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
Though the three eastern bays (still on the north side) are chiefly
Decorated, portions of Archbishop Roger's work have been retained or
used again. Thus the fourth column from the west is his, and perhaps the
fifth up to the abacus, which is convex and of limestone. The respond
against the east wall is of his pattern, but it has not the circular
plinth, and the capital is of limestone, has the abacus moulded with
rounds upon the edge, and is covered with delicate foliage in the
Decorated manner. In these arches the lower order has exactly the same
mouldings as in the western bays, and is of gritstone, while the upper
order is of limestone, and has fillets upon the larger mouldings. It
would seem, therefore, that the later builders have used the original
archivolts again, and have merely added another order or orders over it.
The plane of the wall above, indeed, is brought forward to the face of
Archbishop Roger's vaulting-shafts: yet without being really thickened,
since it is set back from his wall on the exterior. At the junction of
the old vaulting-shafts with the additional order of the first Decorated
arch the later builders have carved a group of grotesque faces. In each
bay of the Decorated triforium there is a round arch filled with tracery
consisting of three round-headed and trefoil lights with two circles
enclosing trefoils above them; and on either side of this arch (but on
one three only, in the first of the side bays) is a sunk lancet panel
enclosing a pointed arch impaling a trefoil. The clearstorey has a
second plane of tracery, a feature not very common in England. The
vaulting-shafts are in clusters of three and are filleted, and the
string-course below the triforium is not carried round them. Each
cluster springs from a semicircular corbel resting on a head, and has
its capitals enriched with foliage. The last pendentive of the vaulting
rests on a single shaft springing directly from a head-corbel. The
string-courses are not of the same pattern with those on the older bays.
[Illustration: THE NORTH SIDE OF THE CHOIR.
(Junction of Transitional and Decorated work.)]
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