The normal form of groined or intersecting vaulting,--the simplest
manner in which a large space may be arched over in moderate spans,--is,
by the two or more intersecting vaults, springing directly from a square
pier (Fig. 235). Now, this is not only inartistic, but is bad in
construction. The line of intersection is necessarily weak, and the
vault requires aid to make it perfect in construction; and this can only
be given it in the form of increased thickness, which is at once
obtained by altering the form of the pier from a square to a cross form,
and applying to the vault the same principle of divided orders as we
have done before to arches (Fig. 236); only that, in this case the upper
order is a vault, and the lower one only an arched rib coming in to aid
the vault. The groined vault is thus divided into compartments, and
beauty and strength at once provided for. This elementary form may be
decorated in a multitude of ways.
The mere addition of an impost and a base to the pier does much to
relieve its plainness. We may, however, as in the case of arches,
substitute shafts for the divisions of the pier, or double shafts where
the ribs are wide; or we may, instead of amplifying the forms of the
pier, concentrate it to a column, from whose capital the ribs spring, as
we have already seen in case of the double arch.
When groining springs from a wall, nearly the same system applies,
excepting that one division only of the pier is needed instead of all
four. Thus the simplest provision is a mere projecting pilaster,
carrying the cross ribs, the wall itself taking the place of the lateral
ones. This pilaster may be converted into a shaft or a double shaft, or
the rib may be amplified by a central semi-roll moulding, and the whole
carried by a triple shaft or other combinations, or a corbel substituted
for the pilaster or group of shafts. Thus we have vaulting reduced to a
principle which, however plain, is at once artistic and constructionally
good, and is susceptible of all degrees of ornamentation.
What I have said of doors applies equally to windows, subject to some
modifications arising from their practical requirements. The simplest
form of an arched opening, going square through the wall, is eminently
unsuited to a window; and this is so obvious that it has rarely been
used at any period, for the square edges of a thick wall evidently
prevent the light from diffusing itself in the interior.
The most favourable forms are those in which the jambs are sloped,
either directly from the exterior inwards, or from some intermediate
point, both inwards and outwards, so as to give the freest scope for the
rays of light. In this respect I have nothing to say against the forms
customary in the previous style.[19]
The Norman windows are of great variety. The simplest, which is
prevalent in very homely buildings (as may be seen in many extremely
humble churches on the cliff between Dover and Deal), is an opening with
no external recess, but splaying at some 45 degrees inward, the glass
being flush with the exterior. From this we have every variety of
architectural grade; first, a chamfer or moulding added to the exterior;
then, two orders, plain or moulded; or a shaft may be substituted for
the outer order in the jamb, or the same repeated, as in doorways.
Internally, the thickness of the walls continues to be splayed so as to
diffuse the light, though in buildings of a high architectural class,
mouldings or divided orders (with or without shafts) may enrich the
inner angle, or may even take the place of the splay altogether.
In domestic windows two or more openings are often used externally,
divided by a little column, the whole being internally united into a
single opening. These are sometimes comprised on the exterior under a
single arch to increase the architectural effect.[20] The same is also
used for belfries and other positions where use dictates it.
I have now shown you that doors, windows, archways, arcades, and
vaulting were generated, as to their architectural treatment, simply by
the exercise of logical reasoning.
In the general treatment of the exterior of a building the same
prevailed. The walls, being thick, needed little buttressing, and this
little was supplied, and the flatness of the walls at the same time
relieved, by a sort of pilaster or slightly projecting pier placed at
reasonable intervals, which were united under the eaves, in many cases,
by a row of corbels. The walls were further relieved by projecting
base-courses, and string-courses under the window cills or elsewhere;
and, in buildings of a higher class, by decorative arcading or other
methods of raising its architectural character.
In all the foregoing particulars, it will be observed that I have stated
nothing but what could be arrived at by simple and almost abstract
reasoning, almost apart from anything which, strictly speaking, belongs
to style of art. The results, indeed, apply equally to all the more
perfect varieties of Romanesque, and follow from the mere thinking out
of the subject; and if we desired to strike out some new variety of
arcuated architecture, we could not do better than start from a point
thus logically arrived at. To say that these are the leading
characteristics of the Norman style, is saying at once too much and too
little; for none of these characteristics would distinguish it from the
Romanesque of Central France or Germany, which possess them equally with
the Norman, while the latter certainly does possess features of its own,
which would so distinguish it. These consist, however, for the most
part, in the decorative details, and in the general composition of the
buildings, but more particularly the latter; for, if the Rhenish,
Central French, and Norman buildings were to exchange details, their
composition would still distinguish them at a single glance, and each
would be appropriated to its respective district in spite of any doubt
about its details. The essential and logically derived elements are the
same in all; the details, though united by a common bond of sentiment
and feeling, differ in a certain degree,--while the customary forms of
composition, though by no means contradictory, still differ so much as
to leave no doubt about their being three, though evidently sister
styles, or, rather, local varieties of the same great style.
