Ronald P. Jones, Photo.]
THE GREAT EAST WINDOW.
BAY OF ARCHBISHOP ROGER’S CHOIR (WITHOUT THE VAULTING).
(From a drawing by Sir G. G. Scott, by permission of the Archæological Institute.)
The treatment of the vaulting-shafts is very remarkable; indeed, nothing is more instructive than the variety shown in the treatment of this feature throughout Archbishop Roger’s church, the different parts of which are suggestive of nothing so much as of a series of architectural experiments. Here, upon the capital of each column, rests a sort of compound rectangular plinth, from which project three corbels, hollowed underneath and having little blocks beneath their overhanging edge. From this plinth and corbels springs a cluster of no less than five shafts, which, by their united width, conceal the springing of the upper order of the main arches. They are banded at the string-course below the triforium, and end at the sill of the clearstorey in a compound capital, of which the three central members are square, and the others round. Upon this capital, apparently, stand the two adjoining shafts that carry the thickening of the wall above the clearstorey, and here (but hidden by the vaulting) stands also the original roof-shaft, and these three are ‘detached.’ Thus the arrangement is in principle similar to that adopted in the north transept, while at the same time the clustered shafts are even more disproportionate here than there to the slight burden they have to carry; indeed the effect is that of five shafts diminishing to one. The vaulting hides a feature which is not found in the transept, namely, a little lancet arch whose apex comes exactly behind the roof-shaft in each bay.
Watson, Ripon, Photo.]