Yale University Library 39002018341306 YALE UNIVERSITY ART LIBRARY GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL FROM S.W. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND AN ANALYSIS OF THE ORIGIN & DEVELOP MENT OF ENGLISH CHURCH ARCHITECTURE FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES FRANCIS BOND, M.A. , LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD; Fellow of the Geological Society, London ; Honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects WITH 1254 ILLUSTRATIONS, COMPRISING 785 PHOTO GRAPHS, SKETCHES, AND MEASURED DRAWINGS, AND 469 PLANS, SECTIONS, DIAGRAMS, AND MOLDINGS LONDON B. T. BATSFORD, 94 HIGH HOLBORN 1905 Printed at The Darien Press, Edinburgh. PREFACE. In the preparation of this work full use has been made of the materials which have accumulated, both English and foreign. In all important cases an attempt has been made to render due acknowledgment. A list of the sources which have been drawn upon most freely will be found on page viii. ; reference is made to many others in footnotes in the course of the book. But, in addition, the writer has to acknowledge the ready assistance of many friends who have obtained information or verified data for him on the spot. As to the illustrations he is under special obligation to members of the architectural profession for the ready and generous assistance they have given. The difficulty has been to select from the valuable material placed at his disposal. For plans, sketches, moldings, or measured drawings his acknow ledgments are due to Mr Maurice B. Adams, f.r.i.b.a. ; the Com mittee of the Architectural Association Sketch Book ; Mr H. J. Austin; Messrs G. Bell & Son ; Mr W. H. Bidlake, m.a. ; Mr J. Bilson, F.S.A. ; the Council of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society ; the Dele gates of the Clarendon Press, Oxford ; the Rev. Canon Church, m.a. ; the Rev. R. Corrie Castle ; Mr J. J. Creswell, a.r.i.b.a. ; Mr Reginald Fowler; Mr G. Frisch, a.r.i.b.a.; Mr S. K. Greenslade, a.r.i.b.a.; Lord Grimthorpe ; Mr T. G. Jackson, m.a. ; Mr Montague Rhodes James, litt.d. ; Mr C. Henman, a.r.i.b.a.; Mr Gerald C. Horsley; Mr A. H. Kersey, f.r.i.b.a. ; Mr J. Langham ; Mr John Murray ; Mr J. T. Micklethwaite, f.s.a. ; Mr J. Norton ; Mr A. Y. Nutt ; Mr H. A. Paley, a.r.lb.a. ; Mr Roland W. Paul, f.s.a.; Mr H. Phibbs ; Professor Beresford Pite, f.r.i.b.a. ; Mr E. S. Prior, m.a. ; Mr H. A. Prothero, M.A.; Mr Harbottle Reed; the Council ofthe Royal Institute of British Architects; Mr J. Oldrid Scott, f.s.a.; Mr C. Wontner Smith, A.R.I.B.A. ; Professor Elsey Smith, m.a. ; the Committee of the Society of Antiquaries ; Mr Charles Spooner; Mr Russell Sturgis, m.a., PH.D.; Mr Sydney Vacher, a.r.lb.a.; Mr H.D.Walker ; Mr F. S.Waller, f.r.lb.a. ; Mr W. G. Watkins, a.r.lb.a. ; Mr W. S. Weatherley, f.s.a. ; vi PREFACE. Mr A. Needham Wilson, a.r.lb.a. ; as well as to others with whom it has been found impossible to communicate. A large number of photographs has been placed at his disposal ; and though they necessarily lose in reproduction by mechanical pro cess, the results show how excellent in many cases were the originals. He is indebted for the use of photographs to Dr F. J. Allen; Rev. W. Tuzo Alston; Mr W. G. Bannister; Mr R. H. Barker; Mr F. Bligh Bond, f.r.i.b.a.; Mr R. P. Brereton, ii.A. ; Dr Oscar Clark; Mr J. S. Collings; Mr W. Davidson; Messrs Dawkes & Partridge; Mr J. P. Freeman ; Mr S. Gardner ; Mr J. Pattison Gibson ; Mr Donald Gooding; Rev. T. Gough; Mr E. Gunn, a.r.lb.a.; Mr C. C. Hodges; Mr G. H. Lovegrove ; Rev. T. Perkins; Dr H. W. Pigeon; Rev. H. Bedford Pirn; Mr Alan Potter; Rev. G. K. Saunders; Mr F. R. Taylor; Mr G. H. Tyndall ; Mr E. H. Walker; Mr E. \y. M. Wonnacott, f.s.l As the preparation of the work advanced, the importance of liberality of illustration became increasingly apparent. It is only right to acknowledge the readiness with which Mr Batsford seconded the author in his wish to widen the scope of the book and to bring it out in worthy form. Special acknowledgment is due to Mr Harry Batsford ; his interest in the subject and acquaintance with archi tectural literature made his assistance of great value. The whole of the moldings, diagrams, plans, and sections have been drawn by Mr L. R. Stains. Sections are drawn to a uniform scale ; the plans of the parish churches, and that of St Gall, are drawn to half the scale of those of the greater churches. The text has had the advantage of the revision and criticism of Mr John Bilson, from whose sound and accurate scholarship the writer has benefited at all stages of its pre paration. Various portions of the proofs have been revised by Mr T. D. Atkinson, m.a. ; Mr S. B. Beale, a.r.i.b.a.; Mr Harold Brakspear, F.S.A.; Mr R. P. Brereton, m.a.; Mr J. N. Comper ; Mr J. J. Cress well, A.R.LB.A. ; Rev. R. A. Davis ; Mr C. H. Grinling, m.a. ; Mr E. M. Hick; Mr W H. St John Hope, m,a. ; Mr G. H. Lovegrove ; Mr R. Phene Spiers, f.s.a. ; and Mr E. W. M. Wonnacott, f.s.l, to all of whom the writer is indebted for suggestions and criticisms of much value. Not seldom, however, he has ventured to disregard their advice, and has remained of the same opinion still ; for all the shortcomings of the text, therefore, he alone is responsible. Valuable assistance has been rendered by Rev. R. A. Davis in the preparation of the index. The student and archaeologist will find in Chapter XLII. a dated list of English buildings arranged in alphabetical order. Such a list PREFACE. VI 1 should be of great service to all who are interested in the history of English architecture. The preparation of this list has involved much labour ; but it is obvious that the first draft of such a chronology cannot be free from imperfections and inaccuracies. The writer will welcome any corrections or additions to it. To the architectural student it is hoped that the twenty-eight sheets of moldings will be found specially valuable. In the largest collection hitherto published, that by Mr Paley, the moldings are very minute and crowded together, nor are they to the same scale ; yet it makes all the difference whether, for instance, a capital and arch come from a piscina or a pier arcade ; several species of moldings are omitted altogether, e.g. those of vaulting ribs, basement courses, door ways and windows ; and of those which are illustrated the locality from which they come is in many cases not indicated. Of the other collections, that in Sharpe's Arckitecht,ral Parallels is of great value, but it is contained in an expensive book long out of print ; nor does it illustrate any moldings later than the fourteenth century ; that in Sharpe's Mottldings of the Six Periods of British Architecttire extends up to the Reformation, but was never finished. The present collection gives a conspectus of English moldings from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the sixteenth century ; they are drawn boldly and clearly ; they are to the same scale ; the locality, as far as possible, of each is given ; molds of ribs, basement courses, doorways and windows have been included ; and three sheets have been added of the plans of piers, as well of the greater churches as of the parish churches. It has been attempted, moreover, to show the correlation of cognate members. A sheet has been prepared to show the relation of the pier on the one hand to the base and plinth, on the other to the abacus or capital and arch. In the same way illustra tions have been inserted to show the relation of the arch to the jambs of doorways and windows. These architectural members are not complete in themselves ; each is part of a group, and should not only be beautiful in itself, but should fit the position it occupies as a member of that group or whole. The co-ordination of the various members of the pier and arch has hardly ever been systematically illustrated except in Messrs Johnson and Kersey's valuable Churches of the Nene Valley, to the authors of which special acknowledgment is due. The various members have not always been illustrated on the same sheet. To facilitate reference, however, all the illustrations, including the moldings, have been indexed alphabetically (709-738). In many cases also it will be found that a photograph has purposely viii PREFACE. been given as well as a drawing, e.g. of the foliated capital of West Walton. The index to the illustrations, therefore, should constantly be consulted. In the same way a vault is often shown both in per spective and in plan, e.g. that of the choir of Oxford Cathedral (331); as also the piers, e.g. that of the nave of Norwich Cathedral (238 and 659). It may be added that the photographic representation of vaults on plan has not hitherto been attempted in an architectural treatise (see 327-334), and it is believed that this will greatly clear up the intricacies of rib construction. In many later vaults, indeed, e.g. that ofthe nave of St George's, Windsor (330, 332), the construction is utterly unin telligible as the vault is usually seen, i.e. in perspective. In conclusion, the writer begs the student to believe that no collection of moldings will absolve him from the task, as delightful as it is indispensable, of drawing them for himself in sittt. The following are the Titles of Authorities quoted summarily in the course of the Text. Anderson, VV. J., and R. Phene Spiers. The Architecture of Greece and Rome. London, 1902. Architectural Publication Society. Dictionary of Architecture. 7 vols. London, 1849 to 1892. Architecture and Bidlditig, Dictionary of. Edited by Russell Sturgis. 3 vols. New York, 1901. Barry, E. Lectures on Architecture. 1881. Bell. Series of English Cathedrals. London, 1896-1 904. Beckett, Sir E. Book on Building. 2nd edition. London, 1880. Billings, R. W. Carlisle Cathedral. London, 1840. Durham Cathedral. London, 1843. Kettering Church. London, 1843. Temple Church. London, 1838. Bilson, John. The Beginnifigs of Gothic Architecture. Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. March 11 and 25, April 15, 1899, and May 10, 1902. Chapter House of Beverley Minster. Archseologia, liv. 425. On the Recent Discoveries at the East End of the Cathedral Church of Durham. Archaeological Journal, hii. 1-18. Beverley Minster. Architectural Review, iii., 197-204 and 250-259. Bloxam, M. H. Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, nth edition 2 vols I ondon 1882. Bond, Francis. English Cathedrals Illustrated. 3rd edition. London, 1903. PREFACE. ix Bond, Francis. On the Comparative Value of ' Documentary and Architectural Evidence in establishing the Chronology of the English Cathedrals. Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. November 21, 1898. Classification of Romanesque Architecture. Journal of Royal Institute of British Architects. April 22, 1901. BoviTMAN, H., and Crowther, J. S. Churches of the Middle Ages. 2 vols. London, 1850. Boyle, J. R. Holy Trinity Church, Hull. Hull, 1890. Brakspear, Harold. Hayles Abbey Church. Archaeological Journal, Iviii. 350-357. On the First Church at Furness. Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, xviii. Lacock Abbey Church. Archseological Journal, Ivii. 1-9. Lacock Abbey. Archseologia, Ivii. 125-158. Burnham Abbey. Archaeological Journal, Ix. 294-317. Waverley Abbey. Surrey Archaeological Society, 1905. Beaulieu Abbey. Archaeological Journal. 1905. Brandon, R. and J. A. Analysis of Gothick Architecture. 2 vols, London, 1847. Open Timber Roofs of the Middle Ages. London, 1849. Parish Churches. London, 1848. Britton, John. Architectural Antiquiti's of Great Britain. 5 vols. Lond., 1807-1835. Cathedral Antiquities of Great Britain. 6 vols. London, 1814-1835. Brown, G. Baldwin. From Schola to Cathedral. London, 1886. The Arts in Early England. 2 vols. London, 1 903. Browne, Willis. Sui^'ey of the Cathedrals of York, Durham, Ss'c. 1727. Brutails, j. A. L'archeologie du moyen age et ses methodes. Paris, 1900. Buckler, George. Twenty-two Churches of Essex. London, 1856. " Builder," The. Cathedrals of England and Wales. London, 1894. Butler, W. Measured Drawings of Christ Church, Dublin. 1874. Christ Church, Dublin. London, 1901. Butterfield, W. Shottesbrooke Church. London, 1844. Carpenter, R. H. Sherborne Abbey Church. Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. March 19, 1877. Carter, J, Ancient Architecture of England. London, 1795. Plans and Drawings published by the Society of Antiquaries, 1807. Cattaneo, R. L' architecture en Italie du VP au XP siecle. Traduction par M. le Monnier. Venise, 1890. Caumont, A. de. Ab'ec'edaire, ou Rudiments d'arch'eologie. 3 vols. 1858-1862. Caveler, W. Specimens of Gothic Architecture. 2nd edition. London, 1839. Warmington Church. London, 1850. Choisy, A. Histoire de F Architecture. 2 vols. Paris, 1899. Dart de batir ch^z les Romains. Paris, 1873. Dart de batir chez les Byzantins. Paris, 1893. Christian, E. Skelton Church, Yorkshire. London, 1846. Churches of the Archdeaconry of Northampton. Oxford, 1849. Colling, J. K. Details of Gothic Architecture. 2 vols. London. 1856, Gothic Ornaments. 2 vols. London, 1850. English Mediceval Foliage. London, 1874. CoLSON, J. B. Reparations of the Roof of Winchester Nave in 1896. Winchester, 1899. Conder, E. L. Long Melford Church. London, 1887. Cox, Rev. J. C, LL.D., Churches of Derbyshire. 4 vols. London, 1875-1879. X PREFACE. Cox, Rev. J. C, and Sergeantson, Rev. R. M. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, North ampton. Northampton, 1897. Craddock, Thomas. Peterborough Cathedral. Peterborough, 1874. Cresy, E. Stone Church, Kent. London, n.d. Dartein, F. DE. D architecture lombarde. 1865-1882. Dehio and von Bezold. Die Kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. 2 vols., text; 601 plates. Stuttgart, 1884-1901. Dollman, F. T. Church of St Mary Overie, Southwark. London, 1881. Analysis of A/icieiit Domestic Architecture. 2 vols. London, 1861. Enlart, Camille. Origines frangaises de V architecture gothiq^ie en Italie. Paris, 1894. Manuel d'archeologie francaise. Vol. I. Architecture religieuse. Paris, 1902. Vol. II. Architecture civile et militaire. 1904. (Unless otherwise specified, the refer ences in the text are to Vol. I.) Fen and Marshland Churches. Wisbech, n.d. Fergusson, J. History of Architecture in all Countries. 2 vols. 3rd edition. Edited by R. Phene Spiers. London, 1893. Ferrey, B. Christ Church, Hants. London, 1834. Freeman, Archdeacon. Architectural History of Exeter Cathedral. 2nd edition. Exeter, 1888. Freeman, E. A. IVindoiv Tracery. Oxford, 185 1. Garbett, E. L. Principles of Design in Architecture. 7th edition. London, 1891. Gardner, J. Starkie. Ironwork. London, 1893. Godwin, E. W. Bi-istol Cathedral. Archaeological Journal. Vol. 20. Greenwell, Canon W. Durham Cathedral. 4th edition, Durham, 1892. Grimthorpe, Edmund, Lord. St Albans Cathedral and its Restoration. 2nd edition. St Albans, 1893. Hadfield, J. Ecclesiastical, Castellated, and Domestic Architectu?-e in Essex. London, 1848. Hodges, C. C. Hexham Abbey. London, 1888. Blyth Priory Church. 188 1. Hope, W. H. St John. Alnwick Abbey (White Canons). Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. 1887. Canterbury, St Pancras. Archasologia Cantiana. Vol. 25. Canterbury, Inventories of Christ Church (with J. W. Legg). London, 1902. Castle Acre Priory (Cluniac). Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society. 1904. Dale Abbey (White Canons). Derbyshire Archaeological Society, i. 100, and ii. 128. Fountains Abbey (QSiX&cAvi.Vi). Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, xv. 269-402. 1900. ¦ Furness Abbey (Cistercian). Transactions of Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological Society. Vol. xvi. Notes on the Abbey Church of Glastonbury. Archaeological Journal, lxi. 185-196. 1904. Gloucester Abbey (Benedictine). Records of Gloucester Cathedral, iii. i. Hulne (White Friars). Archaeological Journal. 1890. Lezves Priory (Cluniac). Archaeological Journal, xl. Architectural History of the Cathedral, Church, and Monastery of Rochester. London, 1900. PREFACE. xi Hope, W. H. St John. .9/ Agatha's Abbey, Richmond (White Canons). Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, X. 117-158. 1887. St Radigund's Priory (White Canons). Archaeologia Cantiana, xiv. 140, Watton Abbey (Gilbertine). Archaeological Journal, Iviii. i. West Langdon (^\{\X.e Q,sj\ox\%). Archaeologia Cantiana, xv. 59. Hubsch, H. Monuments de l' architecture chretienne. Paris, 1866. Johnson, J. Reliques of Ancient English Architecture. London, n.d. Johnson, R. J. Specimens of Early French Architecture. London, 1864. King, T. H. Study Book of Mediceval Architecture and Art. 4, vols. London, 1858. Lasteyrie, Comte Robert de. Discours sur les origines de l' architecture gothique. Caen, 1901. Crypte de St Martin, Tours. Memoires de I'academie des inscriptions et belles lettres. Tome xxxiv.. Part I. Paris, 1891. Lethaby, W. R. Mediceval Art. London, 1904. Livett, Rev. G. M. Southivell Minster. Southwell, 1883. Longman, W. St PauVs Cathedral. London, 1873. Micklethwaite, J. T. Westminster Abbey. Arch. Journal. Vol. 51. Murray. Cathedrals of England and Wales. 8 vols. London, 1861-1873. Neale, J. St Alb an' s Abbey. London, 1877. Nene Valley, Churches of. Edited by E. Sharpe, J. Johnson, and A. H. Kersey. London, 1880. Paley, F. A. Manual of Gothic Moldings. 4th edition. London, 1877. • Manual of Gothic Architecture. London, 1846. Parker, J. H. Glossary of Gothic Architecture. 5th edition. 3 vols. Oxford, 1850. Guide to Architectural Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Oxford. Oxford, 1846. Great Haseley Church, Oxon. Oxford, 1840. Dorchester Church, Oxon. Oxford, 1845. Petit, Rev. J. L. Remarks on Church Architecture. London. 2 vols. 1841. Boxgrove Priory. Chichester, 1861. Potter, Joseph. Tintern, Buildwas, and Wenlock Abbeys. London, 1849. Prior, E. S. History of Gothic Art in England. London, 1900. Pugin, A. Specimens of Gothic Architecture. 2 vols. London, 1821. Pugin, A. and A. W. Examples of Gothic Architecture. 3 vols. London, 1838-1840. Pugin, A. VV. True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture. London, 1841. Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts. London, 185 i. Reeve, J. A. Fountains Abbey. London, 1892. Rickman, T. Styles of Architecture in England. 7th edition. London, 1881. RuPRlCH-RoBERT. L' architecture normande aux XP et XIP siecles en Normandie et en Angleterre. 2 vols. Paris, n.d. Ruskin, J. Seven Lamps of Architecture. 3rd edition. Orpington, 1891. Saint-Paul, Anthyme. Violletle-Duc, ses travaux d'art et son systeme archeologique. 2nd edition. Paris, 1881. Histoire monumentale de la France. 4th edition. Paris, 1895. Scott, Sir G. G. Gleanings from Westminster Abbey. 2nd edition. Oxford, 1863. Lectures on the Rise and Development of Mediceval Architecture. . 2 vols. London, 1879. Scott, G. G. (Jun.). Essay on the History of English Church Architecture. London, 1881. xii PREFACE. Sharpe, Edmund. Architectural Parallels in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, selected from Abbey Chm'ches. London, 1848. Supplement to ditto, containing full-sized moldings. London, T848. Mouldings of the Six Periods of British Architecture. 3 parts. London, 187 1. ¦ ¦ Decorated Window Tracery in England. 2 vols. London, 1849. Lincoln Excursion of Architectural Association. London, 1871. Architecture of the Cistercians. Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, June 19, 1871. Ornamentation ofthe Transitional Period. London, 1876. New Shoreham Church, Sussex. Chichester, 1861. Seven Periods of English Architecture. 3rd edition. London, 1888. Sketch-Books. Architectural Association. 32 vols. 1867-1904. Abbey Square. 3 vols. 1872. John 0' Gaunt. 3 vols. 1874-1879. Spring Garde?is. 8 vols. 1 866-1 890. Statham, H. H. Architecture for General Readers. London, 1895. Stewart, Rev. D. J. Architectural History of Ely Cathedral. London, 1868. Architect7(ral History of Norwich Cathedral and Cloister. Archaeological Journal. Vol. 32. Stokes, Margaret. Early Christian Architecture in Ireland. London, 1878. Early Christian Art in Ireland. 2 vols. London, 1887. ViOLLET-LE-Duc. Dictionnaire raisonne de F architecture francaise du XP au XVI siecle. 10 vols. Paris, 1858-1868. Walcott, Rev. M. E. C. Church and Conventual Arrangement. London, 1861. Waller, F. S. Gloucester Cathedral. 1856. Weale. Quarterly Papers on Architecture. 4 vols. 1844-1845. Whewell, Rev. W. Notes on German Churches and Normandy. Cambridge, 1835. Wickes, C. Spires and Towers of England. 3 vols. London, 1853. Willis, Rev. R. Architecture of the Middle Ages, especially of Italy. Cambridge, 1835, Canterbury Cathedral. 1845. Chichester Cathedral. Chichester. 1861. York Minster. Archaeological Institute. York volume, 1846. Worcester Cathedral. Archaeological Journal. Vol. 20. Worcester Monastery. Archaeological Journal. Vol. 20. ¦ Winchester Cathedral. Archaeological Institute. Winchester volume, 1846. Lichfield Cathedral. Arch^ological Journal. Vol. 18. Facsimile of the Sketch Book of Wilars de Honecort. 1859. On the Construction of the Vaults of the Middle Ages. Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Vol. I., Part II. 1842. Architectural History of Glastonbury Abbey. Cambridge, 1866. Architectural Nomenclature of the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1844. and J. W. Clarke, M.A. Architectural History of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge, 1886. Yorkshire Churches. Leeds, 1844. Winters, W. Waltham Abbey. Waltham, 1888. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PART I.— THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF ENGLAND. page INTRODUCTION xvii chapter I. Definitions of basilican, byzantine, Romanesque, and GOTHIC architecture I II. Characteristics of English Romanesque architecture, 1050 — c. 1200 14 III. Characteristics of English gothic architecture, c, II 70 — c. 1538 44 IV. Ditto, c 1170 — c. 13 15 65 V. Ditto, c 1300 — c. 1350 80 VI. Ditto, c 1330 — c. 1538 88 VII. Chronological history of the greater English churches 97 PART IL— AN ANALYSIS OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF ENGLAND. VIII. The basilican plan 145 IX. The planning of the eastern limb of the cathedral, monastic and collegiate churches 159 X. The choir, the saint's chapel, the eastern transept, the crypt of ditto 183 XI. The central transept of ditto 195 XII. The nave,, Galilee, western transept, porch and chantry chapels of ditto - 201 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XIII. The planning of the parish churches 212 XIV. The supports ; the basilican column ; the Roman esque pier 230 XV. The supports; the gothic pier 244 XVI. Traheated and arcuated construction ; defini tions OF arches- 257 XVII. The compound arch ; its construction and orna mentation - 272 XVIII. Vaulting; the dome; the semidome ; the barrel vault ; THE half BARREL ; THE STONE CEILING ; THE SPAN ROOF OF .STONE 281 XIX. Ditto. The groined vault 289 XX. Ditto. The construction of ribbed vaults 296 XXI. Ditto. High vaults with diagonal ribs 309 XXII. Ditto. Gothic vaulting; ridge-ribs ; tiercerons ; LIERNES ; FAN VAULTING 323 XXIII. The ABUTMENT OF THE VAULTED CHURCH ; . THE BUTTRESS, THE PINNACLE _- 350 XXIV, The transmission of thrusts by the - flying BUTTRESS ; the OPPOSITION OF THRUSTS 368 XXV. The drainage of the roofs. Corbel-tables, PARAPETS, battlements, GARGOYLES 384 XXVI. The protection of the walls. Ground-courses, DRIPSTONES, hood-molds, STRINGS 402 XXVII. Cubical, scalloped, interlacing, and figure : CAPITALS 409 XXVIII. Corinthianesque capitals; gothic foliated capitals 420 XXIX. Molded capitals 439 XXX. The base 447 XXXI. Romanesque windows, lancets, and plate tracery, 456 XXXII. Geometrical window-tracery 472 XXXIII. Curvilinear window-tracery 479 CONTENTS. XV chapter page XXXIV. Rectilinear window-tracery 491 XXXV. Window construction 505 XXXVI. The triforium 519 XXXVII. Tpie clerestory 543 XXXVIII. Open timber roofs 550 XXXIX. Doorways and porches 573 XL. Towers 586 XLI. Spires 611 XLII. Alphabetical list of dated buildings 638 XLIII. Comparative sheets of moldings of the archi tectural members of ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC churches 658 INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS 709 INDEX OF PLACES 739 INDEX OF SUBJECT-MATTER AND GLOSSARY - 773 INTRODUCTION. Of all the artistic achievements of the English race two make unchallenged claim to pre-eminence : our imaginative literature and our mediaeval archi tecture. Of the former nothing need here be said ; its triumphs are still being won, its end is not yet. With the latter it is not so. Painting, music, novels, play-acting, count their votaries by thousands. The new symphony by Pole or Russian or Bohemian obtains respectful audience and admiration ; columns of appreciation are daily discharged on every second-rate painting or third-rate play. Not so with architecture. There never was a time of such blackness of indifference as to the master-art of architecture. It was not always so. In the old England there was little literature, little painting, little play acting ; but there was the most beautiful architecture. Everybody loved it, or they would not have paid for it. In the fifteenth century every village mason could build a church, and the village carpenter could crown it with a hammer- beam roof. In Elizabeth's spacious days. Lord Bacon, Lord Burghley, the Secretary of State, the Ambassador to France, were students of architecture ; largely competent to criticise and control the planning and design of hall and mansion. In the Augustan age of English literature and English architecture, no cultured man but had visited and studied the palaces of Palladio and Michael Angelo, and was competent to discuss the proportions of the orders. A knowledge of architecture was a necessary equipment of the gentleman. Lord Burlington was proud to father designs, the paternity of which belonged to others. Those were glorious days for architects, before the English aristocracy had concentrated its intellectual force on the destruction of the pheasant and the fox. Nowadays architecture is outside the precincts of culture. Educated people know little and care less about architecture. Classic and Renaissance, Romanesque and Gothic, are naught to them ; their ignorance is naked and unashamed. In this general neglect medieval architecture beyond all is immersed. For a brief period indeed interest in thissupreme artistic achievement of our race was revived by Britton, Pugin, Petit, and Willis, greatest of all. That interest was not to endure. Nowadays the students of our national architecture are few. It is surprising that there are any in the face of the discouragements which their study meets. At the older universities tens of thousands of pounds are expended every year b xviii INTRODUCTION. to encourage the study of classical literature, mathematics, history, or science ; not a penny on architecture. Neither at Oxford nor at Cambridge is there a single professorship, lectureship, scholarship, or fellowship in English medieval architecture. France and Germany have several able periodicals devoted ex clusively to the subject of mediaeval architecture ; we have not one. Government subventions support a great museum of mediaeval art in the Trocadero at Paris ; we have at South Kensington a few casts, and those chiefly of foreign Renais sance work, mixed up with pitchers and jugs and fiddles and furniture. At the annual exhibition of the Ro^^al Academy one small room is deemed enough for the drawings of the architects. Year by year we have exhibitions of the potsherds of Rome and Greece and Egypt ; not of our own mediaeval art. Immense sums are spent in excavating civilisations in far-away countries with which we have little concern ; our own Byland, Rievaulx, Glastonbury remain lost beneath the soil. For this apathy and neglect there must be a reason ; probably there is