Geometrical Window, South Transept, Chester Cathedral
The fourteenth-century masons studied nature carefully, and put masses of carved fruit or flowers or leaves in the capitals of their columns. The arches of the nave of Chester Cathedral prove this fact.
A favourite ornament of the Decorated period is the crocket, a projecting bunch of foliage added to pinnacles, the hoods of arches, and the canopies of niches and tombs. Another device is the ball-flower carved in the mouldings. The ball-flower is as sure a sign of Decorated mouldings as the dog-tooth was in those of the Early English period.
Altar Tombs, Macclesfield
The choir of Stockport Parish Church is a beautiful example of the Decorated style, and the greater portions of Macclesfield, Nantwich, and Prestbury Parish Churches belong to the same period. In many other churches you will find some detail, generally a window or a doorway or an altar tomb, which will show you some of the features of this style.
In the Early English and Decorated periods a spire was sometimes added to the tower, as at Astbury and Bebington. The spire grew out of the pyramid-shaped roof with which the towers of Norman churches were covered.
In the low-lying portions of the Cheshire plain, where stone was scarce but timber plentiful, the framework of a church was often built of wood. In the village of Warburton, on the banks of the Mersey, is a fourteenth-century wooden church, which served as the chapel of a priory that was established here by the Normans. The name itself ('Werburgh-ton') speaks to us of S. Werburgh, the patron saint of the Abbey of Chester, and a field by the river is still called the Abbey Croft; the stone coffins within the church once contained the bones of monks who lived here.
Interior of Warburton Timber Church. Fourteenth Century