# Development and Character of Gothic Architecture/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III
POINTED CONSTRUCTION IN ENGLAND
Few instances of the constructive use of the pointed arch, or of the employment of groin ribs in vaulting, occur in England prior to the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral by a French architect, which was begun in 1175. One instance, however,
FIG. 68.
occurs at an early date in Malmesbury Abbey, a building which is nearly contemporaneous with St. Denis in France. Here in the vaults of the aisles we have a distinct approach to Gothic construction. These vaults, though simple in form and ponderous in their parts, are yet certainly advanced ​in character for their time. In them the principle of interpenetrating round vaults, the forms of whose arches are necessarily determined by the forms of their surfaces, gives place, in a measure, to that of an independent system of arches which command the forms of the vaults. The diagram (Fig. 68) will explain their character. It will be seen that the pier arch and the transverse arches are all pointed, and that the diagonals are semicircular. It will be seen, too, that the crowns of the diagonals reach to a considerably higher level than those of the transverse and longitudinal ribs, and that consequently the vaults are, like early French vaults, considerably domed, as in the section a, b. The ribs are much less developed in section than the ribs of the vaults of St. Denis—the diagonal rib, c, being so shallow as apparently to add little strength to the groins, and the transverse ribs, d, being plain square-edged arches of little projection.
It is evident that the central aisle was originally designed for vaulting with quadripartite vaults, since a group of three vaulting shafts rises from each pier capital. These shafts clearly belong to the original construction, as may be seen (Fig. 69) by their perfect adjustment with the imposts of the great arcade, and by their being banded by the original triforium string. They emphasise the divisions of the bays and give a continuity to the vaulting system, like that which is characteristic of Gothic design in France. Another feature with a likeness to French design is the wall which shuts off the triforium arcade, screening from view the timber roofs over the aisle vaults. This arrangement was not followed in the subsequent pointed architecture of England, where the timbers of the aisle roofs are generally visible from the pavement of the central aisle. In all other respects the structure is strictly Norman-Romanesque in character. The great arcades are supported by ponderous round columns, the spaces between them being not quite equal in extent to two of their diameters; hence the massiveness of the construction is in striking contrast to the comparative lightness of St. Denis. It may be noticed in passing that the hood-moulding over the pier archivolts is an early instance of a feature that afterwards became practically constant in the pointed architecture of England. But this feature, whose ​real function is to protect the parts beneath it from the weather, is hardly appropriate to an interior.
FIG. 69.
The existing high vaults are of late English construction, and are ill suited to the lower portions of the building. If the originally intended vaults were ever built over the central aisle, the effect of the interior must have been both grand and impressive, though the scale of the building is not large.
Such a building might lead to the belief that a Gothic development, though not a native one, had begun in England almost as early as in France. But Malmesbury stands an isolated instance, and there is no other contemporaneous building in England like it. It is not, like St. Denis, a link ​in a chain of progress. Its vaulting is an imitation of French work. Nothing in the island leads up to it, and nothing directly comes of it. The building is not even consistent with itself as one really animated by a new principle would be. The new form of vaulting does not, as at St. Denis, influence other parts of the structure. Its Norman builders were not thoroughly imbued with those structural principles which led Suger's workmen to give such consistency to every part of the French fabric.
The buildings which immediately follow Malmesbury show less, rather than more, approach to Gothic principles. The early Cistercian Abbeys of the north exhibit no new principles. In them the pointed arch occurs, indeed, more or less frequently in arcades and openings, but it is without influence upon modes of vaulting, and without structural consequence in the general system. Vaulting, when it occurs in these abbeys, is often of a very primitive and even rude sort. The aisles of Fountains Abbey (Fig. 7O), which date from about the middle of the twelfth century, are, for instance, vaulted with a succession of pointed vaults without penetrations, which are carried on heavy transverse round arches springing from the piers on the one side, and from corbels projecting from the wall on the other. With exception of the pointed form the construction of these vaults is substantially the same as that of the vaults of the aisles of the Basilica of Constantine at Rome. The central aisle of Fountains was neither vaulted nor intended for vaulting. The interior of the nave consists merely of broad, bare, and massive walls carried on heavy pointed arches, supported by plain round columns, and pierced above with small openings. There are no triforium openings, and there is nothing whatever of new structural principle involved in any part. In Kirkstall Abbey, which is of about the same date, the aisle vaults are groined, and have a full system of ribs—those which bound the compartments being pointed. The arches of the pier arcade are pointed, and are of three orders, and the piers are composed of grouped members answering to these orders. ​No central vaults ever existed, and the design above the pier arcade is the same as at Fountains. It is simply heavy Norman work with pointed arches substituted in some places for round ones.
Thus far in England, though the Cathedrals of Senlis and Noyon were now building across the Channel, there is nothing more advanced towards Gothic. But on the contrary, even
FIG. 70.
later than this time, such important works as the Galilee of Durham, the naves of Peterborough and Ely, and many other buildings, were constructed in the unmodified Norman style. No important structural change extending through a whole edifice is manifest in England till William of Sens begins that rebuilding of the choir of Canterbury to which I have referred. And even this building, though a very beau​tiful and important one, is not—owing perhaps largely to the fact that its designer was hampered by the necessity of preserving and working into the new edifice portions of the previous Norman fabric—so frankly and fully Gothic as the choir of
FIG. 71.
​Paris, which had been designed more than a decade before. This choir of Canterbury (Fig. 71) is the real beginning of what Gothic there is in the pointed architecture of England. From it, as the main source at least, is derived what is commonly known as the Early English style. It is in five bays, and is vaulted with one quadripartite and two sexpartite compartments. These vaults are provided with transverse and diagonal ribs, but are without longitudinal ribs. The transverse ribs only are pointed. The vaulting shafts correspond in number with the ribs to be carried—there being three in the main group and but one in the intermediate pier. The single shaft in the intermediate pier was probably derived from Sens, where the longitudinal rib shaft is carried on the clerestory ledge, rendering a single support for the intermediate transverse rib all that is necessary. We shall presently see that this single vaulting shaft subsequently became frequent in England, where, with little constructive propriety, it is made to carry the three ribs of quadripartite vaults.
The vaulting shafts at Canterbury rest on the capitals of the ground-story piers, which are alternately round and octagonal columns. The pier arches are pointed and of two orders of square section, such as are characteristic of contemporaneous design in France. The triforium, in this portion, consists of pointed arches of two orders carried on monolithic shafts. The clerestory is in two planes, divided by a passage way. The inner plane is pierced by three pointed arches—a larger central arch with one lesser arch at each side,—which together nearly fill the space enclosed by the vault. The outer plane is pierced by a single obtusely pointed arch. This form of clerestory, with round arches in place of pointed ones, is of Norman origin, as may be seen in Durham Cathedral and elsewhere. With more acutely pointed arches it subsequently became the characteristic form in the so-called Early English style.