more than one. In the first place architecture, if it is to be studied to the best advan tage, must be studied, like botany and geology, in situ. But such study is open to few. Hexham and Dore, Norwich and St David's are far sundered. Yet these and countless others must be visited in any thoroughgoing survey of English mediaeval architecture. Next to actual inspection of the buildings, the best thing is to study them in illustrations. Hitherto, however, it has not been possible, except to the few, to study them even in this form. There are indeed comparatively few mediaeval buildings of the first rank which have not been illustrated in measured drawings. But what private person could afford to become the possessor of the tomes, many of them rare, costly, and bulky, in which they are to be found : Bowman and Crowther's Churches of the Middle Ages, Brandon's Analysis and Open Timber Roofs, Britton's Architectural Antiquities and English Cathedrals, Caveler's Specimens, Colling's Details, Gothic Ornaments, and English Mediceval Foliage, Hadfield's Essex, Johnson and Kersey's Nene Valley Churches, Pugin's Examples and Specimens, Sharpe's Architectural Parallels, Professor Willis' invaluable papers, scattered about in the Transactions of various provincial societies, the Architectural Association Sketch Book (32 vols.), the Spring Gardens Sketch Book (8 vols.), the John d Gaunt Sketch Book (3 vols.), the Abbey Square Sketch Book (3 vols), Neale's St Alban's, Hodges' Hexham, Reeve's Fountains, and a host of other monographs. These, in default of personal visits to each church, are the sources to which the architectural student must resort. Such a collection, however, is entirely out of reach except to residents in London. This difficulty of access to adequate illustrations may well explain, to some extent at any rate, the unpopularity of the study of mediaeval architecture. It has been unpopular because the apparatus for its proper study has not been available. To the writer, therefore, the first thing to be done, to advance the study of mediaeval architecture, seemed to be to provide copious illustrations. Fortunately two circumstances combine to make this possible, even in the compass of a single volume to do this in a fairly adequate manner. One is that the copyrights of many large and costly works have run out, and it has become possible to reproduce from them illustra tions long out of print. The second is the facilicy of illustration given by INTRODUCTION. xix modern photographic processes. It has been the writer's pleasant task to visit nearly every important church in England, camera in hand, and he has had abundant aid from his brother photographers. But for photography an illus trated volume so copious in examples would have been out of the question. With its aid, it has been possible to include 20 whole-page collotypes, 785 repro ductions of photographs, sketches, and measured drawings, in addition to 469 further illustrations which are arranged on 12 pages of plans, 2 pages of sections, 8 pages of diagrams, and 28 pages of moldings. A great book is a great evil ; but not, it is to be hoped the reader will think, a great picture-book. A yet graver reason it may be for the failure of mediaeval architecture to arrest and retain the attention of the modern student is the frag mentary and disconnected presentation of the subject which has been usual. Open any of the text-books from Rickman downwards and try to obtain a consecutive and complete treatment of any one of the chief features of the mediaeval church — its plan, its vault, the abutments of the vault, the drainage of the roofs, the fenestration — what do we find ? Perhaps we would like to know about the principles of construction of the vault. On this we get a few isolated scraps of information under "Norman," followed by details about doorways and buttresses and windows and capitals and things in general. The few scraps of information about Norman vaults are lost in this olla podrida. When we have forgotten all about them, we get perchance some information about "Early English" vaulting. This in turn is overlaid by layer upon layer of other miscellaneous matter. And so on to the end. No subject can be understood nor can any subject interest, when treated in such desultory fashion. There seemed to the writer, therefore, to be room for a connected analysis of mediaeval architecture. In this, first of all, should come the subject of planning — a subject of primary importance, which however has usually been omitted altogether. Secondly should come the important matter of the vault and its supports. Of great importance also is the question of abutment ; it is one thing to put up a vault, it is another to induce it to stay up. This includes the whole machinery of buttresses, pinnacles, and flying buttresses. Then there is the drainage question. How is the rain to be kept from damaging roof and wall ? This includes the corbel-table and dripping eaves, and the later contrivances of gutter, gargoyle, parapet, and battlement ; also the protection of wall, window, and doorway by basement course, string, dripstone, and hood-mold. Then there is the whole question of lighting, and the development of window tracery as controlled by the exigencies of stained glass ; and many other subjects, each needing separate treatment, such as the capital and the base, the triforium and the clerestory, the doorway and the porch, the roof, the tower and the spire. On every one of these a separate treatise seems to be demanded ; not necessarily lengthy, but consecutive in treatment, and as far as space allows, complete. It is precisely to such a collection of short treatises on mediaeval planning and building construction that Part II, , the bulk of the work, is devoted. (See Table of Contents, xiii, xiv, xv.) The fragmentary treatment of mediaeval architecture which has prevailed so long is probably due mainly to the influence of Rickman's work. Just as Linnaeus taught the botanical student to arrange his plants in orders, genera. XX INTRODUCTION. and species, so Rickman taught his followers to classify their churches in archi tectural periods. Linnaeus' methods long prevailed ; and while they prevailed, botany was a dull science. Later on, botanists arose who taught how plants grew, and botany at once became a fascinating study. Architecture had not the good fortune of botany ; it has remained a classificatory science. No wonder, then, that it has been found void of life and interest. Nor is that the only objection to a mere classificatory treatment. It is bad enough that it devitalises the subject of interest ; it is worse still if the classifi cation is itself unsound. And that is so. We have been told for nearly a century that there are four periods of English mediaeval architecture : Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. But there is no such thing ; the famous four periods are mere figments of the imagination. Take a subject of primary and fundamental importance : that of the planning of the greater churches ; there are not four, but only two periods of planning ; of which the first, the period of the three parallel eastern apses and of the periapsidal plan, ends with the twelfth century, while all the later plans were in use by that time. Or take vaulting as the criterion. Then the periods become five : that of the groined vault, the ribbed vault whether quadripartite or sexpartite, the vault with tiercerons and ridge ribs, the lierne vault, and the fan vault ; the periods are not four but five, and do not coincide with the traditional Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. If the very important matter of abutment be taken as a criterion, we are equally in difficulty. All the main methods of abutment had come into use by A.D. 1200; in the Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular periods no important novelty as to methods of abutment is introduced. Only to one, and that quite a subordinate member of the building, does the antiquated terminology fairly apply, viz., to the fenestra tion ; and even here it is badly chosen and inaccurate, and was very properly revised and corrected by Mr Edmund Sharpe.* The whole classification, moreover, is mischievous as well as baseless. The novice is led to believe that architecture stopped at the end of each of the four periods, turned over a new leaf, and began again de novo. Nay further, that there is in each of the four periods some inward and spiritual significance, which, could it be discerned, would give us the keynote or character of the whole archi tecture of the time. But it is just as easy to argue about the deep moral and spiritual significance of the two planning or abutment periods as about that of the traditional four ; and just as futile. The greatest objection of all, however, to this cutting up of architectural history into periods is that it obscures the essential unity of the development of the building art. Professor Freeman ever protested against the demarcation of ancient and modern History. Equally important is it to emphasise the unity of architectural art, and to protest against its being cut up into arbitrary sections. Architecture is one, not many. Every so-called style was a transition from that which preceded it, and a transition to that which was its successor. " From Roman to Renaissance the history of architecture is an uninterrupted series of transitions ; it is quite time that we studied the art of the Middle Ages in the fashion in which we study the * For Rickman's Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular, Mr Sharpe substituted Norman, Transitional, Lancet, Geometrical, Curvilinear, Rectilinear. INTRODUCTION. xxi development of a living being, which from infancy passes to age by a series of insensible transformations, without its being possible from one day to another to say where infancy or youth ceases or where age begins." * In the present volume, therefore, the traditional classification into periods has been abandoned,! except that in Chapters II., IV, V., and VL, the charac teristics of the so-called Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular periods are enumerated. It follows from what has been said above that it is here attempted to introduce into the subject of English mediaeval architecture that evolutionary method of treatment which has been so fertile of results in every branch of knowledge to which it has been applied. The book is an attempt not to classify, but to work out processes of development. Evolution, whether in architec ture or in anything else, was not a flux of blind and unmotived change. For every change there was a reason. What that reason was it may perhaps now in many cases be impossible to discover. We cannot look through the eyes of the old builders. We may think we see what they were about ; but we merely think, we do not know ; we are in the region of conjecture, and conjecture is hazardous. But are we therefore to discard conjecture? It is not discarded from modern science. The naturalist does not know that the colours of insect or of bird are due to protective or sexual reasons ; this is but a hypothesis, i.e. a conjecture ofhis. So too in architecture hypothesis is not to be discarded, provided that it explains the phenomena, and that the cause it assigns is a vera causa and is adequate to produce the effect. The writer, therefore, has not shrunk from the suggestion of causative relations. Nothing is more interesting than the search for the hidden cause ; nor should the investigator be deterred even if at times his discovery prove but a mare's nest. From the adoption of an evolutionary method of treatment yet one more consequence flows. It is that the evolution should be traced back, not half-way, but if possible to the fountainhead ; in other words the question of origins should be dealt with. English mediaeval architecture has been presented too often as a sort of architectural Melchizedek, or as if it sprang forth full-grown like some Pallas from the teeming head of Zeus, in the last half of the eleventh century, in Caen or Canterbury. But the Norman offshoot of the great Romanesque stock had its roots in a distant past. Its history goes back to the earliest days of church building in newly Christianised Rome, to the first years of the fourth century. That history indeed, from the fourth to the eleventh century, is dark and dubious. But that the Romanesque and Gothic minsters are the offspring of the early Christian basilicas there can be no doubt, however difificult it may be at present to establish each step of the pedigree. Throughout the book, therefore, reference has been made, where reasonable evidence exists, to the origin and history of mediaeval architecture not only in our own country but throughout Gaul, Germany, and Italy in the Dark Ages. The statements made are in many cases far from pretending to certainty ; but by the references which have been given to authorities the reader is put in a position to test for * Viollet-le-Duc. t The French archajologists have long discarded the arbitrary divisions of De Caumont and others. xxii INTRODUCTION. himself the validity of the conclusions presented. English architectural history will lose nothing if it ceases to be so insular. To the Romanesque architecture of Normandy in particular much attention has been given ; in the great abbeys of that country we have the incunabula of the English abbey church and cathedral. Nor has the writer hesitated to describe developments which are to be found in the Gothic of France, but which were not reached here. French writers do not fail to include in their architectural treatises an account of those features, such as the open timber roof, the lierne and fan vault, which were developed here only, or reached here the highest stage of development. Similarly it seemed desirable not to conclude the discussion, for example, of the treatment ofthe triforium without some account of the "transparent" triforium ofthe He de France. Wherever possible, the comparative method of investigation has been adopted, at any rate as regards the most important of the schools of mediaeval architecture ; those ofthe He de France and England. Many shortcomings there are, and must necessarily be, in this or in any attempt to deal with the vast subject of English mediaeval architecture. It is true that measured drawings of most of the greater churches are to be found scattered here and there in the various Sketch-Books ; in the Builder, Building News, Architect, British Architect, Builder's Journal ; and in such collections as those of Bowman and Crowther, Brandon, Colling, the Churches of the Nene Valley, and various monographs. But very few scientific descriptions of churches, with complete apparatus of measurements, plans, sections, elevations, details, moldings, and critical text have hitherto been published. Again, a writer on the medieval architecture of France or Germany has a vast corpus of facts ready to his hand in the archaeological literature of that country ; in England the Transactions of the provincial societies, though they were founded mainly for the study of medieval architecture, are largely devoted to non-architectural subjects.* Their proper task — that of analysing, describ ing, and classifying the churches of each district — has with a few noteworthy exceptions, made exceedingly little progress. The want of accurate classified information and the lack of an index to measured drawings have made and must make the preparation of any work on English architecture difificult and incomplete ; errors must needs occur in battalions. The author will be grateful for any corrections, suggestions, or criticisms addressed to him through the publisher. * Among recent papers may be mentioned one, " On the Ceremonial of the Toda Dairy ;" an interesting topic, but qu\illait-il faire dans cette galeref GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. PART I. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF ENGLAND. Chapter I. Architecture Defined — Basilican and Byzantine Architecture — Romanesque Architecture — Schools of Romanesque — Gothic Architecture Defined — Relation of Gothic to Romanesque, Definition of Architecture, — The art of Architecture has been defined very variously. It was defined by Mr Garbett * as " the art of well building ; in other words, of giving to a building all the perfection of which it is capable," Mr Ruskin f defined it as " the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure." In the American Dictionary of Architec ture and Building (1901) it is defined as "the art of building with some elaboration and skilled labour " ; and, in a more limited sense, as " the modifica tion of the structure, form, and colour of houses, churches, and civic buildings, by means of which they become interesting as works of fine art." But it can hardly be held that there is one art of making things well, and another of making them badly. There is not one art of making clothes that fit and another art of making misfits. One and the same art makes flower-pots for the gardener and Worcester ware for the connoisseur. So it is with Architecture. It is simply "the art of building."! Good architecture is indeed the art of building beautifully and expressively ; and bad architecture is the reverse. But architecture is the art of building in general. This seems clear enough. But as a matter of fact the definition contains an ambiguity in the use ofthe term " building." In the erection of every edifice the work necessarily falls into two parts. There is the actual putting together of the materials by manual labour and machinery so as to form roofs, supports, * Principles of Design, i. t Seven Lamps, 13. X So VioUet-Ie-Duc {Architecture, i. 116), who defines architecture as '' Part de batir." So also Mr Barr Ferree, for whose discussion of the current definitions see the Architectm-al Record, i. 199. A 2 DEFINITION OF ARCHITECTURE. and abutments. There is also the preliminary process of planning and designing the buildings, and, it may be, of making drawings, whether rough sketches, or drawings to scale or full size, as well as that of superintendence. Now these two operations, the preliminary and the subsequent one, may be carried on by the same individual, or they may not. If a modern builder is erecting a terrace of small tenements, he may conduct both operations himself; he may plan and design the terrace, superintend the actual building of it, and take part in the work with his own hands. In such a case he is both architect and builder. And what is sometimes done nowadays by a modern builder was no doubt at all periods occasionally done by builders. We may be sure that in the fifteenth century many a village builder was capable of planning and designing a new aisle or chancel as well as of putting it up. In such a case, as in that of the modern builder quoted above, he was, in the modern and restricted sense of the terms, both architect and builder. But when a large and important building is erected nowadays, one and the same man does not undertake both divisions of the work ; one part of the work is handed over to one man, the other part to another ; in modern parlance the first is the architect, the second the builder. And we may be sure that at all periods when any great building was erected, there was a similar division of functions. When the Parthenon was built, or Santa Sophia, or Amiens Cathedral or Salisbury, even if the architect had gone through the " shops," as the British engineer still does, he would have too much to do with planning, design, drawings, and superintendence, to work at the buildings to any considerable extent with his own hands. The more he used his hands, the less time he would have to use his brains. To be accurate, therefore, we must not, except in comparatively small and unimportant work, define "architecture" as "the art of building," but as "the art of planning, designing, and drawing buildings, and of directing the execution thereof." * Another difficulty has been raised as to whether Architecture should be classed with the Fine or the Industrial Arts; i.e. whether it belongs to the category in which are found Painting, Sculpture, Music and Imaginative, Literature; or whether it ranks with the Industrial Arts. The difificulty arises from the fact that there is really a third category intermediate between the Fine and the Industrial Arts. No one would contend, except by way of paradox, that farming and cookery are anything but Industrial Arts. But * How far the mediasval magister operis was builder as well as architect has long been a qucEstio vexata. See Notes on the Superintendents of English Buildings in the Middle Ages, by \\'yatt Papworth, Journal of R.I.B.A., xxxviii. ; On the Hope of English Architecture, by W. H. White, Journal of R.I.B.A., December 1874; Architects and Master Workmen, by J. J. Stevenson, Journal of R.LB.A., January 1875 ; D^^ Romanische und Gotische Baukunst, by Max Hasak, Stuttgart ; Mr T. G. Jackson, in Builder, loth April 1897 ; Enlart's Manuel, i, 62; Choisy's History, ii. 518 and 256; Anthyme St Paul's Hist. Monumentale, 293; Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire, iv. 198 ; The Basis of Gothic Architecture, by Mr E. S. Prior, in Builder, 23rd February 1901 ; Education in Building, by Professor Lethaby, in Journal of R.I.B.A., 17th June 1901 ; and his Mediceval Art, 255. On Mediaeval Working Drawings, see article by Mr Surges in Journal of R.I.B.A., xxxviii.; article on "Drawing" in The Dictionary of Architecture, issued by the Architectural Publication Society ; list of medieval drawings m Journal of R.I. B.A. , 25th November 1858; and in Lethaby's Mediceval Art, 260; W&sl, 'm Journal of R.I.B.A., 1874,38; V\o\\tt-\t-'DvLC, Dictionnaire, \x. igy; Enlart's Manuel, i. 65. '^'^'¦^v o U •V^.,,...;- u-"' ¦ ; ¦ CO \ ''.; ¦ V+H o ol CJ If) rt a (*H o 0) (/I o. <; EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. S it is different when we turn to what are called the Applied Arts or the Decorative Arts. These arts are, in the main, utilitarian ; nevertheless their products may to some extent be beautiful and expressive; in the case of the jeweller, sometimes to a very considerable extent. It is true that if the jeweller make a clock or watch, his main object is utilitarian; but if he make some purely useless article, such as a ring or necklace, his occupation becomes a Fine Art. So it is with the architect or builder. When he is providing shelter, which is a utilitarian occupation, and the primary function of Architecture, his art to that ¦extent is an Industrial Art. But if he provide shelter in the fashion in which it is provided in Westminster Hall or Westminster Abbey Church, his work ranks among the Fine Arts; without ceasing, however, to be an Industrial Art. When, however, he is building a Triumphal Arch, a Nelson's Column, an Eleanor Cross, his Architecture becomes a Fine Art, pure and simple. For a Fine Art, pure and simple, is one which has no connection with material utility and use. Early Christian Architecture. — What we are concerned with here is the Church Architecture which was done in England between the Norman Con quest and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century ; the earlier part of which goes by the name of Romanesque or Anglo-Norman or Norman, while the latter part is called Gothic. Church Architecture had a very long history before the Norman style reached these islands in the eleventh century. What Mr Pugin designated Christian Architecture began on a large scale at the commencement of the fourth century of our era, in the reign of Constantine. Almost at once it diverged in two opposite directions. One half of Christendom used the Greek, the other the Latin liturgy. The Greek Christians developed their churches on the lines of such buildings in Rome as the Pantheon, S. Stefano Rotondo, and the like ; producing that great style of domed churches, which, because centred at Constantinople (whose Greek name was Byzantium), goes by the name of Byzantine Architecture. Its origin and history would be far clearer if it were called East Roman. It is an architec ture in which Roman methods of construction were worked out by Hellenistic craftsmen. But those who used the Latin liturgy, i.e. Western Christendom, erected churches of vast dimensions— indeed OLD ST PETER'S (147) and St Paul's extra muros, Rome, had areas of about 100,000 feet— but quite simple in structure.* These Early Christian churches are called Basilicas, and the style is the Basilican; what the French archaeologists call the Latin style.f It is neither Byzantine nor Romanesque, but a style with quite distinct characteristics of its own. Up to the ninth century it may be said to have had the field entirely to itself in the greater churches of Western Christendom. It persisted, in its own country at any rate, here and there throughout the whole Romanesque^ period and well into the Gothic days. * In section they are practically the same as Ely nave (34-i)- t See article on Latin style by W. P. P. Longfellow in the American Dictionary of Architecture and Building. \ Pisa Cathedral, S. Ambrogio, Milan, and St Mark's, Venice, may well have been building together ; the first is Basilican, the second Romanesque, the third Byzantine. 6 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. Romanesque Architecture.* — The last part of the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth centuries were the worst times probably ever known in Western Europe ; they were emphatically the Dark Ages. The Roman Empire of the West had sunk beneath the barbarian hordes ; it was not till the redistribution of Europe into nationalities, till Charlemagne arose, late in the ninth century, that civilisation lifted its head again, and a new architecture became possible. To the ninth century may be attributed the elaborate planning of the monastery of ST GALL (194); the eastern parts of S. Ambrogio, Milan, and the ambulatory of ST MARTIN, TOURS (192,3). This new style is called Romanesque.^ It is a term by no means easy to define. Quicherat's well- known definition is that Romanesque architecture is that which has ceased to be Roman, though it still retains much that is Roman ; and which is not yet Gothic, though it has already something Gothic about it. The definition is an attractive one, but is really but little helpful; it is to explain " obscurum per obscurius." To understand it we must first know what Roman and what Gothic architecture is. The same objection applies to M. Anthyme St Paul's de finition ; that it is " Roman architecture purified and developed to suit the needs of the Catholic liturgy and the genius of each of the peoples who employed it from the ninth to the thirteenth century " ; we want to know what he means by Roman architecture. Turn to ViolIet-le-Duc {Dictionnaire, iv. 60) and all becomes clear. The Roman work of which Romanesque is the offspring is just one particular sort of Roman work ; that of the Basilica. " Le probleme que les architectes de I'epoque romane (= Romanesque) s'etaient donne a resoudre 6tait celui-ci : Clever des voutes sur la basilique antique ; " i.e. put shortly, the Romanesque problem was that of vaulting a basilica. Romanesque architecture is the art of building vaulted basilicas. And by a basilica we mean what is basilican both in plan and elevation ; iri plan, as having nave and aisles ; in elevation, as having aisle wall, lean-to roof, and clerestory wall containing windows. This then was the problem of problems of the W^estern builders from the ninth century onward ; to vault an aisled church without destroying its clerestory lighting. Romanesque Schools. — This problem could be solved, and was solved perfectly in more than one way ; nowhere probably till late in the eleventh century. One solution was to ceil the nave with barrel vaults resting on clerestory walls pierced with windows. This was the solution of the two schools of Burgundy and Provence. A second was to ceil the nave with a row of domes ; a method peculiar to Le Puy Cathedral and St Hilaire, Poitiers. A third was to ceil the nave with intersecting vaults ; groined vaults, as at Speyer ; ribbed vaults, as at Durham.;]: It was the last solution which resulted in Gothic * The term "Romanesque" was first proposed by Mr Gunn ; and was adopted by Dr Whewell in his Notes on German Churches, 1835. t The application of the term varies greatly. Many apply it, with Mr Fergusson (i. 411), to all Christian Architecture, except Byzantine, done in Western Europe, before Gothic ; i.e. all the work between the fourth and the latter part of the twelfth century. Such an application, which would designate the fourth century basilicas of Rome and the sixth century ones of Ravenna as Romanesque, is confusing in the extreme, and should be discarded. \ In the above no account has been taken of the schools which evaded one of the conditions of the problem, by omitting either the aisles or the clerestory lighting. On the whole subject see Classification of Romanesque, and table on page 13. