THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY ENGLISH STYLE
The English are not a sculptural race. Their architecture, however,
the style which they evolved, is just as exquisite as that of the French
cathedrals, and at the same time typically English, known under the
name of Early English.
Originally it came from France, as did the Gothic style in all
countries. The Cistercians, the new reformed order of the I2th
century, to which St. Bernard belonged, favoured it. Cistercian
houses in England were amongst the first to use pointed arches. Into
cathedral architecture it was introduced by William of Sens at
Canterbury. Details there are French in character. What is, however,
unusual in France, is the duplicating of the transepts as we find it at
Canterbury and then at Lincoln, Wells, Salisbury and many more
cathedrals. It is not a feature invented in England. Cluny, the centre
of the most influential Benedictine order before the foundation of
the Cistercians, had it—not in the loth-century shape of the church
which is illustrated (fig. 12), but as it was rebuilt in 1095 seqq. (pi.
xra). The fact that this duplication remained solitary in France but
became so popular in England is eminently characteristic of the
different approach to architecture in the two countries. The Gothic
style in France, as we have seen, tends all to spatial concentration.
The Early English style lacks that quality. A cathedral such as
Salisbury with its square east end and its square double transepts
(fig. 32) is still the sum, as it were, of added units, compartment
joined to compartment. Looking at,'say, Lincoln and then at Rheims
(pis. xxx and xxix), this difference comes out most eloquently.
Rheims seems vigorously pulled together, Lincoln comfortably
spread out. The same contrast can be found in the west facades. The
English ones are comparatively insignificant. Porches, added to the
naves and developed sometimes into superb pieces of independent
decorative architecture, serve as main entrances instead. And where
there are fully developed facades, as at Wells and Lincoln, they have
an existence unrelated to the interiors behind, are screens, as it were,
placed in front of the church proper, and not the logically designed
outward projection of the inside system, as are French facades. It has
been said that this seemingly conservative attitude of English archi-
tects was due to the survival of so many big Norman cathedrals, the
foundations and walls of which were used in the rebuilding. But this
materialistic explanation, like so many of the same kind, does not
hold good. Salisbury was a new foundation. There was nothing on
the site when the first stone was laid in 1220 (the same year in which
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