BRISTOL AND ELY
same spatial motifs in the sacristy of the cathedral. Here the ribs of
the little vault are accompanied by a skeleton of secondary flying
ribs starting at a lower level than the others, shooting through the
air and meeting the primary ones at the central boss. The effect is
again one of deliberate and pleasing confusion. Classic Gothic ribs,
just like classic Gothic arches, keep strictly to the strata of space
assigned to them; they never stray into others.
At Ely more than anywhere else the new attitude towards space
has found an adequate form. Between 1322 and 1342 the crossing of
the cathedral was rebuilt in the form of an octagon. The choice of
this shape by the designer, who probably was the King's carpenter,
Master William de Hurle, can have been nothing but a deliberate
attempt at breaking the I3th-century's discipline of right angles. The
diagonal axes, with their large windows and flowing tracery, destroy
the precise dividing lines between nave, aisles, transepts and choir
whichhad been the groundwork in the plan and elevation of a classic
Gothic church. It has been argued that the glass of Amiens or the
Sainte Chapelle also breaks this logicality of the earlier Middle Ages
by opening the room towards a mysterious transcendental world.
That is not so; the sheets of glass may give a diaphanous character to
the enclosure, but it is an enclosure all die same. It doesn't really allow
the eye to wander into dirn^ incomprehensible distances. The octagon
of Ely has this very effect, an effect of surprise and ambiguity.
The Lady Chapel at Ely (1321-49) achieved the same aim by
subtler and more delicate means. The rectangular chapel isolated
from the main building, as only chapter-houses usually are, has all
the way round an exquisite arcading with crocketed ogee arches
gathered together by larger three-dimensional or nodding ogee
arches (pi. xxxvi). Ogee-curved quatrefoils with seated figures fill the
spandrels. The arches are covered with a luxuriant growth of vegeta-
tion, no longer as crisp as that of the I3th century, but with its un-
dulations of knobbly leaves and its intricacy of minute detail at once
more sophisticated and, strangely enough, more uniform in its
general appearance. This is due to a treatment that makes it impossi-
ble to isolate part from part/as one could in looking at the leaves of
Southwell. Now all one sees is an incessant ripple and flow, lights
and shadows whisking over bossy surfaces, fascinating but far re-
moved from the clarity of a hundred years ago.
The three-dimensional ogee arch is a motif of great significance.
It does what the octagon does in Ely Cathedral, and the piers with-
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