Perpendicular Gothic (also Perpendicular , Rectilinear , or Third Pointed ) architecture was the third and final style of English Gothic architecture developed in the Kingdom of England during the Late Middle Ages , typified by large windows, four-centred arches , straight vertical and horizontal lines in the tracery , and regular arch-topped rectangular panelling. Perpendicular was the prevailing style of Late Gothic architecture in England from the 14th century to the 17th century. Perpendicular was unique to the country: no equivalent arose in Continental Europe or elsewhere in the British-Irish Isles . Of all the Gothic architectural styles , Perpendicular was the first to experience a second wave of popularity from the 18th century on in Gothic Revival architecture .
31-402: Chichester Cross is an elaborate Perpendicular market cross in the centre of the city of Chichester , West Sussex , standing at the intersection of the four principal streets. It is a Grade I listed building . According to the inscription upon it, this cross was built by Edward Story , Bishop of Chichester from 1477 to 1503, but little is known for certain and the style and ornaments of
62-466: A monastic foundation, "forming a continuous and solid architectural barrier... that effectively separates the world of the monks from that of the serfs and workmen, whose lives and works went forward outside and around the cloister." Cloistered (or claustral) life is also another name for the monastic life of a monk or nun . The English term enclosure is used in contemporary Catholic church law translations to mean cloistered, and some form of
93-467: A Frankish nobleman's villa rustica , in a tradition unbroken from late Roman times. Another early cloister, in the abbey of Saint-Riquier (790–799), took a triangular shape, with chapels at the corners, in conscious representation of the Trinity . A square cloister sited against the flank of the abbey church was built at Inden (816) and the abbey of St. Wandrille at Fontenelle (823–833). At Fulda ,
124-600: A Tudor arch, filling the wall with glass. The window tracery matches the tracery on the walls. During the reign of Edward III the style began to dominate at the Court, especially at the redevelopment of Windsor Castle, where John Sponlee designed the buildings to house Edward's neo-Arthurian fancies. Of these the Dean's Cloister and Aerary Porch survive and exhibit early Perpendicular blind tracery and lierne vaults. The style attained maturity under Henry Yevele and William Wynford in
155-462: A cathedral) and King's College chapel. These were both straightforward fan vaults , but pendant vaulting also reached its apogee with those over St Frideswide's Priory (now Oxford Cathedral ) and the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey, a major example of the late Perpendicular style. Another important example is St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle , begun in 1475. The vault of the chapel
186-540: A large and convenient market-house was, about the year 1807, erected in the North-street; on the completion of which, it was proposed to take down this Cross, then considered as a nuisance. This was prevented from taking place when some of the members of the corporation purchased several houses on the north side of the Cross in order to widen that part of the street by their demolition. A bust of King Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur
217-505: A palatine chapel built by King Edward I following the model of Sainte-Chapelle at the Palais de la Cité in medieval Paris . It was built in phases over a long period, from 1292 until 1348, though today only the crypt exists. The architect of the early building was Michael of Canterbury , followed in 1323 by his son Thomas. One of the original decorative features was a kind of blind tracery; blank vertical panels with cusped, or angular tops in
248-401: Is a dial, exhibiting the hour to each of the three principal streets; the fourth being excluded from this advantage by standing at an angle. In the centre is a large circular column, the basement of which forms a seat: into this column is inserted a number of groinings, which, spreading from the centre, form the roof beautifully moulded. The central column appears to continue through the roof, and
279-412: Is constructed of Caen stone , one of the most favoured building materials of the age. The cross's form is octangular, having a strong butment at each angle, surmounted with pinnacles. On each of its faces is an entrance through a pointed arch, ornamented with crockets and a finial . Above this, on four of its sides, is a tablet, to commemorate its reparation in the reign of Charles II. Above each tablet
310-484: Is supported without by eight flying buttresses, which rest on the several corners of the building. Malmesbury Market Cross in Wiltshire is the other surviving late medieval covered English market cross with a similar form, but rather smaller and simpler. Until the start of the nineteenth century the Cross was used as a market-place; but the increased population of the city requiring a more extensive area for that purpose,
341-611: The Dissolution of the Monasteries ) were rebuilt in 1331–1350. It was likely the work of one of the royal architects, either William de Ramsey, who had worked on the London cathedral chapter house, or Thomas of Canterbury, who was architect to the king when the transept of Gloucester Cathedral was begun. The architect preserved the original 11th-century walls, covering them with Flamboyant mullions and panels. The east window of Gloucester choir has
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#1732837926140372-563: The Divinity School, Oxford . In the later 15th century, the pendulum swung back towards elaboration, especially under the Tudors. John Harvey considered this change to be significant enough to merit Tudor Gothic being considered as a separate style, with greater continental influence, but this position is not widely held. At this period many of the most dazzling vaults were constructed, such as those by John Wastell at Peterborough Abbey (now
403-425: The soffit of the window, with horizontal transoms frequently decorated with miniature crenellations . Blind panels covering the walls continued the strong straight lines of verticals and horizontals established by the tracery. Together with flattened arches and roofs, crenellations, hood mouldings , lierne vaulting , and fan vaulting were the typical stylistic features. The first Perpendicular style building
