GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
(For the Mirror.)
The following explanation of a few of the terms employed to designate parts of Gothic architecture, may, perhaps, prove acceptable to some of your readers. Having felt the need of such assistance in the course of my own reading, &c. &c.—I extracted them from an expensive work on the subject, and have only to lament that my vocabulary should be so defective.
Buttresses.—Projections between the windows and at the corners.
Corbel.—An ornamental projection from the wall to support an arch, niche, beam, or other apparent weight. It is often a head or part of a figure.
Bands.—Either small strings around shafts, or horizontal lines of square, round, and other formed panels, used to ornament spires, towers, and similar works.
Cornice.—The tablet at the top of a wall, running under the battlement. It becomes a
Basement when at the bottom of it, and beneath this the wall is generally thicker.
Battlement.—It may be indented or plain; sunk, panelled, or pierced.
Crockets.—Small bunches of foliage, ornamenting canopies and pinnacles.
Canopies.—Adorned drip-stones.—Vide Dripstone.
Crypts.—Vaulted chapels under some large churches, and a few small ones.
Crisps.—Small arches; sometimes double-feathered, and according to the number of them in immediate connexion; they are termed tre-foils, quatre-foils, cinque-foils, &c.
Dripstone.—The tablet running round doors and windows.
Featherings or Foliations.—Parts of tracery ornamented with small arches and points, are termed Feathered, or Foliated.
Finials.—Large crockets surmounting canopies and pinnacles. This term is frequently applied to the whole pinnacle.
Machicolations.—Projecting battlements, with intervals for discharging missiles on the heads of assailants.
Mullions.—By these, windows are divided into lights.
Parapet.—When walls are crowned with a parapet, it is straight at the top.
Pinnacle.—A small spire, generally four-sided, and placed on the top of buttresses, &c., both exterior and interior.
Piers.—Spaces in the interior of a building between the arches.
Rood Loft.—In ancient churches, not collegiate, a screen between the nave and chancel was so called, which had on the top of it a large projection, whereon were placed certain images, especially those which composed the rood.
Set-offs.—The mouldings and slopes dividing buttresses into stages.
Spandrells.—Spaces, either plain or ornamented, between an arch and the square formed round it.
Stoups.—The basins in niches, which held holy water. Near the altar in old churches, or where the altar has been, is sometimes found another niche, distinguished from the stoup, by having in it at the bottom, a small aperture for carrying off the water; it is often double with a place for bread.
Tabernacle-work.—Ornamented open work over stalls; and generally any minute ornamental open-work.
Tablets.—Small projecting mouldings or strings, mostly horizontal.
Tracery.—Ornaments of the division at the heads of windows. Flowing, when the lines branch out into flowers, leaves, arches, &c. Perpendicular, when the mullions are continued through the straight lines.
Transoms.—The horizontal divisions of windows and panelling.
Turrets.—Towers of great height in proportion to their diameter are so called. Large towers have often turrets at their corners; often one larger than the other, containing a staircase; and sometimes they have only that one.