Though the constructive system of this choir is as a whole less complete than that of contemporaneous buildings in France—having a very undeveloped buttress system,—it is yet internally a very beautiful and an almost strictly Gothic structure; but it is altogether an importation from the Continent, and in no sense a native development. No monument of like importance, and none whatever of the ​same character, had before been erected in England. Its novelty struck the minds of all who beheld it with wonder and admiration.
It was natural that such a building should excite emulation, and the lesson which it taught bore fruit in some of the important erections which quickly followed it. Among the earliest of these were the more easterly portions of the same cathedral, the east end of Chichester, and the choir and east transept of Lincoln. After the completion, by William of Sens, of the choir and a portion of the east transept of Canterbury, the master, having received injuries in a fall from the scaffolding, relinquished the work and returned to France. He was succeeded by another William, said to have been an Englishman.
It is difficult to distinguish with precision the beginning of the work of the second William. His whole work was, for the most part, a mere carrying-out of the original design of William of Sens. A few round abaci occur in the crypt and on the east side of the transept, which are probably the work of the second William; everywhere else the square abaci and the mouldings of the original design are retained, as well as the French forms of pointed arches.
The Cathedral of Chichester was, like Canterbury, originally a Norman structure of the end of the eleventh century. It was extensively damaged by fire in the year 1186, and immediately thereafter repairs were begun which involved the entire rebuilding of the two easternmost bays (Fig. 72). At the same time the whole church, including these two bays, was vaulted with quadripartite vaults having transverse and diagonal ribs, but no longitudinal ribs, which last are usually wanting in the early pointed vaults of England. These ribs interpenetrate at their springing, and thus are gathered upon a single round abacus which covers a triple group of capitals. They receive no support from the lower piers, but their triple vaulting shafts, which are slender and closely grouped, are sustained by corbels placed just above the capitals of the lower piers. The lower pier (section, Fig. 73) consists of a ​central round column of coursed masonry, surrounded by four widely detached monolithic shafts, which are adjusted
FIG. 72.
to the arch orders of the ground-story only. We have here an early instance of that want of structural continuity which is a marked characteristic of pointed architecture in ​England. An instance of a compound pier, none of whose members are directly employed in the support of the vaulting, never occurs in the Gothic of France. Another defect of this pier of Chichester is that of the great distance at which the lesser shafts are placed in relation FIG. 73. to the central column, which destroys that compactness of the group which is essential to strictly Gothic supports. The compound capital, too, which is in idea the same as that of the pier at the west end of the nave of Paris—described in the last chapter—necessarily shares this want of compactness, and thus the whole pier compares unfavourably with the French example.
The pier arcade is round arched and of two orders, the triforium consists of a round arch in each bay encompassing a sub-order of two pointed arches carried on clustered shafts, and the clerestory is substantially the same as that of Canterbury. Externally there is a shallow buttress against the clerestory wall, which is reinforced by a flying buttress of a purely French type, perhaps the earliest instance of a fully developed flying buttress in England.
The characteristics of this building are thus mixed. It is not, like Canterbury, a French design, but it is apparently the work of Anglo-Norman architects who adopted certain features of the growing French style, and naturally modified them according to their own tastes, but failed to perceive their functional connections and structural logic. Yet, notwithstanding the want of structural consistency, there is a good deal of beauty in this work.
Almost immediately after Chichester (probably about 1190) were begun the deservedly famous choir and the east transept of Lincoln Cathedral. In this beautiful building ​there is manifest a curious mingling of foreign and Anglo-Norman characteristics. It is, in the main, an Anglo-Norman modification of that portion of Canterbury which was designed by William of Sens. Bishop Hugh, during whose episcopate the work was executed, was a Frenchman by birth and early training; and his architect, Geoffrey de Noyers, though perhaps, as has been affirmed, born on English soil, was in all probability, as the name indicates, of French or Norman extraction. However this may be, the plan of the edifice—especially that of the original east end—is distinctly French; and French characteristics, modified by Anglo-Norman taste, prevail throughout. In general, the foreign influence governs the construction, while the Anglo-Norman influence appears in the decorative details. Structurally, there is no other building in England that exhibits so much of Gothic character except Westminster Abbey, which is rather a French than an English design.
The original eastern termination of this choir was destroyed to make room for the existing Presbytery. It was apsidal, with an apsidal aisle and three apsidal chapels. Each arm of the transept had two apsidal chapels on its eastern side, three of which remain unaltered, and the fourth, the north chapel of the north arm, has recently been ​restored after having been elongated in the form of a rectangle (Fig. 74). Westward of this transept the choir is prolonged to the extent of four bays, and is terminated by a second transept—a construction which, with exception of a portion of its eastern side, is a work of the first quarter of the thirteenth century.
FIG. 74.
Lincoln Cathedral is vaulted throughout. The vaults of the choir are curious and even awkward in form; they are difficult to describe clearly in words, but the plan, Fig. 75, shows the arrangement of their ribs; and the elevation, B, Fig. 75, gives the form of the longitudinal arch which is also curious. It will be noticed that the lateral cells are set obliquely, so that they do not meet each other in the centre of the compartment. But in principle they are substantially the same as ordinary quadripartite vaults, each compartment being complete in itself. The rib system includes a longitudinal ridge rib, probably the first instance of the introduction of this structurally useless member which subsequently became an almost constant feature of English vaults. The longitudinal arch is not provided with a rib; but in place of it there is merely a slender moulding. This longitudinal arch springs from the same level as the transverse and diagonal arches, and hence the vaulting conoid is spread out over a considerable extent of wall (its ​middle section being nearly square) instead of being concentrated, as in French vaulting, upon the pier. FIG. 75.The upright supports of these vaults consist of a single vaulting shaft against each pier, upon the capital of which the ribs are all gathered. This vaulting shaft descended to the pavement, forming one of the members of the compound pier of the ground-story. The lower piers vary in design, but are alike in general principle. The typical form is that of a central octagonal column of coursed masonry, having four of its sides hollowed. Against these hollowed or channeled sides are grouped respectively four slender monolithic shafts carrying the ribs of the central vaults, the ribs of the aisle vaults, and the sub -orders of the pier arches. The whole system is shown in the section, Fig. 76, through one bay of this choir.
