Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon: A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its FabricHallett, Cecil Walter Charles
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon: A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric
Hallett, Cecil Walter Charles
Ripon Cathedral
To begin with the north side. The arch in the first bay has been built
up, probably to strengthen the tower, and by the twelfth-century
builders themselves, for the abacus-moulding of the capital is continued
across the blocking wall. In the latter the fifteenth-century builders
have made a small pointed doorway, which is now blocked but apparently
once gave access from the top of the screen to a staircase in the north
aisle. This and the two next bays bear in all three stages a general
resemblance to the east side of the north transept. The columns,
however, are clusters of eight cylindrical shafts, and stand upon
circular plinths, the base proper following, of course, the form of the
pillar. The capitals, as usual, are compound and composed of plain
inverted bells, and have square tops with the abacus hollowed and
grooved. The arches differ from those in the transept only in that the
large moulding under the soffit is 'keeled,' and that the mouldings
which flank it are simple ridges. In the triforium the cusps visible in
the glazed sub-arches belong to some tracery which has been applied to
the back at a later period.
[Illustration: THE GREAT EAST WINDOW.]
The treatment of the vaulting-shafts is very remarkable; indeed, nothing
is more instructive than the variety shown in the treatment of this
feature throughout Archbishop Roger's church, the different parts of
which are suggestive of nothing so much as of a series of architectural
experiments. Here, upon the capital of each column, rests a sort of
compound rectangular plinth, from which project three corbels, hollowed
underneath and having little blocks beneath their overhanging edge. From
this plinth and corbels springs a cluster of no less than five shafts,
which, by their united width, conceal the springing of the upper order
of the main arches. They are banded at the string-course below the
triforium, and end at the sill of the clearstorey in a compound capital,
of which the three central members are square, and the others round.
Upon this capital, apparently, stand the two adjoining shafts that carry
the thickening of the wall above the clearstorey, and here (but hidden
by the vaulting) stands also the original roof-shaft, and these three
are 'detached.' Thus the arrangement is in principle similar to that
adopted in the north transept, while at the same time the clustered
shafts are even more disproportionate here than there to the slight
burden they have to carry; indeed the effect is that of five shafts
diminishing to one. The vaulting hides a feature which is not found in
the transept, namely, a little lancet arch whose apex comes exactly
behind the roof-shaft in each bay.
[Illustration: BAY OF ARCHBISHOP ROGER'S CHOIR (WITHOUT THE VAULTING).
(From a drawing by Sir G. G. Scott, by permission of the Archaeological
Institute.)]
[Illustration: DECORATED CAPITAL IN CHOIR.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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