The building was in a most deplorable state, and Hugh had thus an opportunity of becoming, so to speak, the second founder of the church. He quickly resolved to commence the building entirely afresh from the foundations. The sum of money necessary for this purpose was large, and Hugh proposed to retire to Witham until the accumulated revenues of the see should reach the amount required. Although he was not permitted to do this, he often visited the little Somersetshire monastery, where he would remain for a month or two at a time, doing the duties of a simple monk, and practising all the austerities of the Carthusian order. For six years Hugh diligently collected the materials for carrying out his great scheme, and at last the foundations of a new choir were laid. The year 1192 marks an epoch, not only in the history of Lincoln Minster, and of English architecture, but in that of Gothic architecture generally. "What Diocletian did at Spalato for the round arch, Saint Hugh did at Lincoln for the pointed arch.... We have seen how, while the elder church of Remigius was rising in the stern grandeur of early Norman times, men were still found who clave to the older traditions of independent England. So, while its eastern limb was giving way to the new form which rose at the bidding of Saint Hugh, men were still rearing the naves of Peterborough and Ely, works which shew in their details some signs of the change which was beginning, but which, in their leading lines and proportions, vary not at all from the earlier works which they continue." "St. Hugh was strictly the first to design a building in which the pointed arch should be allowed full play, and should be accompanied by an appropriate system of detail.... To Hugh of Avalon, neither from the West-Saxon nor the Ducal-Burgundian Avalon, ... French and English forms would be alike foreign, and he doubtless gave full play to the taste of his architect, a taste which did nothing less than develop on the soil of Lindesey the first complete and pure form of the third great form of architecture, the architecture of the pointed arch."[ 2] Who was this architect? What nation did he belong to? These questions are of considerable interest. The first it is easy to answer. In the "Magna Vita" of St. Hugh we read that the architect was Geoffrey de Noyers (Gaufrido de Noiers). The name certainly looks like that of a foreigner, but from a letter contributed by M. Viollet le Due to the Gentleman's Magazine in May 1861, we must conclude that he was in all respects an Englishman, though doubtless of foreign descent. The letter contains such interesting remarks on the characteristic differences between French and English Gothic, that it may be worth while to quote it in full—
"I expected from what I had heard in England to find at Lincoln the French style of architecture, that is to say, some constructions of the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth which would shew the evident influence of a French architect. But after the most careful examination I could not find in any part of the cathedral of Lincoln, neither in the general design, nor in any part of the system of architecture adopted, nor in the details of ornament, any trace of the French school of the twelfth century (the lay school from 1170 to 1220), so plainly characteristic of the Cathedrals of Paris, Noyon, Senlis, Chartres, Sens, and even Rouen. The part of the cathedral of Lincoln in which the influence of the French school has been supposed to be found, has no resemblance to this. I speak of the choir. On the exterior the choir of the cathedral of Lincoln is thoroughly English, or Norman if you will: one can perceive all the Norman influence; arches acutely pointed, blank windows in the clerestory, reminding one of the basilica covered with a wooden roof; a low triforium; each bay of the aisles divided into two by a small buttress; shafts banded. In the interior, vaults which have not at all the same construction as the French vaults of the end of the twelfth century; arch-mouldings slender, and deeply undercut; the abacus round; the tooth-ornament; which do not at all resemble the ornaments which we find at Paris, Sens, St. Denis, &c.
"As to the large rose window of the north transept, which is said to have been executed between 1190 and 1200, without disputing that date, which appears to me rather an early one for it, I cannot consider it as a French composition. In the first place, I do not know a rose window of that period in France which is divided into four compartments; the centre of this window does not resemble the arrangement adopted in France; and as to the decoration with small roses which cover the mouldings, they are a very characteristic English ornament.
"Nowhere in France do we find between 1190 and 1200 pillars similar to those at Lincoln, with the crockets placed between the shafts; nowhere in France do we find crockets carved like these; nowhere shafts with hexagonal concave section; nowhere capitals or abacus similar to those of these pillars.