Unlike the pier of Chichester before noticed, this pier of Lincoln has a functional relation to the vaulting similar to that of the westernmost pier of the Cathedral of Paris, though in its proportions and in its details it is very different. It is constructively like a French pier throughout its whole height, having a buttress (a, Fig. 76) incorporated with it from the level of the triforium. This buttress is reinforced by an arch, b, thrown across the triforium, and a flying buttress, c, over the aisle roof; the united pressures of the central vault, the aisle vault, the triforium arch, and the flying buttress, being met by the great outer buttress, d, against the respond pier of the aisle. This buttress, like nearly every other part of the structure, is French in general form, and Anglo-Norman in decorative detail.
​At the transept crossing the piers show the influence of Canterbury most unmistakably. They are, in fact, structurally
FIG. 76.
identical with the corresponding piers in the last-named building,—except that the Lincoln piers contain two shafts ​(a, in A, Fig. 77) that have no functional office. With this exception they consist, respectively, of a central column surrounded by detached monolithic shafts, each one sustaining
FIG. 77.
a rib of the vaulting. These shafts are in two superposed orders—the first having their capitals at the springing of the ground-story arches, and the second having bases which ​rest upon these capitals and capitals at the springing of the vaults. But while at Canterbury (B in the same figure) the bases and capitals are of purely French type—the capitals having square abaci and Corinthianesque foliage, and the bases square plinths, those of Lincoln are of the newly introduced Anglo-Norman form—with round abaci, and what English writers call "stiff-leaved" foliage, and round plinths. The influence of Canterbury is shown also by the single vaulting shafts of the choir vaults; but in the use made of them the want of a fine sense of structural consistency on the part of the Anglo-Norman builders is obvious. At Canterbury, where the vaults are sexpartite, the single vaulting shaft is only employed at the intermediate pier, where it has but a single rib to sustain; while in the quadripartite vaults of the choir of Lincoln it is employed at every pier, and has to support three ribs.
The ground-story arches are obtusely pointed and of two orders. The triforium openings consist of coupled pointed arches, each arch embracing a sub-order of two lesser pointed arches carried on clustered shafts. These arches are not screened off by a thin wall of masonry from the triforium, as are the arches of Malmesbury, but they open into it, exposing to view the timbers of the aisle roofs. This exposure, as I have before remarked, is common in English churches. The clerestory is of the same type as that of Canterbury—a type which is peculiarly Norman and may be seen not only in Durham Cathedral, but even in the Abbaye-aux-Dames at Caen, where the two planes of masonry with triple openings in the inner plane occur, the only difference being that the Norman examples have but one opening in the outer plane, are more ponderous in construction, and have round arches and short thick shafts. Fig. 78. A and B, elevations of the clerestories of the Abbaye-aux-Dames and of the choir of Lincoln respectively, will illustrate this relationship.
The effect of this choir was doubtless greatly damaged by the destruction of the original chevet. The much over-praised angel choir is not an appropriate termination for the design, and affords no adequate compensation for the loss of the apse of Geoffrey de Noyers.
The choir of Lincoln is considered by English writers as ​the first distinct example of an edifice in the so-called "Early English" style, and as a product of purely English genius. It is certainly one of the few buildings m England which approach nearly to Gothic. It contains all the essential parts of a Gothic edifice; but they are so treated that a strictly Gothic result is hardly reached. That the builders did not possess a clear apprehension of the structural principles of the new style is manifest in many points. Gothic forms are used by them in an imitative rather than in an inventive way. For instance, there is a want of compactness in the lower piers, especially in those piers of the transept which
FIG. 78.
have the much-admired crockets on the angles of their central members. A pier whose component parts are thus widely detached, fails to conform to the principle of Gothic building which demands the utmost concentration of supports. The forms of the vaulting conoids, in spreading out so widely upon the clerestory wall, are a still more significant indication of the want of clear apprehension of Gothic principle; and the ponderous arches thrown across the triforium in place of a second flying buttress are yet another.
Contemporaneous with Canterbury and Lincoln is the Church of St. Mary's, New Shoreham; its ground-story, according to Sharpe, dating from 1175, and its upper ​portions from 1190 to 1210. The ground-story piers are of massive Norman proportions, and, like those of the choir of Canterbury, are alternately round and octagonal columns. Their bases have the square plinths that are common in French design of this epoch; but instead of the square abacus, almost universal in France, the capitals have round and octagonal abaci in conformity with the respective forms of the piers. The pier arches are pointed, and the walls are unbroken by vaulting shafts, the vault supports having no connection with the ground-story, but starting from the triforium level. Thus, though it is more than thirty years later, this ground-story is less advanced toward Gothic than that of Malmesbury Abbey (which, in many respects, it strikingly resembles), where the vaulting shafts rest on the lower piers. From a corbel at the triforium string rises, on each pier, a group of three vaulting shafts whose clustered capitals have abaci formed by the clerestory string, which projects at each group so as to cover them.
The vaults are quadripartite, with their ribs all springing from the same level, so that their pressures are not compactly gathered against the pier, but are diffused laterally over considerable spaces of wall. The clerestory has in each bay one small pointed opening through its massive wall. The triforium openings differ considerably one from another. The two easternmost bays have single openings, each consisting of a cusped pointed arch carried on shafts engaged with the jambs which are of plain square section. These openings do not more than half fill the spaces between the piers. The bays farther westward have coupled pointed openings in two orders, the sub-order being curiously and clumsily massive.
Conspicuous instances of a peculiar and extensive class of early pointed buildings in England are the Abbey Churches of Byland and Whitby. The pointed arch prevails throughout these buildings, except in the openings of the aisles of Byland and in the first order of the triforium of Whitby, where the arches are round. But these buildings have no vaults and were evidently not intended for vaulting, though shafts similar to vaulting shafts rise, from corbels situated a little below the triforium string, to the top of the wall. These shafts are thus only decorative features employed ​precisely as were the engaged columns in the early arched constructions of the Romans, and the buildings are throughout, notwithstanding their pointed arches, the same in principle as those of round arched Romanesque design. They consist merely of massive walls with timber roofs over their central aisles; hence there are no lateral pressures calling for a Gothic buttress system, and they have no organic framework in which their strength resides.
A characteristic example of early pointed Norman design is that portion of the choir of Ripon Cathedral which was erected during the episcopate of Roger, Archbishop of York, some time between 1154 and 1181. This structure was apparently designed for vaulting, as a group of five vaulting shafts rise from the capitals of each of the lower piers, and are terminated at the level of the clerestory string by capitals in apparent preparation for a full system of vaulting ribs. But the scheme appears to have been changed when this level was reached, and a clerestory was added with a straight cornice, a single shaft being carried up from the grouped capitals of the vaulting shafts to the top of the wall. Unless this be an alteration, some form of timber roof must, therefore, have covered this choir from the first. With exception of the vaulting shafts there is no approach in this building to Gothic constructive forms, though in common with the abbey churches just mentioned, and many other contemporaneous edifices, the pointed arches of its pier arcades and other openings give the interior a superficial appearance of Gothic. The outer openings of Ripon are small and round arched like those of Durham; the walls are massive, and are provided externally with shallow pilaster strips instead of buttresses.
