Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/157

Rh England. An instance of a compound pier, none of whose members are directly employed in the support of the vaulting, never occurs in the Gothic of France. Another defect of this pier of Chichester is that of the great distance at which the lesser shafts are placed in relation to the central column, which destroys that compactness of the group which is essential to strictly Gothic supports. The compound capital, too, which is in idea the same as that of the pier at the west end of the nave of Paris—described in the last chapter—necessarily shares this want of compactness, and thus the whole pier compares unfavourably with the French example.

The pier arcade is round arched and of two orders, the triforium consists of a round arch in each bay encompassing a sub-order of two pointed arches carried on clustered shafts, and the clerestory is substantially the same as that of Canterbury. Externally there is a shallow buttress against the clerestory wall, which is reinforced by a flying buttress of a purely French type, perhaps the earliest instance of a fully developed flying buttress in England.

The characteristics of this building are thus mixed. It is not, like Canterbury, a French design, but it is apparently the work of Anglo-Norman architects who adopted certain features of the growing French style, and naturally modified them according to their own tastes, but failed to perceive their functional connections and structural logic. Yet, notwithstanding the want of structural consistency, there is a good deal of beauty in this work.

Almost immediately after Chichester (probably about 1190) were begun the deservedly famous choir and the east transept of. In this beautiful building