Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/189

Rh rich arcading that lightens the effect, would give this portion of the building very much the aspect of a fortress.

Hardly better is the west façade of Peterborough. It is again an entirely false screen rather than a front appropriate to and conformed with the building. The three vast recesses have not, as they have at Lincoln, any correspondence with the proportions of the nave and aisles which they terminate. Being of equal height, and the narrow one being in front of the wide central aisle, while the wide ones fall in front of the narrow side aisles, they wholly contradict these proportions, and they make a very unhappy architectural group as well.

Thus, as a rule, the west front in England has little approach to Gothic character. It is, on the contrary, a massive erection, whose details are largely mere surface decorations unrelated to the real structural scheme. There are exceptions, however, among which may be noticed the western façade of, which was constructed during the first half of the thirteenth century. Here the towers are the true terminations of the aisles, and the three internal divisions are marked externally by continuous, though shallow buttresses. There is a low central portal and two lesser portals, all gathered into the central compartment, and consequently all opening into the nave. This central compartment is crowned by a gable in conformity with the form of the roof, and it is pierced by two tiers of five lancets. The design, as a whole, is therefore appropriate, and in this respect offers a rare exception among early buildings in England.

In the early pointed architecture of England western towers are less common and less imposing than those of early Gothic buildings in France. But the Norman feature of a vast tower at the crossing of nave and transept, seldom adopted by the French Gothic builders, was perpetuated in England. There is provision for such a tower in nearly every church of importance in the island; but in many cases it exists either as a mere beginning, or as it was erected at a comparatively late period in the perpendicular style, as at Worcester, Gloucester, Canterbury, York, and other churches. I do not know of any remaining completed tower of the early pointed epoch; but the truly magnificent central tower of Lincoln, dating from about the middle of