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 7 architecture. The Burgundian and Provengal solutions with barrel vaults, and that of Le Puy with domes, proved unfruitful ; nothing came of them. The third solution, however, is of the utmost importance. This solution was worked out in several countries, more or less independently; in particular, in Lombardy, Germany, and Normandy. From Normandy it was borrowed by England. In Germany, at Speyer, the high vault was groined. In Lombardy, e.g. at S. Ambrogio, Milan ; in Germany, e.g. at Worms ; in Normandy, e.g. at LESSAY (319) ; in England, e.g. at DURHAM (8) ; the high vault had diagonal ribs. But at this point a difficulty arises. Such churches as EXETER (9) and Amiens Cathedrals also come within the definition. Both are aisled churches with clerestory lighting ; both are vaulted with diagonal ribs. Yet Exeter and Amiens are as undoubtedly Gothic as S. Ambrogio, Milan ; Worms ; Speyer ; Lessay and Durham are undoubtedly Romanesque. What then is it which constitutes the one set of churches Romanesque, but the other set Gothic ? Gothic Architecture. — The answers given to this question are extra ordinarily diverse. The term "Gothic" occurs much before the seventeenth century.* Those who invented it were quite clear as to what they meant. They meant that it was something barbarous, because non-classical. Some believed that it was actually invented by the Goths and Vandals who overthrew the Roman Empire. " Then," says Vasari, " arose new architects who after the manner of their barbarous nations erected buildings in that style which we call Gothic." So also Evelyn says that " the ancient Greek and Roman architecture answered all the perfections required in a faultless and accomplished building" ; and that the Goths and Vandals demolished these, and " introduced in their stead a certain fantastical and licentious manner of building ; congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy, monkish piles, without any just proportion, use, or beauty " ; utterly devoid of all " true and just symmetry, regular proportion, union, and disposition." f We may now turn to definitions expressed, as they ought to be, in con structional terms. The first is extracted from various statements, not very definite, of VioIlet-le-Duc ; the substance of which is, that Gothic architecture is 1 the art of erecting buildings in which the outward thrusts of the vaults are neutralised by the inward thrusts of the flying buttresses. The objection to it is that the thrusts of the vaults are far more powerful than the thrusts of any of the flying buttresses, and cannot be neutralised by them (see 378). The next is an attractive one ; it is that of M. Anthyme St Paul ; viz. that Gothic construction is the result of the fusion, in one and the same vault, of diagonal ribs and pointed arches, abutted, when necessary, by flying buttresses. To this it may be objected, first that no mention is made of buttresses, which are of primary, whereas flying buttresses are only of secondary importance ; also that the pointed arch is not of primary importance. Exeter Cathedral * See references in Paley's Gothic Architecture, 16, and Lethaby's Med. Art, 135. + Mr Ruskin's definition may be inserted as a curiosity. " Our final definition of Gothic,'' he says, " is Foliated architecture, which uses the pointed arch for the roof proper, and the gable for the roof-mask" {Stones of Venice, ii. 222). By "foliated architecture" he explains that he means that in which the arches (other than bearing arches and pointed arcading) are cusped ; and the apertures foliated. 8 GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. might be rebuilt with every arch semicircular, yet its construction might remain Gothic. To M. Enlart * also the diagonal ribs and flying buttresses appear to be Durham Nave from S.E. essential elements, though the latter are but organs of transmission ; the real work of stopping the thrusts of the vault being passed on to the buttresses ; * Manuel, 435-442. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 9 moreover many buildings, undoubtedly Gothic, have no flying buttresses at all ; e.g. Poitiers and BRISTOL (35.4) Cathedrals. He recognises, however, that the pointed arch is non-essential. On the ground that the pointed arch is freely employed in Romanesque construction half a century before the Gothic period, he says, "Cet e'l/ment doit etre d liming de la definition du style gothique A To the vault with diagonal ribs and the flying buttress he adds, " une ornamentation toute nouvelle, puisne, non plus dans les traditions, mais dans F etude directe de la nature ; " a statement hardly true of the foliated capitals and scrolls of the early Gothic Exeter Nave from West. of England, if they be derived, as suggested below (420), mainly from classical sources. On one point at any rate we may agree ; viz. that the one thing of primary importance is the vault. Flying buttresses, buttresses, pinnacles, pointed arches, would none of them be there, were it not for the vault. The pointing of the arches facilitates its construction (322) ; the buttresses, flying buttresses, and pinnacles are the machinery by which its thrusts are neutralised. Now in vaults with diagonal ribs one peculiarity is universally found. They are not constructed like barrel vaults ; they have not a continuous thrust along the whole length of the walls on which they rest. This very fact brings an immensely IO GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. powerful, because concentrated, thrust against certain points of the wall. At these points it is necessary to strengthen the wall. It is just at this point that we part company with such Romanesque as that of Durham and Lessay. Compare them with Exeter or Amiens. The aisles of all four have vaults with diagonal ribs, giving inter mittent and concentrated out ward pressures. How are these pressures met? In the first two, by thickness of wall ; in the second two, by buttresses. In Durham and Lessay intermittent pressures are stopped, unscien tifically, to the great waste of material, by continuous abut ment ; at Exeter and Amiens, scientifically, to the great economy of material, by inter mittent abutment. This then is the difference between our Romanesque and our Gothic, between Durham and Exeter ; a difference of abutment. So we may frame a final definition of our Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Anglo-Norman Romanesque is the art of erecting aisled and clerestoried buildings whose vaults have groins or intersecting ribs and the thrusts of whose vaults are stopped by walls. English Gothic architecture is the art of erecting -aisled^and clerestoried buildings with vaults whose ribs .intersect* and whosfi__thrtasts are wholly or mainly stopped, directly or indirectly, by buttresses. The second definition excludes Durhara nave, though it has a vault with intersecting ribs, flying buttresses, and pointed transverse arches in the vault ; on the ground that the abutment is by thickness of wall, not by projection of buttress. One difficulty remains. It is that in many churches which no one would think of calling anything but Gothic, e.g. Salisbury, the thrusts of the vault are not wholly stopped by buttresses, but partly by the wall. If we insist that the buttress shall do all the work, and that the wall shall be reduced to a mere pier, we shall have to exclude nearly all the Gothic work of England — Salisbury Chapter House and GLOUCESTER CHOIR (35.5) would be exceptions — and much of that of the Continent ; and confine Gothic architecture to a few examples in the style of the He de France. A definition so restricted carries with it its own condemnation. * It is best not to introduce "diagonal" ribs into the definition : have no diagonals. York Nave from S.W. for some of our later vaults GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. ir It remains to see whether the definition given above is of sufficiently general application. First, it applies to such buildings as the temple CHOIR (35.1), ceiled with vaults which pro duce opposing thrusts ; the dia gonal ribs and buttresses are there, though not the flying buttresses. Secondly, there are diagonal ribs and buttresses in buildings without aisles or clere stories, such as Ely Lady Chapel and the Sainte Chapelle, Paris ; though no flying buttresses. To include this second class we may curtail our definition ; making it read, "Gothic architecture is the art of erecting buildings with vaults whose ribs intersect and whose thrusts are stopped by buttresses." But there is a still larger set of buildings to which we cannot deny the term Gothic ; but which have wooden roofs, not vaults ; viz. the vast majority of the parish churches ; and here and there cathedral work; e.g. YORK MINSTER (10) and Carlisle Choir. These have no stone vaults, and therefore no thrusts. The only thing left of our definition is the buttress. They all have buttresses. Revise the definition once more, and we may include Carlisle Choir and the rest. It now reads, " Gothic architecture is the art of erecting buttressed buildings." So it turns out after all that the universal element in Gothic is not the vault with intersecting ribs, but the buttress. One case remains to be put. What is to be said of the Eleanor Crosses or of such a monument as the canopied tomb of Archbishop Grey in York transept? The Eleanor Crosses present no difficulties, if we alter the definition to " Gothic architecture is the art of building with the aid of buttresses'' ; for all the Eleanor Crosses have buttresses. There are no buttresses, however, in Archbishop Grey's Monument* There are, however, trefoiled arches richly molded, triangular pediments above them, capitals with stalked conventional foliage, conventional leaf scrolls and crockets, water-holding bases, moldings generally of peculiar design ; all characteristic of Gothic and not of Romanesque architecture ; the monument is unquestionably Gothic. In its widest sense, therefore, Gothic architecture is the art of erecting buildings whose vaults possess intersecting ribs and the thrusts of whose vaults are wholly or largely, directly or indirectly, stopped by buttresses ; and also of doing work which possesses the chief charac teristics of buildings so constructed. * Nor round Clymping Church. York, N. transept. 12 RELATION OF GOTHIC TO ROMANESQUE. As we have enlarged the definition of Gothic, so we must enlarge that of Romanesque. The majority of our greater Romanesque churches, e.g. Peter borough nave, have no high vaults ; a few, e.g. Carlisle nave, have not even aisle vaults. Nevertheless, there is such a large amount of Romanesque about them that they must be called Romanesque, not Basilican. E.g. in Carlisle nave there is a clerestory passage and inner arcade; the pier arches are in recessed orders; the cylindrical piers are of unclassical proportions ; the bases and strings are unclassical ; there are scalloped capitals; from the abaci rise roofing shafts; there are shafts in the jambs of windows ; there is a corbel table. A nave which has so many of the characteristics which we find in such a church as Durham must be classified with Durham as Romanesque. Therefore the definition may be enlarged as follows : Anglo-Norman Romanesque architecture is the art ot erecting buildings whose vaults are groined or have diagonal ribs, and the thrusts of whose vaults are stopped by walls, not by buttresses; and it is also the art ot doing work which possesses the chief characteristics of buildings so constructed. From what has been said above it will be clear that the difficulty of estab lishing a line of demarcation between Anglo-Norman Romanesque and Gothic is very great. The connection between the two is of the most intimate nature. It is difficult to exclude the nave of Durham from Gothic, without excluding at the same time those of Wells and Salisbury. It follows that the idea that Gothic is an individual and independent style is fallacious. Our Romanesque and our Gothic are not two styles but one style. Gothic is perfected Romanesque; Romanesque is Gothic not fully developed, nor carried structurally to its logical conclusion. This was recognised long ago by Mr Petit:* " The Romanesque of Normandy, and still more of England, is essentially Gothic ; not indeed fully developed, but quite sufficiently so to mark its direct and inevitable tendency." So also M. Enlart: " L'architecture gothique n'est que la perfec- tionnement de celle qu'on appelle romane." M. Anthyme St Paul takes the same view:t " If, from an artistic point of view, Romanesque and Gothic seem to be, and indeed are, two distinct arts, historically they are one and the same art ; two phases of the same existence. Gothic is not superposed on Roman esque; has not supplanted or stifled it; on the contrary, it is its supreme result; the last stage in its development; its apogee, consummation and accom plishment." So also Comte de Lasteyrie | says: "Gothic architecture did not * Church Architecture, i. 93. t On Viollet-le-Duc, 123. t On the following page the main systems of high vaults are shown tabularly. The perfected systems are those which include aisles, clerestory lighting, high vaults, and aisle vaults, Peterborough has aisles, clerestory lighting, and aisle vaults, but no high vault. The Perigueux churches have high vaults and clerestory lighting, but no aisles, Notre Dame, Poitiers, and Issoire have aisles, aisle vaults, and high vaults, but no clerestory lighting. All the rest, i.e. the four perfected types of Romanesque, have aisles, clerestory lighting, aisle vaults, and high vaults. To the four perfected types may be added the abbey church of Tournus, which is sui generis. In this the barrel vaults of the nave were set transversely as in the aisles of fount.uns (101) nave and London Bridge. To the imperfect types may be added certain Syrian churches with flat stone ceilings and aisles, but no clerestory lighting, e.g. Kalb Louzeh, see 285. The curious church of Loches near Tours may be mendoned: two bays of its unaisled nave are roofed with spires. CLASSIFICATION OF ROMANESOUE. 13 arise from a reaction against the principles of Romanesque ; on the contrary it is the natural development of those principles ; the logical consequence of the germ-idea of the Romanesque builders, of protecting the naves of their churches by vaults of stone" {Discours, 17). Vaulting of Romanesque naves Perfected Imperfect I Domes Barrel vaults With groined With half aisles barrels in the aisles Intersecting cylinders I Groined Domes Barrel vaults Ceilings On pier On arcade triforium arcade 0 Cm in ari '3 C3 'S 0 a Cl, S "o 0 ' c 0 c "3 ! fL, 5) < uri u 15 E0 '0 Ph 0 1— t J3 be3 0 ;_0 bi bii cu < ¦^ bp OJ -d ^ ^ ji Ph 0 )-• Ph >->Oh m 1 Ribbed (Romanesque) ri a Q Ribbed (Gothic) Ph '0 Ph >3 p455 Chapter II. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE OF ENGLAND FROM 1050 TO C. 1200. Anglo-Saxon Architecture— Number of Norman Churches— Size of the Norman Churches Planning — Vaulting — Masonry — Foundations — Internal Elevation — External Ele vation — Clerestory — Abutment — Buttresses — Arches — Piers— Abacus— Capital- Base — Roof Drainage — Ground Courses — Strings — Windows — Doorways — Towers- Ornament. Number of Churches. — The history of Primitive Romanesque or Anglo- Saxon or Pre-Conquest architecture in England is referred to only inci dentally in this volume ; a full account of it has been given recently in The Arts in Early England by Professor G. Baldwin Brown. It was a backward member of the great Romanesque family ; and was cut off untimely by the advent from Normandy of another branch of the same family, which had there reached a far higher stage of development. For a whole century the history of English architecture is mainly the history of the development of the Romanesque of Normandy. The history commences with the building of Westminster Abbey by Edward the Confessor, which was commenced in 1050, sufficient ofthe eastern part of the work being complete in 1065 to allow a consecration to take place. The Romanesque of Normandy, therefore, had already found its way into this country before the Norman Conquest. But after the Conquest the progress it made far surpassed anything that had been done in its mother country. Within a century the land was covered with churches, great and small. There was hardly one of the greater Anglo-Saxon churches which was not rebuilt,* and a great number of churches, entirely new, were erected. The resources of the Norman bishops and abbots were of course vast ; conquered England had been divided up in largess; some of the grantees, ecclesiastics as well as laymen, counted their manors by hundreds. Nevertheless when one remembers that the whole popula tion of the country was less than half of that of the present metropolis (4I millions), the bulk of building done seems incredibly great. Very many of the ¦ churches then built have perished from the face of the earth; but even if a list be confined to those which remain wholly or in part, or which have been rebuilt in ¦Gothic, it is an astonishing record of the labour and the piety of the scanty popu- * Hexham nave seems to be a solitary exception. ST. ALBANS, NAVE FROM S.W. SIZE OF ROMANESQUE CHURCHES. 15 lation of England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.* Imagine all those churches enumerated below, and many other great churches like Cirencester and Coventry and Leicester, crowded into one-half of the present metropolis, together with the vast number of parish churches rebuilt throughout Norman England, and some idea may be formed of the enormous bulk of church building which followed the Conquest. Size of Churches. — Moreover the churches built from 1050 to 1200 were not only exceedingly numerous, but very many were also amazing in scale, far surpassing the very largest churches of their mother country, Normandy ; f so large indeed that even in Gothic days nothing was set out on so vast a scale. To the very last some of the proudest Gothic minsters remained content with the dimensions that had been laid down in the eleventh century ; with the naves of LINCOLN (151.1) and Winchester, the transept and nave of canterbury J (149.3). Nowhere in Western Europe was there building in the eleventh century on the gigantic scale of the Romanesque of England. Planning of the Greater Churches. — The width of the great Norman churches was conditioned only by the length of the tie-beams by which they were spanned (572). Even when vaulting came into general use, the Romanesque widths were not exceeded. The Norman naves of BURY (150.3), Peterborough, and Gloucester, have a span of 35 feet, a width rarely exceeded in Gothic days. In length the greater churches were still more remarkable; except in the West of England; the greater part of the length being given to the nave, which at Ely and ST ALBANS (153.2) reached a length of thirteen bays, and ' Cathedrals of Benedictine Monks — Canterbury, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, Winchester, Worcester. Churches of Benedictine Monks or '^nm— Battle, Bath, Binham, Blyth, Bury St Edmunds, Chepstow, Chester St Werburgh, Colchester, Croyland, Glastonbury, Gloucester, Leominster, Lindisfarne, Mailing, Malvern, Per shore, Peterborough, Ramsey, Readiiig, Romsey, St Albans, Selby, Sherborne, Shrewsbury, Tewkesbury, Thorney, Tutbury, Tynemouth, Waltham, West minster, Wymondham. Churches of Cluniac Monks — Lewes, Castle Acre, Wenlock. Churches of Cistercian Monks — Waverley, Buildwas, Fountains, Furness, Kirkstall, Louth, Rievaulx. Churches of Carthusian Monks — Wilham, London Charterhouse, Mount Grace. Churches of Preraonstratensian Canons — Bradsole, Easby. Churches of Gilbertine Canons — Old Malton, Sempringham, Wattott. Cathedral of 'Augustinian Canons — Carlisle. Churches of Augustinian Canons — Bourn, Bridlington, Brinkburn, Bristol, Bolton, Colchester St Botolph, Christ Church, Twynham, Dorchester, Dover, Dunstable, Kirkham, Kenilworth, Lanercost, Lilleshall, London St Bartholomeit/s, Llanthony, St Frideswid^s, Oxford, -St Saviour's, Southwark, Thornton, Waltham, Walsingham, Worksop. Cathedrals of Secular Q,?morvs.— Chichester, Exeter, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, London, Old Sarum, Wells, York. Churches of Secular Ca.XiOVi%— Beverley, Chester St John's, Ripon, Southwell, Wimborne. t Mr Prior points out that the Abbaye-aux-hommes at Caen probably had originally an area of less than 30,000 feet. But Norman Winchester and Old St Paul's occupied about 65,000 square feet ; while Bury St Edmunds had an area of 68,000 feet. Cluny, the largest mediaeval church of the West, had an area of but 54,000 square feet c. 1131. Gothic Art in England, 34. X Bath Abbey Church, rebuih in the sixteenth century, occupies the site of the nave only of the Norman church. i6 PLANNING OF ROMANESOUE CHURCHES. at NORWICH (148.4) of fourteen. The choirs varied in length from the two bays of Lincoln to the four of DURHAM (149.1); but by 1096 CANTERBURY (149.2) had set out a new choir of nine bays. More accommodation being needed, instead of further prolongation of the church east or west, which would have given it a most unmanageable length, and would have been forbidden by the dimensions of most sites, cross arms (transepts) were set out ; at first at the junction of nave and choir ; afterwards, in the Canterbury of 1096, projecting also from the choir to north and south. This second or eastern transept was, however, rare till Gothic days. But every great church, without exception, had a central transept ; that of Bury St Edmunds was 234 feet long ; every great church was cruciform. From each arm of the central transept there usually projected eastward one apsidal chapel, as at NORWICH (148.4); more rarely two, as at ST ALBANS (153,2). At DURHAM (149.1) instead of an apse there is an eastern aisle to each arm of the transept. Winchester and ELY (iS3-4) have a western as well as an eastern aisle. Both have, or had, north and south galleries as well. In nearly all the larger churches, so far as we can judge from surviving examples, it was usual for the nave to have a single aisle on each side. Ripon built an unaisled nave c. 11 70. There was occasionally a highly developed western transept; as at BURY (150.3) and Ely. Up to the middle of the twelfth century all the choirs of the greater churches ended in a semicircular apse, with the exceptions of Ely, Dover, Southwell, Sherborne, and Romsey. All important choirs possessed aisles.* But there were two entirely different ways of planning the choir aisles. One was to terminate each aisle in a small apse parallel to the central apse of the choir; e.g. DURHAM (149.1). The other was to continue the choir aisle round the apse forming what is called an ambulatory ; and to construct, leading out of it, apsidal chapels, usually three in number, pointing north-east, east, and south-east ; e.g. Norwich (160). A solitary exception to these two plans occurs at ROMSEY (15 1. 3). Here the ambulatory is rectangular instead of semicircular, and there were no chapels leading out of it, except one to the east ; cf. Hereford and LLANDAFF (164). Cistercian Planning. — But about the middle of the twelfth century another influence of Continental architecture has to be taken into account. It is no longer that of the Romanesque of Normandy, but that of Burgundy ; the Romanesque amid which the monks of Citeaux, Clairvaux, Pontigny had been bred. Of all the churchmen of the twelfth century the Cistercians were the most influential ; the greatest of them, St Bernard, practically ruled Western Europe, Vast numbers of Cistercian abbeys \\ftx LICHFIELD (244), ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK (52 1), have more of Romanesque stability than Gothic grace. As we have seen, the substance of wall and pier was rubble and mortar. Everything depended on the quality of this mortar. It seems sometimes to have been excellent; e.g. in the Bishop's Palace at Winchester;:]: at Worcester; and at Gloucester. When one recollects how Gloucester choir has been pulled about ; how the Norman walls have been made to carry a tall Gothic clerestory and a heavy vault ; and how an enormous Gothic central tower has been poised on the Norman piers of the crossing, it is plain that here at any rate the Norman masonry must have been good. At Binham, too, and elsewhere one may see great masses of Norman masonry hanging on still by the cohesion of the mortar, though their supports have collapsed or have been removed. But this was by no means always so ; § e.g. at Hereford Mr Cottingham found in 1843 that the core of the piers of the central tower was composed of " broken stones, loam, and lime grouting " ; so that the fourteenth-century tower superposed on them really had for support nothing but the thin shells of ashlar which enclosed the core. But this ashlar, not being well bonded and deeply headed into the rubble cores, had split and bulged ; and the core itself was crushed to pieces for want of a proper proportion of lime in the mortar. In Old St Paul's, Sir Christopher Wren found that the piers of the nave were " only cased without, and that with small stones, not one greater than a Man's Burden ; but within is nothing but a Core of small Rubbishstone and much Mortar, which easily crushes and yields to the weight." At St David's the cores of the walls of the central tower had disintegrated into dust; and when a hole was made, the core "began to pour out like an avalanche." Sir Gilbert Scott saw ten buckets of liquid cement poured into one hole. |j Nor was bad building unknown in Gothic days. In the west front of PETERBOROUGH (112) the mortar in the joints of the ashlar had crumbled into dust, and the blocks could be lifted from their positions by hand. In the south transept of * On the other hand the aisle walls of Patrington, c. 1340, are only 2 feet 3 inches thick, though intended to carry a vault ; those ofthe Temple Church, Bristol, are i foot loj inches. t Prior, 34. J See Willis' Wi?ichester, 72 ; and E. Christian \n Journal of R.LB.A. , 1877, 151. § For the condition of the interior of the piers of Sherborne central tower see R. H. Cax'pe.ntQX \n fournal of R.I.B.A., 1877, 149. II Report to Dean and Chapter, 1869. ROMANESQUE FOUNDATIONS. 