Fig. 396.
Then do precisely the same with the wider or central span, and our space is covered with oblong fan vaulting of the most usual kind. Now, as the lower arch of the central span is identical with the higher arch of the side spans, it follows that the fans in the sides (or aisles) are continued and completed in the central vault, the lower arch of the small vault being also continued round to complete the design. The decoration of the smaller fans then is in two stages, and that of the larger ones in three; but, the design of both being continuous, the one is only an extension of the other.
Had the architect stopped here, no system of vaulting, on the fan principle, or space so divided, could be more systematic or more simple in its ideal.
He had no thought, however, of stopping at so commonplace a stage, and his pillars were designed only to do their work on paper, and then to be erased. The columns were omitted, and their places supplied by pendants; but, as such a roof could not stand for a moment, something must be done to supply the support which the pillars would have afforded.
Fig. 397.—Henry VII’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.
This was effected by the introduction of strong transverse arches crossing the whole chapel, and springing much lower than the vaulting ([Fig. 397]). These crossed the narrower spans, striking arbitrarily into their fans, and uniting themselves with the central vaulting. The pendants are not to be looked upon as constructionally interfering with these transverse arches, as they become, in fact, part of them, and the arches may be supposed to pass through them in an imaginary line, so that, as in the case of the Lady Chapel at Caudebec, the pendant is in reality a voussoir, the greater portion of which hangs down below the face of the vaulting; the small arches upwards towards the wall help to strengthen and weight the transverse arches at their weakest part.
