THE LATE GOTHIC STYLE C. I25O-C. I5OO
one west country and one east country church: the cathedral (then
abbey church) of Bristol, and the cathedral of Ely. The chancel of
Bristol was begun in 1298 and chiefly built during the first third of
the I4th century (pi. xxxv). It differs in four significant things from
all English cathedrals of the preceding period. It is an aisled hall, not
a basilica—that means that its aisles are as high as its nave, so that
no clerestory exists. This type of church elevation had existed in
Romanesque South-western France (see p. 25), but it had then no-
where attempted what it now does: the creation of a unified room
with piers inserted, instead of the classic Gothic principle of a stag-
gered elevation from aisle to nave. This tendency towards the unified
room has its origin in the refectories and dormitories of monastic
architecture and suchretrochoirs as that of Salisbury. Its introduction
into the body proper of the church made the Bristol architects
change, with a self-certainty remarkable at such an early date, the
shapes of both piers and vaults. The piers, a peculiarity exceptional
before the isth century, have no capitals, the vaults no special
emphasis on the transverse arches. That means that no halt stops the
flow up these shafts and into the ribs, and the flow along the star-
like formations of the primary and secondary ribs. There appears
in this a deliberate break with the classic Gothic principle of func-
tional articulation all the way through from pier base to vault boss.
Moreover, to support the weight of the nave vault, which in a
basilican Gothic church is conducted down by flying buttresses to
the roof of the aisles and then by buttresses to ground level, the
aisles are crossed at the level of the springing of their vaults by curi-
ously ingenious and yet naive struts or bridges thrown across below
the transverse arches. From their centres ribs sprout up to help in
forming transverse pointed tunnel-vaults to abut die nave vault.
The device may thus have been thought out for technical reasons:
it is aesthetically most effective all the same. A classic Gothic interior
is meant to affect us in two directions only: the facade-altar direction
and the other, at right angles to it, which make us see the sheets of
stained glass and the tracery on the right and the left. At Bristol our
eyes are lured all the time into glimpses diagonally up and across.
The same effect can be studied on a larger scale in Wells Cathedral,
where in 1338 an enormous arch or strut of similar design and func-
tion was placed between nave and crossing to support the crossing
tower. It is grossly baffling, but undeniably impressive. At Bristol it-
self the cathedral architect has given a more playful version of the
58