It will be seen that the buildings already noticed are very diverse in character, though in all of them the pointed arch is more or less generally employed. In some of them this arch is used structurally in portions of the edifice, as in the aisle vaults of Malmesbury. In others its structural use is more general, and a correspondingly functional system of supports is connected with it, so that, for the most part, a really Gothic character pervades the work, as in the choirs of Canterbury and Lincoln. But in the larger number the pointed arch is used, for the most ​part, only in arcades and single openings, while other Gothic features are introduced without functional use.
This lack of structural unity exhibited by the pointed architecture of the latter part of the twelfth century in England is in marked contrast with the consistency of structural principle everywhere exhibited at the same time in the architecture of France. It shows that there was no such consistent development in the architecture of England as there was in that of France at this time. The pointed arches and other Gothic features in England, with few exceptions, were due to direct continental influence, but were merely ornamental modifications of structurally unmodified designs; and even this ornamental modification was by no means as yet universal. For contemporaneously with Canterbury and Lincoln were built the great naves of such important churches as Ely and Peterborough, in which the round arched and heavy walled Norman art remains substantially unchanged. Even the aisle vaults of the nave of Peterborough, though provided with transverse and groin ribs, are in other respects essentially Norman constructions. The pointed arch is nowhere employed in them, and their workmanship is heavy and inelegant. Had there been anything in England at this time corresponding with the architectural movement of the native schools of lay builders in France, it would have been impossible that such vaults as these, to say nothing of the nave with which they are joined, should be constructed half a century after the vaults of St. Denis, and while the choir of Lincoln was building in the near neighbourhood.
The failure among the architects in England to comprehend the true principles of Gothic building becomes still more marked in the thirteenth century, as the so-called Early English style advances, and more still, as it passes into the Decorated or Geometrical. An examination of a few typical buildings of this period will illustrate this fact. Among the most important and the finest of the earlier class is the nave of Lincoln, erected between 1209 and 1235. Already in this structure are the vaults encumbered by numerous superfluous ribs,—ribs which have no necessary ​function. The employment of such ribs appears to have had a singular fascination for the English builders at this epoch,—a fascination which gathered strength as the native taste asserted itself more and more, until, in the perpendicular style,—the first style of architecture that can properly be called English, it became predominant!
In these vaults of the nave of Lincoln there are six such ribs in each vaulting compartment—namely, four tiercerons, a in the plan, Fig. 79, and two liernes, b in the same figure. The longitudinal arches are round, and spring from a level not much above that of the springing of the transverse and diagonal ribs, in consequence of which the section of the vaulting conoid,
FIG. 79.
at the level a, in A, Fig. 80, is nearly square, as shown at B in the same figure. And hence here again the vault thrusts are not gathered upon the pier in a strictly Gothic manner. It will be also seen in the section B, Fig. 80, that the ribs of these vaults are so arranged as to give a convex curve to a portion of the vaulting conoid. This peculiarity marks an early step in the direction of the so-called fan vaulting system which subsequently became so conspicuous a feature of English pointed design. The rib system is mainly supported by the wall, which it penetrates, rather than by the vaulting shafts. These vaulting shafts consist of three very slender and closely grouped members rising from corbels placed just above the capitals of the lower piers; they are thus, like the vaulting shafts of Byland and Whitby, more decorative than structurally ​necessary features. FIG. 80. The grouping of members in the lower piers has reference to the arch orders and to the vaulting of the aisles only, the high vaults having no connection with them; these piers are of three varieties, whose sections are given at A, B, and C, respectively, in Fig. 81. The small detached shafts of A and B are in two monolithic sections, and are bonded with the pier by a band at their junction. The engaged shafts of the section C are built up in courses with the main body of the pier. These are indeed pretty sections, and the actual piers are objects of much beauty, but their want of connection with the vaulting is a structural defect which among others excludes this nave from the category of strictly Gothic erections.
FIG. 81.
The clerestory is again of the general Anglo-Norman type which retains a good deal of solid wall beneath the arch of the vault. Both it and the triforium differ from ​those of the choir in their proportions and in their ornamental details only.
All the arches of this interior, except those of the windows of the aisles, have hood-mouldings which add to the effect of subdivision of the arch orders—an effect that was pleasing to the Anglo-Norman taste even as early as FIG. 82. the time of the construction of the archivolts of Malmesbury. The vaults of the aisles are in five cells as are those of the choir also, there being a half intermediate transverse rib on the wall side. This half-rib is carried by a monolithic detached shaft resting on a corbel placed just above the string-course which runs along the wall at the level of the window sills. The main transverse ribs of the aisle vaults are carried by responds consisting of five closely grouped monolithic shafts; and a cusped arcade lightens the wall space beneath the window string.
The buttress system is, like the internal vaulting system, largely wanting in structural completeness and functional efficiency. The clerestory wall is unbroken externally by pier buttresses. It has a continuous arcade of alternate groups of three wide arches, which open into the nave, and three narrow arches which are blind. The central blind arch in each group occupies the place of a pier, and into it the head of the flying buttress abuts, with the effect, to the eye, of piercing the wall. The level of the abutment is but little above the line where the aisle roof meets the wall, and ​the very slight pier buttress—which rises through the roof to the intrados of the abutting arch—is hardly noticed in a general view of the structure (Fig. 82). A comparison of this clerestory with the nearly contemporaneous clerestory of the nave of Amiens (Fig. 44) affords an instructive illustration of the difference between Anglo-Norman and Gothic construction in this portion of an edifice. FIG. 83.The Cathedral of Salisbury is commonly considered as exhibiting the early English style in its purest form, and it is therefore an important building for comparison with the new architecture of the Continent. The structure was begun in 1220, contemporaneously with the nave of Amiens, and the two buildings may be taken as fairly typical of the respective styles. The nave of Salisbury is roofed with quadripartite vaults of greater simplicity than those of the nave of Lincoln. Its rib system contains none but functionally necessary ribs, and in this system, as well as in the forms of the vault surfaces, there are many points of likeness to French vaulting. The most important of these is that which results from the forms of the longitudinal arches, which rise for some distance in a line more nearly vertical than is common in England, and give something of those twisted surfaces that characterise more truly Gothic structures. Fig. 83, a perspective view of one of the vaulting conoids, will illustrate this. In this vaulting the longitudinal arch is provided with a more pronounced rib than is usual in buildings of this class. An important structural defect will ​be noticed in the absence of upright supports for the longitudinal ribs; these ribs have no visible supports whatever, but merely die against the vertical portions of the vault surface. Of connection between the vaults and the lower stories of the structure there is less than in any vaulted
FIG. 84.