25 YORK MINSTER (523) it was found in 1871 that the core of the clerestory walls had been made up of stone chippings without mortar. As late as 1323, after the fall of two Norman bays at the east end ofthe north side ofthe nave of St Albans, the cores of the new piers were built with such bad mortar that it was found recently that they had disintegrated into dust, and the whole weight of the superincumbent walls was carried by the casing of ashlar. Foundations. — Equally varied was the practice ofthe Romanesque builders with regard to foundations. They knew perfectly well what was the right thing to do ; sometimes they deliberately did the wrong. Frequently their foundations were both deep and broad. The foundations of the three eastern apses of Norman DURHAM (149.1) were carried down more than 14 feet, till the solid rock was reached. Those of the \^'all of the north choir aisle are so broad as to provide a footing both for the buttresses outside and the bases of the vaulting shafts within.* Lord Grimthorpe found that " the foundations of the piers of St Albans t are singularly large and strong." At Ely| the foundations ofthe thirteenth-century presbytery are about 6 feet deep and rest on the rock. But those of the Norman choir were only 4 feet 6 inches deep and did not go down to the rock. In the Lady Chapel of Glastonbury § the foundations consist of a rubble wall 12 feet or more deep ; so that when a crypt was wanted in the fifteenth century, all that was necessary was to clear out the soil between the foundation walls. At York the first stone of the foundations of St Mary's Abbey II was laid in 1271 at a depth of 9 feet. In places, however, the founda tions were 24 or 26 feet deep. Moreover the builders sometimes took the trouble to provide continuous foundations from pier to pier. Professor Willis H says that he " saw that at Lichfield, Ely, Hereford, and elsewhere, the ranges of piers were set on con tinuous foundations,** walls of rubble constructed with the greatest care.'' In Gothic work one of the best examples of good building construction is Lincoln nave; in this there are transverse walls underground from pier to wall, as well as longitudinal ones from pier to pier. But the temptation to economise on the foundations was not always resisted. At Gloucester the north-west tower fell in 11 70; "because of bad foundations," says Giraldus Cambrensis, At Croyland there is a bed of gravel underlying peat. The gravel is about 11 feet from the surface; but the peat was excavated for 6 feet only; and the foundations consist largely of layers of quarry dust. This culpable carelessness about foundations is not without parallels in Gothic work. The thirteenth-century Lady Chapel of Chester Cathedral has been found to have been built without foundations of any sort. Peterborough is especially noteworthy among our greater churches for insufficiency of foundations ; the * Mr Bilson in Archceological fournal, liii. 8. t The great care with which the foundations of St Albans were prepared is described in Buckler's St Albans, 35. X Se^ fournal of R.I.B.A., Jan. 3, 1876, 70, 71, 79, 80 ; and Stewart's Ely, 20. § Willis' Glastonbury, 63. II Rickman, 175. 1 Glastonbury, 63. ** Continuous foundations are exposed to view at St Mary's Abbey, York. 26 ROMANESQUE INTERNAL ELEVATION. Norman portions, the thirteenth-century west front, the eastern chapels of the fifteenth century were all built without proper foundation.* Internal Elevation. — Not only were the supports ofthe Romanesque churches exceedingly massive, but the walls were pierced with but few and small openings. Where in such a Gothic clerestory as that of SALISBURY (170) there would be three windows, or as at Exeter one broad window stretching from buttress to buttress, in a Romanesque church there was but one window, and that a small one. So with the aisles In a Gothic church the voids pre ponderated over the solids; in a Romanesque church it was the very reverse; the building was almost wholly solid. This solidity, this monumental stabilit)', is the special excellence and merit of Romanesque design. The lightness and grace that were already attained in large degree in ELY (57) and Peter borough are not half so impressive as the massive grandeur and gloom of the earlier work of WINCHESTER (261) and DURHAM (8). Internally, all the great churches were three stories high. At the top was the clerestory wall; at the back of which was a single window in each bay, and in front of the window usually a triple arcade; e.g. ELY (273). At the bottom.; was the range of piers and arches — the pier arcade — separating the nave from- the aisles. Between the pier arcade and the clerestory was the front wall of the triforium chamber, usually pierced with an arcade. The proportions of these three stories vary very considerably. They were largely controlled by the dispositions adopted for securing adequate light for the central aisle or nave. If the pier arcade was low, the light from the aisle windows was obstructed. Especially was this so, where there was a cloister roof outside one of the aisle walls; unless the aisle windows were set high in the wall, they would not clear the cloister roof But if the aisle windows were set high, the piers and their arches must be lofty also. Where they were set high, an eleva tion resulted in which the pier arcade was lofty, and the triforium arcade comparatively small; e.g. GLOUCESTER NAVE (26). In such a design no windows were inserted at the back of the triforium, or at any rate, only small ones. But an alternative method was much in favour. This was to raise the aisle wall, and to insert an entirely new row of windows in the upper part of it, which became a back wall to the triforium chamber. And as the light from these windows was wanted for the nave, there could be no solid wall in front of the triforium. Either the triforium chamber opened into the nave by one great arch,! as at ST ALBANS (14) ; or if there were two arches, they were constructed; lightly so as to obstruct the light as little as possible ; e.g. ELY (57). In this design so much of the height of the interior was absorbed by the triforium arcade, that the pier arcade was usually low. Besides the two above methods of designing a Romanesque interior, both more or less logical, there were illogical variants and compromises. Thus Durham has windows in the upper part of the aisle wall, but the triforium is low and is blocked by massive arches in front. On the other hand, Roms.ey has a tall triforium with a light open arcade, but no windows at the back of it. St * This is the more remarkable as there is solid limestone rock a few feet below the foundations. GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL, NAVE FROM S.W. ROMANESQUE INTERNAL ELEVATION. 27 Bartholomew's, Smithfield, has magnified its triforium at the expense of its pier arcade ; though here also the triforium is a blind-story. Another eccentric design is that which is seen in OXFORD CATHEDRAL (525), in which the containing arch of each bay of the triforium is continued down to the ground ; with the result that what is a low three- storied is made to appear a tall two-storied interior. Another curious design is that of St Botolph's Priory, Col chester, where again a three- storied is made to look like a two-storied elevation ; but in this case by absorbing the triforium into the clerestory. Towards the end of the twelfth century this design reappears at st DAVID'S (525), In the Cistercian churches usually no windows were inserted in the triforium ; and being con sequently a blind-story, a solid wall was built in front of it ; e.g. FOUNTAINS NAVE (lOl). Walls which do not rest on pier arcades ; e.g. the east wall of the south transept of NORWICH (168); are also usually divided into three stories, which may or may not be similarly propor tioned to those of the aisled portions of the rest of the church. External Elevation. — The usual elevation is one of two stories ; aisle wall and clerestory. But if the triforium has windows, there are three stories, which, subdivided by strings, produce four stories at Ely, six at NORWICH (31). Oxford Cathedral Choir. 28 ROMANESQUE EXTERNAL ELEVATION. Eastern Facade. — Of the churches ending eastward in three parallel apses we have no example complete. Peterborough retains the central apse, but has lost the side apses. Romsey retains the eastern side apses, but never had a central apse. The original form of our east ends may, however, be seen in Normandy: e.g. in ST GEORGE'S DE BOSCHERVILLE (i6o) and CERISY-LA- FORET (i6o). Of churches with the ambulatory plan and radiating chapels Durham Cathedral. we have good examples at NORWICH (148.4) and GLOUCESTER (135) ; though in both the eastern Norman Chapel was pulled down in the thirteenth century, to make room for a rectangular Lady Chapel. Good examples of rectangular east fronts survive at Darenth, Barfreston, and PATRIXBOURNE (218). Of West Fronts the most important left are those of SOUTHWELL (520), Rochester, and Durham Cathedrals, and of Tewkesbury and Castle Acre ; * but * See Plate in Britton's Arch. Ant., iii. ROMANESQUE CLERESTORY. 29 they have been altered by the insertion of a big window in the centre of each. Tn Normandy, however, the west front of the Abbaye-aux-hommes remains almost as it was built. Fine west fronts remain in the parish churches of Castle Rising and Iffley, Of the Transept Fronts, one, in a church of Monks or of Regular Canons, adjoined the dormitory and other buildings east of the cloister. Where these have been torn away, e.g. from the south transept of Ely, the result is necessarily an unsightly space of blank wall. But the elevation of the other transept is frequently one of much grandeur ; e.g. the north * transepts of Winchester, Ely, Peterborough ; and of NORWICH (31) ; finest of all. Clerestory. — There was never but one window in each bay. At Southwell, by exception, the clerestory windows are circular. In the Cistercian churches, e.g. FOUNTAINS (lOi), and a few others, e.g. Leominster, there is no passage. Nearly always there is a passage in the thickness of the wall. In front of this usually there are three arches, of which the central one is the highest, e.g. ELY (57). Comparatively few parish churches had clerestories ; and then usually not till late in the twelfth century. Abutment System. — We now come to the most difficult problem of the mediaeval builders ; which was not how to erect a building, but how to keep it up. If a transverse section of one of the great Romanesque naves be examined, e.g. that of ELY NAVE (34. i); it will be seen that the navef contains two high walls (" clerestory " or " nave walls ") nearly 73 feet high, and two low walls ("aisle walls ") nearly 50 feet high. What keeps them from falling over to north or south ? The nave walls have nothing whatever to keep them from inclining inwards except their vast weight, and the fact that they rest on adequate founda tions. The aisle walls have nothing to prevent them from inclining outwards except buttresses of such slight projection as to be utterly inadequate for the purpose. Like the nave walls, they remain vertical simply because of their great weight and their good foundations. On the other hand, the lower half of the aisle walls is prevented from inclining inward by the loaded arches of the vault ; which thrust outward like a compressed spring. And in the same way the lower part of the high wall — in Ely about 28 feet out of 73 feet — is kept from inclining outwards by the thrust of the same vault, that of the aisles. And as the load on the arches of a Romanesque vault was very heavy — for they were filled in with a thick mass of rubble — the pressure brought to bear by the aisle vaults against the walls on either side was very considerable. So considerable was it that sometimes the aisle wall has been thrust outwards. And though the nave wall is loaded with an enormous weight of masonry, extending up to the top of the clerestory wall, it has been noted — e.g. by Sir Christopher Wren — that the pier arcade on which the nave wall rests has not infrequently received a considerable inclination inwards, owing to the thrust of the aisle vault. So valuable was the aisle vault in the construction of their larger churches that it is very rare to find the Romanesque builders omitting it. Indeed in churches of the first rank in England only two cases seem to occur ; viz. the naves of Rochester and * The normal position for the cloister was to the south of the nave ; hence the principal transeptal fagade was normally that ofthe north transept. t The roof of the nave is omitted ; those ofthe aisles are shown in dotted lines. 30 ROMANESQUE ABUTMENT. Carlisle cathedrals : in the former of which, however, pilasters were built against the eastern part of the aisle wall, as supports for a vault which at first apparently was contemplated. The weakest point of such a construction as that of Ely is that abut ment is applied to the nave wall so low down. The first improvement on such a section is seen in CHICHESTER CHOIR (344)) and DURHAM choir (370). It consisted in building semicircular arches in the triforium chamber between the nave wall and the aisle wall. If this had been done at Ely, about 37 feet of the 73 feet of the nave wall would have got abutment, instead of only 28 feet. Again, just as the aisle vault prevents the nave wall and the aisle wall from bulging towards one another, so a high vault over the nave, ever trying to expand between the two nave walls, prevents them from bulging inwardly. Such vaults were actually constructed at Durham ; where, in all probability, the high vaults of the nave were built between 1128 and 1 133, and those ofthe transepts earlier still. There can be no question as to the potency of the new ally. With a heavy vault between them, it was utterly impossible for the nave walls to incline inwards. The danger lay in the other direction. So far from being insufficient, the force exerted by the new agency was only too great. The high vault was always tending to thrust apart the clerestory walls. So much so that the high vault built over Durham choir, probably before 1 104, collapsed early in the thirteenth century. Evidently the next thing to do was to provide a remedy to prevent the clerestory walls from bulging out. The remedy applied — once more at DURPIAM (370) — in its day one of the most advanced churches of Western Europe in science of construction — was to build in the triforium chamber, not arches as in that of the choir, but flying buttresses. This made safe some two-thirds of the height of the nave wall. For the high vault, as may be seen on examining the photograph of the nave on page 8, does not spring from the top of the clerestory wall, but from a level considerably below it. So that it was unnecessary to provide abutment for the clerestory wall much above the springing level. This solution — that of Durham nave — is the one adopted even in much of our Gothic architecture ; e.g. at Wells, at Salisbury, at Tintern, even in Winchester nave in the remodelling commenced c. 1360. And where the high vault springs low down in the clerestory wall, it is entirely scientific and satisfactory. If, however, it was desired that the high vault should spring at a higher point, then it was necessary to take the flying buttresses out^of the triforium chamber, and to build them aboye,Tnsteari~of^BenSatEjhe triforium roof^ This it was left for the Gothic builders to do ; viz. in the choir of CANTERBURY (^34.3), II75 ; CHICHESTER (34.4), I184 ; LINCOLN (34,5), II92. In the parish churches these difficulties of abutment very seldom presented themselves ; it was most exceptional for a parochial aisle to be vaulted.* Buttresses. — These were for the most part little more than decorative pilasters; e.g. at STEYNING (359); and so late as 1175 in WELLS CHOIR (373). * A fragment ofthe groined vault ofthe aisle remains at St Peter's, Canterbury. 31 Norwich North Transept. ROMANESQUE ARCHES, 33 But the Cistercians by the middle of the twelfth century were building effective buttresses of considerable projection at Fountains and KIRKSTALL (152.4). Arches. — One of the special marks of mediaeval architecture is that it is above all things an arcuated, not a trabeated style (257). It may be said that Greek architecture is a trabeated style pure and simple ; that Grjeco-Roman work was a mixed style, partly trabeated, partly arcuated ; but that Romanesque and Gothic are wholly* arcuated styles. Up to about the middle of the twelfth century the semicircular arch was employed almost exclusively. Here and there a segmental or an elliptical arch occurred in the vaulting or in the heads of doorways. The pointed arch had indeed been introduced in Gloucester choir apses and DURHAM nave (8), and at Rochester ; but chiefly in vaulting. In pier arcades the pointed arch was first employed by the Cistercians at FOUNTAINS (lOi) and Kirkstall, about the middle of the twelfth century. Some time elapsed, however, before it came into general use in doorways, windows and ornamental arcading. To the very end of the century conservative builders were still building their pier arches semicircular ; not only in village churches such as SUTTON ST MARY (42), but a great cathedral as ST DAVID'S (525). In the last half of the century trefoiled arches also occur in doorways and wall arcading. All the larger arches were built in recessed orders ; not built like the BRIXWORTH ARCH (274), but as in page 272. At first the edge of each order was left square, as in the transept of WINCHESTER (261) (choir com menced 1079) and Blyth, founded in io88.f But very soon, e.g. in Chichester choir, commenced c. 1088, either the edges were rounded off into roll moldings, or the faces were covered with carved ornament. But in the West country, which seems to have had its own school of Romanesque as well as of Gothic, it is very common to retain the plain square-edged arch, without molding or ornament, far into the twelfth century. Examples of unmolded and uncarved Romanesque arches are the pier arcades of Holy Cross, Shrewsbury, Malvern and Leominster naves, and St John's, Chester. The pier arches of the nave of TEWKESBURY (297), consecrated 11 23, are but slightly molded. At Romsey, of the four orders of the pier arches of the nave, three are square-edged ; only the outer one is carved with the chevron. At Hereford the arches are much carved; but little molded. In GLOUCESTER NAVE (313) and at Christ Church, Hants, the pier arches are molded ; but the moldings are few and heavy. On the whole, the Romanesque ofthe West of England is characterised by the small progress made in molding the arch. Piers. — In the eleventh century cylindrical piers seldom occur, except in the West of Plngland, as in the choirs of GLOUCESTER (294) and TEWKESBURY (165), where they are short and massive. As a rule either all the piers are compound, as at NORWICH (238) ; or compound piers alternate with cylinders, as at DURHAM (239). In the twelfth century cylinders alternate with octagons in PETERBOROUGH CHOIR (318) ; while in the West of England and Southwell nearly all the naves have cylinders ; which, at GLOUCESTER (99) and TEWKES- * Lintelled doorways are an exception. t It is not necessary to take into account the square-edged arches of St Albans and of St Botolph's, Chichester. They were square-edged simply because they were built of bricks. C 34 ® © CCALI o^ Ft^T I. Ely Nave. 2. Durham Nave. 3. Canterbury Choir. 4. Chichester Choir on left, Nave on right. 5. Lincoln Choir, 35 5CALE or FEET I. Temple Choir. 3. Exeter Choir. 2. Westminster Choir. 4. Bristol Choir. 5. Gloucester Choir. 36 St Mary's, Guildford, North Apse. ROMANESQUE PIERS. 37 BURY (297), are of enormous height and bulk. Where the compound pier is employed, it contains, in the best examples, e.g. DURHAM (659.1), a separate shaft or column for each order of the arch and for each rib of the vault. In the aisled parish churches, few of which, if any, are earlier than the twelfth century, the pier is almost always a cylinder. NORTHAMPTON ST PETER'S (663.1) is an exception; in this compound piers and banded columns are employed. Abacus — The Norman abacus is always square-edged. Its under surface is usually a straight chamfer, as at YOULGREAVE (421.4) ; or a hollow chamfer, as at CANTERBURY (417.7). In plan it is usually square; but the cylinders of GLOUCESTER CHOIR (99) have circular abaci and capitals ; another peculiarity of West of England Romanesque. At DURHAM (239) and Buildwas cylin drical piers have octagonal abaci. Abaci logically subdivided appear as early as the eleventh century in ELY TRANSEPT (506). Capitals. — There is a great variety of Romanesque capitals. Imitations of debased Roman versions of the Corinthian and Composite capital are frequent, especially in the eleventh century. At first the band of acanthus is usually omitted; in the twelfth century it is attempted; e.g. at CANTERBURY (417.7), These Corinthianesque capitals survive to the very end of the twelfth century. The most common of the Norman capitals is the cubical or cushion cap ; e.g. CANTERBURY (430). At Peterborough hardly anything else occurs. Usually it is a little scalloped. When much scalloped or coniferous, it is usually late ; e.g. in the apse of ST MARY, GUILDFORD (36). In the last quarter of the century, the incurved cone is frequent in the West of England work ; e.g. ST DAVID'S (412.5). Another capital which persists to the end of the twelfth century is that with interlacings ; e.g. ELY (412.1). In the last quarter of the century attempts are made here and there to render naturalistic foliage. The water-leaf cap is very characteristic of the period c. 1165 to c. 1190; e.g. WALSOKEN (417.2). Base, — The Norman base is at first quite insignificant ; altogether dispro portionate to the great spread of the capital. Its moldings are usually of the simplest and rudest. Little attention was paid to the base till well on in the twelfth century ; when a variant of the Attic base was adopted, with flattened lower roll. The plinth was either square ; or if the pier was compound, separate rectangular plinths were provided for the shafts and columns of the pier ; e.g. DURHAM (659.1). The " spur" ornament may occur, where the plinth is square ; e.g. NORTHAMPTON (663. 1 ). Roof Drainage. — The roofs had a fairly steep pitch ; as is shown by the weatherings on TEWKESBURY TOWER (390). The upper courses of the walls, except at Ely, projected on corbels or corbel arches, and the roof coverings again projected beyond these ; e.g. SOUTHWELL TRANSEPT (390). For this system of "dripping eaves" the Cistercians substituted gutter, gargoyle, and parapet at FOUNTAINS (385.6), Kirkstall, Roche, and Byland. Ground Courses. — At first the importance of protecting the foot of the wall from drip and splash was little recognised. Round the base of the twelfth-century work at Hereford, however, a basement course, semicircular in section, exists. About the middle of the century the Cistercians built base- 38 ROMANESQUE STRING COURSES. ment courses at FOUNTAINS (679.1) and Kirkstall of considerable height and projection. String Courses. — On the other hand, strings were employed from the first in great numbers ; not only to shelter the walls from drip, but merely ornamentally. Owing to the great amount of wall space in the Romanesque churches, strings were of great decorative importance. In the strings, carving was employed as well as molding. Windows. — The balustered window, being unsuited for glazing, was con fined to towers ; the baluster was generally set near the outer face of the wall. The usual window was oblong and round-arched ; set near the outer face of the wall, and much splayed internally. In the jambs were frequently set decora tive shafts. The clerestory window of the greater churches was usually orna mented with an inner arcade ; e.g. ELY (57). With the exception of a solitary example at ROMSEY (457.2), there is no grouping of aisle or clerestory windows till GLASTONBURY LADY CHAPEL, II 86 (465). On the other hand, circular windows were highly developed ; e.g. PATRIXBOURNE (218). Doorways. — The oldest type of doorway is that at ELY (39), with lintel and tympanum. More often these are omitted, as at SEMPRINGHAM (40). The arch of the doorway is almost always semicircular till late in the twelfth century. There are no double doorways.* The arch of the doorway is con structed in recessed orders ; of which at Malmesbury there are eight. More room for orders was got sometimes by thickening the wall in the neighbourhood of the doorway. Norman porches survive, some of two stories ; e.g. at South well and SHERBORNE (576). Nor are Norman doors lacking, with the original iron work ; e.g. SEMPRINGHAM (40). Towers. — All the greater churches seem to have had a central tower, except EXETER (377), whose towers were placed at the ends of the transepts. The normal group was one central and two western towers. Sometimes, as at ELY (587), there was but one western tower; sometimes, as at Tewkesbury, there was none. None of the greater Norman towers seem to have been octagonal ; they were square. The central towers were meant to be lanterns. Not only have they windows, but they have elaborate arcades round the inner wall, intended to be seen from the floor of the church. Sometimes a central tower barely rises above the roofs ; e.g. at Winchester ; more often it rises to a considerable altitude, as at TEWKESBURY (390), St Albans, Norwich, Castor, Sandwich, St Lawrence. Internally, as well as externally, the towers are usually much ornamented with arcading. Probably they were roofed with low square spires. In flint districts the towers of the parish churches were often circular. Norman Ornament. Ofthe Romanesque schools of sculpture the most skilful seem to have been those of Toulouse, Provence, Northern Spain, Poitou and Burgundy. The Normans were among the most backward ; and through lack of skill had to * Abroad these are very common; e.g. magnificent double doorways lead from the cloister into the transept of Tarragona Cathedral, and from the narthex into the nave of Vezelay, ROMANESQUE ORNAMENT. 39 confine themselves largely to geometrical work, simple and easy of execution. The decorative stock-in-trade of the Normans in the eleventh century, with which they started us in England after the Conquest, was composed of billet. Ely, Western Processional Doorway of Nave, square or round ; damiers, patterns like a chessboard ; stars ; imbrications, or shingle ; interlacings ; chevron, or zigzag ; torsades, or cable ; palmettes, honey suckle, or anthemion ; and rinceaux, or scrolls of foliage.* All the above occur ¦^ Ruprich-Robert, 124. 40 ROMANESOUE ORNAMENT. J_t, also in the twelfth century both in Normandy and England, and in much greater profusion. The billet is more common in the eleventh, the chevron in the twelfth century ; e.g. the earliest parts of Ely have the billet ; but it also occurs in Canterbury choir in 1175, in Lincoln south-east transept in 1192. The billet may be square, as at St Augu.stine's, Canterbury ; or round, as in Binham Priory. The chevron is used with great profusion in the twelfth century ; e.g. in the western doorway and windows of IFFLEY (574); in the window of ST JAMES', BRISTOL (516); in the pier-arches of WALTHAM (521) and STEYNING (273) ; in the ribs of DURHAM VAULT (8). In later work of this century it is often studded with " pearls," or otherwise enriched ; it may be inverted ; and in late ex amples it may be much undercut. The chevron is an almost exact reproduction of devices found on ancient Roman stones ; e.g. on the fine altar recently discovered at Lan- chester * in Durham. Late examples are seen at ST DAVID'S (412.5) ; in the north porch of Wells ; in Glaston bury Lady Chapel ; highly undercut, with a roll beneath it, in the north transept chapel of Tewkesbury, c. 1230; and in the doorway of Stone Church.f It survives in archivolts in Cyprus and Sicily till the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For examples see above. The saw-tooth ornament is com mon in early work ; with teeth first of an obtuse, later often of acute angle. The star ornament is found in Roman work, e.g. on the Lanchester altar ; it occurs in Ernulph's work at Canterbury ; at Romsey ; Stringham, Norfolk ; Herringfleet, Suffolk ; Upton, Gloucester, and elsewhere. The nail-head, being easy of execution, was a great favourite ; e.g. Ely. A band of nail-head was often employed in the first half of the thirteenth century in capitals ; e.g. at KETTON (440.2) ; compare the buttress of ST PATRICK, DUBLIN (354). * Bidlder, Dec. 28, 1895, 474. t Cresy illustrates it in page 6, and gives reasons for believing that it belonged to an earlier doorway. OFtl_S_ Sempringham. ROMANESQUE ORNAMENT. 