Paris, which had been designed more than a decade before. This choir of Canterbury (Fig. 71) is the real beginning of what Gothic there is in the pointed architecture of England. From it, as the main source at least, is derived what is commonly known as the Early English style. It is in five bays, and is vaulted with one quadripartite and two sexpartite compartments. These vaults are provided with transverse and diagonal ribs, but are without longitudinal ribs. The transverse ribs only are pointed. The vaulting shafts correspond in number with the ribs to be carried—there being three in the main group and but one in the intermediate pier. The single shaft in the intermediate pier was probably derived from Sens, where the longitudinal rib shaft is carried on the clerestory ledge, rendering a single support for the intermediate transverse rib all that is necessary. We shall presently see that this single vaulting shaft subsequently became frequent in England, where, with little constructive propriety, it is made to carry the three ribs of quadripartite vaults.
The vaulting shafts at Canterbury rest on the capitals of the ground-story piers, which are alternately round and octagonal columns. The pier arches are pointed and of two orders of square section, such as are characteristic of contemporaneous design in France. The triforium, in this portion, consists of pointed arches of two orders carried on monolithic shafts. The clerestory is in two planes, divided by a passage way. The inner plane is pierced by three pointed arches—a larger central arch with one lesser arch at each side,—which together nearly fill the space enclosed by the vault. The outer plane is pierced by a single obtusely pointed arch. This form of clerestory, with round arches in place of pointed ones, is of Norman origin, as may be seen in Durham Cathedral and elsewhere. With more acutely pointed arches it subsequently became the characteristic form in the so-called Early English style.
Though the constructive system of this choir is as a whole less complete than that of contemporaneous buildings in France—having a very undeveloped buttress system,—it is yet internally a very beautiful and an almost strictly Gothic structure; but it is altogether an importation from the Continent, and in no sense a native development. No monument of like importance, and none whatever of the
