Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/25

 right angles to the main choir. The Scottish plan of avoiding groins is thus adhered to. The above arrangement of the aisle vaults also enables the aisle windows to be carried up to a good height. The barrel vaults across the aisles rest on flat arches (made to resemble straight lintels), which run between the caps of the main piers and the responds against the walls. The whole construction recalls that of a castle with a large central hall roofed with a barrel vault, and having a series of side chambers entering off it, each covered with its separate barrel vault running at right angles to the main building. If the partitions between these side chambers were removed, and plain arches or lintels substituted, the construction would be exactly that of Rosslyn Church. Such a series of chambers, with barrel vaults running at right angles to a passage, is of common occurrence in the ground floors of the Scottish castles. An exceptional feature connected with the main vault of Rosslyn Church is that the same stones which form the interior arch also form the outside roof—the usual overlapping stone covering being omitted, possibly to avoid the extra weight. The exterior of the roof is thus curved like the interior.

During the late pointed period many varieties of details were indulged in. The buttresses are generally somewhat stunted. They are plain and solid, and have often rather elaborate canopies and corbels for statues placed on the front of the buttresses, without recessed niches. The buttresses have frequently numerous set-offs, and are generally finished with stunted square pinnacles having crocketed finials. The windows are almost always pointed, and contain simple tracery derived from the earlier styles. The copying of the forms of the older styles is specially noticeable in the windows and traceries.

At Ladykirk, the unusual form of elliptical windows is introduced, probably in order to admit as much light as possible at the haunches. As above explained, there are generally no aisles, and the windows, being kept down below the springing of the main arch, are, as usual, low, and here leave on the exterior a high space of blank wall above them.

The above form of construction does not require or admit of a triforium and clerestory. At Rosslyn, where there are side aisles, the side walls of the choir are carried up so as to permit of clerestory windows. The tracery is almost always set in the centre of the wall, and the same mouldings, usually double chamfers, are repeated in the reveal both on the inside and outside.

Where the choir, nave, and transepts have square ends, there is generally a large traceried window carried up in the gable under the barrel vault of the roof, by which the principal light in the church is obtained.

The details of the late pointed churches in Scotland have comparatively little connection with the late work either in England or France, but some signs exist of importations from both these countries.

At Melrose Abbey, Linlithgow Church and Palace, and a few other