Fig. 519.—Dunblane Cathedral. Half-Plan of Nave Piers.
The west end ([Fig. 520]) is one of the finest parts of the cathedral. On the ground floor it contains the western doorway ([Fig. 521]), deeply recessed with a series of shafts and arch mouldings of line first pointed design, flanked by an acutely pointed blind arch on each side with trefoiled head within it. This ground story is surmounted by three lofty pointed windows (see [Fig. 520]), all of equal height, and each divided into two lights by a central mullion, and having the arch head filled in the central window with a cinquefoil, and in the side windows with a quatrefoil. The windows are all enclosed with a label moulding, having carved terminals. The jambs and arches have plain triple splays ([Fig. 522]), and the openings in the arch heads are cut out of plain circular shields like the windows of the clerestory. A passage like that of the clerestory runs round in the west wall, and has an inner arcade of clustered shafts, with arch mouldings and tracery similar to those of the clerestory. In the interior arcade the three arch heads are all filled with cinquefoils cut through what is almost a plain shield ([Fig. 523]). The gable is filled with an elegant vesica piscis ([Fig. 524]), to which Ruskin draws attention in his Edinburgh Lectures.
Fig. 520.—Dunblane Cathedral. West End.
The edifice has not been intended to be vaulted. The buttresses of the nave are light (see [Fig. 517]), and they are finished with plain
Fig. 521.—Dunblane Cathedral. West Doorway.