A B C of Gothic Architecture

by John Henry Parker

Ambry, or Locker, with the Door, Rushden, Northants, c. A.D. 1350.

Piscina, Tackley, Oxon.

Timber Roofs of this period are comparatively scarce, although they are more common than is usually supposed; but it is lamentable to observe how fast they are disappearing: that of the hall of the abbey of Great Malvern, the finest example that existed in this country, or probably in any other, was wantonly destroyed: it was a wooden ceiling, with an outer roof.

Bradenstoke Priory, or Clack Abbey, near Chippenham, in Wiltshire, is, or was, a fine example. The timber roofs of churches of this style are not generally so fine as those of halls. There are, however, many very good specimens of Decorated roofs remaining in churches, as at Adderbury, Oxfordshire, Raunds, Northamptonshire, and several others in that neighbourhood.

It should be observed that what are called open timber roofs are, very frequently, inner roofs or ceilings for ornament only, with a plain substantial outer roof over them, as at Sparsholt, Berkshire. These inner roofs or wooden ceilings, are sometimes of precisely the same form as stone vaults, which are, in fact, ceilings of another kind. The wooden vaults of Warmington and the cloisters of Lincoln have been already mentioned; those of the nave of York Minster and Winchester Cathedral are also of wood only. At Kiddington, Oxfordshire, is a good example of a Decorated timber-roof of an ordinary parish church. At Kidlington, in the same county, there is also a Decorated timber-roof to the south aisle of the nave.

Kiddington, Oxon, c. A.D. 1350.

Ceilings are very useful and often necessary, and the proper thing to be considered is how best to make them ornamental also, as they were formerly. The Puritan fashion of plain whitewashed plaster ceilings caused a natural prejudice against ceilings altogether, which has been carried too far. These were introduced in the seventeenth century, and continued during the ignorant and apathetic eighteenth, and first half of the nineteenth. In some instances these flat plaster ceilings entirely concealed the upper part of fine Decorated windows; this was notably the case in the fine church of Haseley, Oxfordshire; the plaster ceiling had there been introduced in the time of George the Third. This church was the first to be restored by the Oxford Architectural Society, and the first in which open-seats were restored in the diocese of Oxford.

The open timber-roofs of the Victorian Gothic architects, whether in what are miscalled restorations or in new churches, have quite a distinct character of their own, a general imitation of the time of Edward the First or Second; but no one with eyes in his head can mistake these for old work, although in some of the real restorations the work is so well done that inexperienced eyes are frequently deceived. In roofs and painted glass this is never the case; the English painted glass of the Decorated style is generally very good, with grey backgrounds, and bands of figures in colour, which are thus well seen; in modern glass, bright colours are put in the backgrounds, and destroy the effect of the figures. The roofs are also generally a bad imitation of the old work.