Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/186

Rh the proportions or to the magnificence that it attained across the Channel.

The western façade is in England, as a rule, both inappropriate as a termination of the building, and ill arranged as an independent architectural design. Very few early ones remain. The west façades of the greater number of the larger churches—such as York, Canterbury, Beverley, Westminster, and others—were built at later epochs than the main body of the edifices to which they are attached. The most important existing fronts of the thirteenth century are those of Lincoln, Salisbury, Wells, and Peterborough. That of Lincoln (Fig. 91) consists of a vast arcaded screen, unbroken by upright divisions, with a level cornice terminating its multiplied horizontal lines. A gable rises through the middle of this cornice, and stair turrets at each angle are crowned with conical pinnacles. A great pointed arched recess in the centre reaches almost to the cornice, and is flanked by two lesser round arched recesses. In each of these recesses is a round arched doorway giving access to the nave and aisles respectively. Behind this great screen, and quite independent of it, rise two lofty square towers with angle turrets. This façade exhibits four different styles of architecture. The great recesses (except the arch of the central one) and the lower parts of the towers are early Norman, belonging to the original edifice, which was dedicated in the year 1073; the portals are very rich and beautiful late Norman insertions of about 1140; the rest of the great screen is of pointed design and was probably completed before 1235; while the upper portions of the towers are in the perpendicular style. It is thus, from an historical point of view, one of the most interesting façades in Europe, but as an architectural combination it is one of the least admirable. Of structural Gothic character it has nothing whatever, and as a termination of a three-aisled building it is far less appropriate than the Romanesque façade of the Cathedral of Pisa, whose richly arcaded design it remotely recalls. For in Pisa the façade follows the form of the building which it terminates, while at Lincoln there is no conformity of the one with the other.

Almost equally unrelated to the building is the west front