Two very important features which Norman possesses, in common with other
varieties of Romanesque, are, first, that, when a column is used for
bearing weight, its diameter is made proportionate rather to its load
than to its height; and, secondly, that columns are used also in a
purely decorative capacity, and their diameter, in that case, is simply
such as is best proportioned to their position; and most usually to the
size of the arch-order they have, apparently, or really to carry.
We will now go into minor details.
The first purely decorative features which we may imagine to have been
introduced,--if the logical scheme I have been supposing had been
strictly followed out,--would be the base-course of a wall, the impost
to sever the pier from the arch, and the drip, or label, to draw the
line between the arch and the wall. These mouldings in their elementary
forms are alike. In Anglo-Saxon they were usually square courses (Fig.
237); in Norman, their simple form is the same with the angle cut off
(Fig. 238).
[Illustration: Fig. 237.]
[Illustration: Fig. 238.]
This form for the impost and the label was adopted also, very usually,
for string-courses; but, in all positions, it was soon relieved by
additional forms, as the double chamfer, the quirk, the quirk and
hollow, and the round and hollow, or the cyma (Fig. 239).
[Illustration: Fig. 239.]
The primary idea of a capital to a decorative shaft is that of a cubical
block over which the impost returns. It is, in fact, the upper course of
the square portion of the pier for which the shaft has been substituted,
or out of the substance of which it is cut (Fig. 240).
The object, therefore, to be kept in view in designing the capital, is
to devise the best method or methods of bringing about a transition from
the cylindrical shaft to the square impost or abacus. The simplest form
used in early Norman work is little more than the mathematical solution
of the problem, which would be the frustum of an inverted cone
intersected by the faces of the cube.
[Illustration: Fig. 240.]
The elliptical sections thus generated being unsightly, they would soon
be converted into semicircles; and as these will not fit themselves to
the true cone, a group of portions of conoids is generated, meeting in
an indented angle, such as we always find in these caps, excepting in
the very earliest. At no period, however, were the reminiscences of the
Corinthian capital wholly ignored; and we accordingly, even in the
earliest examples (and perhaps as frequently in them as in later ones)
find a rude imitation of its form.[21] At other times we find the block
covered with carved scrollwork; and at others, again, the extreme
simplicity is obtained by a mere portion of a cone or a simple moulding
intervening between the shaft and the abacus, as in the Confessor’s
buildings at Westminster, and in the crypt at Winchester.[22] The bases
consisted usually of a moulding following the curve of the shaft, and
resting upon a square plinth, beneath which was a sub-base. The
mouldings of the base were very various: they seem to have been
suggested by the varieties of the Roman base; but they often take other
forms, as in the Confessor’s work at Westminster, where we have a mere
splay and a double hollow. The orders of arches were sometimes relieved
by being cut into large rolls; or the lower order in archways had a
massive demi-roll attached to it. The roll was soon accompanied by a
hollow, and these varieties almost exhaust the list of mouldings in the
earlier examples, though we shall see that they subsequently increased
into great multiplicity and beauty. Mouldings became, moreover, at an
early date enriched. Thus we find the chamfers of a string or label
relieved with the billet or short piece of roll left projecting from
them at intervals. These chamfers are also enriched with chevrons of
slight depth, such as masons sometimes impress in mortar with the point
of their trowel. These simple ornaments, as we shall presently see, soon
increased into endless variety.
The figure-sculpture of the period was of extreme uncouthness; often so
much so as to be nearly unintelligible, though rapidly improving as the
style advanced. The tympana of the doorways (which were sometimes filled
in to the square, and sometimes to a low segmental arch line) were often
filled with sculpture in slight relief. Heads were used as corbels
(placed in a hollow moulding), and such rude art was introduced in other
positions which might suggest it.
Soon it became frequent to relieve plain surfaces--whether to
arch-orders, or elsewhere--with ornaments in very slight relief usually
known as “surface ornaments,” which had the advantage of imparting
decoration without disturbing essential forms. Of this, however, we
shall see abundance as we proceed.
Having now traced out, by a system of rational induction, the essential
elements of the style, we will proceed to some of the varieties of
combination.
Let us take, in the first instance, a portion of the nave or choir of a
church.
If this be unaisled and unvaulted, it is a very simple affair. Windows
at a reasonable height, dealt with agreeably to the architectural grade
of the building,--probably a base-course, a string beneath the cills,
and possibly pilaster buttresses between the windows, and a corbel-table
uniting the same under the eaves.
