Examples of the semicircular-headed doorway are of constant occurrence throughout the whole Scottish Decorated period, accompanied with the utmost variety and extent of decoration. The west door of the Abbey Church, Haddington, is a very pleasing example of two orders repeating the favourite roll-and-fillet moulding, with a deep hollow between filled with floriated decoration. It is divided into two doorways by a central shaft, and both it and the jam-shafts have richly floriated capitals and moulded bases. The triple, round-headed windows of the tower, and indeed the whole style of its decoration, are no less markedly characteristic of the peculiarities of the Scottish Decorated period. A still more beautiful doorway, of similar construction, formed, till the year 1829, the entrance to a chapel added to the south aisle of the collegiate church of St. Giles at Edinburgh in 1387. It is now rebuilt between two of the pillars of the central tower, but shorn of many of its finest adjuncts. Similar illustrations might be greatly multiplied, as in the vestry door of the cathedral at Iona, filled in with a trefoil arch; in the beautiful cloister doorway of Melrose Abbey; in the gracefully proportioned priests' door of the collegiate church of Seton, on the south side of the choir, adorned with the arms of Sir William Seton on a shield couche, about the year 1400, but more probably the work of his son; who was buried there in 1441; and in the richly decorated south doorway of Holyrood Abbey, with ogee canopy, and flanking buttresses, the work of Abbot Crawfurd about 1458. The same form of doorway was to be seen, accompanied with several varieties of detail, in the collegiate church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, founded by Mary of Gueldres, the widow of James II., in 1462, and recklessly demolished in the progress of the North British Railway operations in 1848. In some respects this was the finest example of late decorated work in Scotland. The entrance from the north transept to the chantry chapel, latterly used as the vestry, was by a neat round-headed doorway, with a simple roll-and-triple-fillet moulding, with a broad hollow externally running continuously round the arch, and with a hood-mould enriched with flowers in the hollow, springing from moulded corbels.
Another small round-headed doorway, with a similarly decorated hood moulding, but with engaged jam-shafts with moulded capitals and bases, latterly blocked up, had formed the entrance to the north transept; and a large one, of like construction, but with the rich mouldings in the jams carried round the head of the arch, without capitals, was placed within a groined porch formed in the angle of the south transept, and formed the principal entrance to the church. The decorations of this fine doorway consisted entirely of a series of filleted quarter-roll mouldings, continued round the recess of the doorway without any break. The most beautiful portion of the whole building was the richly decorated groined roof of the choir and apse, with its vaulting shafts springing from corbels sculptured into all manner of grotesque forms of imps, grinning masks, and caricatures of monks and friars, such as the one here figured, which projected nearly over the site of the old high altar, as if in purposed mockery of the rites on which it seemed to look down. Yet above these unseemly drolls rose the ribbed groins of the beautiful roof, in its eastern portion especially, hardly to be surpassed in chaste design or elaborately varied details. In this point, however, it more nearly approximated to the usual arrangement of English roofs, being enriched with clustering ribs and bosses, and divided by transverse pointed arches into vaulted bays. The most striking peculiarity in the Scottish stone roof-work is the use of the single vault instead of the transverse groined vaulting, deemed essential elsewhere to ecclesiastical roofing. In its earliest and simplest forms, as in the choir at South Queensferry, it differs in no way from the contemporary baronial halls, as at Borthwick or Crichton, from which it appears to have been directly derived. It is probable, however, that pictorial decoration was employed to relieve its otherwise bald surface, as was certainly the case in the baronial halls, traces of which still remain both at Borthwick and Craigmillar. It continued in use to the last in this very simple form, where little decoration was required, as in the muniment room of the church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, while the choir of the same building presented one of the chastest and richest specimens of a groined vault in Scotland.
The single vaulted church roof, so like that of the baronial hall, may be very fitly traced to the almost exclusive occupation of Scottish builders, for nearly a century previous to its introduction in military architecture. But while retaining its form they speedily learned to restore it to harmony with the decorated work below. The chapel of St. Mirinus, more frequently termed the sounding aisle, attached to the south side of Paisley Abbey, furnishes a remarkably beautiful specimen of a ribbed roof of this simple form, treated with great variety, and an ingenious adaptation to the variations in the walls from which it springs, which shews how entirely the architect was familiar with this style of vaulting, so little known elsewhere. The choir of the collegiate church of Bothwell, founded by the grim Earl of Douglas in 1398, is another very fine example, in which the richness of details abundantly proves that economy had no influence in the choice of this favourite form of ceiling. Another magnificent specimen of the richest style of Scottish decorated Gothic is Lincluden Abbey, the work of the same grim Earl; but its graceful vaulting-shafts no longer sustain the branching ribs of stone. The choir at Seton is a plainer and less complete example. Only the eastern portion, including the apse, is decorated with moulded ribs, which spring from sculptured corbels, and meet in the ridge rib, where they are tied by equally fine bosses at the intersections. George, second Lord Seton, is said by the historian of the house of Seton to have "pendit the choir and biggit the vestry," about the year 1493;[648] but the chronology of this work is manifestly wrong in some places, and is altogether a very unsafe guide for the ecclesiologist. In nearly all those examples no side aisles exist, and they are indeed very generally confined in Scotland to the largest collegiate and abbey churches, being introduced evidently less for ornament than for use, where an unusual amount of space was required. Occasionally even the semicircular arch is employed in the roof, as in the Lady Chapel at Roslin, where the greater elevation of the pointed arch would be objectionable from its peculiar position. The choir of the beautiful little cross-church of St. Monance, Fifeshire, finished apparently in 1369, furnishes an interesting example of the transition to the transverse vaulted roof, the ridge ribs of the cross-vaults being bent down about half-way from the centre, where they diverge from a boss into three groin ribs, the centre one springing nearly from the top of each window, which is as usual considerably below the vaulted roof. The choir-roof of the collegiate church of the Holy Trinity at Edinburgh, A.D. 1462, may be considered as marking the period when the peculiar Scottish vaulted roof was generally abandoned, though more than one interesting example of its use at later dates remain to be noticed. It is retained in the older portion of the north aisle of the choir of St. Giles's Church at Edinburgh, while the two eastern bays, as well as the beautifully groined centre aisle, the work of the same period as the collegiate foundation of Mary of Gueldres, are in conformity with the newer style.
The same convenience which suggested the use of the round instead of the more elevated pointed arch, also occasionally led to the use of the still more depressed segmental arch, as in the chantry doorway at Bothwell; or even to the two-centred flat arch with segmental curves, as in the great doorway of the beautiful screen and organ-loft at Glasgow, and in a smaller doorway, the work of Abbot Crawfurd, circa 1460, now built into the east arch of the north aisle of Holyrood Abbey. The segmental arch is most frequently employed in monumental recesses, as at St. Bridget's Douglas, St. Kentigern's Borthwick, and in the choir at Seton; but other Scottish churches exhibit the semicircular arch employed for the same purpose, as in the magnificent tomb of Margaret, countess of Douglas, at Lincluden, and in the recesses under the great north and south windows of the transepts at Seton. One of the most beautiful Scottish examples of a late segmental arched doorway, which is figured here, is that of the vestry or chantry chapel of Bothwell Church, Lanarkshire.
Bothwell Chantry Door.
Dunkeld Cathedral.