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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The neighbouring village church at Skelton—said to have been built by the same hands as the transept of the cathedral, and the ruined chapel of St. Leonard’s Hospital in the gardens round the abbey—show how unerringly the same style fitted itself to works of the most stupendous or of the humblest scale.

This great county is filled with the noble productions of the thirteenth century. The minsters of Beverley and Ripon owe much of their beauty to it; and scarcely one of the abbey churches, whose lovely but mournful ruins add a charm so melancholy to the secluded valleys of Yorkshire, fails to show the work of the great period.

I cannot attempt even a cursory description. Go, I pray you, and study for yourselves: go to Fountains Abbey, and study well its choir and eastern chapels, with their massive pillars, the tallest perhaps in England, and the remains of its wonderful abbatial hall, exposed to view by the recent excavations, and its many other wonders; but do not be satisfied with a passing visit: take up your quarters at Ripon, and follow up your studies from day to day. A week is but a short allowance for so rich a school of art. Then go to Rivaulx and Whitby, twin works, it would seem, of the same accomplished architect. I cannot award the palm to either—they are truly a “par nobile fratrum,” and it is fair to prefer whichever of them we have seen the last. Their great point of difference is that the choir of one has been vaulted, and that of the other has shown its timber roof; but in glorious architecture they are equal, and almost unequalled. As you go from York to Whitby you pass a small fragment of the Abbey of Kirkham: stop and look at it: small as it is, it is one of the best designed pieces of work I ever saw. If from Whitby you cross the moors to Guisborough, you will see what was probably the work of the very end of the century—the stupendous east end of that abbey, with its east window exceeding even that at Lincoln in height.

If you go on to Durham, the Chapel of the Nine Altars will rivet your attention;[56] and farther yet at Hexham,[57] at Dryburgh, and far on through Scotland, to the Chapel of Holyrood, and the glorious remains of Elgin Cathedral, and that noble temple yet preserved unruined at Glasgow, you will find a long series of the art of this wonderful age.

In returning, pray look in at Furness Abbey, where you will find an absolute gem of our style in the ruined chapter-house.[58] It has been of the same construction with the Temple Church, and of exquisite beauty.

I have passed over the whole series of southern examples—as Hythe, Shoreham, Winchester, Boxgrove, Wells, Llandaff (one of its most original productions), Worcester, Lichfield, Hereford, and a hundred more examples, all of which supply proofs of the wonderful perfection of the architecture of this century.

But a mere catalogue is both useless and wearisome.

I ought also to have called special attention to the circumstance, that while in France nearly every great church is vaulted, such is not the case in English works: they seem to have acted with perfect freedom in this respect, and their churches, even the largest of them, have frequently had open timber roofs, and suffer little by the variety.

One thing cannot fail to strike every one who closely studies our old architecture. In early Norman buildings we often find rude and clumsy workmanship; in works from the middle of the fourteenth century, on to the extinction of Gothic architecture, we frequently meet with the same—the work of rude, untutored hands, evidently unable to do justice to their style; but from about 1175 to the end of the thirteenth century, and nearly fifty years later, we scarcely ever meet with this inequality. The art seemed to be all-pervading. Certain buildings may have been plain to a degree, and rustic in their object and material, yet you rarely find anything you can call rude in workmanship or unskilful in treatment. It was a great period, and its greatness seemed to pervade even the most secluded districts, and the workmen everywhere to have felt a pride in keeping up to the period of their art in which their lot had been cast. Nor need we wonder at this, for everywhere were buildings going on; scarcely a village church escaped the notice of the builders of this wonderful age. The whole country was engaged in the one work of building, and that with an ardent feeling to render their work worthy of the style they had generated.

And let us not imagine that the architecture of the age developed itself only in cathedrals, abbeys, or churches of any kind; all other buildings evince the same spirit: a barn of the thirteenth century shows the nobleness of the pervading style as clearly as even the cathedral itself, and what remains of their domestic architecture tells the same tale. Everything was done well, in good taste, and in accordance with reasonable and practical requirements and the means at command.