Vaults are met with in Renaissance buildings, but they are a less distinctive feature of such buildings than they were in the Gothic period; and in many cases where a vault or a series of vaults would have been employed by a Gothic architect, a Renaissance architect has preferred to make use of a dome or a series of domes. This is called domical vaulting. Examples of it occur occasionally in Gothic work.
Waggon-head Vaulting, or Barrel-Vaulting.—A simple form of tunnel-like vaulting, which gets its name from its resemblance to the tilt often seen over large waggons, or to the half of a barrel.
Wainscot.—(1) The panelling often employed to line the walls of a room or building; (2) a finely marked variety of oak imported chiefly from Holland; probably so called because wainscot oak was at one time largely employed for such panelling.
Weathering.—A sloping surface of stone employed to cover the set-off (which see) of a wall or buttress and protect it from the effects of weather.
Wheel Window.—A circular window, and usually one in which mullions radiate from a centre towards the circumference like the spokes of a wheel; sometimes called a rose-window.
Window-head.—For illustrations of the various forms and filling-in of Gothic window-heads, see the words Arch and Tracery.
