“Early English Buildings are readily distinguished from those of the Norman period by their comparative lightness, their long, narrow, lancet-shaped, pointed windows, their boldly projecting buttresses and pinnacles, and the acute pitch of the roof. Internally, we have pointed arches supported on slender and lofty pillars, which are frequently formed of a number of shafts connected at intervals by bands. One of these shafts is frequently carried up to the springing of the roof, where it ramifies in various directions to form the ribs of the vaulting, which have now lost the heaviness of the Norman period and are become light and elegant. The whole character of the building is changed, and instead of the heavy masses and horizontal lines of the Norman style, we have light and graceful forms and vertical lines.”

The rapidity with which the change of style took place has been pointed out, and the complete character of the change, which was developed as fully in some of the earliest buildings of the new style as in the latest. New ideas and a new life seem to have been given to architecture, and the builders appear to have revelled in it even to exuberance and excess, and it was necessary afterwards, in some degree, to soften down and subdue it. At no period has “the principle of verticality” been so completely carried out as in the Early English style, and even in some of the earliest examples of it.

The characteristic of lancet-windows applies only to the early part of the style, from A.D. 1190 to about A.D. 1220 or 1230, after that time circles in the head of the windows of two or more lights came in, and the circles became foliated by about A.D. 1230, and from that time to 1260 or 1270, when the Decorated style began to come into fashion.

The Windows in the earlier examples are plain, lancet-shaped, and generally narrow, as at Stanwick and Bakewell; sometimes they are richly molded within and without, but frequently have nothing but a plain chamfer outside and a wide splay within.

South-east View of Cowley Church, Oxon.

Square-headed windows are not at all uncommon in this style, more especially in houses; they frequently occur also in churches, as in the small church of Cowley, near Oxford. Sometimes, when the central

Stanwick, Northants, c. A.D. 1220.
An unusually narrow lancet-window, with very wide splay, and coupled shafts in the inner arch. 		Bakewell, Derbyshire.
A good example of the hood-mold over the inner arch (or scoinson-arch).