+EARLY GOTHIC BUILDINGS.+ The pointed arch and ribbed vault were importations from France. Early examples appear in the Cistercian abbeys of Furness and Kirkstall, and in the Temple Church at London (1185). But it was in the +Choir of Canterbury+, as rebuilt by William of Sens, after the destruction by fire in 1170 of Anselm’s Norman choir, that these French Gothic features were first applied in a thoroughgoing manner. In plan this choir resembled that of the cathedral of Sens; and its coupled round piers, with capitals carved with foliage, its pointed arches, its six-part vaulting, and its _chevet_, were distinctly French. The Gothic details thus introduced slowly supplanted the round arch and other Norman features. For fifty years the styles were more or less mingled in many buildings, though +Lincoln Cathedral+, as rebuilt in 1185-1200, retained nothing of the earlier round-arched style. But the first church to be designed and built from the foundations in the new style was the cathedral of +Salisbury+ (1220-1258; Fig. 128). Contemporary with Amiens, it is a homogeneous and typical example of the Early English style. The predilection for great length observable in the Anglo-Norman churches (as at Norwich and Durham) still prevailed, as it continued to do throughout the Gothic period; Salisbury is 480 feet long. The double transepts, the long choir, the square east end, the relatively low vault (84 feet to the ridge), the narrow grouped windows, all are thoroughly English. Only the simple four-part vaulting recalls French models. +Westminster Abbey+ (1245-1269), on the other hand, betrays in a marked manner the French influence in its internal loftiness (100 feet), its polygonal _chevet_ and chapels, and its strongly accented exterior flying-buttresses (Fig. 137). +MIXTURE OF STYLES.+ Very few English cathedrals are as homogeneous as the two just mentioned, nearly all having undergone repeated remodellings in successive periods. Durham, Norwich, and Oxford are wholly Norman but for their Gothic vaults. Ely, Rochester, Gloucester, and Hereford have Norman naves and Gothic choirs. Peterborough has an early Gothic façade and late Gothic retro-choir added to an otherwise completely Norman structure. Winchester is a Norman church remodelled with early Perpendicular details. The purely Gothic churches and cathedrals, except parish churches--in which England is very rich--are not nearly as numerous in England as in France. +PERIODS.+ The development of English Gothic architecture followed the same general sequence as the French, and like it the successive stages were most conspicuously characterized by the forms of the tracery. The EARLY ENGLISH or LANCET period extended roundly from 1175 or 1180 to 1280, and was marked by simplicity, dignity, and purity of design. The DECORATED or GEOMETRIC period covered another century, 1280 to 1380, and was characterized by its decorative richness and greater lightness of construction.