English Gothic is usually divided into three periods or styles, viz.: Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular, prevailing (approximately) during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries respectively, although there was no strict division between them.
Early English Reigns of Richard I., John and Henry III. (A.D. 1189-1272).—The characteristics of this style as compared with the Norman are, “the comparative lightness of the structures, the long, narrow, lancet-shaped, pointed windows, the boldly projecting buttresses and pinnacles, the acute pitch of the roof, and generally the variety, the beauty of proportion, and the singular grace and vigour of the ornaments.”
Internally, we have pointed arches, supported on slender and lofty pillars. When the style had become fully established, the builders appear to have revelled in it even to exuberance and excess.
Church building had received a severe check in the reign of John, during the interdict of 16 years that rested upon the kingdom, but soon after the accession of Henry III., who was himself an enthusiast, architecture revived and developed very rapidly.
One of the chief characteristics of the Early English styles consists in the mouldings, in which a new principle was embodied. This was the idea of obtaining effective combinations of light and shade by means of “undercutting.” Such a combination of projecting rounds and deep hollows would present to the eye the appearance of alternate bands of light and shade, the depths of the hollows causing them to appear almost black.
The most characteristic ornament of this style is the “dog-tooth” or “tooth” ornament. (Pl. [34], Figs. 9 and 11.) It consists of a series of flowers, each of the four petals, bent backwards, the division between the petals being placed in the middle of the sides of the pyramid thus formed.
A very striking peculiarity is the foliage used in sculpture, which is technically known as “stiff-leaf foliage,” though the stiffness is in the stems rather than in the leaves. The latter take the form of a conventional three-lobed foliage. (Pl. [35], Fig. 1.) It copied no individual leaf, “though it has all the essential qualities of Nature.” Its use gives great richness of effect to the building, and is supposed to have been developed by gradual change from the Classical Orders, chiefly from the Ionic Volute.
The Crocket was also introduced as a new feature in this style. It is an ornament used to decorate the edges of the architectural units, and is supposed to be derived from the crook of a bishop’s pastoral staff. In fine Early English work the Abacus (Pl. [35], Fig. 1A) is circular, and is deeply undercut.
The Pillars are usually round or octagonal. They are built of large blocks of dressed stone, and so differ from the Norman pillars, which consisted of rubble with a facing of stone. In the more important buildings they are formed of four or more slender shafts of Purbeck marble, which are placed around a large circular column of stone, and their dark colour causes them to “stand out” against the paler central stone pier.