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Great Britain handbook for travellers

(1906)

p. 58

iiv
HISTORICAL SKETCH
clerestory, two in each bay, while in Somerset the large churches
commonly have one large window in each bay, while in the smaller
ones with coved roofs the clerestory is often left out. In York¬
shire there is a third type of tower, which evidently follows the
western towers of the minster, having a single large belfry-win¬
dow, where in Somerset there would be two or more. In Northamp¬
tonshire, rich inspires and octagons, there is perhaps only one
square tower of great merit, at Titchmarsh. Gloucestershire and
Worcestershire have another type of tower, continued from the be¬
ginnings of the Perpendicular style in Gloucester abbey; the
panelling looks as if it were nailed on, which it never does either
in Somerset or in East-Anglia. Of large parish churches in this style
(out of the special districts) the two University churches of Ox¬
ford and Cambridge may supply good examples : also the collegiate
(now cathedral) church of Manchester, which is purely parochial
in its architecture; Fairford in Gloucestershire, which has a cen¬
tral tower without transepts and which comes within the sixteenth
century; and, among very small churches, Whiston in Northamp¬
tonshire (near Castle Ashby, p. 265), from its extraordinary grace
and its extremely late date, 1534. But a full list would be endless;
all that can be done is to pick out a few examples here and there.
In minsters the style is on the whole less happy than in parish
churches. The stateliest example is doubtless to be found in the Per¬
pendicular parts of York; but here, though the feeling, as in the
earlier nave, is thoroughly Continuous, it is hardly thoroughly Per¬
pendicular. The shafts of the clustered pillars have a prominence
unusual in the style, and which gives the building an effect of its
own. And another building which belongs to this period by date can
still less be said to belong to it by style. The nave of Westminster
abbey was built in the fifteenth century, and a near examination
will show that the details are of that date; but the proportions
and general effect are utterly unlike anything in the Perpendicular
style; everything is closely adapted to the adjoining work of the
thirteenth century. And, just as in the case of the nave of Ely,
where, in the west front, the architect got free of his model, he
built in the usual fashion of his own time. The series of genuine
Perpendicular buildings begins, as we have seen, at Gloucester
and goes on at Winchester. The work of Wykeham at Winchester
keeps all the massiveness and solemnity of earlier style, because
it is in truth not a rebuilding from the ground, but the Norman
nave cased in the new style. This should he compared with the
eastern parts of Gloucester, where the Norman work is not cased
but merely overlaid in the peculiar local style, and with the nave
at Canterbury which was rebuilt from the ground. Here we cannot
but feel that there is the same fault as in the Romanesque naves
of Gloucester and Tewkesbury; the pier-arches are too high and
the clerestory too low; the triforium has of course vanished. The

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