"Moreover, I confess that I cannot believe readily in the date of 1190 to 1200 for the different parts of this choir; but that the date of 1220, or 1210 at the earliest, seems to me to agree better with the architectural character. We have in Normandy, especially in the cathedral of Rouen and the church of Eu, architecture of the date of 1190; it is purely French, that is to say, it corresponds exactly with the architecture of the 'Isle de France' except in certain details. At Eu, at the cathedral of Le Mans, at Seez, we have architecture which resembles that of the choir of Lincoln, but that architecture is from 1210 to 1220, it is the Norman school of the thirteenth century. There is, indeed, at Lincoln, an effort at, a tendency to originality, a style of ornament which attempts to emancipate itself; nevertheless the character is purely Anglo-Norman.
"The construction is English, the profiles of the mouldings are English, the ornaments are English, the execution of the work belongs to the English school of workmen of the beginning of the thirteenth century."
Sir G. G. Scott was entirely in agreement with the eminent French authority on this point. And the matter was summed up by Precentor Venables in the following words[ 3]:—"Regarding the choir and eastern transept of Lincoln, as we are fully justified in doing, as an English work, great and peculiar interest attaches to it as the earliest dated example of pure Gothic architecture, without any lingering trace of Transitional feeling; the first perfect development of what is known as the Early English style. Other examples of this style might, it is true, were their dates known, prove to have been earlier in execution. But their exact age is unrecorded, and Lincoln stands the foremost of all whose dates we know. Its fully developed style makes the work at first sight, as Sir G. G. Scott has said, seem almost 'an anachronism,' and has caused some, especially M. Viollet le Due, to imagine that it must be 'antedated.' But there is no building in England of which the precise age is more certainly known, and of the date of which the evidence is more indisputable. No one has ever doubted the early date of Bishop de Lucy's eastern chapels at Winchester. The commencement of these is placed by Professor Willis on documentary evidence in 1202, only ten years after the foundation of the Lincoln choir, while their character is even more advanced than that which is found at Lincoln. One leading characteristic of advance at Lincoln is the circular abacus of the columns, which is found throughout."
The work of St. Hugh at Lincoln is of such extraordinary importance to the student of architecture, that it may be well to closely follow an eminent authority in tracing the parts which date from this bishop's time. J. H. Parker, who remarked that the architecture of Lincoln Minster was his favourite study for thirty years, carefully investigated the matter, and the results were published in the 43rd volume of the Archæologia. He says that "the work of the time of St. Hugh, A.D. 1192-1200, is pure early English Gothic, and is the earliest building of that style in the world. The French have nothing so early, not even in the royal domain, which is usually cried up as the district of the earliest Gothic in the world. The best-informed French archæologists admit that they have nothing of the character of Lincoln for twenty or thirty years after the time of St. Hugh.... The portion of the cathedral (erected by St. Hugh) consists of the choir ... the aisles to it and the smaller or eastern transept, with the apsidal chapels on the eastern side of that, also two bays on each side of the chancel arch in the great transept; but the walls of the eastern side of that transept only—the the two ends with the wheel windows and the western walls of the transept are of later periods. The original work had thin walls only, with flat buttresses on the outside, and one of the elegant wall-arcades on the lower part of the inside, making the wall still thinner." Mr. Parker also considered that the vaults were insertions of subsequent periods, and that the original building had only a timber roof and a flat wooden ceiling, similar to that which remains at Peterborough. "When the vaults were added it was found necessary to make the walls thicker, and this was done by a casing on the inside; but the builders being unwilling to conceal the beautiful wall-arcade, made another similar to it in the lower part of the new inner wall, exactly like the earlier one against which it is built, but in such a manner as not to conceal it. This arrangement is proved by a flat vertical joint up the middle of the wall,... not content with this, when the vaults were inserted the architect also placed vaulting-shafts to help to carry those of the aisles, and these descend to the ground. This accounts for the three shafts one in front of the other, which have so long been a puzzle to architects and to students of architectural history. The walls were further strengthened by solid square buttresses built up against the flat ones; these now strong buttresses receive and support the thrust of the vault of the choir, which is carried over the aisle by flying buttresses, with circular openings over the vault of the aisle, built against the inner flat buttress of the inner wall, which had been sufficient to carry the wooden roof, but would not have carried the vault." It may be well to remark here that some authorities have not agreed with Mr. Parker with respect to the stone vault and the double wall-arcade, but have considered that the intention was from the beginning to construct them as they now are seen.