of the Hereford throne, Tracy opines that ‘at Exeter Bishop Stapeldon’s relatively modest stalls were designed and built by a different team of craftsmen up to a decade earlier than the far more ambitious throne’ (p 86). The accounts tell us that during the Christmas term of 1309–10 Master John de Glaston worked for fourteen weeks removing the stalls, at a rate of 3s 9d per week. Audrey Erskine reckoned that this recorded the movement of pre-existing stalls into the new choir. Stapeldon was installed as bishop in 1308, which further suggests the stalls were much older, with the surviving misericords suggesting a thirteenth-century date.

Tracy provides all the relevant passages from Erskine’s transcripts, both for the throne and for works concerning the high altar, in two appendices. Whilst welcome, and thereby providing a fully rounded volume, precise references to Erskine’s two volumes would have been helpful. This, however, is a small quibble, for the volume is a major step forward in our understanding and appreciation of medieval craftsmanship, and many will want to add this excellent volume to their collection.