Gothic Architecture
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The rounded arch, with a series of stones or bricks held in place by a central capstone, was developed by the Romans |
It survived through the dark ages of the early Middle Ages in Europe as the Romanesque style – known as Norman in England. It was typified by heavy pillars and thick walls, pierced by a few rounded.
Arches springing from pillars allowed the creation of large open spaces within stone buildings, which is what churches required, and it was within churches and cathedrals that stone building techniques were perfected. |
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The Gothic style, based on the pointed arch, began in France in the 12th century, and spread across Europe, developing variations, until it gave way to a return to classical ideals in the Renaissance. The term Gothic was first used in the Renaissance as a contemptuous term of abuse, dismissing Mediaeval tastes as barbaric.
Once developed, in the 12th Century, the pointed arch was considered so graceful that it was applied wherever an arch could be applied, for purely aesthetic purposes, but it began as a useful structural development.
The hammerbeam timber roof at Westminster Hall, 68' wide, dating from the 14th century, shows how timber, worked in the Gothic style, could span vast spaces. |
Wide spaces were traditionally roofed with timber, but the ultimate goal of stonemasons was to be able to vault an open space with stone.
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cellar at Fountain's Abbey |
It was found that could stone roof supports could be created by crossing two rounded arches.
Such an arrangement led to the development of pointed arch ribs, which could be grouped to span ever wider spaces with stone vaulting.
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Pointed arches turned out to be more effective at transferring weight down into the supporting pillars than rounded ones, and the pillars themselves, usually constructed of clustered shafts instead of the heavy Romanesque trunk-like columns, became increasingly more slender and delicate, the ribs resting on capitals sometimes carved with elaborate foliage.
Clustered Pillar and carved capital
at Lincoln Cathedral |
Vaulting
The early simple Gothic vaulting developed into elaborate, many ribbed vaults.
Saisbury Cathedral
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Exeter Cathedral
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Wells Cathedral
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Gloucester Cathedral
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The final development, in the fifteenth century, was the breath-taking ornate fan vaulting of the English Perpendicular style.
King's College Cambridge
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St. David's Cathedral
Westminster Abbey
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Buttresses
Despite rising to ever greater heights, walls became thinner with the support of flying buttresses to counteract the outward thrust. The buttresses, inward leaning arches, began as functional structures and evolved into works of beauty in their own right, with ornate stonework and carved pinnacles.
early flying buttresses
at St.Remi
decorated flying buttresses
at Beverley Minster |
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Windows
Thinner walls meant that more windows could be inserted. Although stone vaulting was crucial to the development of the Gothic style, the pointed arch window is its most recognisable feature, gradually evolving through many variations.
The earliest was the simple unadorned lancet window, tall, narrow and sharp, often set in groups, as here with the windows known as the Five Sisters, at York Minster.
Wider, equilateral arches followed, supported by vertical mullions that branched into ornate tracery. This began with distinct geometric patterns. In time, a more flamboyant flowing style developed, giving the stonework an organic form.
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geometric window at
Lincoln Cathedral (Angel Choir) |
West window at Exeter Cathedral |
Selby Abbey
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West Window at York Minister
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The Black Death in the middle of the 14th century, heralded a new variation of the Gothic style in England, known as Perpendicular. In many ways it was more restrained, with less extravagant tracery, with the exception of the new fan vaulting. Capitals virtually vanished from pillars.
Windows were supported with relatively plain mullions that extended uninterrupted to the top of the arch, but they became wider still, the wall space between them diminishing to the barest minimum giving almost the appearance of walls of glass.
The light that now flooded into even the largest building was of course filtered through stained glass, complimenting the vivid colours with which much of the stonework would have been painted in Mediaeval times.
Perpendicular window at King's College |
King's College, Cambridge
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A style of window found throughout the Gothic period, was the circular rose window, with tracery radiating from its centre. Used in large gable apexes, it could not fail to impress, from outside or within, especially when filled with stained glass.
Rose window at Lincoln Cathedral
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Rose window at Durham Cathedral |
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Rose window at York Minster |
tomb at Gloucester Cathedral
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Tracery was often cusped to add even more complexity, as did quatrefoil and trefoil piercings, and in the late 13th and early fourteenth century it was applied not only to windows but to any available stonework. Empty wall space was carved, decorated with tracery, niches and statues.
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The Gothic style was essentially a development of stone architecture and in the Middle Ages only the most significant buildings, such as churches and cathedrals would be of stone, so the style is naturally associated with church architecture. Elements of Gothic design however found their way into domestic architecture too and even furniture.
Gothic features in Great Chalfield Manor |
The coronation chair in Westminster Abbey |
 St. Paul's Cathedral |
The flattened arch of the Perpendicular style continued to be used by the Tudors, but the Gothic style began to give way to the revived Roman style during the Renaissance. For a couple of hundred years Gothic was out.
In the eighteenth century it came back as Gothic Revival, beginning with Horace Walpole’s house at Strawberry Hill.
Gothic elements were mixed willy-nilly with Baroque designs, and could be confused with notions of Gothic Horror.
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‘An abbey! – yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey! – but she doubted, as she looked around the room, whether anything within her observation would have given her the consciousness.… The windows, to which she looked with particular dependence, from having heard the General talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be sure, the pointed arch was preserved - the form of them was Gothic – they might even be casements – but every pane was so large, so clear, so light! To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions and the heaviest stonework, for painted glass, dirt and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing.’
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen |
However, by Victorian times, despite the social revolution of the industrial age and an emphatic confidence in the economic progress of the age, or perhaps because of it, there was an increasing nostalgia for some mythical Mediaeval Utopia, and just as the PreRaphaelites turned to the Middle Ages in art, so serious scholars and architects reintroduced the Gothic style for churches, railway stations, lodge cottages and the most prestigious public buildings.
Pugin's Gothic touches on
the Palace of Westminster |
The Houses of Parliament were rebuilt between 1836-70 not in a modern style suited for a constitution heading towards democracy but in the style of a Feudal era. The architect, Charles Barry, was assisted by Augustus Pugin, the high priest of the Gothic revival. |
Gothic cottage window |
Castell Coch |
Another Gothic Revival master, William Burges, worked for the Marquis of Bute in ‘restoring’ castles in South Wales. His work at least emphasised the gaudy colour that would have dominated in Mediaeval buildings and allowed little compromise with the modern world. A visit to Castell Coch would have satisfied Jane Austen’s Catherine Morland, even without cobwebs and dirt.
Some of the essential elements of the Gothic style spread far and wide, remaining popular long after the need for stone vaulting was forgotten.
American Gothic
by Grant Wood |
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