Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/165

Rh portions from 1190 to 1210. The ground-story piers are of massive Norman proportions, and, like those of the choir of Canterbury, are alternately round and octagonal columns. Their bases have the square plinths that are common in French design of this epoch; but instead of the square abacus, almost universal in France, the capitals have round and octagonal abaci in conformity with the respective forms of the piers. The pier arches are pointed, and the walls are unbroken by vaulting shafts, the vault supports having no connection with the ground-story, but starting from the triforium level. Thus, though it is more than thirty years later, this ground-story is less advanced toward Gothic than that of Malmesbury Abbey (which, in many respects, it strikingly resembles), where the vaulting shafts rest on the lower piers. From a corbel at the triforium string rises, on each pier, a group of three vaulting shafts whose clustered capitals have abaci formed by the clerestory string, which projects at each group so as to cover them.

The vaults are quadripartite, with their ribs all springing from the same level, so that their pressures are not compactly gathered against the pier, but are diffused laterally over considerable spaces of wall. The clerestory has in each bay one small pointed opening through its massive wall. The triforium openings differ considerably one from another. The two easternmost bays have single openings, each consisting of a cusped pointed arch carried on shafts engaged with the jambs which are of plain square section. These openings do not more than half fill the spaces between the piers. The bays farther westward have coupled pointed openings in two orders, the sub-order being curiously and clumsily massive.

Conspicuous instances of a peculiar and extensive class of early pointed buildings in England are the Abbey Churches of Byland and Whitby. The pointed arch prevails throughout these buildings, except in the openings of the aisles of Byland and in the first order of the triforium of Whitby, where the arches are round. But these buildings have no vaults and were evidently not intended for vaulting, though shafts similar to vaulting shafts rise, from corbels situated a little below the triforium string, to the top of the wall. These shafts are thus only decorative features employed