Religion Still Rich Enough to Build
Despite anticlerical ideas and heresy, religion still had enough strength and wealth to carry English architecture to a stage of perfection. The growth of trade and the spoils of war paid for cathedrals, castles and palaces, and gave the universities of Cambridge and Oxford splendor by providing the most beautiful houses of learning built up to that time.
Materials and Timber Roofs
England's building materials, from Purbeck marble and white Nottingham stone to the timber of Sherwood and the bricks of various counties, went into aristocratic towers, splendid tapering spires, and wooden roofs as strong as the Gothic stone vault. The ugly tie-beam stretched from wall to wall gave way to projecting brackets that, with thick oak beams, held up a high open roof.
Some of England's most beautiful churches roofed their naves in this style. The roof of Selby had oak beams whose bosses and ornaments in decorative patterns rivaled the fan vaulting of Bath Abbey, the choir of Ely Cathedral and the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral, with their winding stone tracery.
Three Styles of Gothic
The patterns used in the window tracery, wall paneling and choir screens gave their names to later styles, which often flourished at the same time and sometimes even blended in a single building.
- Geometric Decorated Gothic (about 1250–1315) drew on Euclidean figures in its designs, as at Exeter Cathedral.
- Curvilinear Decorated Gothic (about 1315–1380) used flowing lines instead of fixed geometric forms and cautiously foreshadowed the Flamboyant style of French architecture, as in the south window of Lincoln Cathedral.
- Perpendicular Gothic (about 1330–1530) applied vertical and horizontal lines within the usual four-centered Gothic arch, as in Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster Abbey.
The strong colors of thirteenth-century stained glass had now become softer and lighter, or turned a pale silver and gray. In these windows the display of chivalric splendor, then fading, matched the legends of Christianity, bringing Gothic art to its final stage of perfection and at the same time its decline.
Westminster, Windsor and the Great Cathedrals
England has seldom seen such an architectural passion. The present nave of Westminster Abbey took three centuries to build (1376–1517). We can hardly comprehend the labor of brains and hands that over all those years created such splendid and matchless tombs for England's great.
The rebuilding of Windsor Castle was no less grand. There Edward III rebuilt the great round tower on yet larger foundations (1344), and in 1473 Edward IV began St. George's Chapel, with its fine choir stalls, fan vault and stained glass.
- Ely: Alan of Walsingham built a superb Lady Chapel in the Curvilinear style and a lantern tower.
- Gloucester: a central tower, an arched vault for the choir, a splendid east window, and wide cloisters whose fan vaults are among the wonders of English architecture.
- Winchester: the vast nave was widened and the new facade covered with Perpendicular designs.
- Coventry: a church was founded in the same style, of which only the magnificent spire survived the Second World War.
- Peterborough: a fan vault of astonishing effect.
- York Minster: the nave, western towers and choir were completed in this period.
Towers were the glorious crowns that shone on the brow of the architecture of this age. Merton and Magdalen Colleges at Oxford, Fountains Abbey, Canterbury, Glastonbury, Derby, Taunton and hundreds of other sites were graced by fine towers.
Colleges and Chapels
William of Wykeham designed New College, Oxford, in the Perpendicular style. William of Waynflete, another architect over ninety, laid out the great quadrangle at Eton in the same manner. At King's College, Cambridge, a chapel was built that is the masterpiece of the age. Its windows, vault and choir stalls could reconcile Caliban to education and draw Timon of Athens to worship.
Perpendicular for Everyday Buildings
Perpendicular Gothic had a simplicity and solidity that suited public and secular buildings such as schools, castles, forts, guildhalls and town halls. In this style the Earls of Warwick built their famous castle near Leamington in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The London Guildhall, which the capital's merchants took pride in, was built between 1411 and 1435. It burned entirely in 1666 and was rebuilt by Christopher Wren, a new interior was made in 1866, and bombs of the Second World War destroyed that.
Even the city's shops used a kind of Perpendicular design in the vertical divisions between their windows. With their carved doorways, inscriptions and jutting balustrades, they charm us with a fleeting splendor.
Sculpture
English sculpture of this period remained mediocre. Statues made for church facades, like those on the churches of Lincoln and Exeter, were inferior to the buildings they were designed to adorn. The reredos at Westminster and St. Albans became a setting for statues, but these are of too little worth to burden our story.
The best sculptures were tomb monuments. Fine effigies were carved of Edward II at Gloucester Cathedral, of Lady Eleanor Percy at Beverley Minster, of Henry IV and Joan of Navarre at Canterbury, and of Richard de Beauchamp at Warwick. The material was usually white marble. English sculptors showed their best work in carving the flowers, plants and foliage of their green and fruitful land.
Woodcarving, Painting and Illumination
Fine carving was also done in wood. The choir stalls at Winchester, Ely, Gloucester, Lincoln and Norwich take the viewer's breath away with a beauty born of exhausting labor and care.
In England of this period painting was considered a minor art, and its works lagged far behind Flemish and French ones. Illumination was still a favored craft. Edward III paid 66 pounds (6,600 dollars in the book's conversion) for the illumination of one volume of stories. Robert of Ormesby gave Norwich Cathedral an illuminated Psalter that the Bodleian Library, in its collection of illuminations, calls "the most beautiful English manuscript." The art of miniature painting declined after 1450 with the rise of wall painting and panel painting, and in the sixteenth century, with the new miracle of printing, it vanished.