opening is square-headed, there is an arch or a dripstone in the form of an arch over it, with the space or tympanum filled up with ornament, as at Ringstead, Northants. But this arch over the square head is frequently wanting, and these simple square-headed windows of the thirteenth century, which are very common, especially in castles, are often mistaken for Perpendicular work of the fifteenth.
In the Early English style we have, in the later examples, tracery in the heads of the windows, but it is almost invariably in the form of circles, either plain or foliated, and is constructed in a different manner from genuine Decorated tracery. At first the windows have merely openings pierced through the solid masonry of the head, the solid portions thus left gradually becoming smaller and the openings larger, until the solid parts are reduced to nearly the same thickness as the mullions; but they are not molded, and do not form continuations of the mullions until we arrive at real Decorated tracery. This kind of tracery was called by Professor Willis plate tracery; being, in fact, a plate of stone pierced with holes: it is extensively used in Early French work. The more usual kind of tracery, as at Winchester and Romsey, is called by Professor Willis bar tracery, to distinguish it from the earlier kind. These terms are so expressive and convenient that they are now generally adopted.
WINDOWS.
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Romsey Abbey, c. A.D. 1250. A very rich example, with beautiful foliage on the inner arch, and shafts to that and to the mullions. |
St. John’s, Winchester, c. A.D. 1260. This belongs to the later division of the style, with foliated circles in the tracery of the window, and shafts to the inner arch. |
The Arches are frequently, but not always, acutely pointed, and in the more important buildings are generally richly molded, as in Westminster Abbey, either with or without the tooth-ornament, as the arches at York Minster. It has been already observed that the form of the arch is never a safe guide to the date or style of a building—it depended much more on convenience than anything else; the moldings are the most safe guide: for instance, the arches of the nave of Westminster Abbey are of the same form as those of the choir and transepts, yet they were built by Sir Richard Whittington, (better known by the story of his cat), in the fifteenth century, and their moldings belong distinctly to that period. In plain parish churches the arches are frequently without moldings, merely recessed and chamfered; the only character being in the capitals and bases, or perhaps in the hoodmolds, though these also are sometimes wanting.
Very acute arches are generally the earliest, but this cannot be relied upon as a rule; an Early English arch is sometimes very flat, being made within an existing Norman one, which was semicircular, owing to some change of plan, as in the Lady Chapel of Oxford Cathedral; and similar examples are not uncommon, when the convenience of the construction calls for flat arches.
Wall Arcade in Chapel of Choir, Westminster Abbey, A.D. 1260.