41 The pellet or " stud " might be circular ; either flat, as at Stoneleigh, or forming a boss, as at Iffley and Crickfont, Or it might be a lozenge, as at Essendlne. The patera or medallion is a large flat, circular disc, often containing foliage or figures ; e.g. at llandaff (580) and HALES (575). The fret or key or embattled ornament is a most ancient decorative form ; common in Arabia, China, South America ; Greek, Roman and Byzantine work.* Good examples occur in the doorways of Middle Rasen and Kirkstall. Imbrications or shingle or scale work is also a very ancient motive ; more common in Normandy than England ; it occurs in W^estminster Hall and on Castor tower. Interlacings are common in England before the Conquest, and after c. 1090 ; but are somewhat rare between 1066 and I090.f Good examples occur at Castor, c. II24; IFFLEY (256); NORTHAMPTON ST PETER'S (41 5.6) ; SHOBDON (415.3). Canon Taylor held that the Irish scribes imported them into the Continent ; Professor Boyd Dawkins that they originated with the Franks ; being found in great numbers on Germanic sword-hilts, brooches, buckles, &c., as early as the fifth century. But they are common in Byzantine work, especially in the eighth century ; and very common indeed on Roman sarcophagi and especially in the. Roman mosaic pavements which were executed all over the Empire. They occur in Armenia, Hungary, Styria, Wallachia, Mycena;, Chaldaea, Assyria, the Canarese or west coast of India ; in fact, wherever the traditions of plaiting basket work decoratively have survived. Interlacing snakes occur on an eighth century bas-relief on the wall of the old Cathedral of Athens ;| on the jamb slabs of the Anglo-Saxon doorway of Monkwearmouth ; in Norman doorways at Kilpeck ; on a fourteenth-century capital at Oakham ; and elsewhere. The bead and roll occurs in the slype of the south transept of St Albans, in the doorway of HALES (575), and in St Leonard's Priory, Stamford, where it produces a curious molding (705.3). It is common in Greek and Roman work ; and is probably motived by a child's necklace. § A double cone occurs at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. The chain occurs in St William's Chapel, York, and in the vaulting of St Peter in the East, Oxford ; the dedication of which may have been to St Peter in vinculis. The cable is frequent and effective, especially at Southwell over the arches of the crossing. Sometimes it occurs in bases. The nebule is used instead of corbels beneath the eaves of SOUTHWELL (390) and Binham. Beak-heads and cat-heads are common in 'the twelfth century; e.g. in the west doorways of IFFLEY (574) and barton-le-street (427). Wolf-heads occur over the pier arches of Bayeux nave. Pearls are very common in Norman leafage and ornament ; e.g. in NORTHAMPTON ST PETER (415.6). They have been supposed to be reminiscent * Barry's Lectures, loi. + J. T. Irvine \r\ fournal of Arch. Assoc, 48, 26. X Cattaneo, 77, Fig. 19. § See Statham's Architecture for General Readers, 152. 42 ROMANESOUE ORNAMENT, of the ornament (dots of ink) in the Irish missals. But they are particulariy common in Poitou, Berri, and Burgundy ; and in Scandinavian wood-carving. The palmette, honeysuckle, or anthemion, is common in Greek, Roman and Byzantine work ; especially in Corinthian and Composite capitals ; so also in Norman work ; e.g. at TILNEY (423.4). Rinceaux or leaf-scrolls were very common in Greek, Roman and Byzantine work. They are much used in Norman work, especially in capitals ; and had much to do with the origin of the conventional stalky leaved capital of eariy Gothic (429). See BARTON-LE-STREET (427); ELY (430); NEW SHOREHAM (430). Roses were common in the "lacunaria" or Roman ceilings, and in Corinthian capitals. They occur in the south doorway of IFFLEY (577)- Reminiscences of Classical Mythology occur ; e.g. Centaurs ; the Sagit tarius ; Sirens ; Mermaids. The stock illustrations of animals are taken from the Bestiaires.* The signs of the zodiac, the works of the months, the virtues and vices all find representation, first in Romanesque, and afterwards in Gothic sculp ture. Duration of the .11 ¦ %\ A%,\ %. m^lB "-v"- ¦ Romanesque Style. — We "w" ..- *Vl ¦''' lo #!.#^^^W.. "#"¦- i saw that the first building in the Anglo-Norman variety of Romanesque was the abbey church of West minster, commenced in 1050. It does not follow that all the world set to work immediately to build to Anglo-Norman design. There have always been Radicals and Conservatives in architecture, as in politics. For another generation or two, well into the twelfth century, we may be sure that many people went on building in Anglo-Saxon fashion. Similarly, when all the world had adopted the Anglo-Norman style, they would not give it up simultaneously. The greater churches would be the first to abandon it for Gothic : but even among these the progress was far from being at a uniform rate. The naves of St David's and Wells were building * On Ecclesiastical Zoology see Evans' Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture : and the article on " Physiologus " in the Encyclopcedia Britannica. Sutton St Mary. DURATION OF ENGLISH ROMANESQUE. 43 simultaneously c. 1190; the nave of St David's is almost as Romanesque as St Botolph's, Colchester, founded in 1102; while Wells nave is in many respects as Gothic as the choir of Lincoln Minster. At no time and in no style was the progress uniform in different parts of the country; e.g. the choir of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, commenced in 1123, is not so advanced as the Norwich choir of 1096 or the Durham choir of 1093. Still slower would the rate of progress be in the villages ; a fact which has always to be borne in mind in estimating the date of a village church. In village churches rude and archaic work is not necessarily a proof of an early date. If we judged by the rude and archaic exterior and interior of TOWYN CPIURCH (458) we should unhesitatingly assign it to the eleventh century; but it might well be that the new current of Romanesque did not strike the remote coast of Merionethshire till well into the twelfth century. SUTTON ST MARY (42) was not begun till after 1180. On the whole, we may conclude that Romanesque work was still being done in the smaller churches, here and there, till the end of the twelfth century. In the greater churches we may take it that Gothic architec ture came into being not later than c. 1175, with the commencement of the choir of Wells Cathedral by Bishop Reginald de Bohun ; that of Canterbury under the direction of William of Sens ; and those of Roche, Byland, RIPON (102), and York. In France tbe choir of St Denis was commenced in 1140; that of Notre Dame, Paris, in 1163. By Mr Sharpe the work done c. 1145 to c. 11 90 has been designated Transitional ; by Mr Brandon Semi-Norman. But in the first half of it the presence of pointed arches, e.g. at Fountains and Kirkstall, is not a sufficient ground for admitting them to the fellowship of Gothic ; they are churches in which much more reliance is placed on thickness of wall than on projection of buttress. Nor on the other hand, because of the retention here and there of the semicircular arch, are well-buttressed buildings, such as Canterbury choir, to be denied the name of Gothic. Chapter III. CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. Monastic v. Secular Gothic — Admixtures of Romanesque — Procedure in Rebuilding— Length, Span, Height, Area of Enghsh Churches— Proportions — Abutment- Skeleton Construction — Economy of Material — Lightness of Construction — Im portance of Stained Glass — Reasons for Height of Gothic Churches — The Vertical and Horizontal Line. In the Anglo-Norman architecture ofthe eleventh and twelfth centuries the first landmark is Edward the Confessor's Church at Westminster. The second is the commencement of the building of Cistercian churches c. 1140 ; in what has been called the Transitional, Semi-Norman, or Pointed Norman style. More than one hundred Cistercian abbeys were founded between 11 25 and the end of the century. Of the Cistercian churches remaining the oldest appear to be Fountains, Kirkstall, and Furness. Only a quarter of a century separated these from the Gothic architecture of Canterbury, Wells, Roche, Byland, and Ripon. Up to c. 1175 the lion's share of the work had been done by the Monks and the Canons Regular. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the monastic orders were the progressives and the reformers in the Church. Much energy had been shown even before the Norman Conquest, e.g. by Dunstan, in expelling Secular Canons from their churches, and in replacing them by monks. But gradually the Secular Canons reformed themselves, and regained their influence ; the proof of which is to be seen in the great amount of Gothic architecture to be put to their credit. If we take as a test the cases where whole Romanesque churches were pulled down and rebuilt, not under stress of fire or storm or because of collapse of masonry, we shall find that the Secular Canons were much the more thoroughgoing in Gothic building. To them is to be credited the rebuild ing of the cathedrals at Wells ; Lincoln;* Salisbury; Lichfield; Exeter; York; Ripon and BEVERLEY (176) Minsters; and Howden. On the other hand, the Benedictine monks rebuilt Whitby, Westminster, St Mary's, York, and Bath ; the latter not till the sixteenth century. The Cistercian abbeys were but partially rebuilt, some not at all. The Augustinian Canons f rebuilt St Saviour's, Southwark. * Portions of the Norman west front were incorporated at Lincoln ; at E.xeter the transept^il towers were retained ; York retains a Romanesque crypt ; Ripon allowed some Romanesque work to remain south of the choir + The Canons Regular, of whom the Augustinians were the most important order m England, lived a common life in a cloister under a Rule (regula) ; and differed little from the monks, except that none of them were laymen, and that they were attached to a cathedral or other collegiate church. < Pi awinH<:oz ?Jou ADMIXTURE OF ROMANESOUE. 45 The comparison is largely in favour of the Secular Canons. If it is true that we owe the majority of our Romanesque churches to the Regular orders, it is equally true that the Secular Canons took the leading part in the development of English Gothic, The number of English churches of the first rank built or rebuilt wholly in Gothic is not great. What is rare here is quite common in France. The number of cathedral, abbey and collegiate churches with out admixture of Romanesque in the Domaine Royale and Champagne is very large.* In some of our greater churches the melange of styles is something extraordinary. At Hereford, Chichester, St Albans, Wimborne, every variety and subvariety of our mediseval architecture may be seen in juxtaposition in one building. As a rule, an English cathedral is not a study in harmonies, but in contrasts. Most often it is a contrast of a Romanesque nave and a Gothic choir ; as in Ely and Hereford cathedrals ; sometimes one transept is Romanesque, the other Gothic ; as in Hereford and Chester Cathedrals ; or a Romanesque transept contrasts with a Gothic choir and nave, as in Winchester Cathedral ; or a Romanesque choir has a Gothic retrochoir, as at Peter borough, Durham and Chichester ; or the eastern bays of the nave are Roman esque; the western Gothic, as at Romsey; Gloucester; Shrewsbury; or the reverse * The following list, necessarily imperfect, will give some idea of the extent to which Romanesque was retained in our more important churches : — A. Binham, Blyth, Bolton, Boxgrove, Bury, Canterbury C, Canterbury St Augustine, Cariisle C, Castle Acre, Chepstovv', Chester C, Chichester C, Christ Church, Hants, Colchester St Botolph, Dorchester, Durham C, Ely C, Gloucester C, Hereford C, Leominster, Lindis farne, London Old St Paul's and St Bartholomew's, Mailing, Malvern, New Shoreham, Norwich C, Pershore, Peterborough, Ramsey, Rochester, Romsey, St Albans, Selby, Shrewsbury, South well, Tewkesbury, Thorney, Tutbury, Tynemouth, Waltham, Wimborne, Winchester C, Worcester C, Wymondham ; the above contain work earlier than 1150. B. Buildwas, Cartmel, Chester St John's, Dore, Dunstable, Fountains, Furness, Kirkstall, Temple Church, London, Malmesbury, Oxford St Frideswide's, Wimborne, Winchester St Cross ; the above contain work c. 11 50 to c. 1200. Ely Lantern. 46 ADMIXTURE OF ROMANESQUE. is the case, as at Rochester. Sometimes early is in juxtaposition to late Gothic; as at WELLS (127), Lincoln, Lichfield, Canterbury, York. Sometimes the substruc ture is Romanesque, the superstructure Gothic ;. as in Selby nave ; St John's, Chester ; and in the naves of Rochester and Malmesbury ; OXFORD CHOIR (27). Some times the church was poor ; and do all it could, the work went on very slowly ; in the naves of Selby and Binham there is a difference of date and a difference of style almost in every bay. More heterogeneous churches and more picturesque churches cannot be imagined ; as delightful to the artist as to the archsologist. What has been said of the greater is largely true of the smaller churches also. As a rule, an English parish church was not pulled down and rebuilt de novo , the old church frequently remains inside,* forming the nucleus round which all the later additions have crystallised ; e.g. at St Mary's, Guildford ; where all that is left of the original building is the central tower. The chief exception is that in districts where the farmers were making large profits from their wool, and the weavers and merchants from their woollen cloth, e.g. Norfolk, Suffolk, and Somerset, frequently the churches were wholly rebuilt ; the chancel often in the fourteenth, and the nave in the fifteenth century ; leaving no trace of the original church. Romanesque largely survived in England, while in the Domaine Royale and Champagne most of it disappeared. The output of Norman building here in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had been enormous ; and at the end of the latter century it must still have been in good repair. The very number and grandeur of our Romanesque churches may have saved them from being promptly rebuilt in Gothic. The substitution of Gothic for Romanesque was a long and slow process in most of the greater English churches. Some, like Selby, Chester St John's, Binham, Romsey, at the end of the twelfth century, had Romanesque naves still incomplete ; and finished them in Gothic. More often, however, the nave was complete ; and the new Gothic was first employed at the east end of the church. At Norwich nothing was done but to substitute a rectangular Lady Chapel for the eastern apsidal chapel. At Chichester, Ely, Durham, St David's, and Here ford, the eastern limb was prolonged or extended. In very many cases a clean swe^p was made of all work east of the crossing ; so that Romanesque choirs are now rare with us ; e.g. Winchester, Worcester, Southwell, Boxgrove, Foun tains, Pershore, Carlisle, in the thirteenth century ; Selby, mainly in the four teenth ; Malvern and Christ Church, Hants, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Not only a -new choir, but a new central transept also was built at Hexham, Rochester, Rievaulx, in the thirteenth, and at Bristol in the fourteenth century. At St Albans in the thirteenth ; at Shrewsbury and Waltham Abbeys in the fourteenth ; at Gloucester in the fifteenth century, a beginning was made of rebuilding the Norman naves from the west end. At Rochester a com mencement was made at the east end. A less drastic method was adopted at Gloucester and Tewkesbury ; an example copied at Winchester and Norwich in the fourteenth, at Sherborne and Malvern in the fifteenth century. It was not to pull down the old Norman work, but merely to put a new face on it ; to give it a Gothic veneer. At TEWKESBURY * Last to disappear generally were the responds of the chancel arch. 47 Gloucester Choir, N.E. Angle. DIMENSIONS. 49 (165) the recasting was of a more drastic character than at GLOUCESTER (135). At Tewkesbury the ambulatory plan is still there, and the Norman cylin drical piers, somewhat heightened ; but the Norman triforium and clerestory were removed. At Gloucester the clerestory was removed ; but the vaulted upper aisle was left, to give abutment to the new lierne vault of the choir. At WINCHESTER (90, 342) and Sherborne Abbey, piers, arches and thick clere story wall were all left, but transformed into Gothic guise. The piers in Win chester nave are the original Norman ones, with the moldings * modified ; while the vaulting shafts are the Norman roof shafts unaltered. Sometimes the rebuilding was continued till the whole church became Gothic. In some few cases the works were carried on with considerable rapidity ; and in these the result is a uniformity and regularity of style in which a French man sees nothing remarkable, but which at once strikes one of ourselves as something exceptional. Lincoln (as it was c. 1250), Salisbury (170), St Saviour's Southwark, and Exeter, were each built in about half a century. Other churches, built wholly in Gothic, but Gothic extending over long periods of time, are Canterbury Cathedral, Lichfield, Beverley Minster, and Westminster. In the last two the later is assimilated to the early work, so that in these two there is remarkable unity and uniformity of design. In several cases, when the original Anglo-Norman cathedral had been wholly rebuilt in Gothic, another period of Gothic building set in later, by way of extension of the eastern limb ; in the last half of the thirteenth century at LINCOLN (151. i) and Old St Paul's ; in the first half of the fourteenth century at Wells, Lichfield, Glastonbury, Carlisle. Still more extensive was the Gothic work done at York. Here there was first, a Norman cathedral Then the choir was rebuilt, 11 54-1 181 ; the transepts 1 247- 1 260; the nave 1291-1345 ; making the whole cathedral Gothic. Then once more the works recommenced, the choir of 11 54-1 181 was pulled down and the present presbytery and choir were built, 1367-c. 1400; and the three towers c. 1 400- 1 474. As we have seen above, almost always the short Norman choirs were either rebuilt or lengthened ; and the Gothic choirs themselves were sometimes lengthened a second time. The result of this was that the greater Gothic churches are remarkable for the great length of their eastern limb ; differing in this respect completely from their Norman predecessors, where the excess of length is to be found in the nave; e.g. at ST albans (i53-2), Winchester,! ELY (153.4), Peterborough, NORWICH (148.4). In total length we can show churches, with their long Romanesque naves and long Gothic choirs, surpassing the largest mediseval churches of Europe. Feet. 475 475435 435 430427 * The diagram on page 659 shows the Norman pier as remodelled. t Winchester nave was longer still before its remodelling by Wykeham and his successors. D Feet. Old St Paul's 586 Milan Winchester 530 Florence St Albans 520 Amiens Ely - 517 Rouen C. Canterbury 514 Reims Westminster 5°5 Cologne 50 DIMENSIONS. In the spans of their naves they are surpassed by many. Feet. _ Feet. 73 6360 58 S6S6 5548 46 In internal height* they fall far short of their Continental brethren; some being exceptionally low ; e.g. Lichfield, 57 feet; Chichester, 61 feet; Beverley, Wells, Gloucester, 6"] feet ; Worcester, 68 feet ; Exeter, 69 feet. Kin£;'s C. C. 45i Gerona York 45 Toulouse Ripon 40 Perpignan Boston 40 Albi Ely 39 Milan I.^incoln 39 Seville Canterbu ry choir 39 Florence Glastonbury 38 Reims Old St Paul's 36 Amiens Feet. Feet. Old St Paul's nave 103 Cologne 15s '\\'estminster 103 Beauvais 150 York choir 102 Bologna 150 Gloucester choir 86 Amiens 144 Salisbury - 84 Bourges 117 Lincoln nave 82 Chartres 106 Peterborough 81 Strasburg - lOI Canterbury nave 80 Toledo 100 \\'inchester 78 Leon 100 1 area also they have many superiors on the Continent. Sq. feet. Sq. feet. Old St Paul's 72,460 Seville 150,000 York 63,800 Milan 92,600 Lincoln 57,200 Saragossa 80,000 Bury 56,270 Amiens 70,000 \Vinchester S3>48o Cluny 66,000 Glastonbury 48,000 Toledo 66,000 Ely 46,000 Cologne 65,800 Westminster 46,000 Florence 65,700 Durham t 44,400 Bologna 65,000 Salisbury 43,515 Chartres 65,000 Canterbury 43.215 Reims 65,000 Peterborough 41,090 Bourges 59,000 Much has been written on the subject of the proportions of the Gothic churches here and abroad ; e.g. the assumption being that the interiors were proportioned according to the ratio of the sides of equilateral or of isosceles triangles, as the case might be. No two of these theories agree ; nor are they based on uniform systems of measurement.^ In this, as in all matters, practical considerations may fairly be assumed to have come first with the builders. The * These measurements give the height up to the apex of the vault. The lengths, breadths,. and heights given in the above tables are internal measurements. t Durham occupies nearly an acre. The boundary line of Salisbury, following the angles. made by the buttresses and other projecting parts, is nearly half a mile. X Moreover, the new work was frequently erected on the old foundations, e.g. the nave and central transept of Canterbury. " It is vain to look, as many have done, for any general doctrines. of proportion in work so conducted" (Lethaby, Med. Art, 169). SI Beverley Choir from S.E. PROPORTIONS. 53 span of the nave could not be expanded at will ; it was confined within certain limits by the difficulties and cost attending roofs of exceptional span. Again, iri determining the height of the nave, the first thing to take into account was the amount of light desired ; this regulated the height of the aisle window and of the clerestory window ; consequently, of the pier arcade and the clerestory wall. Again, there was the question of borrowing light from the triforium chamber ; if that was desired, the height assigned to the triforium had to be considerable. On the other hand, if no light was desired from this source, the height of the triforium could be greatly diminished. As for the length of each limb, that again could not be determined by geometrical ratios. Its length depended mainly on considerations of ritual ; on the number of monks or canons attached to the church; and on the number of altared chapels desired. It often happened that the length of a church was curtailed by some obstacle ; by a highroad or a foot path, or the city wall. Thus the east end of the presbytery of OXFORD CATHEDRAL ( 1 52.3) extended up to the city wall ; and there was no room to the east for a Lady Chapel ; it was therefore placed to the south. The Lady Chapel of Gloucester and the chancel of Walpole St Peter's were built over rights-of- way ; in these two instances curtailment was avoided by building a vaulted subway. This may have been the case at Hythe also. But, of course, the most weighty factor was the amount of money at the disposal of the monks or canons. Given funds and spaciousness of site, the number of bays in a nave, choir or transept could be multiplied till, as at BURY (150.3), there was a nave of 296 feet, or, as at Old St Paul's, a transept of 293 feet and a choir of 224 feet. In England, at any rate, the ratio of height to span varies so greatly, that certainly it cannot be predicated of the builders that they had any abstract scheme of ratios in their heads. The following table shows the height and span of some of the more important vaulted churches* — Span. Height. Ratio. Span. Height. Ratio. Tewkesbury nave 33 58 1.8 Noyon — — 2.07 Gloucester nave 34 68 2 l.aon — — 2.21 Exeter nave 34 69 2 Chartres 46 106 2-3 Lichfield nave 28 57 2 Bourges 46 117 2-5 Wells nave 32 67 2.1 St Sernin, , Toulouse Lincoln nave 39 82 2.1 (Romanesq ue) — — 2-59 Winchester nave 32 78 2.4 Toledo 38 100 2.6 Gloucester choir 33 86 2.6 Amiens 46 144 3-1 Beverley choir 26 67 2.6 Leon 31 100 3-2 Salisbury nave 32 84 2.7 Beauvais 45 '50 3-3 Norwich choir 28 83 2.9 Conques( Romanesqut ;) — — 3-4S Westminster nave 35 103 2.9 Cologne 41 ISS 3-8 St Trophime, Aries (Romanesq ue) — — 4.2 On nothing does the effectiveness of an interior depend so much as on the ratio of height to span. In the naves of GLOUCESTER (26), TEWKESBURY (297), EXETER (9), and Lincoln the vault is crushingly low. There can be no question that the most successful vaulted interiors we possess are those * The dimensions given in this and the preceding tables must be accepted as only approxi mate : of many churches the measurements are not trustworthy. 