building that we have yet noticed—the vaulting shafts resting on corbels situated far above the springing of the triforium arches. There are thus no continuous upright members embracing even two of the stories; and there would be hardly less structural continuity from the pavement if these vaults were carried on corbels at their springing. The ground-story and the triforium are merely two super​posed arcades entirely unconnected with each other by any vertical members. The triforium string forms a cornice to the ground-story which is continuous from one end to the other of the nave. The interior system is thus better adapted to a timber roof than it is to a Gothic vault. The clerestory is walled in, as is usual in England, and is lighted (Fig. 84) by the customary triple openings. It is hence, in common with most others in the island, in marked contrast with the clerestories of France, in which, by this time, no wall whatever remained beneath the arch of the vault. This shows how the wall was clung to in the architecture of England, and how the openings remained merely windows in walls; whereas, in the architecture of France, the structural idea of windows gives place to that of entire voids between the arches and their supports. However large these triple windows in the Anglo-Norman clerestory may be, and they are at Salisbury about as large as they can be, there remains a vast structural difference between such a clerestory and one like that of Amiens, where the longitudinal rib of the vault and the archivolt of the opening become, as we saw in the preceding chapter, one and the same member. The triforium consists of a very obtusely pointed arch of three orders encompassing two lesser arches, each again embracing two still smaller ones. The encompassing arch is so depressed as to ill accord with the more acute forms of those with which it is associated, and its sides are so slightly curved that an angle is formed at the springing, repeating the same awkward peculiarity of the clerestory. The great arches of the ground-story, like the other arches in general, are equilateral—that is to say, the centres of their curves are in the angles of the bases of equilateral triangles, and are thus situated at the points of springing. This form of arch, or a form closely similar, generally prevails in France, and is also very common in England—as in the Chapel of the Nine Altars at Durham, the Presbytery of Ely, and in many of the abbey churches, such as Tintern, Bridlington, Netley, Rivaulx, Whitby, Byland, Kirkstall, and others. But the distinctively Anglo-Norman type is rather the lancet form, the centres of whose curves lie beyond the points of springing—as in the smaller arches of the nave of Lincoln, and the pier arches of Westminster Abbey. The arch ​sections are rounded in accordance with the usual Anglo-Norman custom, and the archivolts are everywhere provided with hood moulds. The lower piers are plain round columns of coursed masonry, with which are grouped four slender monolithic shafts, the whole forming a compound member, whose parts correspond with the orders of the superposed arches.
The buttress system of Salisbury is very imperfectly developed, nothing more than a shallow pilaster strip appearing externally. Beneath the aisle roof a flying buttress is brought to bear upon the wall at the springing of the vaults, which aids in resisting, though it does not wholly bear, the lateral pressures, these being largely overcome by massiveness of construction in the walls.
It will thus be seen that Gothic principles are, at most, but very imperfectly embodied in Salisbury. There is, in the structure, no continuous pier reaching from the pavement to the cornice, no well adjusted and externally apparent buttress system, and consequently no complete and functional framework. It is essentially a walled building which, though not so ponderous in effect as that of Durham, is yet, in principle, notwithstanding its pointed arches, its multiplied mouldings, and its slender shafts, little different from it in structural character.
Perhaps the next English cathedral of importance, though it is not a building of the first magnitude, is that of Wells, whose nave and transepts, erected during the episcopate of Bishop Jocelin (1206-1242), are contemporaneous with the naves of Lincoln and Salisbury. In the nave of Wells we have a repetition of some of the peculiarities which have just been noticed in that of Salisbury, while it exhibits some other features that depart still more widely from Gothic principle. Here, as at Salisbury, the vaults are, indeed, of true Gothic form, but the vaulting shafts descend but little way below the clerestory string, and thus the bays are undivided by continuous upright supports. The triforium is an unbroken arcade of narrow openings extending along the whole length of a massive wall. The piers and pier arches are excessively ponderous, though their effect is lightened by numerous subdivisions into shafts and mouldings. The buttress system consists, again, ​of concealed flying buttresses and external pilaster strips. Thus with Wells as with Salisbury there is no real skeleton to the building. Its strength resides in its heavy walls
FIG. 85.
as much as does that of any Romanesque structure. I have likened Salisbury in point of structure to Durham. Wells is in some points strikingly like an even earlier Norman building—that of the Abbaye-aux-Dames at Caen. This likeness is partially illustrated by Figs. 85 and ​86—portions of the interiors of Wells and the Abbaye-aux-Dames respectively. It will be seen that the triforiums are
FIG. 86.
almost identical, both consisting of a series of narrow arched openings in heavy walls, without encompassing arches ​gathering them into groups. In both cases the imposts are continuous—that is to say, there are no capitals nor mouldings at the springing of the arches,—and even the sections and the roll mouldings on the edges of the jambs and arches are the same. If the drip-moulds were removed from the arches of Wells, the only difference between the two examples would be that the one has round and the other pointed arches; but the Abbaye-aux-Dames is not, like Wells, devoid of continuous supports. It has shafts rising from the pavement to the springing of the vaults and dividing each of the three stories into bays. It is in this important respect much more like a Gothic building. The lower piers and pier arches are, moreover, actually lighter than those of Wells, though they have fewer subdivisions, and the individual parts are therefore more massive. It may, indeed, be said that the piers of the Abbaye-aux-Dames are more like Gothic than they may at first seem, while the piers of Wells are a good deal more Romanesque than they seem. Between the buttress systems of the Abbaye-aux-Dames and Wells there is no essential difference, though the two buildings are at least a century and a half apart in date. Both have their flying buttresses concealed beneath the aisle roof, and both display only pilaster strips externally.
In external aspect the nave of Wells closely resembles this early Norman building; the difference consisting in little more than the substitution, in the openings, of pointed arches for round arches. The same is equally true of most other early English structures. The triple arches of the clerestory, the grouping of openings in the west end, and the great lanterns at the crossing of nave and transept—features which have been generally regarded as peculiarly English—are all derived from this Norman art of the Continent. So plain, indeed, is the identity of characteristics, that one has only to make the comparison in order to perceive that the early pointed architecture of England is essentially a Norman product, and that it is, at most, very imperfectly Gothic.
