The Towers in this style are frequently extremely rich and elaborately ornamented, having four or five storeys of large windows with rich canopies, pinnacles, and tabernacles; double buttresses at the angles, and rich deep open parapets, with pinnacles and crocketed turrets at the corners, having small flying or hanging pinnacles attached. These very gorgeous towers are chiefly found in Somersetshire, as at Wrington, Taunton, Brislington, Dundry, &c. There are, however, few which, for beauty of proportion and chasteness of composition, can rival that of Magdalen College, Oxford. In that example the lower storeys are extremely plain, all the ornament being reserved for the belfry-windows, the parapet, and pinnacles; by this judicious arrangement the eye takes in the whole subject at once, thus giving to it a solemnity and a repose which are not attained by the more gorgeous specimens before referred to. This tower was originally intended to stand alone, as a campanile, or belfry-tower; the buildings which have been erected on two sides of it are of a subsequent period. At the time it was building, Wolsey, afterwards the celebrated Cardinal and Prime Minister of Henry VIII., was a Fellow of this College, and held the office of Bursar; tradition gives him the credit of the design, there is no better authority for this, but it is probably true he was a great builder.
| Dundry, Bristol, c. A.D. 1520. | Magdalen College, Oxford, c. A.D. 1492. |
The light and elegant style of vaulting known as fan-tracery[F], which is peculiar to this style, with its delicate pendants and lace-like ornaments, harmonizes finely with the elaborate ornament of the tabernacle-work below.
The Porches are in general very fine, and highly enriched with panel-work, buttresses, and pinnacles; open parapets, windows, and tabernacles with figures, flanking the window or the outer arch, and in the interior sometimes a richly-groined vault. Very fine examples of these porches are found in Norfolk, Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Dorsetshire.
There are frequently very good porches of this style of a more ordinary kind in the parish churches, with a stone vault, as at the west end of Woodstock, Oxon. This church had been partly rebuilt in the Georgian era, in the style of that period, on the side next the street; but at the back and at the end, where it is out of sight, the old work has been preserved in the complete restoration of this church in the time of Queen Victoria.
West Porch, Woodstock, Oxon, c. A.D. 1500.
In later examples we find ornament used to such an excess as completely to overpower the usual characteristic features of the building; no large space is left on which the eye can rest, but every portion is occupied with panelling or other ornament.