54 PROPORTIONS, of the naves of Westminster, Salisbury, Beverley, and Winchester, Where height and span are also properly correlated with length, as in the naves of WINCHESTER (342) and WESTMINSTER (63), there an English interior is seen at its very best. But there is yet another factor which has very great weight. What it is, may be seen by examining the naves of LICHFIELD (523) and Wells. They are quite sufficiently long ; but their height is only about twice their span. Yet they do not look low ; as do the naves of EXETER (9) and Lincoln, which also are only about half as broad as they are high. The reason for this is that we have taken into account only the breadth of the nave. But the breadth of each of the bays of which the nave is composed is also an important factor. The following table shows the ratio of the breadth to the height of the bay in a few examples. It will be seen how great is the difference of bay proportion in such interiors as those of Westminster * and Exeter. Breadth Height PnH( of Bay. cf Bay. ixaiK Exeter nave 20 63 3-1 Lichfield nave 16I 57 3-S Lincoln presbytery 21 74 3-S ^\'ells nave 16 68 4 Westminster choir - 18 100 S-S Yet another factor is treatment of the vaulting shaft. Where it rises from the pavement, as at Lichfield, the apparent height of the bay is enhanced ; but the church looks lower where as at Exeter and Lincoln presbytery it starts from a corbel at some intermediate point. Of all our interiors, perhaps that of WINCHESTER NAVE (342) is most successful. If we take 2 as the unit, then if the breadth of each of its twelve bays is 2 ; the span ofthe nave is 2r: ; the height of the vault and of each bay is 6A ; the length of the nave is 22|. It is to be noted that it retains massive Norman vaulting shafts descending to the pavement. So much for the dimensions and proportions of the greater churches. Another factor of enormous importance is the character of the methods of abutment employed. Abutment. — Of systems of abutment to Gothic clerestories we may dis tinguish four. The first is that which was first employed in DURHAM NAVE (34.2), and which was contemplated at NORWICH (371). In this the clere story walls are abutted low down by flying buttresses concealed beneath the aisle roof The second is seen in CANTERBURY CHOIR (34.3), commenced 1 175. Here there is retained the arch spanning the triforium chamber, which was employed in DURHAM CHOIR (370) ; except that it is segmental instead of semicircular. But in addition a flying buttress emerges, for the first time, into the open air. It is constructed in very timid fashion, just crawling along above the triforium roof ; unornamented ; regarded, plainly, as nothing more than a builder's expedient. In LINCOLN CHOIR (34.5), commenced 1192, precisely the same system is adopted as in Canterbury choir ; except that the arch in the * WESTMINSTER CHOIR and LINCOLN PRESBYTERY, illustrated on pages 55 and 56, may be taken as average specimens of a French and an EngUsh internal elevation. GOTHIC ABUTMENT, 55 triforium chamber is pointed. The third system is seen in CHICHESTER NAVE (34.4), which was vaulted in the last years of the twelfth century. Here also, as at Canterbury, flying buttresses are displayed in the open air ; but they are heavy and clumsy. Plainly they are no copies of Canterbury work, but just the flying but tresses of Durham nave built out of doors. Similar flying buttresses, equally massive and plain, are seen at NEW SHOREHAM and BOXGROVE (373). But down below, in the section on the right, page 34.4, may be seen a second flying buttress, help ing to support the aisle roof Here then we have a double set of flying buttresses, one above, the other beneath the triforium roof The fourth system is that in which all abutment inside the triforium chamber is discarded, and in which, as at EXETER {35.3), the flying buttress is displayed in the open air. The fifth appears at WEST MINSTER (35.2) c. 1245 ; and earlier still in Ely presbytery c. 1234, In both these churches the thrusts of the high vaults are stopped by two flying buttresses in super position, both of them above the aisle roofs. In the Gothic architecture of England two of the five systems remained in employment, viz,, the first and the fourth ; with an ever-increasing tendency to employ the fourth. In France, in the Gothic of the Domaine Royale, the fourth and fifth systems chiefly were employed. Owing to the vastly greater height of their clerestories, the first three systems would have been ineffectual. Skeleton Construction. — From the character of the Gothic vault and from the employment of the buttress there flowed consequences which entirely transformed the face of Gothic architecture. Owing to the fact that in a Gothic vault thoTibs only descend to the wall opposite the piers, it follows that, while the parts of the wall to which they do descend are exposed^to an enormous bursting pressure, the whole of % Ml IZ 0 t Z 3 t^ 5 Scale of Feet •i ' _j° Westminster Choir, 56 SKELETON CONSTRUCTION. — -9iiit ? ^ f ^ ^ ^ ^ "^ '."fg^-^ Lincoln Presbytery. the space between the springs of the ribs — i.e. nearly the whole bay — is free from any such pressure. It follows that if the builder chooses to omit the wall space between each pair of buttresses, he can do so, provided that he builds a re lieving arch across from buttress to buttress to carry the parapet and roof And where the wall was, he can have glass. To a large extent, therefore, Gothic architecture meant the substi tution of voids for solids and window for wall. The differ ence between the Romanesque and the Gothic construction may be seen by comparing ELY NAVE (57), LINCOLN PRESBY TERY (56), and WESTMINSTER NAVE (55). At Ely the distance from window to window in the clere story is about 13 feet ; and the whole breadth of each bay is solid wall, except a window 4 feet across. In Lincoln presby tery the clerestory window occupies 1 2 feet out of a total breadth of 23^- feet ; leaving \\\ feet of solid wall ; the voids and solids nearly balancing. But at Westminster the clere story window occupies as much as 10 feet in a bay of a total breadth of 1 8 feet ; leaving 8 feet of solid wall ; so that the voids outbalance the solids. Ely may be taken as an average specimen of late Romanesque construction ; Lincoln presby tery of English Gothic ; West minster approaches the con struction of the He de France. The French churches go far beyond Westminster in the SKELETON CONSTRUCTION. 57 attenuation of the clerestory wall. In Amiens nave the windows of the clerestory are more than three times as broad as the strips of clerestory wall ; which are also narrower than the piers down below between nave and aisles. In the nave of St Denis * (1231 to 1280) the piers below are still broader than the strips of clerestory wall between the windows. While in Metz Cathedral * the piers between the nave and aisles are nearly twice as broad as those be tween the clerestory windows. Vast is the difference between such construction and that of Lincoln presbytery. In such churches as Amiens, St Denis, EVREUX (539), the clerestory wail ceases to exist qua wall.f Really it has become the upper part of a pier : of one of the piers below between nave and aisles. In such examples the piers of the ground story do not stop, as they appear to do, at their capitals ; each continues up, between the pier arches, between the bays of the triforium arcade, and between the bays of the clere story, till it stops about one-third of the distance up the clerestory windows, as at Amiens and Metz ; or half-way up, as at Beauvais and St Denis. Such a pier, which may be called the Vault pier, is at Beauvais nearly 140 feet high. How is it kept in position ? The lower part of it, if it be a pier between the nave and aisle, is kept from moving to east or west by the arches which it supports. It cannot incline backward ; be cause of the inward thrust of the vault of the aisle. Nor again can it incline forward, for it is weighted with its own upper portion, which is loaded with its share of vault and outer roof In the triforium stage the arches of the triforium arcade act as straining arches. To oppose any movement forward or backward there is opposed the weight of its upper portion carrying its share of vault and outer roof In the clerestory stage, it is pre- * Elevations in Dehio, Plates 387, 388. t See especially the longitudinal section of Glou- - cester choir on page 59, Ely Nave. 58 SKELETON CONSTRUCTION. vented from moving to east or west by the arches of the windows, which act as straining arches. It cannot move forward because ofthe thrust of the high vault; it cannot move backward because ofthe flying buttress,* which acts as a stay,propped up on the top of the aisle buttress ; which buttress is loaded with a pinnacle. All this complex mechanism is needed to keep such tall vault piers upright. In England, as we have seen, even in the semi-French church of West minster, usually we did not carry Gothic construction to such logical extremes; eliminating masonry till there remained nothing but a vault pier. It was not that we could not, but that we would not. Even in the thirteenth century the principle of the vault pier was thoroughly understood and properly applied in England. The construction of the Chapter House of Salisbury is precisely the same as that of the clerestories of Amiens, Beauvais, St Denis, Metz. In all five the wall between the windows is reduced to a pier ; and the wall ribs of the vault serve also as the arches of the window. In GLOUCESTER CHOIR (59), finished c. 1350, a magnificent pier ascends uninterruptedly from the pavement to the spring of the arches of the clerestory window ; a construction which was repeated, but with more timidity, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster, Malvern, and Bath. But what was optional with us was a constructional necessity with the French builders. Even if they had wished, they could not have constructed their lofty churches in our English fashion, with retention of great breadths of clerestory wall. Look at a typical English Gothic elevation, such as that of LINCOLN presbvtery (56). On a pier which is about 5^ feet broad is balanced a mass of clerestory wall, which is no less than 11 i feet broad. Such a pier is top heavy ; the upper part is twice as broad as the lower. In the lofty French churches, to have poised such an enormous weight on the slender piers of the ground story, would have crushed them. Consequently the upper part of the vault pier, as we have seen, had to be made narrower, not broader, than the lower. Other considerations no doubt had weight. The generative principle of Gothic architecture has been described, with considerable truth, as the economy of stone.f Labour was cheap, stone was dear. Stone was something precious ; more like ivory than wood. Every care must be used to lessen the cube of stone. Any amount of labour might be expended on ornament ; as little as possible on ashlar. The masons had grown up under this tradition. There was a premium on economy of ashlar. Nowhere is the result plainer than in the construction of the Gothic vault pier. It was an enormous saving in stone. Such construction, of course, revolutionised Romanesque practice ; which had been to rely wholly on walls for the stability of the vault. Now reliance was almost wholly on the pier with its paraphernalia of buttresses, flying buttresses, pinnacles. In the nave of a Gothic church in its final development all the windows might be taken away ; also the end walls, the walls beneath the * In Gloucester choir instead of flying buttresses there is a half barrel. t "The most lavish expenditure of labour seems to have been considered no waste, if effecting the slightest saving of material" (Garbett's Principles of Design, 219). "II fallait se suffire avec pen de materiaux ; il fallait trailer la pierre comme une chose precieuse ; tous les efforts devaient tendre a en limiter I'emploi ; on devait batir avec le moins de matiere." (Choisy's Histoire, ii. 526.) u[oq3 J3ls33no|f) ±a3J JO 31VD9 6? 6o SKELETON CONSTRUCTION, windows of the aisles and the clerestory, and the spandrils of the pier arcade : it might be reduced to a mere skeleton, consisting of four rows of stone posts— the inner two being the vault piers, the outer two the buttressed piers between the aisle windows, connected by arches — and on these posts, with the winds of heaven blowing through them, the vaults both of nave and aisles would still stand secure. Like the half-timbered house, the Crystal Palace, or the American "sky-scraper," the constructional members are totally independent of the filling in. With skeleton construction, moreover, another advance was made to the more complete lighting ofthe mediseval churches. Every window, as in the clere stories of Amiens nave and Gloucester choir, could be widened till it occupied all the whole space from one vault pier to the next. This was no small gain. A church so constructed, with the voids so much in excess of the solids, was very light in appearance. Its lightness of construction was still further increased by the superiority of the masonry as compared with that of Roman esque. The walls could be, and were, made thin.* The piers themselves became surprisingly slender in comparison with their Romanesque predecessors (659, 661). All this attenuation of the supports was again facilitated by the lighten ing of the later vaults ; for the web of these vaults was much thinner ; a shell of ashlar being employed instead of heavy rubble ; nor was it covered with a layer of concrete (304). The result was a wonderful church. A church built logically with vault-pier construction presented an interior such as the world had never seen or dreamt of It was an " aerial immateriality " ; some thing spiritual, incorporeal. In such an interior it all but seems that the load might float away from the unsubstantial air or rather from the belt of coloured light on which it rests. In a Romanesque minster like DURHAM (8) one is impressed by the vast downward pressures that exist. Not so in the ethereal- ised later Gothic. " Who, while viewing a stately tree in the pride of its growth, ever thinks of its weight, or of the pressure of its boughs upon the stem ? It is with its upward soaring that the mind is impressed ; and just so it is with the interior of the Gothic cathedral. The perfection with which all the physical forces are met has to the mind the effect, not merely that they are annihilated, but that they are actually reversed!' f Nevertheless such construction may be deemed perhaps somewhat non- architectural : a little out of consonance with the material employed ; masonry being made almost as pliant and ductile in design as if it were metal. The great Gothic churches are of stable construction — have they not stood for hundreds of years ? — but however much the intellect appreciates the unseen balance of forces by which their stability is assured, the eye desiderates something more ; solidity as well as stability : and this in its later phases the Gothic preponderance of voids fails to give. " In works of a monumental character which are designed to last for centuries, the strict economy of material, which is sometimes deemed necessary in engineering works, is not advisable ; because mass, solidity and durability are of the very essence of their architectural character." \ * In late Gothic, e.g. in the Coventry churches and in the choir of ST MARY REDCLIFFE (525), the clerestory wall was made thinner than the pier arches which supported it. t Scott's Lectw-es, ii. 189 ; f/^ Ruskin's Seven Lamps, 64. X Y&:^\xi%oxii History, \. 15. ALTITUDE, 6i This unsubstantiality of skeleton construction was, however, largely counter acted by opacity of glass. How essential to Gothic design is stained glass may be seen by visiting any church which has now but white glass. Such a church seems but a collection of stone scaffolding. With stained glass, even if it be one great lantern, hke KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE (62), an apparent solidity is produced that reassures. " None would have made walls which are literally windows, unless strength of colour had come forward to simu late strength of substance." * Nothing in the whole history of architecture is so unsatisfactory as an Amiens glazed in white glass ; nothing so delightful as that same church filled with stained glass, provided that the glass be good. Altitude and Verticality of Gothic. — In a Gothic as compared with a Romanesque church or part of a church there is usually a considerable increase of height ; e.g. at Norwich the nave, which retains its Norman clerestory, is 6g\ feet high ; the choir, which has a Gothic clerestory, is 83I feet high. A similar difference between the height of nave and choir obtains at Gloucester. The parts that rise are the pier arcade and the clerestory ; the triforium tends to diminish in height, as its roof is flattened more and more. The primary reason for the greater height of Gothic pier arcade and clerestory^ is a practical one ; it is due to the desire to have taller windows and more light. It would be useless to make the aisle windows taller if the pier arcade remained low, Tallness of pier arcade is as necessary as tallness of clerestory, if more abundant light is to be had. Of the two chief factors in the dimensions of an interior, breadth and height, the former is the master-factor ; the breadth governs the height ; e.g. if an English church is to have a nave of 32 feet span, as at Salisbury and Winchester, each aisle may have a span of about 16 feet. And if the aisle windows are j to be sufficiently tall, the aisle should be about 40 feet high ; which should be the height of the pier arcade also. Now a satisfactory elevation is one that allots one-half of the total height of the interior to the pier arcade, one-sixth to the triforium, and one-third to the clerestory ; therefore if the pier arcade has a height of 40 feet, the triforium arcade will occupy about 13 feet, the clerestory about 27 feet, and the total height to the top of the clerestory will be 80 feet; externally, the ridge of the roof will be about 108 feet high. This corresponds pretty closely with the distribution of the three vertical stories of Salisbury, which is 84 feet high, and of WINCHESTER NAVE (90), which is 78 feet high. In such an elevation, the height both of the nave and of the aisles is about two and a half times their span.f But in the He de France the builders, in fixing the height of the churches, by no means allowed themselves to be curtailed by the fenestration. Amiens, with a nave of 46 feet span, would, if built with the average English proportions, have an internal height of 1 14 feet ; as a matter of fact, the height is 144 feet. In Amiens the height of the nave and aisles is respectively nearly three times their span. Light enough could have been gained without running up the aisles and nave to such great heights. Partly from ambitions of masoncraft, partly * Rensselaer's English Cathedrals, 431. t The above dimensions are of course merely an imaginary example ; there are many deviations from such a standard as this. 62 VERTICALITY. from exalted ideas of design, the boundaries of the material were far outpassed. The result was a series of buildings surpassing all the other works of man ; in which the builders reached forward to and attained not merely the beautiful, but the sublime. Nowhere does one feel so much the greatness and the insignifi cance of man. Man who built these towering vaults is crushed and overwhelmed by his own work. To a large extent verticality is the dominant note of Gothic architecture ; horizontality of Romanesque. All the vertical lines that were present in the Romanesque building are present in the Gothic ; but they are all elongated owing to the greater height of the building. The piers of Durham give im portant vertical lines ; but there is a great difference between these and the vault piers of GLOUCESTER CPIOIR (59) rising into the clerestory 66 feet from the pavement. So with the vaulting shafts ; they shared in the general uplifting of the interior. The pointing, too, of every semicircular arch carried the eye upwards. The articulation of the piers into shafts and columns and the disuse of the Romanesque cylinder immensely multiplied the number of vertical lines. So also did the multiplication of window mullions. On the other hand, the space from buttress to buttress being occupied with windows, there was less room for the horizontal line either inside or outside the buildings. Bands, too, which checked the upward flow of the shafting, were for the most part abandoned. From the summit of the vaulting shafts, as at EXETER (9), whole sheaves of ribs ran upwards to the ridge of the vault. Externally, the vertical line was still more pronounced ; in the great projection ofthe buttress; in the substitution of the pinnacle for the gablet ; above all, in the upper growth of the spire. Nevertheless, it is possible to overemphasise the verticality of Gothic architecture. What the builders took away with one hand, they put back with the other. If they added tiercerons to diagonal and transverse ribs, they also added horizontal ridge ribs. If they articulated the vaulting shaft, they usually cut it short at a corbel. If more and more they disused the string, they more and more filled their windows with transoms. If they added the pinnacle, they substituted for the corbel table the far more emphatic horizontality of the pierced or embattled parapet. Whole districts gave themselves up to tower design, and eschewed the spire. So then we may say, with more justice, that Gothic is not the embodiment of verticality alone, but rather the just balance of the two conflicting principles of the vertical and the horizontal line. INTERIOR OF KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, LOOKING WEST. 63 Westminster. Chapter IV. CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH GOTHIC FROM c. 1 170 TO c. 131 5. Planning — Internal Elevation — East Front — Transept Front — West Front — Vaulting — Piers — Ornament. Planning. — By the end of the twelfth century* the planning of the greater churches had been revolutionised. Three new systems of church planning had come into use ; differing from one another ; but all agreeing in breaking away completely from Romanesque tradition. No more churches were built with parallel side apses, like those of ST MARY'S, GUILDFORD (36) ; a belated example of this class. Equally the Norwich plan, with semicircular apse, ambu latory and tangential chapels, went out of use ; except at Westminster in the thirteenth and Tewkesbury in the fourteenth century, where it was revived with polygonal apses. No more semicircular apses were built after those on the east sides of the choir transepts of Canterbury and LINCOLN (66). All the great churches, however, remained cruciform, and most had aisled naves. The Norman western transept was repeated at LINCOLN (151. i) and Peterborough. The eastern transept of Canterbury was much copied in this period ; e.g. at LINCOLN (66), Rochester, Worcester, SALISBURY (170), BEVERLEY (176). Of the transepts some were without aisles ; some had an eastern aisle ; few had western as well as eastern aisles ; none had return galleries, except the north-eastern transept of Lincoln. f Some of the eastern transepts were as loftv as the choir ; e.g. at Beverley, Worcester, and Salisbury ; others were as low as the aisles ; e.g. at Southwell and Exeter. So also if there was an eastern chapel, it might be low, as at Chichester and SALISBURY (170); or of the full height of the choir, as at Rochester, Worcester, BEVERLEY {i76).\ At FOUNTAINS (150.2) and Durham the choir transept was built at the eastern extremity of the church. Of eastern limbs three types came into use about the same time; that of OXFORD CATHEDRAL (152.3), 1154-1180, with aisled choir and unaisled sanctuary; that of ST CROSS, WINCHESTER (104) (probably not earlier than 1160), New Shoreham (probably c. 1175); and JERVAULX * The periodic. 1170 to c. 1315 corresponds roughly with the Early English and Early Decorated of Rickman, Bloxam, and Parker ; and with the Late Transitional, Lancet, and Geometrical periods of Sharpe. + The south-eastern transept of Lincoln seems to have been remodelled in the thirteenth century. X When tall, it sometimes formed the presbytery. E 66 .> ' 1- u -1- r'l W;' *^,V •V, I ' ' r'l 1 • '31 vl if ' ^/ ' n i ^ r,, V. ¦ it ," ^ !-J^ A .: ii Lincoln Minster, S.E Transept, INTERNAL ELEVATION. 67 (iS3-3)> in which both choir and presbytery are completely aisled; and that of Chichester, c. 11 70, with retrochoir and rectangular eastern chapel* Many Norman choirs were found too small and were pulled down and rebuilt in Gothic.f In several cases, as at Lincoln, this was the prelude to the rebuilding in Gothic of the whole church. Little change occurs in the planning of the parish churches till the second half of the thirteenth century. All the Norman forms of plan remain in use. The simple forms of plan, however, tend to be replaced by the more complex forms, as transepts and aisles come more into use. Aisles are still narrow and low ; and clerestories rare. It was not till the second half of the thirteenth century that the aisles became broad, as at St Martin's, Leicester, and War mington ; or lofty, separated from the nave by tall, slender, graceful piers, as in HOWDEN NAVE (546), HEDON (544) and Stone. Internal Elevation. — As in the Romanesque churches, so in our early Gothic work all the greater churches internally were three stories high ; ground story, triforium arcade, and clerestory. And all the various Romanesque dis positions still survived. In ELY PRESBYTERY (526) and in WESTMINSTER (379) the triforium still retains windows in its back wall ; giving an exterior three stories high. This arrangement is, however, rare in Gothic. The curious design of the Augustinians of OXFORD (27) and Dunstable is repeated by the Benedictines of GLASTONBURY (536), but with pointed arches. Then this design also disappears. The tall triforium arcade of Romsey, St Bartholomew's, Smithfield — illogical in design because the triforium has no windows at the back — is repeated in the early Gothic of Hexham and WHITBY (114), and later in YORK TRANSEPT (523), and the north side of the nave of BRIDLINGTON (125). More often, however, the height of the triforium is reduced by flat tening its roof more or less. The space thus gained was sometimes given to the clerestory ; as in the south side of BRIDLINGTON NAVE (125), and in Guisborough choir ; :|: and Exeter ; or the height of the piers was increased, as the choirs of CANTERBURY (106), Salisbury, and BEVERLEY (51). In the Cistercian churches, however, the design of Fountains and Kirkstall naves survives, here and there, as late as TINTERN (524), 1269-1287. But a much more common and a more important elevation is that in which the jambs of the clerestory window are carried down to the string of the triforium ; e.g. ST DAVID'S (525) ; Dore ; Southwell and PERSHORE choirs (75) ; and the south side of BRIDLINGTON NAVE (125). The most advanced specimen of this treatment is the nave of YORK (10), the foundation stone of which was laid in 1291. Here not only the jambs, but all the four mullions of the clerestory windows, descend to the triforium string. The parish churches for the most part are still without a clerestory, and the * The Chichester plan occurs also at Dore and Glastonbury, but without the eastern Lady Chapel. + E.g. Ripon ; York ; Wells ; Lincoln ; Lichfield ; Salisbury ; St Paul's ; Beverley ; South well ; Hexham; Southwark; Rochester; Worcester; Whitby; Boxgrove; Chester Cathedral; Pershore ; Rievaulx ; Fountains ; Carlisle ; and after c. 1250 Lincoln, Tintern, Thornton, Exeter, Guisborough. X Illustrated in Sharpe's Arch. Parallels, Plate 70. 68 EXTERNAL ELEVATION. internal elevation is of one story, even in the great church of Yarmouth. Where a clerestory occurs, in the first half of the century, its windows are often set in an arcade of pointed arches ; e.g. at Darlington, Great Grimsby,* Elm, and West Walton. In the last half of the century low clerestories become more common ; their windows are often small circles. The naves of HOWDEN (546) and HEDON (544) show the clerestory window rising to a considerable height. Where the parish church has a clerestory, the internal elevation is one of two stories. East Front. — Of the east fronts of the thirteenth century several distinct types survive, i. At DORE ('182) there is a rectangular ambulatory, but not a projecting eastern chapel. St Saviour's, Southwark, is similar; and originally perhaps Winchester, before the Perpendicular Lady Chapel was added. 2. At SALISBURY (170), Chester Cathedral, Hereford in the first half of the century, and at Chichester, Exeter, St Davids and St Albans in the second half, a low Lady Chapel forms the eastern termination. 3. At Tynemouth, BEVERLEY (176), and SOUTHWELL (359), the choir ends at full height in a short unaisled presbytery or Lady Chapel. 4. At Whitby, Rievaulx, BOXGROVE (373), ELY f (464), in the first half of the century, both choir and aisles are carried at full height to the east: as they were in the second half at LINCOLN (177), Tintern, Ripon, and Guisborough. The east fronts of the chapels of Ely Palace, London, and MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD (473), also belong to the last years of the thirteenth century. 5. At FOUNTAINS (150) and Durham the churches terminate to the east in an eastern transept, with nine altars, 6. WESTMINSTER (63) adopts the polygonal apse of French Gothic. Transept Fronts. — To the twelfth century belong the transept fronts of Ripon and Canterbury ; as well as those of the eastern transepts of LINCOLN (66), To the first half of the thirteenth century belong the north tran septs of LINCOLN (69) and Hedon ; four transepts of SALISBURY (170) and four of BEVERLEY (176) ; two of Whitby and Rievaulx; two of York — differing entirely in design — the north transept of Rochester ; and later in the century those of Tintern. As these fronts were often seen in conjunction with the sides of the transepts, they often followed the dispositions of the latter ;| e.g. at Hedon § and in the east transepts of Worcester the sides of the transept contain two rows of windows ; and beneath the bottom row is blank wall. In the north elevation, therefore, at Hedon there is a doorway, at Worcester a blank wall ; two triplets of lancets superposed, corresponding to the rows of lateral windows ; and a third graduated triplet of lancets in the gable. This is the logical eleva tion for an unaisled transept ; viz. one of four stories. On the other hand, if the transept have aisles, then on its flanks there may be (i) wall beneath aisle windows ; (2) aisle windows ; (3) aisle roof, which gives a half gable at the end of the transept ; (4) clerestory windows. The normal elevation for such a transept is one of five stories. This logical disposition obtains in all the * Illustrated in Building News, March 21, 1875. + The eastern terminations of the aisles have been ruined by conversion into chantry chapels by Bishops Alcock and West. + So also in Norman transepts ; e.g. Winchester and Norwich. S Illustrated in Builder, Dec. 17, 1887. 