Few early pointed buildings in England are any more Gothic in principle than those already noticed. The choir of Ely, the choir and smaller transept of Worcester, the great transept of Lincoln, the choir of Chester, the transept ​of York, which has no vault, but in place of it a wooden imitation of one, and other similar buildings, present substantially the same characteristics. Westminster Abbey is an exception, and is, after the choir of Lincoln, the most Gothic structure in England, having a complete and continuous vaulting system, including a Gothic system of buttresses.
Nor are Gothic principles carried out more fully in the later structures of the thirteenth century in England. Of these later structures one of the most famous is the Presbytery of Lincoln which dates from about 1270. Its vaults have, in addition to the full system of functional ribs, two tiercerons in each compartment. The ribs which span the central aisle spring from a level a little above midway between the triforium and clerestory strings, while the longitudinal rib springs from the clerestory ledge. There is, therefore, something of Gothic form in the lower portion of the vaulting conoid, which is gathered against the wall in a vertical line for several feet from the springing, and presents, accordingly, somewhat twisted surfaces. Five small and compactly grouped vaulting shafts carry the five greater ribs, but these ribs so interpenetrate at their springing as to become greatly reduced in bulk, and consequently in the numbers of their mouldings. Of these mouldings the tierceron is reduced to one member, the transverse rib to one and parts of two others, and the diagonal rib to two. The adjustment of the shafts to this group is peculiar. The two lateral shafts, instead of carrying each a separate rib, carry each one moulding of the same rib—namely, the diagonal; while all that remains of the transverse rib and the tiercerons together is carried by the central shaft. Hence, though the number of shafts corresponds to the number of great ribs in the vault, yet there is no really functional relationship between them—that is to say, each rib does not, as in French-Gothic, find its own independent support in the shaft group.
The upper parts of the vaults of this Presbytery are less like those of true Gothic form than are the lower portions. They approach more nearly to the character of simple intersecting vaults of pointed section. Their ridges are almost, if not quite level, and their surfaces are hardly at all ​domed—the courses of masonry having parallel joints, and running in nearly straight lines from rib to rib. The vaulting shafts are as usual stopped upon corbels not far below the triforium string; and the larger members of the lower piers are consequently again arranged with reference
FIG. 87.
to the arch orders only, while very slender shafts are inserted between the larger ones, for which there are no corresponding members in the archivolt. Here, then, once more, as almost constantly in Anglo-Norman pointed architecture, the employment of structural members was largely governed by decorative motives without a logical regard to functional consistency.
The clerestory of the Presbytery is a variation of the earlier pointed Norman type, and consists of four open arches surmounted by tracery in each plane—the inner plane having ​in addition two lesser blind arches, one in each of the wall spaces on either side. The triforium and lower arcade differ only in decorative treatment from those of the nave and choir (Fig. 87).
Externally there is no pier buttress whatever, not even a pilaster strip, either above or below the head of the flying buttress. In place of it is a broad space of wall, with two tall niches in its surface, between which the flying buttress is brought to bear (Fig. 88).
88.
The nave of Lichfield, which must be nearly contemporaneous with the Presbytery of Lincoln, differs in many points from the buildings already noticed, though in structural character it is not essentially different. Its vaults exhibit the peculiarity of having no transverse ribs; but they have tiercerons, longitudinal and cross liernes, and a surface rib in each lateral cell. The springing of the longitudinal arch ​and of the great ribs is at the same level—which is that of the clerestory string, and there is, therefore, no narrowing of the lower part of the vaulting conoid upon the line of the clerestory buttress, such as is found in true Gothic.
The vaulting shafts, however, which are but three in number, though there are six ribs to carry, start from the pavement, and are unbroken in their ascent to the springing of the vaults. Their continuity gives a degree of Gothic expression which is not very common in England at this time, though at a later period it became more frequent, as at York and Winchester.
The clerestory of Lichfield is noticeable among clerestories in England, as having in each bay but one opening which nearly fills the space beneath the longitudinal rib of the vault. The form of this opening is the peculiar one of an equilateral triangle with segmentally curved sides.
There is no need of further or more detailed consideration of the forms of piers and buttresses, for these in England are never structurally complete and never exhibit anything like consistent development. There is hardly such a thing in the country as a continuous pier, all of whose parts are functionally adjusted at once to the arcades and to the vaulting, nor am I aware of an example of an entirely logical and well-adjusted buttress system; much less is there evidence of any experimental or inventive development of these members.
From what has already been said it will be seen that in England the mode of enclosure, in the pointed architecture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is substantially the same as in the round arched Norman style. Massive walls, pierced with comparatively small openings, continue for the most part, throughout this period. The openings are usually, indeed, larger than they were in the older style, and they are perhaps more generally, and more closely grouped, so as to give a larger proportion of opening to that of wall; but in hardly any case does the wall wholly disappear and a vast glazed opening take its place. It could not, indeed, be otherwise, for the Anglo-Norman pointed structure has no such sustaining skeleton of piers and buttresses as would render safe the entire suppression of the walls. It was not until after the middle of the thirteenth century that openings ​became large enough to require dividing members and to call for the use of tracery. And when they did become so, and when tracery was employed, the opening still remained really a window through a wall. When the grouped lancets of the east end were replaced by one great mullioned and traceried opening, some truly magnificent designs were indeed produced, of which that of the Presbytery of Lincoln is perhaps the grandest; yet still are these great windows generally mere openings in walls. Rarely, if ever, in England do the rib of the vault and the archivolt of the aperture come one and the same member, as they do in Amiens Cathedral.
Such are the structural characteristics of early pointed architecture in England in so far as concerns the longitudinal bays. The east ends in this architecture are usually square, perhaps because the constructive difficulties of the apsidal form were deemed too formidable, or, perhaps, from an acquired preference derived from the widespread example of the great Cistercian churches.
FIG. 89.
The east end of Lincoln (Fig. 90) retains its side compartments in their original form. Their lower portions contain each one wide mullioned and traceried window, above which is a blind arcade of five arches, and over this again is a gable having no connection with the aisle roofs, but rising above them as an entirely useless and merely decorative feature. The central compartment has two great pointed openings, one above the other. The lower one of these is the great window to which I have already referred, and the second is a lesser, though still a very large window, lighting the space over the vaults.
In addition to the east ends of Ely and Lincoln, that of Salisbury, which also retains its original form, may be mentioned as affording another illustration of that want of unity and logic of design and construction which so largely characterises this architecture. In this case the walls of the three compartments, into which the façade is divided by buttresses, are carried up to an equal height, where they are surmounted by a cornice supported by a corbel table; and above this are three gables, one over the central compartment, and smaller ones over the lateral compartments. These last are, of course, merely false decorative features, the aisle roofs being far below them.
