The slope of the roof is much lower than before, and often the former high-pitched roofs were at this period replaced by the almost flat roofs prevalent in the fifteenth century. The parapets are often embattled.
The rose, the badge of the houses of York and Lancaster, is often used as an ornamental detail, and also rows of the Tudor flower, composed of four petals, frequently occur. One of the most distinctive mouldings is the cavetto, a wide shallow hollow in the centre of a group of mouldings. Also we find a peculiar wave, and a kind of double ogee moulding which are characteristic of the style.
Spires of this period are not very common, and usually spring from within the parapet. The interiors of our churches were enriched at this time with much elaborate decoration. Richly carved woodwork in screens, rood-lofts, pulpits, and pews, sculptured sedilia and a noble reredos, and much exuberance of decorative imagery and panel-work, adorned our churches at this time, much of which was obliterated or destroyed by spoliators of the Reformation period, the iconoclastic Puritans of the seventeenth century, or the “restorers” of the nineteenth. However, we may be thankful that so much remains to the present day of the work of our great English church-builders, while we endeavour to trace the history of each church written in stone, and to appreciate these relics of antiquity which most of our villages possess.