69 Lincoln North Transept. WEST FRONT. 71 transept fronts of SALISBURY (170); in each there is (i) wall, with or with out doorway ; (2) a triplet or quintet of lancets ; (3) a band of arcading or of low windows ; (4) another triplet or quintet of lancets ; (5) the gable con taining graduated lancets or a rose window. To this type belongs the noble north facade of Westminster. It is five stories high ; the great rose is placed in the fourth story instead of the gable ; and as the chief entrance to the church is from the north, there are three lofty doorways. But when it was thought fit, such logical dispositions were disregarded ; e.g. in the central transepts of BEVERLEY (176) and the south transept of York the logical arrangement was disturbed in order to get more headway for doors ; while in all the Beverley transepts, quite illogically, the gables were cut up into two stories by a string. The Whitby elevation also is illogical. The greatest revolution, however, was in the north transept of YORK (11). Here the three central stories were con solidated into one ; and this one great central story was filled with five enor mous lancets, all of the same height, the famous Five Sisters. A little later this elevation of three stories was adopted at Tintern Abbey ; except that for a quintet of lancets there v/as substituted a tall traceried window of six lights ; and in the north transept of Hereford. In the east transept of Canterbury ; and the central transepts of LINCOLN (69), Whitby, and Beverley ; and in the south transept of York and the north transept of Westminster circular windows are employed. West Front. — Of the artistic problems which came before the mediaeval builder for solution none seem to have presented such great difficulties as the composition of the grand facade of the greater churches. When a civic building was designed, e.g. the Cloth Hall of Ypres,* which is 440 feet long, no one dreamt of making one end of it the grand facade. But this is exactly what the church architect, for ritualistic reasons, everywhere was compelled to do. Otherwise he might have made what is now a side of the church the principal facade ; a facade which in many cases would have exceeded 500 feet in length. In the centre of this might have been placed the main entrance ; emphasised, perhaps, as at Ypres, by a great central tower. Two minor towers, to the far east and west, might have brought together the wings. But to restrict to a breadth of some 80 feet the grand facade of a church 500 feet long, and with transepts spreading out perhaps 200 feet, was to make an adequate solution almost impossible. Nevertheless an adequate solution was found. This was to give to the fa9ade in height what could not be given in breadth. Such a fa5ade was familiar to the builders in Normandy in the eleventh century ; and was reproduced at SOUTHWELL (520), DURHAM (28), LINCOLN (562), and elsewhere. Early in the thirteenth century it is seen at Ripon ; and at the very end of the century at LICHFIELD (^frontispiece'). Still greater is the adequacy of the fajade if the towers have spires ; as at Lichfield, and formerly at Lincoln and Ripon. And if, behind and between these, there is a central spire, so lofty that this also enters into the grouping of the west front, as at Lichfield, and formerly at Lincoln and Ripon, then, narrow as is the fa9ade, it is adequate even for a church so vastly long and broad as Lincoln. *' Illustrated in Fergusson, ii. 201. 72 WEST FRONT. This fine type of design was still further strengthened by setting the western towers clear of the aisles instead of in a line with them. At Lichfield the Howden West Front. towers project but slightly to north and south; but at WELLS (154.3) they are quite clear. For the success of the twin tower facade, however, it is indispensable that the towers shall be towers all the way to the ground. The towers must be WEST FRONT. 73 wholly independent ofthe central fa9ade : as they are in the Abbaye-aux-Hommes, Caen ; Castle Acre, and Southwell. The distinction bet\\een the central and the lateral fa9ades is strongly emphasised at Bayeux and Beverley Minster, and with magnificent effect. In this respect the western towers of Durham and Ripon show some timidity , at Wells and Lichfield the towers are lost in the fa9ade ; at Lincoln and Peterborough they rise in inexplicable fashion in the rear of the fa9ade. The towered fa9ade, however, was perhaps an architectural extravagance ; one of the few instances in Gothic architecture of work done mainly for effect.* For this reason, perhaps, and because of its cost, it was adopted in comparatively few churches. Another design was borrowed from the Norman churches which could be turned to religious account. At Ely and Castle Acre, and originally at Hereford, the fa9ade had included a screen wall ornamented with band upon band of arcadings of semicircles, intersecting semicircles, pointed and trefoiled arches. These arcades were built more deeply recessed ; and in each recess was placed a statue. Such a statued screen, an open-air reredos or iconostasis, was defensible on religious grounds. It taught Scripture History and the Legends ofthe Saints.t Such a great rectangular wall was not designed merely as a fa9ade, and is not to be criticised as a fa9ade. The criticism which it does provoke is that it was ill advised to put sculpture at heights where its meaning was indistinguishable, and where it is exposed to the inclemency of our English climate. Lincoln, Wells, Salisbury adopted this reredos type of fa9ade in the first half of the thirteenth century. At the very end of the century it reappears, for the last time, at Lichfield ; but with a couple of steeples perched on the top ofit. After this it disappears from English architecture. The simplest method of disposing of the difficulty with the grand facade was to recognise frankly that the west front was not the grand fa9ade ; and to cease to try to make it one. This was the sensible method adopted in far the most churches. The west front was designed in them in the same simple fashion as the north and south fronts of the transepts. Possibly Cistercian precedent had considerable weight ; for no Cistercian church had either western towers or the screen-wall fa9ade. So the simple type of west front greatly preponderated. It occurred in the first half of the thirteenth century at Wenlock ; Whitby ; Bolton; St Saviour's, Southwark ; Romsey; BINHAM (471); in the second half at HOWDEN (72); and frequently in later work. It is the same as the west front of a parish church which has no western tower ; for distinctness we may call this third type of western fa9ade the parochial. The history of the design of the parochial fa9ade is the same as that of the transept fa9ade. At first it is cut up into four or five stories ; as at Bolton and Byland, Then, in the west front of Romsey, the central tiers of windows are consolidated into one gigantic triplet of graduated lancets ; and the number of stories is reduced to three. But little, if at all later, is the west front of BINHAM (471); here * One western tower might be useful as a campanile. But bells were often placed in the central tower ; e.g. Lincoln (328). The western towers, however, have constructional value ; see pages 381 and 598. + The French preferred to teach them in the statued archivolts of their doorways ; and they were taught both by French and English in the stained glass windows. 74 EARLY GOTHIC VAULTING, it seems to have been intended to have superposed rows of lancets, as at Ripon ; but a single great window of bar tracery was preferred. Other three story fa9ades are those of Valle Crucis and Tintern. At Peterborough, as at Lincoln, there are two fa9ades. The inner fa9ade was built at the end of the twelfth century ; and was to have flanking towers (as at Wells) of which one only has been completed. The outer fa9ade was built a generation later and is still broader. Vaulting. — None of the Gothic vaults are groined ;* aU are ribbed. But there are considerable differences between the ribbed vaults, e.g. of DURHAM AISLE (315) and NAVE (8); and those, e.g. of NEW SHOREHAM (313) and CHICHESTER (3 1 3). In the first place, the filling-in ofthe latter is of ashlar, and is much less heavy. Rubble " filling-in," however, was frequently retained, e.g. in LICHFIELD NAVE (3 1 3). The ribs became much less massive; and were composed of longer blocks. It ceased to be customary to make the trans verse thicker than the diagonal ribs. At ROCHE (675) they differ much; while at BYLAND (675), which can be but little if any later, they are of the same profile. The rectangular is gradually replaced by a triangular profile ; the Gothic moldings being executed more and more on the chamfer plane : e.g. contrast the ribs of WHITBY CHOIR (675,12) with that of LINCOLN GALILEE (677-3). The lower portion ofthe ribs ceases to be built independently; being constructed in solid springers. Sexpartite vaulting received encouragement from Canterbury choir ; but quadripartite vaulting was always the more common, and finally superseded sexpartite. Additional ribs were added in LINCOLN CHOIR Tooth Ornament. (327), commenced 1192; and to give abutment to these a new rib, the longi tudinal ridge rib, was invented. Other intermediate ribs, or tiercerons, were added in LINCOLN NAVE (327), c. 1230 ; and to abut these, transverse as well as longitudinal ridge ribs, were employed. At Ripon, Hexham, WHITBY (114), Carlisle, the tradition of the Norman ceiling survived, and no high vaults were built. Piers. — In the greater churches three types of pier were in use in the earlier part of the period. The first is the western pier ; usually short and massive ; not employing marble ; but encircled with slender shafts of freestone, arranged in triplets ; e.g. in WELLS (209), LICHFIELD (244) ; a late example is PER SHORE CHOIR (75). The second is the southern pier ; usually tall and graceful ; encircled by slender detached shafts of marble ; banded with annulets of marble or bronze; e.g. CHICHESTER RETROCHOIR (245), ELY PRESBYTERY (247) ; late examples are Winchester chancel and Wells retrochoir. The third is the northern pier, which discards slender shafts, and is made up of a cluster of stout columns, which are generally of freestone. Some or all of these columns are usually pointed in section ; e.g. ROCHE (661.2) and BYLAND * Throughout the volume the term " groined " is confined to vaults which do not possess ribs. 75 Pershore Choir from S.W. EARLY GOTHIC ORNAMENT, jj {661.3). The clustered column is sometimes found where the southern or western type of pier might be expected ; e.g. ST SAVIOUR'S, southwark (521) ; ST ALBANS NAVE (14) ; EXETER (241), Ornament, — The tooth ornament had enormous * vogue in the thirteenth century; e.g. at SKELTON and WA-RMINGTON (78 and 578); partly because of its effectiveness, partly because it was easy to execute ; as is shown in the diagram on page 74, It had its origin in the Norman nail-head.\ It is one of the few ornaments without a classical pedigree. An early example of it occurs in the labels of the aisle windows of the west front of Rochester, which is probably 1125 to II37-+ It occurs, fully developed, 1131-1133, at Terouanne in the North of France.| It occurs in the west doorways of LESSAY ABBEY (315), and of Davington Priory; the latter was founded in 1153; also in the so-called Baptistery at Canterbury, c. ii6o;ll in doorways at Stillingfleet and Brinkburn; and in the sanctuary arch of Compton ; and among Norman moldings in the north doorway of St Margaret at Cliffe. It occurs as a string at the back of the pier arches of Steyning. It is used profusely at Canterbury in the work of 1175-1184. It is very rare after the thirteenth century ; but an example occurs in the moldings of a Tudor arch at Lichfield,1T and an imitation of it in another at Congresbury Vicarage. It was common in Continental Gothic also ; e.g. in Italy at Perugia, Terni, and Verona ; ** and is very common in Spanish Romanesque ; e.g. in Tarragona cloister. It is still a favourite in Cyprus. "ff Usually this ornament is designed as a pyramid of four leaves ; but at Salisbury it consists of only two leaves ; i.e. a half pyramid ; the treatment at Binham XX and West Walton XX is similar. In late and rich work scrolls of foliage are carved on each face of the pyramid ; e.g. the north doorway of Lichfield and west front of Dunstable. Crockets are said to be derived from the volutes of the Corinthian or Composite capital (425), But our earliest examples are mere incurved hooks, resembling the pastoral staff of a bishop; and corresponding to the earliest knobby type of stalk foliage, e.g. in St Hugh's work at LINCOLN (249) and all round the orders and down the jambs of the west doorway of Strata Florida. These hooks were soon foliated or otherwise ornamented ; e.g. at Wells and Salisbury ;§§ the south porch ofthe west front of St Albans and Lincoln presbytery. ||11 Some of the earliest crockets occur at the back of shafts ; e.g. in St Hugh's work at Lincoln and the west porch of St Albans ; soon they are placed between the shafts. From the middle of the thirteenth century their chief use is to run up the straight gables of canopies ; but they are found in many other positions ; e.g. on the flying buttresses of ST mary redcliffe, Bristol (376); on the hood-molds of doorways, e.g. CLEY (85) ; and of windows, e.g. Louth spire and WREXHAM tower (609) ; on gables, as at LOUTH (397) ; on canopies, as in HOWDEN CHAPTER HOUSE (137) ; on spires, as at louth (611). * Nowhere more than in the Lincoln galilee, which "bristles with tooth ornament, like a cavern of crystals" ; 5355 examples occur in this porch. + Sharpe's Nene Valley, 4. + Hope's Rochester, 33. § Illustrated in Enlart's Manuel, i. 354. || Willis' Canterbury, 82, note. IT Petit's Church Architecture, i. 215. ** Willis' Middle Ages, 196. ++ Enlart's Manuel, 354, I. XX See Colling's Details, i., E,E., Plates 22 and 24. . §§ Illustrated in Bloxam, 179. ||[| Colling's Gothic Ornaments, i., Plates 56 and 21. 78 U:±£^^S^m SECTION THRO THE CENTRE FRONT ELEVATION SECTION OF MOULDING A 9 10 M )2 I Skelton Porch. EARLY GOTHIC DETAIL. 79 For the remaining members of churches of this period. Chapters XV, to XLI. may be consulted. For arches see especially page 279 ; for buttresses and pinnacles, pages 358 and 363; for fiying buttresses, page 371 ; for corbel tables, parapets, pages 392, 393 ; for strings, hood-molds, dripstones, and basement courses, page 406 ; for foliated capitals, page 429 ; for molded capitals, page 442 ; for bases, plinth, griffe, page 45 1 ; for ivindows and tracery, page 460 ; for roofs, page 559; for doonvays, page 579! for towers, page 597; for spires, page 617. See also pages 105-126. Chapter V. CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH GOTHIC FROM C. 1300 TO C. 1350. Planning— Internal Elevation— East Front— West Front— Vaulting— Piers— Ornament, Planning. — No new plans were adopted in the greater churches.* The Salis bury plan was repeated at Milton Abbas, WELLS ( 154-3). and Ottery St Mary The aisled choir, with unaisled presbytery, reappears at Bristol ; and at Lichfield an aisled presbytery with a tall unaisled Lady Chapel is built. At Howden, SELBY (86), and CARLISLE (128) aisles are built to the full length eastward of the eastern limb. Eastern transepts are again built ; at Bayham and Wells, The rebuilding of choirs had been carried on with such vigour in the thirteenth century that not much remained to do. However the choirs of Lichfield, Wells, and Carlisle were lengthened ; and those of Howden, Selby, and Bristol were rebuilt. In the parish churches all the plans in use in the twelfth were retained in the fourteenth century. Penton Mewsey, Hampshire, has unaisled nave and chancel. Leckhampton, Gloucester, had unaisled nave, towered choir and sanctuary. Shottesbrooke is cruciform, without aisles. BOSTON ( 222), Hol- beach, Hingham have aisle.d nave and unaisled chancel. The last is by far the most common plan of the parish church to the end of the Gothic period. In large churches, however, the cruciform plan was still in vogue ; e.g. at Tideswell, Nantwich, and Snettisham, where the nave is aisled ; at Patrington, where both nave and transept have aisles on each side ; at HULL (96), where there are full-length aisles to the chancel as well as to the nave. Many chancels are rebuilt ; and aisles are rebuilt broader and loftier. Internal Elevation. — In the fourteenth century the internal elevation, as before, in the greater church is one of three stories. One belated example occurs of a tall triforium with windows at the back ; viz. in ELY CHOIR (526). This, however, was so designed in order to assimilate it to the presbytery, with which it is in juxtaposition to the east. In the naves of Beverley, Worcester, and Westminster Abbey, triforium arcades occur of moderate elevation ; in all cases to be in harmony with earlier work with which they are in juxtaposition. But, more commonly, the precedent of Pershore and Southwell is followed ; and the jambs of the clerestory window are brought down to the triforium string ; as in Chester nave and TEWKESBURY CHOIR (165). Sometimes the design of York * The first half of the fourteenth century corresponds roughly to the Late Decorated period of Rickman, Bloxam and Parker ; and the years 1315-1360 to the Curvilinear period of Sharpe, 8i Hull Chancel, 82 EXTERNAL ELEVATION. nave or the south side of Bridlington nave is adopted ; and the wall passage is protected by a parapet ; e.g. in the choirs of Lichfield and SELBY (390). At WELLS (127) the front of the triforium of the choir of 1175 and that of the fourteenth-century presbytery were alike masked by ro\\-s of niches. To the eye all these latter interiors, viz. at Chester, Tewkesbury, Lichfield, Selby, Wells, have the appearance of being but two stories high. In the larger aisled parish churches the precedent of Howden and Hedon is adopted generally ; most of them have clerestories, and the elevation is one of two stories. PATRINGTON (133) is an excepdon. Towards the end of the period, however; above all in the chancel of HULL (81, 474); the clerestory window grows vastly both in height and breadth. And before the century is over, two windows ma)- be found in each bay of the clerestory ; e.g. at BOSTON (222) and Holbeach ; as previously at HOWDEN (546). East Front.^i. In the fourteenth century the Salisbury type of east front is revived at WELLS (602) and at Ottery St Mary ; by the latter in imitation of Exeter. At Lichfield the choir is lengthened and a lofty Lady Chapel is added. 2. At Tewkesbury the semicircular apse and chapels of the choir are made polygonal. 3. But the characteristic east front now is rectangular ; with aisles as long as the choir, and the latter carried up in three stories. Of this there are magnificent examples at Selby ; Hull ; CARLISLE (128) ; and Howden.* West Fronts. — The chief west fronts of the fourteenth century are Howden, Exeter, and York, HOWDEN (72) and Exeter f are both of the parochial type. At YORK (82) the lateral fagades are blended with the central one, to the great detriment of the towers : as at Wells and Lichfield, the west front is really a single complete fagade with a pair of towers perched on the top unrelated to it. Beautiful fagades of this period are seen in many parish churches ; especially in Mid-Lincolnshire. Vaulting. — The simpler forms of quadripartite vaulting were still retained; especially in the North of England ; e.g. Beverley nave ; Howden choir ; Guis borough ; and also in the choir of Milton Abbas, Dorset. But in the South and West a new rib, the lierne, was highly developed, and led to combinations of the utmost complexity ; ^.^. in TEWKESBURY NAVE and CHOIR (332, 33o).:[: In BRISTOL CATHEDRAL (329) skeleton vaulting is much employed. Owing to the multiplicity of ribs in some of these vaults the filling-in con sisted of " panels," instead of coursed ashlar. In Selby choir a wooden vault was substituted for the stone vault origi nally intended. In BRIDLINGTON (125) and Howden naves no high vaults were built ; nor in the south transept of St Werburgh, Chester ; nor in the retrochoir of St Albans Cathedral. On the other hand, the churches of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol ; Ottery St Mary, and Patrington were vaulted, wholly or in part. Piers. — The fourteenth century is marked by the disappearance both of the * A restoration ofthe east front of Howden is given in Sharpe's Arch. Parallels, Plate 86. t Exeter fajade has been greatly altered by subsequent additions. X Lierne vaults occur in Tewkesbury nave and choir ; Bristol Cathedral choir and the south transept of St Mary Redclifife ; WELLS CHOIR (332) and lady chapel (325) ; Malmesbury nave ; Ottery St Mary ; ELY CHOIR (329) and Lady Chapel, Nantwich chancel and transept. YORK .MINSTER, WEST FRONT. FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ORNAMENT. 83 Western triple * shafts of freestone and the Southem detached and banded shafts of marble. Instead of these the Northern type of pier prevails ; viz. a cluster of engaged columns; e.g. in the choirs of Milton Abbas, SELBY (390), and Howden ; the naves of York, St Albans, and Worcester; ELY CHOIR (251); and Chester south transept. But at BRISTOL (66i.il)f a completely new form of pier is devised. Ornament. — The ball-flower is just as characteristic of the first half of the fourteenth century as is the tooth ornament of the thirteenth. It has been supposed by some to be the trollius or globe-flower ; by others to be derived from a hawk's bell| ; by others to be a horse-bell, in that the thong as well as the bells is sometimes represented.! It is found, however, in late Norman work, side by side with the pellet ; and so may be taken to be but a survival of this Norman ornament. || In France also it first occurs solid, then pierced with lobes, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; e.g. in the balustrade of the towers of Notre Dame, Paris.TT During the course of the thirteenth century it was abandoned in France. In England it has been said to be confined almost wholly to the reign of Edward II. (1307-1327). But it occurs in the hollow architrave moldings of the arches of the thirteenth-century clerestory of Beverley Minster ** ; and in the west front of Salisbury. Late examples are seen, c. 1380, in the west doorway of St Mary's, Beverley ; and in the late Gothic porch of Worlingworth, Suffolk. It is used with the greatest profusion in the Western counties ; e.g. St Catharine's Chapel, Ledbury ; Hereford central tower ; GLOUCESTER (360), south aisle of nave ; in every window and doorway of Badgeworth, Gloucestershire. At Gloucester ff a horizontal line drawn across the head of an aisle window, just above the spring ofthe arch, cuts no fewer than thirty-two ranks ofthe ball-flower, sixteen within and sixteen without. || The Jour-leaved flower, composed of four leaves arranged so as to form a square, is particularly common in cornices, e.g. at GRANTHAM and ENSHAM (385). It occurs at all periods, but has specialised forms in each ; e.g. on a Norman arch of Northampton St Peter's; c. 1291 in the Eleanor Crosses ; in the fourteenth century at St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster ; and is very common in all the later Gothic ; both in stone and wood work. By the end of the thirteenth century crockets cease to be incurved, and the foliage becomes naturalistic ; e.g. in Southwell chapter house and Exeter reredos ; § § or the leaves are more conventionalised as at Bridlington and Guisborough and Selby; nil in either case they are given an undulating ogee curve, which in the work of 1315-1350 is strongly emphasised ; e.g. in Selby choir, the Percy tomb at BEVERLEY (269), and ELY LADY CHAPEL (269). * Except in Wells presbytery. t See pages 242 and 255. I Glossary, 53. § Scott's Essay. II A solid ball-flower and a fluted pellet occur together at Lincoln ; illustrated in Parker's Manual of Gothic Mouldings, page 14. IT Illustrated in Viollet-le-Duc, Architecture, ii. 243, 6. ** Bloxam, 178. tt Murray's Cathedrals — Gloucester, 18. JI For other e.xamples ofthe ball-flower see illustrations on pages 474.4 and 587. §§ Colling's Gothic Ornaments, i., Plate 14, and Mediceval Foliage, Plate 56. IIII For Bridlington, Guisborough, and Selby see Sharpe's Arch. Parallels, Plate 115. 84 FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ORNAMENT. The word diaper (" d'Ypres or dyaper ") was originally applied to cloth worked in square patterns, which was produced at Ypres. It was common on great festivals to hang the walls of the interiors with tapestry ; and this may have led to diaper work in stone. But rude diaper work or trellis occurs in Ernulph's work at Canterbury, 1096, and Rochester, 1114; and in Grosstete's work at Lincoln (1235-1253). The spandrils of the Norman triforium of Rochester nave were covered with rude foliated patterns, about the middle of the twelfth century. In Gothic it is used in the greatest profusion in the triforium of WESTMIN STER (119) and c. 1290 in the Eleanor Cross at Geddington. Diaper work was in special favour in the fourteenth century ; e.g. in SOUTH WELL SCREEN (179); and in that of the south east transept of Lincoln, where it takes the form of expanded lilies. Niches occur late in the eleventh century in Remigius' west front at Lincoln ; late in the twelfth century all round Barfreston Church ; * and in the thirteenth century on a vast scale in the west fronts of Lincoln, Wells, Salisbury, and Lichfield, In the second half of thirteenth century they are generally sur mounted by a straight - sided hood-mold ; f as in the west front of Wells, the interior of the of GUISBOROUGH (354) Leverington Church Porch. nave and chapter house of York, the buttresses and the west window of HOWDEN (72). For this triangular hood-mold the fourteenth century frequently substituted an ogee hood-mold ; or used them in alternation. The ogee hood-mold, moreover, may bend forward and retreat ; as in the arcading of ELY LADY CHAPEL (269). The niche with ogee canopy may be considered the characteristic feature of fourteenth-century design ; * Illustrated in Britton's Arch. Ant., iv. t The monument of Aymer de Valence {c. 1325) in Westminster is a late example of this. Cley, Norfolk. 86 FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ORNAMENT. 87 it is used in vast profusion in the west front of Lichfield Cathedral, the ruined east front of Howden, and the interiors of the presbyteries of WELLS (127) and Lichfield. So complex and beautiful was the elaboration of the niche that it usurped the interest which should have been retained for the statue it was designed to enshrine. It is as if some school of artists had spent their main effort not on their pictures but on their picture frames. It appears in arcading ; as in the aisle walls of Beverley nave, and under the west towers of LINCOLN (269) ; in the screen of wood or stone, as at SOUTI-IWELL (179); in the reredos, as at CHRIST CHURCH, HA.MPSHIRE (180); in the canopy of a monument, a piscina, a stoup, or sedilia ; or in the wall recess of a tomb ; on the font, the chest, the memorial brass, the window (484) ; even in the pinnacle, as in howden nave (72), Lincoln nave, and Boston.