FIG. 90.
The western façade is in England, as a rule, both inappropriate as a termination of the building, and ill arranged as an independent architectural design. Very few early ones remain. The west façades of the greater number of the larger churches—such as York, Canterbury, Beverley, Westminster, and others—were built at later epochs than the main body of the edifices to which they are attached. The most important existing fronts of the thirteenth century are those of Lincoln, Salisbury, Wells, and Peterborough. That of Lincoln (Fig. 91) consists of a vast arcaded screen, unbroken by upright divisions, with a level cornice terminating its multiplied horizontal lines. A gable rises through the middle of this cornice, and stair turrets at each angle are crowned with conical pinnacles. A great pointed arched recess in the centre reaches almost to the cornice, and is flanked by two lesser round arched recesses. In each of these recesses is a round arched doorway giving access to the nave and aisles respectively. Behind this great screen, and quite independent of it, rise two lofty square towers with angle turrets. This façade exhibits four different styles of architecture. The great recesses (except the arch of the central one) and the lower parts of the towers are early Norman, belonging to the original edifice, which was dedicated in the year 1073; the portals are very rich and beautiful late Norman insertions of about 1140; the rest of the great screen is of pointed design and was probably completed before 1235; while the upper portions of the towers are in the perpendicular style. It is thus, from an historical point of view, one of the most interesting façades in Europe, but as an architectural combination it is one of the least admirable. Of structural Gothic character it has nothing whatever, and as a termination of a three-aisled building it is far less appropriate than the Romanesque façade of the Cathedral of Pisa, whose richly arcaded design it remotely recalls. For in Pisa the façade follows the form of the building which it terminates, while at Lincoln there is no conformity of the one with the other.
91
A different, though still a singularly defective design is that of the façade of the Cathedral of Wells. It consists of a central portion in three compartments, divided by buttresses, with two vast towers, one on either side forming two compartments more. The central portion embraces both nave and aisles of the building, while the towers project north and south beyond the walls of the aisles. This, especially as the towers are not completed above the rest of the façade, gives a vast total width of front, for which the builders in England seem to have had a singular predilection. The screen-like character, though on account of the strongly accented vertical lines of the buttresses less pronounced here than at Lincoln, is still obvious. The upper portions of the aisle compartments are false walls rising above and masking the aisle roofs, and their level cornices of course contradict the lines of these roofs. The central compartment is surmounted by a rectangular mass of wall which has no more relation to the roof of the nave behind it than the walls of the lateral compartments have to the roofs of the aisles. The portals of English churches are in general strangely diminutive, and those of Wells are especially ineffective as features in the total design. The other openings also of this façade (with exception of three long windows in the central bay) are, like those of Lincoln and Salisbury, very small in proportion to the extent of wall. They are, in fact, little more than loopholes which, were it not for the ​rich arcading that lightens the effect, would give this portion of the building very much the aspect of a fortress.
Hardly better is the west façade of Peterborough. It is again an entirely false screen rather than a front appropriate to and conformed with the building. The three vast recesses have not, as they have at Lincoln, any correspondence with the proportions of the nave and aisles which they terminate. Being of equal height, and the narrow one being in front of the wide central aisle, while the wide ones fall in front of the narrow side aisles, they wholly contradict these proportions, and they make a very unhappy architectural group as well.
Thus, as a rule, the west front in England has little approach to Gothic character. It is, on the contrary, a massive erection, whose details are largely mere surface decorations unrelated to the real structural scheme. There are exceptions, however, among which may be noticed the western façade of Ripon Cathedral, which was constructed during the first half of the thirteenth century. Here the towers are the true terminations of the aisles, and the three internal divisions are marked externally by continuous, though shallow buttresses. There is a low central portal and two lesser portals, all gathered into the central compartment, and consequently all opening into the nave. This central compartment is crowned by a gable in conformity with the form of the roof, and it is pierced by two tiers of five lancets. The design, as a whole, is therefore appropriate, and in this respect offers a rare exception among early buildings in England.
In the early pointed architecture of England western towers are less common and less imposing than those of early Gothic buildings in France. But the Norman feature of a vast tower at the crossing of nave and transept, seldom adopted by the French Gothic builders, was perpetuated in England. There is provision for such a tower in nearly every church of importance in the island; but in many cases it exists either as a mere beginning, or as it was erected at a comparatively late period in the perpendicular style, as at Worcester, Gloucester, Canterbury, York, and other churches. I do not know of any remaining completed tower of the early pointed epoch; but the truly magnificent central tower of Lincoln, dating from about the middle of ​the thirteenth century, retains its original form up to the level of the cornice. It consists (Fig. 92) of FIG. 92. three stories above the cornice of the nave; an octagonal stair turret rises against each of its four angles, whose sheer ascent gives an extremely majestic expression to the structure. The stories are finely proportioned in their heights, and the middle one, which is the first that rises clear of the nave roof, is admirably designed as a base for the bell story. In this middle story are no openings except a few very small and narrow ones like loopholes; but the walls are enriched by a blind arcade of five shafted arches. In the upper story, on each side, are two great lancets surmounted by gables, and subdivided by mullions into two lesser lancets, all having traceried heads. This tower is hardly equalled in beauty by any other in England; and it is certainly one of the grandest and most beautiful towers in Europe.
Spires were hardly constructed at all in England during the twelfth century, and on a large scale they appear to have been rarely erected during the entire early pointed period. Large existing spires, like that of Salisbury, are, for the most part, not of earlier date than the fourteenth century. On a ​smaller scale a few spires remain dating from the thirteenth century, of which that of Ringstead Church, Northants, erected about the middle of the century, is a good example. The management of the transition from the square plan of the tower to the octagon of the spire is, in such constructions, very admirable, and it is, I believe, peculiar to England. Instead of starting the octagon immediately from the square base, a four-sided pyramid is interposed which interpenetrates with the octagon. The design is both constructively good and artistically agreeable.
Before closing our examination of the pointed architecture of England we must notice the general plan and its relation to the elevation, in which points this architecture varies widely from that of France. Besides the difference of the rectangular east end, the Anglo-Norman church differs from the French church in usually having two transepts, one at each end of the choir. Eastward of the east transept is the presbytery, which is generally as long as the choir, and beyond this again is often a lady chapel. These parts, in addition to the long nave, give the building an enormous length, the effect of which is greatly enhanced by the comparative lowness of the elevation—a lowness which is prejudicial to good proportion, and which contrasts strikingly with the soaring proportions of the French Gothic churches. The chief impression received from the Anglo-Norman interior is that of a prolonged architectural vista; while the external aspect presents a long, low range of gabled roofs and buttressed walls, whose outlines are broken by the projecting transepts, and by the towers of the west end and of the crossing.
