Churches and Churchyards of England and Wales (Shire Library) by Richard Hayman

Author:Richard Hayman [Hayman, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781784423568
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

Spratton (Northampton-shire) possesses a fine late-twelfth-century arcade. The arches are plain and undercut, a transitional stage from the zig-zag decorated Norman arches to simpler linear Gothic arches.

West Walton (Norfolk) is one of the finest thirteenth-century churches in the country and features stiff-leaf capitals in the nave arcades, one of the signature Early English motifs.

By the fourteenth century, the period of Decorated Gothic, there was a fashion of octagonal piers and more naturalistic foliage, but otherwise the arches were quite similar to those of the thirteenth century. Hitherto the arches had been two-centred, i.e. made up of two intersecting arcs. But in the Perpendicular period new ways were found to make the arcade bays wider, allowing more light to enter the building. Four-centred arches are much wider and flatter than their earlier Gothic counterparts. Perpendicular arcades are the most commonly encountered form and perhaps for that reason often seem less interesting than earlier examples. They were, however, carefully designed to create a vertical emphasis to the structure. Piers are essentially square, but have attached shafts and are set diagonally, increasing the number of vertical lines leading up into the arch. Arches too were finely moulded, continuing the linear character of Gothic architecture which was apparent from the Early English works onwards. Gothic style persisted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the Renaissance is also apparent in church designs. The churches of Sir Christopher Wren in London, and elsewhere, retain the idea of the nave with arcades, which in this period were classical round arches on round piers.

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