Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/166

Rh 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.

A characteristic example of early pointed Norman design is that portion of the choir of Ripon Cathedral which was erected during the episcopate of Roger, Archbishop of York, some time between 1154 and 1181. This structure was apparently designed for vaulting, as a group of five vaulting shafts rise from the capitals of each of the lower piers, and are terminated at the level of the clerestory string by capitals in apparent preparation for a full system of vaulting ribs. But the scheme appears to have been changed when this level was reached, and a clerestory was added with a straight cornice, a single shaft being carried up from the grouped capitals of the vaulting shafts to the top of the wall. Unless this be an alteration, some form of timber roof must, therefore, have covered this choir from the first. With exception of the vaulting shafts there is no approach in this building to Gothic constructive forms, though in common with the abbey churches just mentioned, and many other contemporaneous edifices, the pointed arches of its pier arcades and other openings give the interior a superficial appearance of Gothic. The outer openings of Ripon are small and round arched like those of Durham; the walls are massive, and are provided externally with shallow pilaster strips instead of buttresses.

It will be seen that the buildings already noticed are very diverse in character, though in all of them the pointed arch is more or less generally employed. In some of them this arch is used structurally in portions of the edifice, as in the aisle vaults of Malmesbury. In others its structural use is more general, and a correspondingly functional system of supports is connected with it, so that, for the most part, a really Gothic character pervades the work, as in the choirs of Canterbury and Lincoln. But in the larger number the pointed arch is used, for the most