MIXTURE OF STYLES. Very few English cathedrals are as homogeneous as the two just mentioned, nearly all having undergone repeated remodellings in successive periods. Durham, Norwich, and Oxford are wholly Norman but for their Gothic vaults. Ely, Rochester, Gloucester, and Hereford have Norman naves and Gothic choirs. Peterborough has an early Gothic façade and late Gothic retro-choir added to an otherwise completely Norman structure. Winchester is a Norman church remodelled with early Perpendicular details. The purely Gothic churches and cathedrals, except parish churches—in which England is very rich—are not nearly as numerous in England as in France.
PERIODS. The development of English Gothic architecture followed the same general sequence as the French, and like it the successive stages were most conspicuously characterized by the forms of the tracery.
The Early English or Lancet period extended roundly from 1175 or 1180 to 1280, and was marked by simplicity, dignity, and purity of design.
The Decorated or Geometric period covered another century, 1280 to 1380, and was characterized by its decorative richness and greater lightness of construction.
The Perpendicular period extended from 1380, or thereabout, well into the sixteenth century. Its salient features were the use of fan-vaulting, four-centred arches, and tracery of predominantly vertical and horizontal lines. The tardy introduction of Renaissance forms finally put an end to the Gothic style in England, after a long period of mixed and transitional architecture.
FIG. 129.—RIBBED VAULTING, CHOIR OF EXETER CATHEDRAL.
VAULTING. The richness and variety of English vaulting contrast strikingly with the persistent uniformity of the French. A few of the early Gothic vaults, as in the aisles of Peterborough, and later the naves of Durham, Salisbury, and Gloucester, were simple four-part, ribbed vaults substantially like the French. But the English disliked and avoided the twisted and dome-like surfaces of the French vaults, preferring horizontal ridges, and, in the filling-masonry, straight courses meeting at the ridge in zigzag lines, as in southwest France (see [p. 200]). This may be seen in Westminster Abbey. The idea of ribbed construction was then seized upon and given a new application. By springing a large number of ribs from each point of support, the vaulting-surfaces were divided into long, narrow, triangles, the filling of which was comparatively easy (Fig. 129). The ridge was itself furnished with a straight rib, decorated with carved rosettes or bosses at each intersection with a vaulting-rib. The naves and choirs of Lincoln, Lichfield, Exeter, and the nave of Westminster illustrate this method. The logical corollary of this practice was the introduction of minor ribs called liernes, connecting the main ribs and forming complex reticulated and star-shaped patterns. Vaults of this description are among the most beautiful in England. One of the richest is in the choir of Gloucester (1337–1377). Less correct constructively is that over the choir of Wells, while the choir of Ely, the nave of Tewkesbury Abbey (Fig. 130), and all the vaulting of Winchester as rebuilt by William of Wykeham (1390), illustrate the same system. Such vaults are called lierne or star vaults.