* To some extent there was a geographical difference in the design of the canopies of niches. To the north and east they were more often solid ; e.g. the Percy tomb at BEVERLEY (269) ; the arcading of the Ely Lady Chapel ; the sedilia and Easter sepulchres of Hawton, Navenby, and Heckington. In the south and west light open spire-work was preferred. It was appropriate for wood, and had been used all over England in the wooden canopies above stalls. It was equally unsuitable for stone ; nevertheless it was greatly in favour ; e.g. the sedilia of Exeter and Ottery St Mary ; the Exeter throne ; the tomb of Edward II. at GLOUCESTER (294); that of Sir Hugh Despenser (1349) and Sir Guy Bryan (1380) at Tewkesbury; and the Durham reredos, which is south country work ; made of Dorsetshire clunch, and shipped from London to Durham f via Newcastle, in 1372-1380,]: For other characteristics of a fourteenth-century church, see Chapters XV, to XLI. For arches, see 279 ; for buttresses and pinnacles, 358, 363 ; for fiying buttresses, '^f'/ ; for parapets and battlements, 396 ; for strings, hood-molds, drip stones, and basement courses, 406 ; for foliated capitals, A^}fii ; for molded capitals, 443; for base and plinth, 452; for window tracery, a,-] g; for roofs, 558; for doorways, 579 ; for towers, 608 ; for spires, 617, Also see 126-134. * Illustrated in Prior, 404. t Green well's Durham, 71. The Selby sedilia are also probably of the same London make. X For a full account of the treatment of the niche see Prior, 381-404. Chapter VI. CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH GOTHIC FROM c. 1330 TO 1538. Planning— Internal Elevation — East Front— West Front — Vaulting — Piers — Ornament, Planning. — Only three important choirs of the greater churches were rebuilt ; viz. York, commenced 1361 ; BATH {uA), commenced c. 1500; both with aisles of the full length of the choir ; and Christ Church, Hampshire ; where an aisled choir with unaisled Lady Chapel was commenced c. 1400. None of the three exhibit any novelty in planning.* In the parish churches the normal type is that with aisled nave and unaisled chancel. Some few churches, however, continued their aisles to the full length of the chancel; e.g. Louth, GRESFORD (214). Others, e.g. ST NICHOLAS, LYNN (214) ; North Walsham ; ST STEPHEN'S, NORWICH (228), identical in plan with Louth, differed from it in omitting the chancel arch. But the cruciform plan is never abandoned ; e.g. St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol ; TERRINGTON ST CLEMENT (92). Internal Elevation. — In this period all the varieties of triforium treat ment are reduced to one. The triforium arcade, whether tall or short, disappears altogether. At Malvern the triforium chamber is masked with a blank wall, as in the early work of Fountains and Kirkstall. At Bath is the same arrangement ; but the blank wall is less conspicuous ; for the triforium roof is so much flattened that little height is left for the wall in front. Elsewhere the precedent of York nave is followed. The triforium is closed from the nave by a blank wall, to the bottom of which descend the mullions of the clerestory window, which are allowed sometimes, as in GLOUCESTER CHOIR (59), to descend to the hood-molds of the pier arcade. This mullioned wall appears in front of the triforium in Gloucester choir (1337 to c. 1350); and in the last half of the same century in the naves of WINCHESTER (342) and CANTERBURY (90) ; in the south tran sept of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol ; and in York choir. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it is seen in the choir and nave of ST MARY REDCLIFFE (525); in the choir of Christ Church, Hants ; and in Sherborne ; in ST GEORGE'S, WINDSOR (330) ; and in Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster. Probably the example set in Gloucester choir had most weight in spreading * The period c. 1330 to 1538 corresponds roughly with the Perpendicular or Rectilinear period of Rickman, Bloxam, Parker, and Sharpe, except that it also includes the work at Gloucester, between 1330 and 1360, which their chronology excludes. 89 o LATE GOTHIC EXTERNAL ELEVATION. 91 this design. In the Gloucester choir such a design was almost compulsory ; it was necessary to hide away the great semicircular arches of the lower and upper aisles by panelling them over with the mullions of the clerestory windows (135). When designed, as in Gloucester choir, in conjunction with vault piers, this design gives one the impression, and no doubt was intended to give the impres sion, that the interior is one of a single story. Unity was the ideal of late Gothic design, and nowhere was that ideal realised so completely as in the choir of Gloucester. Similarly, at CPIIPPING NORTON (548), the interior is of one story. East Front. — In the fifteenth century a high Lady Chapel and aisled choir are built at Christ Church, Hants ; and less lofty Lady Chapels at GLOUCESTER (132); St Mary Redcliff"e, Bristol; and Malvern; the last has been destroyed. To the latter part of the fourteenth century belongs the east front of York ; to the fifteenth century that of LOUTIT (89) ; to the sixteenth century that of BATH (373) ; in all three the aisles are as long as the choir, and the latter is carried up full height. West Front. — Of the towered west front there are three examples ; Brid lington, which is a patchwork of various dates ; Canterbury, of which the south western tower was Norman till the "restoration" of 1834; and BEVERLEY iUNSTER (599), which, with the exception of Peterborough, which is sui generis, has the most successful western fagade in England ; the towers are not absorbed by the fa9ade, but are towers all the way to the ground. The parochial west front becomes more and more common in the greater churches. It appears at Winchester, Malvern, Gloucester, WINDSOR (492), Bath. At Winchester and Gloucester it was even substituted for a towered fagade. In the parish churches, in this as in all periods, the west front is mainly occupied by a western tower. Fine facades occur at Maidstone ; HULL (96) ; BEVERLEY ST JIARY's (366) ; Yatton ; Crewkerne ; TERRINGTON ST CLEMENT'S (92). In the late Gothic fa5ades the normal elevation is one of three stories ; e.g. at Winchester, Canterbury, Beverley Minster ; the third story being that ofthe gable. But the roofs were flattened more and more ; in addition, the west window might have a four-centred arch. In such a facade there would practically be no gable, and the elevation would be one of two stories only ; the doorway story and the window story ; e.g. Gloucester, Bath, BEVERLEY ST MARY'S (366), HULL (96), WINDSOR (492). Even with roofs of steep pitch, the elevation is sometimes of two stories only ; e.g. at TERRINGTON ST CLEMENT'S (92). In all the western fa9ades, from first to last, there was a rivalry between the central doorway and the central window. In France, by moderating the size of the central west window, which was often a rose, a loftier doorway could be had beneath. Still further to increase the importance of this doorway, it was often surmounted with a triangular gable, which in Auxerre Cathedral is filled with open tracery and allowed to rise high up in front of the window. Thus the door way become.s, as it should be, an imposing and influential member of the fa9ade. In England nothing was too precious to sacrifice to bigness of window, to floods of light and acreage of stained glass.* * In Beverley Minster the west window is so tall that its head is cut off by the vauUing of the nave. to Tei-rington St Clement's. LATE GOTHIC VAULTING. 93 Vaulting. — It was in this period that the most magnificent of all our vaults were built.* In the first place. Fan vaulting came into use ; probably its earliest application being in GLOUCESTER CLOISTER (344) ; afterwards it was em ployed in high vaults ; e.g. SHERBORNE (346), KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL (62); and HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER (348). Lierne vaults, however, were in even greater favour; e.g. Bristol, St Mary Redcliffe; Hull Nave. Canterbury, Black Prince's Chantry, nave, and St Michael's Chapel ; Christ Church, Hampshire, choir and Lady Chapel ; ELY, Bishop West's Chapel (334) ; GLOUCESTER, south transept (306), choir (334), north transept, west bays of nave, and Lady Chapel; HEREFORD (333), south transept; NORWICH (330), all the high vaults; OXFORD, the Divinity School (331) and the Cathedral * One must not forget, however, the Tewkesbury vaults (330), which are exceedingly beautiful. NAVE 94 L.ATE GOTHIC PIERS. choir (331) ; WINCHESTER NAVE (342) ; and all the high vaults of .ST GEORGE'S, WINDSOR (332). High vaults were projected at Malvern, but not carried out. Those of York are of wood. Piers.— Three varieties of Perpendicular piers may be distinguished. I. Occasionally the cluster of columns survives ; e.g in York choir, where the design is but a fourteenth-century version of that of the nave. 2. More often the columns become less prominent and the central mass more so, and some of the shafts are reduced to "beads"; e.g at CIRENCESTER (448); the nave of St Mary, Oxford ; St Mary Redcliff"e, Bristol ; Bath ; ST GEORGE'S, WINDSOR (255); Christ Church, Hants; Malvern choir; Gloucester west nave. 3. In all these cases the pier is symmetrical ; and two, four, eight or more shafts are retained. But in Sherborne choir and in HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, the piers are entirely unsymmetrical masses, their form being wholly regulated by their func tions. The first step in this direction had been taken at BRISTOL (661. 11) in 1298. In the smaller parish churches there was no scope for com plexity of plan in the piers. At all periods they may be found circular or octagonal, A cluster of four columns was also very common ; it appearseven in the sixteenth-century nave of Ripon Minster, OrnaaU'^nt, — In late Gothic design the window was all important, and its tracery overspread the church ; e.g. in GLOUCESTER CHOIR (47) ; thus reducing very largely the amount of foliated ornament. What foliage was employed was usually of bulbous or undulatory character, and highly conven tionalised. Hard square forms or lozenges are characteristic. Square leaves and four leaves arranged in a square are most common in cornices. Stone diaper was abandoned ; but painted diaper occurs ; e.g. in Bishop Beckington's tomb at Wells (1464). The vine and strawberry leaf were favourite forms of leafage. The rose is common in late work ; e.g. KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL (473), with the portcullis of Henry VII. Shields, heraldic emblems, and grotesque animals are all common. Foliated bosses are frequent in the richer roofs ; e.g. Sail, Tenterden, NEW WALSINGHAM (570). A cornice of vine leaves and tendrils is exceedingly common in the cornices of screens ; it is usually Aisle of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster. LATE GOTHIC ORNAMENT. 95 crested with the Tudor flower. Angels are used in capitals and roofs ; e.g. in the pier arcade of St Mary Magdalene, Taunton. The symbols of the Kettering Western Doorway. Passion are frequently represented on fonts ; also on the ceiling of Winchester presbytery : a capital with the passion flower occurs at TIVERTON (437.6). After c. 1350 Crockets lose much ofthe undulating outline of Decorated 96 LATE GOTHIC DETAIL. foliage ; they are usually conventionalised, and become stiff and square ; e.g. St Mary, Burj^* For other characteristics of a late Gothic church, see Chapters VIII. to XLI. For arches, see 280 ; for buttresses and pinnacles, 361, 364 ; for flying buttresses, 377 ; for parapets and battlements, 396, 398 ; for strings, hood-molds, dripstones, and basement courses, 406 ; for foliated capitals, 438 ; for molded capitals, 444 ; for base and plinth, 453 ; for window tracery, 491 ; for roojs, 562 ; for doorways, 579 ; for towers, 608 ; for spires, 622. See also 133-142. * Illustrated in Colling's Mediaeval Foliage, 56. HOLY TRINITY, HULL, WEST FRONT. Chapter VII. A CHRONOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE CHIEF ENGLISH CHURCHES. [Note. — Except where documentary and architectural evidence coincide, the dates in thi. chapter are to be regarded as merely conjectural approximations ; see note on page 638. For references to the documentary evidence see pages 638 to 657.] 1050—1150. XI, CENTURY: THIRD QUARTER {Edivard the Confessor, Harold, William I).— WESTMINSTER ABBEY, begun loqo. Lanfranc's canterbury, begun 1070. XI. CENTURY: FOURTH QUARTER {William L, 10th year, to William LI, last year), — blyth, founded 1088, bury; part finished in 1095. Ernulph's canter bury, begun 1095. canterbury, st augustine ; castle acre, founded before 1089 or in 1090. CHICHESTER, begun 1091. Chester, st John's, begun 1067 to 1095. CHESTER cathedral (St Werburgh), refounded in 1093. Christ church, Hampshire, begun ;:. 1099. Durham, begun 1093. ely, c. 1090. Gloucester, begun 1089. HEREFORD, begun 1079-1095. lastingham, 1078-1088. lewes, founded 1077. Lincoln, consecrated 1092. London, st John's chapel in tower, C 1080, LONDON, OLD ST Paul's, 1087. MALLING NUNNERY, 1 07 7-1 108. MALVERN, begun f. 1084. NORWICH, begun 1096. Rochester, begun 1077-1108. st albans, begun 1077. SELBY, begun 1097. Shrewsbury abbey, begun 1083. Tewkesbury, choir entered in 1 102. thorney, 1085-1108. tutbury, founded 1080. Winchester CATHEDRAL, bcgUn I079. WORCESTER, bcgUn I084. XII. CENTURY : FIRST QUARTER {Henry I, ist year to 26th year).- binham, re-endowed 1101-1106. bury, gateway, 1121-1130. Carlisle, after iioi. Col chester, ST botolph, founded 1102. exeter cathedral, towers, 1112-1136, LEOMINSTER, consecrated 1130, lindisfarne, partly finished before 1128, london, ST Bartholomew's, begun 1123. Peterborough, begun 1117 or 1118, reading, founded 1121. romsey, c. 1120, sherborne, begun 1107, Southwell, begun 1108-1114. waltham abbey, nave, c. 1120. wymondham, founded before 1107, XII. CENTURY: SECOND QUARTER {Henry I., 26th year, to Stephen, i6th year). — CHEPSTOW, devizes, st JOHN and ST mary, before 1139. dover, st martin's ¦ priory, begun 1131-1139. dunfermline, probably soon after 11 24. new shoreham, nave, c. w 30. The history of the ^Norman branch of Romanesque architecture in England ciimmences with the building of Westminster Abbey in 1050 by Edward the Confessor. His church was of great importance to Anglo-Norman design ; for it was .the first example in this country ofthe periapsidal plan ,(164), derived probably from St Martin de Tours, and anticipating Cluny by thirty-nine years ; 98 CHURCHES OF 1050-1150. a plan which was reproduced at Gloucester in 1089 and at Norwich in 1096. Of the eariiest churches after the Conquest, Lanfranc's Canterbury was but of moderate dimensions, being closely modelled on the Abbaye-aux-Hommes at Caen and c£RISY-LA-FORi>T (148.3) both in plan and elevation. The choir of the former was rebuilt in Gothic ; and the western bays of the nave of C^risy have been destroyed ; but from one or the other we can form a fair idea of what Canterbury Cathedral \\'as like, as rebuilt by Lanfranc* But the Anglo-Norman was far from being a mere servile imitation of the Norman Romanesque, either in plan or structure. Many of our churches were on a far grander scale than the Romanesque churches of Normandy ; even such eariy examples as BURY ST ED^IUNDS (1070) (150.3), ST ALBANS (1077) (i53-2), Winchester (1079), Ely (1083), Old St Paul's (1087) ; especially remarkable was the vast length of the naves of the above. Some, moreover, e.g. Winchester, Ely, Old St Paul's, had western as well as eastern aisles to their transept ; a great St Albans in the Twelfth Century. advance on the eastern apse or apses ofthe transepts of Normandy. As early as 1096, CANTERBURY (149.2) set the example of a vast prolongation ofthe choir also, and in addition built an eastern transept. And in due course BURY ST EDMUNDS (150.3), Ely, and Peterborough provided themselves with vast and complex western transepts. A still greater revolution in planning is seen at Dover, Sherborne, Southwell, Ely, in which the eastern termination of the choir was square; and at ROMSEY (15 1.3), begun before 1120, where not only was the choir rectangular, but it was encircled by a rectangular ambulatory projecting from which was an eastern chapel. These were the greatest inno vations in planning. In construction the primacy rests easily with Durham. Durham was designed for vaults with diagonal ribs as early as 1093 ; and high vaults with diagonal ribs seem to have been constructed over the whole cathedral before 1133 (8). To receive the springs of these ribbed vaults piers and abaci were built of logical design (659.1); and to abut the high vaults * See interior of the abbaye-aux-hommes (319); plan of C^RISY (148) ; exterior (160) ; interior of choir (161) ; of transept (199) ; and of nave (521). CHURCHES OF 1050-1150. 99 To flying buttresses were built in the triforium chamber of the nave. facilitate the vaulting, every transverse arch of the nave was pointed. It would be difificult to find another church in Western Europe, at the end of the eleventh cen tury, which had advanced so far as Durham on the way to Gothic* Nevertheless it is not to be supposed that every Anglo - Norman Church advanced as far as the Durham of 1093- 1133. Even to the middle of the twelfth century or later Durham seems to have remained unsurpassed. For the progress of architectural art is not uniform ; it is not like the steady pro gress of the steamship. Rather it is as in a yacht race, where first one boat and then another catches abreezeandforges ahead, \vhile others it may be are becalmed and sta tionary. Peterborough Cathedral was com menced late ; not before II 17 or 1 118; but the improvements of Ernulph's Canterbury and Durham are largely ignored. It had the old- fashioned plan with three parallel eastern apses ; it had neither the ambulatory nor the elongated choir nor the eastern transept of Canterbury ; nor the high vaults and pointed transverse arches of Durham. Still more retrograde is St Bartholomew's, Smithfield ; begun 1 123 ; * For DURHAM see 149.1, 34, 306, 315, 8, 308, 239, 370, 28, 659.1. Gloucester, North Aisle of Nave. loo CHURCHES OF 1150-1175. where there are no preparations for high vaults and where the aisle vaults are without ribs. Still slower to innovate was the Anglo-Norman builder in the villages ; e.g. the church of SUTTON ST MARY, Lincolnshire (42), a thoroughly Romanesque design, was not commenced till after 1180.* Not only did English Romanesque advance at different rates ; but in distant districts, dissevered by trackless forests and unbridged rivers, it tended to form divergent local schools. Thus the West built its churches less vast in scale, with naves considerably shorter, with less amplification of central transept, and without western annexes, and exhibited a preference for the ambulatory rather than the three parallel eastern apses. So also instead of the compound pier, or of alternation of compound pier and cylinder, or cylinder and octagon, it preferred rows of simple cylinders, short and stout, as in GLOUCESTER CHOIR (294), or immensely tall, as in GLOUCESTER NAVE (26). Of these piers the capitals were often no more than imposts, and the bases were of the most archaic character. The recessed orders of the arches often remained square-edged, with little molding or carving, if any (276). Durham, again, forms a school of its own, with its connections, Lindisfarne, Warkworth, Dun fermline, Selby, and WALTHAM (521). The school, however, that claimed most adherents was the South-Eastern, with its elongated naves, at NORWICH (148.4), ELY (153.4), BURY (150.3), Peterborough, ST ALBANS (153.2), Old St Paul's, Chichester. It may be that this elongation of the nave is due to the precedent set by cPRISY (148.3). 1150—1175. XII. CENTURY: THIRD QUARTER {Stephen, i6th year, to Henry II. , 22nd year). — bolton priory, begun c. 1151. brinkburn, c. 1170. buildwas, f. 1148. byland, the monks entered. 1177. dunstable, nave,,:. 1160. Durham, galilee, c. 1175. ELY, upper parts of v/est transept and infirmary, and st mary's church, c. 1170. fountains, begun c. 1135. furness, after 1148. kirkstall, c. 1152. LANERCOST, consecrated 1169. malmesbury, probably <:. 1150. oxford cathedral, 1154-1180. ROCHE, t-. 1165. STAMFORD, ST Leonard's PRIORY, strata Florida, 1166-1203, wimborne, central tower and part of nave. Winchester, st cross, c. wdo seq. Worcester, west bays of nave, c. 1170. york, part of crypt, 1154- This forms the early part of the period to which Mr Sharpe gave the name Transitional Norman or Transitional.f It is the period of transition from Romanesque to Gothic. By Mr Brandon it was called Semi-Norman; by others Pointed Norman. Mr Sharpe regarded it as having lasted from c. 1 145 * In this church all the walls have been raised ; and what were originally clerestory windows are now openings looking into the aisle. + Owing to lack of documentary evidence as to the date of many of the churches it has been found impossible to arrange and discuss them in strict chronological sequence. They have been arranged, therefore, in this chapter in periods of twenty-five years. CHURCHES OF 1150-1175. lOI to c. 1 190. It is characterised, he says, by the simultaneous use in the same building of semicircular' and pointed arches. But here again there were retro gressive builders, who admitted no pointed arches at all into their churches ; e.g. Dunstable nave and oxford cathedral choir (27) ; the latter is 1154-1180. Even so late as 11 80 the Cathedral of St David's was designed with all its pier arches semicircular. More often, however, to facilitate the Fountains Nave from S.E. vaulting of the aisles (322), the arches of the pier arcade are pointed. These pointed pier arches are at first very obtuse ; e.g. in Fountains nave and in Furness, Kirkstall, Buildwas, all Cistercian; MALMESBURY (522), Benedictine; and the Hospital Church of St Cross, Winchester. More acutely pointed, but covered with Romanesque ornament, are the west transepts of Ely and Peter- borough^the latter probably 1 177-1 193. Still more advanced towards Gothic are I02 Ripon Choir. CHURCHES OF 1150-1175. 103 Brinkburn, Lanercost, RIPON* (102), Roche, and Byland; though they are all without high vaults. In Durham galileef the arches are semicircular and covered with chevron ; and there is no vault ; but the design is so light and graceful that it has more of the Gothic in it than the Romanesque. The most advanced of all are St Cross, Winchester, probably not begun before 1160, and the Cistercian abbey of Roche, Both had high vaults, which at St Cross still remain. In other respects St Cross is thoroughly Romanesque, relying for stability entirely on immense thickness of wall and pier ; it has neither flying buttresses nor transverse arches in the triforium chamber, j Indeed St Cross is less advanced than the nave of Durham ; the chief difference being that at St Cross the pointed arch is employed in the arches of the crossing and the pier arcade, and in the wall ribs as well as in the transverse arches of the vault. In the Cistercian churches more progress is made. A distinct tendency is seen to buttress rather than to thicken the walls.§ But, in accordance with Burgundian tradition, there was a distrust in these abbeys of the flying buttress, which therefore remained undeveloped. The drainage of the walls was improved by heightening the corbel-table, so as to form a parapet masking a gutter behind (385); and by amplifying the basement course, as at Kirkstall and FOUNTAINS (679.1). Owing to the injunctions of the founders of the Cistercian Order and especially of St Bernard, sculptured ornament was discouraged ; one result of which was to increase the employ ment of moldings. For the compound pier, cylinder, or octagon a cluster of columns was often substituted, as at ROCHE (661.2). Scalloped, coniferous, and water-leaf capitals and corbels were especially common in the Cistercian churches. Masonry improved most of all, the Cistercians laying great stress on sound construction, and often working at the masonry with their own hands. The triforium was almost always walled in, and the clerestory passage was infrequent. Stone towers and bells were forbidden by the statutes of the Chapter-General. The walls were left plain ; not covered with arcading. Corbels were used wherever possible instead of vaulting shafts or roofing shafts. There was an almost total absence of colour, whether in pictures, wall-paintings, mosaic pavements, or glass. Cistercian architecture may be fairiy described as a combination of ascetic ardour, temperate good sense, straightforward procedure, and practical utility. || None of the Cistercian churches were of the vast scale of Bury, Lewes, or Old St Paul's. Instead of the western transept they had occasionally a small lean-to western porch ; they had no long choir or eastern transept ; nor had any central transept a western aisle. On the eastern side the transept, as at KIRK STALL (152.4), had an aisle divided into chapels. The presbytery was usually * The greater part of the work of Lanercost, Roche, Byland, Ripon, and the Transitional choir of York was probably done after 1170, and belongs rather to the period 1175-1200. t Originally the piers ofthe Durham galilee consisted of but two marble shafts. X Section in Dehio, Plate 148, § See plan of Kirkstall (152) ; .and buttress of Kirkstall chapter house (359). II On Cistercian architecture see Dehio, i., book ii., c, xiii. ; and Anthyme St Paul in Enlart's Gothic in Italy, 224-228. I04 CHURCHES OF 1150-1175. short and without aisles, and it was usually rectangular. Byland had also a rectangular ambulatory, as, later on, had Dore. Such an unaisled rectangular presbytery as that of Cistercian Kirkstall was of course a complete breaking away* from the traditions of Anglo-Norman planning, whether with three parallel eastern apses or with semicircular ambula tory. But others beside the Cistercians were innovating in planning. At OXFORD (152.3) the Augustinian Canons built an aisled choir and unaisled rectangular presbytery. At ST CROSS, WINCHESTER (215.8), a further step was taken ; the rectangular presbytery being aisled as well as the choir. In one point all the three new types of plan, those of Kirkstall, Oxford, and St Cross, Winchester, from S.E. St Cross, agreed ; their presbyteries were all rectangular. Through the influ ence of these plans, especially of those of the numerous Cistercian churches built at this time, the apsidal presbytery of the Continent, with rare exceptions, disappeared from English architecture. The English became dift'erentiated from the Continental presbytery by being square-ended. One more innovation of the utmost importance was made at ST CROSS. This was that the roof of the presbytery was continued to its eastern termina tion in undiminished height. At St Cross was reached the plan and eastern * It was of course a reproduction of the simplest type of Burgundian plan; probably that of the Clairvaux Church of St Bernard. CHURCHES OF 1175-1200, 105 termination which remained in fashion till the very end of English Gothic archi tecture, till York Minster and Bath Abbey. On the whole, the third quarter of the twelfth century was an epoch fertile in change and improvement, except as regards the important matter of vaulting; and for much of the improvement the builders of the new Cistercian abbeys may fairly claim the credit. Their influence was greatest where their abbeys were most numerous, viz,, in the North of England. 1175—1200. XIL CENTURY: FOURTH QUARTER {Henry IL, 22nd year; Richard I; to John, 2nd year). — bishop Auckland, hall, c. 1190. canterbury, choir, 1175-1178. saint's chapel and corona, 1179-1184. cartmel, founded 1188. chichester, retrochoir, &c., 1186-1199, Darlington church, c. 1192, deeping, st james, c. 1180. dore, choir,