English Cathedrals Illustrated: Second and Revised EditionBond, Francis
History
English Cathedrals Illustrated: Second and Revised Edition
Bond, Francis
Cathedrals -- England; Cathedrals -- Wales
Thirdly, they appear to have intended to separate the presbytery from
its aisles by the usual stone screens—designed to correspond with the
tracery of the clerestory windows. This would have left an ugly cavernous
arch—that of the eleventh-century triforium—in each bay, between the
screen below and the clerestory above. The pattern of the tracery of the
clerestory window had been repeated once in the screen below: what more
natural than to repeat it a second time in the shape of a screen set in
front of the open arch of the triforium? It remained merely to join up
the mullions of all three—lower screen, triforium screen, and clerestory
window—and the three members were welded together into one composition;
harmony and unity reigned from pavement to vault. Here again we have at
Gloucester not only the commencement, but the full development of what
became the leading principle in later English Gothic—the desire to impose
unity on the elevations of their churches by repeats of window tracery.
It is but a short step from Gloucester choir to St. George’s, Windsor.
The only improvement that was made on the design of the Gloucester choir
was that in the next century, when fan-vaulting came into vogue, this
also was covered all over with the patterns of the window tracery.
[Illustration: FROM SOUTH-EAST.]
One question still remained unsolved: how to treat the east end of the
church. At Norwich, where the Gloucester precedent was largely followed
a century later, the apse and ambulatory and chevet of chapels were all
retained—with most beautiful effect. At Gloucester—unfortunately, as
it seems to me—they pulled down the apse; and on the wall of the three
eastern bays of the ambulatory they erected three gigantic windows, so
welded together as to compose one window. And, to bring the whole into
view, they made the new easternmost bays of the presbytery, which had now
to be built, wider to the east than the west. Thus they got one of the
biggest windows in the world, and one of the ugliest. However, no one
looks at the tracery of the window, but at the painted glass which it
still retains. This glass is decidedly Perpendicular in character, but
the armorial bearings in it show that it was completed before 1350. All
the characteristics of late Gothic glass are there. Thus the canopies and
the figures alike are silvery white, and yellow stain is introduced here
and there. The drawing, however, is shockingly bad; and the colour is got
in a very artless way by inserting backgrounds of vertical stripes of red
and blue.
At the same time—between 1337 and 1377—the monks were provided with new
choir-stalls. But while stone-work and glass alike are Perpendicular
in character, the stalls have bowing ogee canopies, and are quite
Curvilinear.
Next the north transept was remodelled (1368-1373). It is very much like
its brother, but is eight feet higher, and the vault has bosses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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