Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

I will close my outline of the English transition by referring to four examples which mark the limits of its duration, by showing how soon the true Early English attained its perfect development. The examples I cite for this purpose are the following:—

Ist. The choir and eastern transepts at Lincoln, which were completed by Bishop Hugh before the close of the twelfth century, and which, though of early character, are decidedly not transitional, but developed Early Pointed.

2d. The western portals at St. Alban’s, built by William de Cella between the years 1195 and 1205.[31]

These are among the most beautiful Early English works in the kingdom, and have no Romanesque reminiscences, nor any French characteristics, except the crochet capital, which is magnificently developed beneath round abaci.

3d. The eastern chapels at Winchester, built by Bishop de Lucy about 1204. These have no striking feature, excepting that they are pure “Early English,” and even show suggestions of tracery.

4th. The Galilee porch at Ely, built by Bishop Eustacious, who held the see from about 1195 to 1214, and which is one of the most magnificent specimens of the fully-developed style in the country.[32] It has the crochet capital gorgeously enriched, not with French, but English conventional foliage; while the arch mouldings are filled with the most exquisite foliage of pure Early English character.[33]

Thus we see that though the French preceded us in the commencement of their transition, our own was, with very trifling exceptions, equally national with theirs, and that it was not only completed as soon, but that it was carried through to a style more distinctive, and fully as national as the glorious Early Pointed of France.

On this subject I will only add one remark: Early as were the first French developments compared with ours; long as was the interval of stagnation between St. Denis and St. Germain des Pres; many as were the steps between the stages of the transition in both countries, and many more before we had developed out of it that Pointed style we know as the “Early English,” with its lancet windows and round abaci; the whole was, nevertheless, carried through within the period of one lifetime. Not only were the transitions of France and England carried on to perfection under contemporary monarchs, but that queen who was present at the consecration of Suger’s precocious monument, who caused that subsequent stagnation by her frivolity, and who perhaps witnessed the completion of St. Cross during her long captivity at Winchester, actually lived there long enough to have seen the fully-developed Early English of De Lucy’s chapels in the neighbouring cathedral.

The length to which my remarks on the French and English transition have been necessarily extended has compelled me to limit what I hoped to have said on that of Germany to a very few observations.

I have already mentioned the extraordinary tardiness of the Germans in relinquishing their much-loved Romanesque. I am not prepared, as in the case of French and English buildings, to trace out the first appearance of the pointed arch, and I have no doubt that there are numerous instances of its use at an earlier date; but there is nothing like a transition into the pointed-arch style till the commencement of the thirteenth century—after it had been completed both in England and France. Nevertheless, the German transition is as distinctly national and as evident an offspring of their own Romanesque as that of France or England; indeed, it is so peculiar as to appear, at first sight, to have little in connection with the architecture of either of those countries, and is usually spoken of as being only a slight variety upon German Romanesque. Let any one look at a few of its leading productions—as St. Martin, St. Gereon, and a few others at Cologne; the churches at Neuss near Dusseldorf, Limburg on the Lahn, Zinzig, or Gelnhaussen; the western façades at Andernach, Xanten, St. Sibald at Nuremberg, and at Halberstadt, the east end of Magdeburg, or at the representations of the cloisters (now destroyed) of St. Gereon, or Altenberg, or at any of the multitudinous list of German churches of the first quarter of the thirteenth century—and he will at once see that they present as natural and logical a transition from their own national Romanesque as the works of Suger do from that of the royal domain of France. The use of the crochet capitals in some of the later examples is the solitary instance of any direct imitation of the already perfected transition in the neighbouring countries.