Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/151

Rh in a chain of progress. Its vaulting is an imitation of French work. Nothing in the island leads up to it, and nothing directly comes of it. The building is not even consistent with itself as one really animated by a new principle would be. The new form of vaulting does not, as at St. Denis, influence other parts of the structure. Its Norman builders were not thoroughly imbued with those structural principles which led Suger's workmen to give such consistency to every part of the French fabric.

The buildings which immediately follow Malmesbury show less, rather than more, approach to Gothic principles. The early Cistercian Abbeys of the north exhibit no new principles. In them the pointed arch occurs, indeed, more or less frequently in arcades and openings, but it is without influence upon modes of vaulting, and without structural consequence in the general system. Vaulting, when it occurs in these abbeys, is often of a very primitive and even rude sort. The aisles of Fountains Abbey (Fig. 7O), which date from about the middle of the twelfth century, are, for instance, vaulted with a succession of pointed vaults without penetrations, which are carried on heavy transverse round arches springing from the piers on the one side, and from corbels projecting from the wall on the other. With exception of the pointed form the construction of these vaults is substantially the same as that of the vaults of the aisles of the Basilica of Constantine at Rome. The central aisle of Fountains was neither vaulted nor intended for vaulting. The interior of the nave consists merely of broad, bare, and massive walls carried on heavy pointed arches, supported by plain round columns, and pierced above with small openings. There are no triforium openings, and there is nothing whatever of new structural principle involved in any part. In Kirkstall Abbey, which is of about the same date, the aisle vaults are groined, and have a full system of ribs—those which bound the compartments being pointed. The arches of the pier arcade are pointed, and are of three orders, and the piers are composed of grouped members answering to these orders.