Early English Gothic architecture

“ Then came the era of the great Gothic builders, and early in the thirteenth century the monks began to rebuild the east end of the church, the tower, and one bay of the nave, and nobly did they accomplish their undertaking. They accomplished a work which caused their Minster to rank with the best achievements of Early English Gothic art, and we must look to Salisbury or the choir of Lincoln to find anything equal to it. For many years the old Norman nave remained. Nearly 100 years passed away, and then a new era of building dawned. ”

“ These shafts are thus only decorative features employed precisely as were the engaged columns in the early arched constructions of the Romans, and the buildings are throughout, notwithstanding their pointed arches, the same in principle as those of round arched Romanesque design. They consist merely of massive walls with timber roofs over their central aisles; hence there are no lateral pressures calling for a Gothic buttress system, and they have no organic framework in which their strength resides. ”

“ We need not stop to consider the earlier innovations in buildings in which the round arch alone continues to be employed—as in the apse of St. Martin des Champs at Paris, and in the Collegiate Church of Poissy, where the vaulting compartments are merely separated by transverse ribs,—but rather begin our investigation of the growth of Gothic in France, with those monuments in which the pointed arch first appears as a constructive device in vaulting. ”

“ The Gothic architecture of the early part of the fifteenth century was ripe for the spirit of healthy reform. It had been actively accumulating, during the progress of the age of Christianity, a boundless wealth of forms, a vast amount of constructive resources, and material fit for innumerable architectural expressions of human power. But in the last two centuries of this era the Love which gave life to this architecture in its earlier developments gradually became swallowed up in the Pride of the workman ”

“ There are hardly any of the magnificent and serene constructions of the early Gothic which have not, in the course of time, been gradually thinned and pared away into these skeletons, which sometimes indeed, when their lines truly follow the structure of the original masses, have an interest like that of the fibrous framework of leaves from which the substance has been dissolved, but which are usually distorted as well as emaciated, and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of things that were; they are to true architecture what the Greek ghost was to the armed and living frame ”

“ The inert principle of construction, the massive walls, the small apertures, and the horizontal lines of the Romanesque architecture make it still closely akin to the old Roman style. But there are rudiments in it already quickening with latent life, which will completely transform the Romanesque building. The evolution of the Gothic system consisted in gradually perfecting the rudimentary skeleton, so as to make it an independent structure. To every part a complete and independent working efficiency was to be given, and an appropriate artistic, as well as a mechanical value. ”

“ When a change or revolution in the order of things sets in, we find generally the style of architecture changing also to adapt itself to the new laws and new thought. This illustrates, to a certain degree, the reason why the so-called Victorian Gothic has not developed to any great extent in England, although some of our best architects sought to revive the earlier Gothic some years ago. ”

“ They are monoliths of slender proportions, though heavy enough for their work, which is considerable. They taper a little and have a slight entasis—a lingering characteristic of ancient art which appears also in several other early Gothic buildings. Their capitals are considerably advanced towards Gothic form by spreading to receive, upon an ample abacus surface, the threefold load of transverse, longitudinal, and diagonal ribs. It is to be regretted that we have now no means of ascertaining what were the forms of the choir vaults and what was their system of supports. ”

“ Classic architecture is that of the lintel and impost, involving the idea of rest: Gothic is that of the arch and the flying buttress, involving the idea of life and motion. The two ideas are absolutely opposed to each other. Classic architecture, directly it admits the arch, ceases to be true to itself in any real artistic sense; yet if it refuses to use, and to exhibit the use of the arch, it denies itself wilfully the use of the best known mode of construction. Gothic architects may still, on the other hand, as they always have done, gain much from the teachings of Classic buildings. ”

“ To make the figure itself an architectural support would not be in accordance with the rational spirit of Gothic art. [7] Nor, in true Gothic, are statues set in niches in walls. For in Gothic the wall spaces are small and contain no more substance than is necessary, leaving nothing to spare for recesses. The places occupied by the statues in the buttresses of the Cathedral of Paris are not niches; they do not diminish the mass of the buttress; they constitute really nothing more than decorative forms of set-offs. ”

“ Gothic architecture is most beautiful, when it is true, as the modern imitations of it hardly ever are; but it was only in use during four centuries of the Christian era, and is therefore not more ecclesiastical than other forms of architecture. In Gothic, as in all other times, the church builders simply used the current style that was in use for secular buildings as well. ”

“ In its essentials it is Gothic of a late type, with just such touches of Italian detail as have been already mentioned. The structure is of dark red brick, with stone dressings; the detail is of the simplest; the windows are generally small, and have flat-pointed heads. Whatever elaboration there is, is chiefly confined to central features, such as the gateways on the great axial line. The chimneys are of cut and moulded brick; the archways are vaulted with fan tracery vaulting; the large windows of the hall are traceried and cusped; everything in its main outline is Gothic. ”

“ The comparative lack of artistic gift exhibited by the figure sculpture is again strikingly manifest in the Anglo-Norman foliate carving. Though examples of much beauty sometimes occur, there was little, in the early pointed architecture of England, of that growth of beautiful types under the influence of that regard for nature which so strongly marked the early Gothic carving of France. In many instances the observation of nature is, indeed, apparent ”

“ Foreign influence is also noticeable in the somewhat later Ripon and Chichester Cathedrals, but by the beginning of the 13th century English Gothic had freed itself almost entirely from the trammels of French traditions, and started forward on the path from which it never deviated, combining a consummate mastery of structural principles and an unwearying attention to detail with a unity of expression that makes an English Gothic church or cathedral an ideal reflection of the spirit of the age which witnessed its erection. ”

