The Ground Plan of the English Parish ChurchThompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
History
The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church
Thompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
Church architecture -- England
eastern chapel, the "Angel Quire," of Lincoln, was little more than a
generation old; and, although the progress of the work was long
delayed, the eventual arrangement, in which the high altar was brought
two bays forward from the east wall, and a spacious chapel was left at
the back, exactly recalls the arrangements of Lincoln and York.
Similarly the quire and chancel of the cruciform church of Holy Trinity
at Hull are aisled to their full length: the arrangement, again, is that
of a cathedral rather than a parish church. The influence of cathedral
plans is clearly visible in St Mary Redcliffe at Bristol, and in the
collegiate churches of Ottery St Mary and Crediton: but here the type
followed is not that of Lincoln and York, but that more usual in the
west and south of England at Hereford, Wells, Salisbury, Exeter, and
elsewhere, where the aisles of the chancel are returned at the back of
the east wall, and form a vestibule to a projecting aisleless lady
chapel. This type of plan occurs outside its regular district at
Tickhill, on the borders of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. But it is
naturally exceptional, and would be used only where there was plenty of
money and space to spare: it demands for its full effect a considerable
elevation, involving a large clerestory, and a church could seldom, if
ever, be found whose original plan invited expansion on these lines. On
the other hand, the aisling of the chancel throughout was simply the
logical development of the ordinary church plan: if the plans of
cathedrals may have suggested the later developments at churches like
Newark or Hull, the simple aisled rectangle, with its three parallel
divisions, and without any clerestory to distinguish the nave from the
aisles--a plan remarkably characteristic of Cornwall--came into
existence in the ordinary course of things, by an extension of the wings
of the building until they flanked the whole of the nave and chancel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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