A. The lancet arch is seldom seen; the equilateral arch is generally, though not always, used. Both this and the obtuse-angled arch are, taken exclusively, difficult to be distinguished from those of an earlier period. In small buildings the edges of the pier arches are plain and chamfered. In large churches a series of quarter-round or roll-mouldings, which have often a square-edged fillet attached, are applied to the sub-arch, edges, and facing.
Q. What difference occurs in the piers from which these arches spring?
A. In large buildings piers of this style were composed of a cluster of slender cylindrical shafts, not standing detached from each other, as in the Early English style, but closely united. A common pier of this kind is formed of four shafts thus united, without bands, with a square-edged fillet running vertically up the face of each shaft. Sometimes a simple cylindrical pier is found. The octagonal pier, with plain sides, is very prevalent in small churches, and does not differ materially from the Early English pier of the same kind. The capitals are either bell-shaped, clustered, or octagonal, to correspond with the shape of the piers; but the cap mouldings are more numerous than in the earlier style. Sometimes the capitals are sculptured. In the churches of Monkskirby, Warwickshire, and of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, the arches which support the clerestory spring at once from the piers, without any intervening capitals, a practice not uncommon in the style of the fifteenth century, but very rare in this.
Q. How are the vaulted roofs of this style distinguished?
A. Of the large stone vaulted roofs each bay is intersected by longitudinal, transverse, and diagonal ribs, with shorter ribs springing from the bearing shafts intervening; thus forming a series of vaulting cells more numerous than are to be met with in the Early English style, though not subdivided to the excess observable in the vaulted roofs of the fifteenth century. Sculptured bosses often occur at the intersections. In the nave of York Cathedral, finished about A. D. 1330, the groining of the roof is less complicated than that of the choir of the same cathedral, constructed between A. D. 1360 and A. D. 1370[106-*]. Small structures are more simply vaulted. In a chantry chapel adjoining the north side of the chancel of Willingham Church, Cambridgeshire, is a very acute-pointed angular-shaped stone roof, the plain surface of the vaulting of which is supported by two pointed arches springing from corbels projecting from the walls; and these sustain straight-sided stone vaulting ribs, obliquely disposed to conform with the angle of the roof, and which act as principals; and above each arch, and between that and the ridge-line of the oblique ribs or principals, the space is filled with an open quatrefoil and other tracery. The north transept of Limington Church, Somersetshire, has a high pitched stone roof supported by groined ribs.
Q. Are there many wooden roofs of this style remaining?
A. We find comparatively few original wooden roofs in structures of the fourteenth century, for such have generally been superseded by roofs of a later date and of a more obtuse form. The high and acute pitch of the original roof is, however, still generally discernible by the weather moulding on the east wall of the tower. In the nave of Higham Ferrars Church, Northamptonshire, is a wooden roof which apparently belongs to this style: the roof is angular-pointed and open to the ridge-line, the walls are connected by tie-beams, and under each of these is a wooden arch formed of two ribs or beams springing from stone corbels.
Q. In what respect do the doors of this style differ?