“ Early in the twelfth century was brought about in Northern Gaul that fine balance of ethnologic, religious, social, and political influences of which the development of Gothic architecture is among the happiest results. But with the quickly succeeding disturbance of this nice adjustment of conditions the character of the art gradually changed, and a course of decline became inevitable and rapid. If we would truly know Gothic art we must study it in the vigour of its early life. ”

“ Even in our finest structures the Romanesque or Norman influence continues to prevail. A large expanse of heavy walling, with small openings, is not unusual. In almost no building are the solid side walls omitted and light tracery substituted between the main supporting piers, as is the case in the best Gothic in France. The broad masses of masonry in the triforium and clerestory of the churches at Linlithgow and Haddington may be cited as examples of the absence of the Gothic spirit. ”

“ After the middle of the 16th century the practice of Gothic architecture virtually died out, though traces of its influence, especially in rural districts, were hardly lost until the end of the 17th century. ”

“ This is the style of which we should first treat when attempting to trace the history of Mediæval architecture. It is a mistake to imagine Pointed architecture to be severed by a great gulf from the Romanesque—the Pointed Gothic from the Round: it is its legitimate offspring, or rather itself in a more advanced{51} stage of its development. The change from the round-arched to the pointed-arched Gothic is no change of essential principles ”

“ THE term Gothic was applied originally as one of contempt in the fifteenth century by the architects of the Renaissance, who attempted to reproduce the ancient architecture of Rome, and considered Mediæval Art, which had ruled all departments of design throughout Europe during the three preceding centuries, to be no better than the invention of the Barbarians, the Goths, and the Vandals, who overran the Roman Empire in the fourth century. During the three previous centuries the persecuted converts to Christianity were driven to take refuge in any hiding-place available. ”

“ This ought to be emphasised, for there is no quality to which more of the impressiveness of such sculpture is owing. Multitudinous as are the details which enter into the design of any great cathedral front, there is rarely any scattered effect in the total impression. An harmonious relationship of mass to mass, from largest things to smallest, is maintained. Such breadth is, indeed, a fundamental quality of all good art; but its manifestation is perhaps more remarkable in Gothic architecture than in any other, because of the multitude of subdivisions through which it has to find expression. ”

“ FIG. 95 In the aisles and in the triforium gallery the tenacity with which the German builders held on to their Romanesque traditional methods of construction is singularly marked. In these parts of the building the vaults have no Gothic rib systems—the groins having no ribs, and the transverse ribs being of the heavy Romanesque type. The external character of this edifice is very far from Gothic. The openings are few and small, and in them the round arch mingles with the pointed arch. ”

“ The work, whether we like it or not at first 190glance, is obviously something new in Gothic architecture. The whole development of medieval Gothic was in the direction of eliminating the wall surfaces. It achieved this by a sort of skeleton construction of lofty piers, arches, vaulting ribs, and flying buttresses. Great glass windows filled the interstices, and these themselves were articulated by stone mullions and tracery in the same linear way. The resulting structure was an intricate scheme of thrusts and supports. ”

“ But there is another element of Gothic architecture that calls for consideration, and that is, that notwithstanding it could be varied and each part made to be exactly what it was intended to be without regard to the total effect, the results are perfectly satisfactory from an æsthetic standpoint. It shows, in a conclusive manner, that a building can be erected with the sole aim of being useful and answering exactly the requirements for which it is designed, and at the same time be of sufficient beauty to call forth, the commendation of future ages. ”

“ Gothic in principle it certainly is not, even in its internal arrangements, while externally, in the entire absence of buttress systems, it has no Gothic expression whatever; nor does it show any signs of growth. Its various elements were imported ready-made, and the style is substantially the same from beginning to end.
Nothing different appears in the Christian architecture of the country till about the second quarter of the thirteenth century, when the complete Gothic of France was taken as a model in the great Cathedrals of Burgos, Toledo, and Leon. ”

“ In ordinary church architecture, though there is still a good deal of mere imitation medieval work carried out, England has not been without examples of a new and original application of Gothic materials. The interior of the church of St Clare, Liverpool, by Mr Leonard Stokes (fig. 100) , is a good example of the modified treatment of the three-aisled medieval plan already referred to, the side aisles being reduced to passages; and also of the tendency in recent years to simplify the treatment of Gothic, in contrast to the florid and over-carved churches of the Gothic revival. ”

“ It might be thought, that while Gothic architecture was a great invention in its time and extremely suitable for ecclesiastical or even educational edifices of various kinds, its time of usefulness has passed and that men's widening experience in structural work, ever since, has carried him far away from it. As a matter of fact, most of our ecclesiastical buildings are still built on purely Gothic lines, and a definite effort is made, as a rule, to have the completed religious edifice combine a number of the best features of Thirteenth Century Gothic. ”

“ With many a gap, with many a lapse, we have followed the earlier stages of Gothic art in the land where it was born. We have seen how, from the efforts of the monks to cover their Romanesque naves with a permanent stone roof, was evolved the intersecting rib vault which was the basis of Gothic architecture, how for a short time churches used the Romanesque and Gothic systems simultaneously as in Morienval and Poissy, and for another short period the churches were Gothic in essentials while retaining a few traits of the earlier phase. ”