Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/223

A.D. 1189.] commonly quite plain, but sometimes it is moulded, and sometimes highly ornamented, as in the example from Durham (6); but in all cases it retains its primitive and distinctive form.







—These are extremely numerous; the ornamented mouldings are almost endless in variety, but the most general is the zigzag, which is used for decoration in all places, both simple and in every variety of combination, sparingly in the early buildings, but profusely in the later ones. The billet is much used in early work, as is also a peculiar kind of shallow lozenge, and other ornaments, which required little skill in the execution.

When large and otherwise blank spaces of walls, either on fronts or towers, have to be relieved, it is frequently done by introducing stages of intersecting arcades—a fine example of which occurs at St. Botolph's Priory, Essex (5).

There is a peculiar kind of ornament which is used to relieve surfaces of blank spaces, either over the arches or the interior, or in the heads of window-porches, &c. This is frequently called diaper work and consists either of lines cut in the stone in the form of a trellis, or in imitation of scale-work, arches, &c., as on the tower here engraved.

St. James's Tower, Bury St. Edmunds (4).—This is an example of an early Norman tower, and elucidates several of the peculiarities in the preceding remarks. It exhibits the flat, pilaster-like buttresses, so