If vaulted with a wagon-vault (as, for instance, St. Cormac’s Chapel, at
Cashel),[23] the walls must be higher, and, it may be, the dead space
which this occasions externally may be decorated by arcading. If,
however, it is groined, the difficulty disappears.
Again, an aisled but unvaulted nave is of simple construction, but if
the aisle be vaulted (unless, indeed, it be a mere demi-vault, which in
this country is very rare), a greater complication is brought into
existence. The groining requires that the aisle wall shall be fully as
high as the crown of the arches between the aisles and the nave; and, as
the aisle roof demands some reasonable height, it follows that there
must be a considerable space of wall above the arches. This may be dealt
with in several ways. If the nave be unvaulted, it is a blank space, or
may be pierced by an arcade or other openings. If the nave is groined
without a clerestory, the space is partly occupied by the springers of
the vaulting, and the intervals may be pierced. If there is a
clerestory, the space becomes what we call (though erroneously), a
_triforium_; or (whether there be a clerestory or not), it may be made
more of and utilised by raising the aisle walls sufficiently to convert
it into a second storey or gallery to the aisle (Fig. 241).
[Illustration: Fig. 241.]
We possess a most complete instance of such an arrangement (though
without a clerestory), in the chapel of the Tower of London,[24] where
this space is made a gallery, covered with a wagon-vault and opens by a
second tier of arches into the nave, which is itself covered by a
similar vault. Had clerestory windows been in this case desired, the
only change requisite would have been to groin the central space and the
gallery, instead of giving them plain vaults, and we should then, with a
trifle more height, have had a model, on a small scale, of the perfected
arrangement of a vaulted and aisled church. Most, however, of our Norman
churches in England are imperfect in two particulars as compared with
this ideal. They have no groining to the central space, nor any vaulting
to the gallery over the aisle. Several, as Durham and Lindisfarne, had
the former, and Gloucester, and perhaps Tewkesbury, the latter; but I
know of no existing church in England, nor of any perhaps of very early
date, even in Normandy, which has both. The Tower chapel is the nearest
approach; and, strange to say, the pre-conquestal example at
Westminster appears (if I read the description aright) to have had all
these features complete, the central space being vaulted, and the aisle
also vaulted in two storeys. Such was often the case in Central France,
even at an early date, as we see in the Church of St. Stephen at Nevers,
erected about 1063, where we find groined aisles, aisle-galleries with
the demi-vault, a clerestory, and above it a wagon-vault to the nave.
The churches at Nôtre Dame du Pont at Clermont, Issoire, and some others
of about the same date in Auvergne, are one point less complete, having
all the features I have enumerated excepting only the clerestory: nor do
I know that there is any specimen so complete and of early date in
Normandy, so that King Edward’s church seems to have gone ahead of its
types in Normandy, and its model not to have been reached by its
successors in England.
Those principles of combination being attained, it was easy to carry
them out into a complete building.
A nave, such as I have described, may be either continued, with the
intervention of a chancel arch, into the choir, and terminated by an
apse; or two such ranges of buildings may be made to intersect, the
crossing space being surmounted by a central tower, supported on four
lofty arches and by massive piers. The east end would usually be
terminated by an apse; the cross building, or transept, by gables; and
the nave perhaps, by a gable flanked by two towers, which terminated its
aisles, or projected beyond them. Transepts may have two aisles, as at
Winchester and Ely; one, as at Durham and Peterborough; or none, as at
Canterbury, St. Alban’s, and Norwich. In the latter case, apsidal
chapels would probably project from its eastern face; and, if the choir
aisle runs round the apse, similar chapels may open out of it.
This gives us the complete mechanical ideal of a great Norman church,
though numerous are the varieties which it is capable of assuming.
I have occupied your time so long in my elementary investigation of the
style that I must defer till my next lecture any attempt to describe its
actual productions.
I will only now say that the vast scale and the endless number of the
architectural works undertaken, and, in most cases carried out to
completion by the early Norman builders, is such as to fill the mind
with astonishment, when we contemplate them. Nearly every cathedral and
great abbey was rebuilt on a stupendous scale; new cathedrals and new
abbeys founded; and churches of all grades from these vast temples down
to the smallest village church erected throughout the length and breadth
of the country; while castles of the most portentous magnitude and
prodigious solidity rose in all directions; the one class of building
appearing to propitiate the divine aid, and the other to defy human
opposition, as if the kingdoms both of heaven and earth were to “suffer
violence,” and “the violent to take them by force.”
Few periods, probably, in the world’s history have been marked by the
construction of buildings more multitudinous and more vast. Their
architecture, as Mr. Freeman remarks, “majestic and awful rather than
beautiful, no style is more truly religious or more imbued with the
spirit and position of the church” (and one may add of the State) “in
its own day,” nor has any age “produced structures whose number, size,
splendour, and richness bear more honourable testimony to the zeal and
bounty of their founders.”