Gloucester Cathedral: a painted floor in the choir gallery

The south choir gallery is a late 1 lth-century structure modified in the mid14th century, as is the adjoining south transept east gallery chapel (Welander 1991, 150; Wilson 1985, 73). A single brick floor laid in a simple herringbone pattern extends throughout both of these galleries; documentary evidence, in the form of building accounts, provides a date in the 1670s for laying this floor with 8,900 bricks purchased from Worcester (Welander 1991, 373). This brick pavement was partially lifted in 1935 revealing a geometric pattern in an underlying surface. The feature was photographed at the time (ibid, 374), but was interpreted as a mortar bed for the brick floor. During 2001 the brick floor was lifted along several narrow channels for inserting cables, as part of improvements to the fire precautions being carried out in the cathedral. Nine trenches, 200-300mm in width, were cut by maintenance staff, involving removal of some bricks and excavation of the substrate to a depth of 100-150mm below current floor level. The level at which this ‘mortar bed’ floor was encountered was 130-l40mm below the present 17th century brick pavement. A total of 44m was cut in this way.