Our Homeland Churches and How to Study ThemHeath, Sidney
Religion
Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them
Heath, Sidney
Church architecture -- Great Britain
A little later, in the Decorated period, we get the great east window
of York Cathedral, 75 ft. high and 32 ft. broad; the east window of
Gloucester Cathedral, 72 ft. high and 38 ft. broad; and other fine
windows at Tewkesbury Abbey; Merton College, Oxford; Wroxhall
Abbey, Warwickshire; and the churches of Chartham, Kent; Stanford,
Leicestershire; Ashchurch, Glous.; Cranley, Surrey; Norbury, Derbyshire,
and others. Salisbury Cathedral has retained portions, but very lovely
portions, of the glazing of its west windows, and enough is left to show
that it was little inferior to the great windows of York and Gloucester.
Carlisle Cathedral, too, has preserved fragments of the original glass
in the tracery of the great east window, but the lower part of the
glazing is modern. Windows in the Decorated style continued to be
arranged in panels, with the spaces between them filled with flowing
patterns of foliage, in which the vine and ivy leaves predominate.
Single figures are more common than in the previous style, and when used
are generally shown beneath a simple pediment or canopy. In the early
examples they only occupy a portion of the window light, but later they
are found occupying nearly the whole of the surface and are surmounted
by large and elaborate canopies. Quarries are much used in this style,
sometimes quite plain, but more often with leaves or rosettes painted on
them in black lines, or painted with the vine and ivy leaves so arranged
that they form a repeating pattern over the whole window. At this
period, too, heraldry began to be employed in the decoration of the
windows to which it is always an appropriate and artistic adjunct, and
many authentic and valuable examples of our national heraldry have thus
been preserved for posterity.
With the advent of the Perpendicular style the glazing became more
uniform in character, the glass was thinner and lighter, the tints
paler, and the whole effect more brilliant and transparent. The
paintings for the most part consist of large figures under elaborate
canopies, frequently occupying an entire light, and in the patterns and
smaller decorations there is a greater freedom of design, and the whole
treatment is more harmonious and artistic than in any other period. The
use of heraldry became very common, and inscriptions on long narrow
scrolls were frequently employed. Among the best examples of this period
are the windows at S. Margaret's Church, Westminster; King's College
Chapel, Cambridge; Fairford Church, Gloucestershire; and Morley Church,
Derbyshire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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