This great length and proportionate lowness may have resulted in some instances from chance, and in some from timidity. From chance, in the addition, at successive epochs, of parts that were not contemplated in the original projects, and from timidity, on the part of builders who were not remarkable for constructive daring, in raising and supporting wide vaults at a considerable altitude. But a predilection for length was a peculiarity of the earlier Norman builders, and this predilection may naturally have survived in their successors. The Norman nave of Winchester, for instance, ​contained twelve bays, that of St. Albans contains thirteen and that of Norwich fourteen, while in France the nave of the Cathedral of Paris, which is one of the longest, contains but ten bays, that of Chartres contains but nine, and that of Amiens but six. As to the comparative heights, it may suffice to say that the choir of Lincoln measures, from the pavement to the crowns of the vaults, about twenty-two metres, while the nave of Amiens measures forty-two. It must be said, however, that vaults in England are sometimes a little higher than those of Lincoln choir, while in France none except those of Beauvais are higher than Amiens, though almost all are much higher than those of Lincoln.
The vaulted polygonal chapter-house is a structure peculiar to England. It is usually octagonal, as at Salisbury and York. At Lincoln the plan is decagonal. The chapter-house is vaulted on a system of ribs which spring from a clustered central shaft, and from single shafts situated in the angles of the enclosing walls. What may be approximately described as a pointed annular vault, interpenetrated by pointed cells, is thus sustained. The openings in these structures have often a more Gothic character than those of the church edifice itself. At Salisbury, for instance, the whole space beneath the vault cell on each side of the polygon is taken up by the opening. The internal effect of these structures is very pleasing, but they present no principles that are materially different from those which we have already considered. The same want of constructive logic that we have noticed in the pointed architecture of England generally is still often apparent. For instance, at Salisbury the central column consists of a main body and eight attached monolithic shafts, with an octagonal abacus to its grouped capitals. Upon this abacus sixteen vaulting ribs—namely, the transverse ribs and the half-ribs which reach to the intersection of the groins of the intersecting cells—converge. The plan of the rib group at the impost is thus a sixteen-sided polygon, which does not adjust itself well to the octagonal abacus of the column; and the consequence is that the ribs fall alternately upon a sustaining shaft and upon one side of the abacus over an intercolumniation. This structural defect is just the reverse of that which was noticed above in relation to the pier (A, Fig. 77) at the ​crossing of the choir and transept of Lincoln. In that case shafts were introduced which had nothing to support, while here are vault ribs with no shafts to carry them.
The almost total absence of vaulting in the smaller village churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England is as noticeable as is the prevalence of vaulting in the small churches of France. Such examples as St. Mary le Wigford at Lincoln, Corringham near Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, and many others, consist of nave and aisles separated by arcades of pointed arches, usually of two simply bevelled orders, supported on clustered columns, whose members are adjusted to the arch orders, and enclosed by plain walls with small splayed and pointed windows and timber roofs. They are often very charming in both internal and external aspect, but constructively they have no Gothic character.
It must now, I think, be apparent that the early pointed architecture of the Middle Ages in England is, with few exceptions, totally different in its nature from that of the same period in France; and that in constructive principle it differs little, if at all, from the Norman-Romanesque, of which it is substantially but a decorative modification. I shall, in the concluding chapter, give further reasons for supposing it to be in the main really Norman rather than English.
* ↑ I take this figure from Sharpe's Architectural Parallels.
* ↑ It may not be generally understood that a vault without penetrations is a vault not crossed by another vault. The vault referred to in the text differs from a plain barrel vault only in having a pointed arched, instead of a round arched, section.
* ↑ The Galilee of Durham is usually classed, by English writers, as transitional. But in structural principles it is Norman of the most primitive type, notwithstanding the slenderness of its columns.
* ↑ See the account of the rebuilding of this choir by the Monk Gervase in Willis's Monograph on Canterbury Cathedral. London, 1845.
* ↑ I copy this and the following figure from Willis's Architectural History of Chichester Cathedral. Chichester, 1861.
* ↑ Sir Gilbert Scott, in his Lectures on the Rise and Development of Mediæval Architecture, vol. ii. p. 142, speaking of the development of the system of receding arch orders, says: "This gives us also our clustered columns, which are, in fact, the mere decoration of the receding orders of the piers." It is true that the clustered column in England is usually nothing more than this; but in true Gothic the grouping of members in the pier has reference primarily to the vaulting and not merely to the arch orders.
* ↑ Parker, in his book entitled An Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture, and some other English writers have advanced the utterly untenable theory that the choir of Lincoln is purely English work, showing no trace of foreign influence. Such a theory is not worth serious consideration in view of the facts regarding the state of England and of native English arts at this time.
* ↑ I say Anglo-Norman rather than English. For whatever part native Englishmen may, at this time, have taken in architectural works, there can be no doubt that all such works, when not, like the choir of Canterbury, wholly conducted by Frenchmen, were mainly directed by Normans, or by men of chiefly Norman descent. The architecture itself makes this clear enough. Substantially, everything in it which is not distinctly French may be traced to the early and contemporaneous Norman work both in Normandy and in England. There are, indeed, certain minor peculiarities of design which may be attributed to native influence. Native workmen were doubtless largely employed, though certainly for the most part in subordinate capacities. Moreover, the fusion between the two races, which by this time had made considerable progress, would naturally tend to produce men of mingled genius, whose work would partake of both Norman and English characteristics. And such work we actually find in the choir of Lincoln and in other early pointed buildings in England.
* ↑ The plan of this apse was recovered during the last century when the pavement of the Presbytery was taken up for repairs. A partial excavation made in December 1886 in the south aisle of the Presbytery again laid bare a portion of the old foundation.
* ↑ At present these vaulting shafts are carried on ill-designed corbels inserted in the wall above the imposts of the lower arcade. This damaging alteration was made in the fourteenth century, when the space formerly occupied by these shafts was wanted for the existing stalls.
* ↑ "St. Hugh's choir of Lincoln Cathedral is the earliest building of the pure Gothic style free from any admixture of the Romanesque that has hitherto been found in Europe or in the world," says Mr. Parker.—Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture, p. 102.
* ↑ The nave of Ely was not completed before 1174, and that of Peterborough was built between 1177 and 1193.
* ↑ The arch was originally round.
* ↑ According to Mr. Parker the date of this church is circa 1260.