Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/173

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posed arcades entirely unconnected with each other by any vertical members. The triforium string forms a cornice to the ground-story which is continuous from one end to the other of the nave. The interior system is thus better adapted to a timber roof than it is to a Gothic vault. The clerestory is walled in, as is usual in England, and is lighted (Fig. 84) by the customary triple openings. It is hence, in common with most others in the island, in marked contrast with the clerestories of France, in which, by this time, no wall whatever remained beneath the arch of the vault. This shows how the wall was clung to in the architecture of England, and how the openings remained merely windows in walls; whereas, in the architecture of France, the structural idea of windows gives place to that of entire voids between the arches and their supports. However large these triple windows in the Anglo-Norman clerestory may be, and they are at Salisbury about as large as they can be, there remains a vast structural difference between such a clerestory and one like that of Amiens, where the longitudinal rib of the vault and the archivolt of the opening become, as we saw in the preceding chapter, one and the same member. The triforium consists of a very obtusely pointed arch of three orders encompassing two lesser arches, each again embracing two still smaller ones. The encompassing arch is so depressed as to ill accord with the more acute forms of those with which it is associated, and its sides are so slightly curved that an angle is formed at the springing, repeating the same awkward peculiarity of the clerestory. The great arches of the ground-story, like the other arches in general, are equilateral—that is to say, the centres of their curves are in the angles of the bases of equilateral triangles, and are thus situated at the points of springing. This form of arch, or a form closely similar, generally prevails in France, and is also very common in England—as in the Chapel of the Nine Altars at Durham, the Presbytery of Ely, and in many of the abbey churches, such as Tintern, Bridlington, Netley, Rivaulx, Whitby, Byland, Kirkstall, and others. But the distinctively Anglo-Norman type is rather the lancet form, the centres of whose curves lie beyond the points of springing—as in the smaller arches of the nave of Lincoln, and the pier arches of Westminster Abbey. The arch