The buttresses (see page [17]) of this period are, as a rule, simple in form, and in small churches consist of two or more stages, each set-off or division being sloped at the top to carry off the rain. In larger buildings the buttress generally finishes with a triangular head or gable, and is frequently carried above the parapet, except where stone vaulting is used, in which case it is covered with a pinnacle either plain or ornamented.

Salisbury Cathedral.
Begun in 1220. The spire was added, 1350.
Drawn by Sidney Heath.
Click to [ENLARGE]

The edges are often chamfered or the angles ornamented with slender shafts. A niche to contain a statue is occasionally sunk in the face of the buttress, but this feature is more common in the next or Decorated period, although the change from one period to another was so gradual that the exact date of a niched buttress would be difficult to determine were there no other features to guide us.

Examples of Early English Capitals
and Ornament
Click to [ENLARGE]

Flying buttresses were first introduced at this period, and are common in all large buildings with vaulted roofs. They are generally of simple design, with a plain capping and archivolt, and they spring from the wall buttress to the clerestory (see page [17]).

CHAPTER V.

THE DECORATED STYLE.

The best examples of Gothic architecture may be said to have been erected between the years 1180 and 1300, and from the latter year many writers date the commencement of its decline. In England we owe nearly the whole of such magnificent buildings as the cathedrals of Lincoln, Salisbury, Worcester, and the abbey of Westminster to the 13th century, and there is scarcely a cathedral or abbey that does not owe some beautiful portion of its structure to the builders of the same period, the transepts and lady chapel of Hereford Cathedral, the eastern transepts of Durham, the nave and transepts of Wells, the transepts of York, the choir presbytery, central and eastern transepts of Rochester, the eastern portion of the choir of Ely, the west front of Peterborough, the choir of Southwell, the nave and transepts of Lichfield, and the choir of S. David's being a few of our most characteristic examples of this period. The style which followed the Early English is known as the Geometric or Early Decorated style, and it embraces roughly the end of the 13th century and the first twenty or thirty years of the 14th century, and continued in its later or Curvilinear form to near the end of that century. Perhaps the most perfect example of the Geometric style in the world is the cathedral church at Amiens, which is usually called the mother church of this style, and although she has many daughters, none of them can be said to equal their parent in beauty.

In England the most perfect examples are not to be looked for in cathedrals and large churches, but in their chapels, and the most superb specimen we possessed, S. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, has been destroyed within comparatively recent years. Those left to us include the chapel of the palace of the bishops of Ely, in Ely Place, Holborn, now the Roman Catholic Church of S. Etheldreda, a building almost identical in plan with the vanished chapel of S. Stephen. Trinity Church, Ely, once Our Lady's Chapel, and Prior Crawden's Chapel, in the same city, are lovely examples of the latest development of the Curvilinear style, while the former is considered the most highly-wrought building in England. Belonging to this period, also, is the choir of Merton College Chapel, Oxford, and Luton Church.