434-722: The British Isles into three stylistic periods. The third and final style – Perpendicular – Rickman characterised as mostly belonging to buildings built from the reign of Richard II ( r. 1377–1399 ) to that of Henry VIII ( r. 1509–1547 ). From the 15th century, under the House of Tudor , the prevailing Perpendicular style is commonly known as Tudor architecture , being ultimately succeeded by Elizabethan architecture and Renaissance architecture under Elizabeth I ( r. 1558–1603 ). Rickman had excluded from his scheme most new buildings after Henry VIII's reign, calling
465-552: The Convent of Saints Sergius and Bacchus , at Umm-is-Surab (AD 489), and the colonnaded forecourt of the convent of Id-Dêr, but nothing similar appeared in the semi-eremitic Irish monasteries' clustered roundhouses nor in the earliest Benedictine collective communities of the West. In the time of Charlemagne ( r. 768–814 ) the requirements of a separate monastic community within an extended and scattered manorial estate led to
496-592: The Latin parent word "claustrum" is frequently used as a metonymic name for monastery in languages such as German. Cloistered clergy refers to monastic orders that strictly separate themselves from the affairs of the external world. The early medieval cloister had several antecedents: the peristyle court of the Greco-Roman domus , the atrium and its expanded version that served as forecourt to early Christian basilicas , and certain semi-galleried courts attached to
527-633: The beginning of the reign of Richard II to the beginning the reign of Edward VI . Though the style rarely appeared on the European continent, it was dominant in England until the mid-16th century. In 1906 William Lethaby , Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey, proposed that the origin of the Perpendicular style was to be found not in 14th-century Gloucester , as was traditionally argued, but in London, where
558-445: The building suggest that it may date from the reign of Edward IV . It was built so that the poor people should have somewhere to sell their wares, and as a meeting point. An earlier wooden cross had been erected on the same site by Bishop William Reade (1369–1385). The stone cross was repaired during the reign of Charles II , and at the expense of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond in 1746, and stands to this day. The Market Cross
589-454: The court of the House of Plantagenet was based at Westminster Palace beside Westminster Abbey . The cathedral of London, the episcopal see of the third-most senior bishop in the Church of England , was then Old St Paul's Cathedral . According to the architectural historian John Harvey , the octagonal chapter house of St Paul's, built about 1332 by William Ramsey for the cathedral canons ,
620-413: The development of a "monastery within a monastery" in the form of the locked cloister, an architectural solution allowing the monks to perform their sacred tasks apart from the distractions of laymen and servants. Horn offers as early examples Abbot Gundeland's "Altenmünster" of Lorsch abbey (765–774), as revealed in the excavations by Frederich Behn. Lorsch was adapted without substantial alteration from
651-529: The flanks of early Syrian churches. Walter Horn suggests that the earliest coenobitic communities, which were established in Egypt by Saint Pachomius c. AD 320 , did not result in cloister construction, as there were no lay serfs attached to the community of monks, and thus no need for separation within the walled community. Horn finds the earliest prototypical cloisters in some exceptional late fifth-century monastic churches in southern Syria, such as
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#1732837926140682-418: The interior; and, on the exterior, thin stone mullions or ribs extending downward below the windows creating perpendicular spaces. These became the most characteristic feature of the style. The earliest Perpendicular in a major church is the choir of Gloucester Cathedral (1337–1350) constructed when the south transept and choir of the then Benedictine abbey church (Gloucester was not a bishopric until after
713-449: The later 14th century. Yevele designed works for the King and Court, such as Westminster Hall , Portchester Castle and the naves of Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral , while Wynford predominantly worked for Bishop Wykeham of Winchester on the nave of the cathedral itself as well as his educational foundations of New College, Oxford and Winchester College . By c.1400 the style
744-531: The latter 14th-century chapter house of Hereford Cathedral (demolished 1769) and cloisters at Gloucester , and then at Reginald Ely 's King's College Chapel, Cambridge (1446–1461) and the brothers William and Robert Vertue 's Henry VII Chapel ( c. 1503–1512 ) at Westminster Abbey . The architect and art historian Thomas Rickman 's Attempt to Discriminate the Style of Architecture in England , first published in 1812, divided Gothic architecture in
775-650: The style of "additions and rebuilding" in the later 16th and earlier 17th centuries "often much debased". Perpendicular followed the Decorated Gothic (or Second Pointed) style and preceded the arrival of Renaissance elements in Tudor and Elizabethan architecture. As a Late Gothic style contemporary with Flamboyant in France and elsewhere in Europe, the heyday of Perpendicular is traditionally dated from 1377 until 1547, or from
806-449: Was added to the cross in the 1660s. The bust was removed in the 1970s after which it was replaced by a glass fibre replica. In 2019 it was loaned to The Novium museum. Perpendicular Period The pointed arches used in Perpendicular were often four-centred arches , allowing them to be rather wider and flatter than in other Gothic styles. Perpendicular tracery is characterized by mullions that rise vertically as far as
837-569: Was built under the direction of William de Ramsey, who had worked on earlier phases of the still-unfinished St Stephens's Chapel. Ramsey extended the stone mullions of the windows downwards on the walls. At the top of each window he made a four-centred arch which became a distinctive feature of Perpendicular. Along with rest of Old St Paul's, the chapter house was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Elements of early Perpendicular are also known from St Stephen's Chapel at Westminster Palace,
868-408: Was contracted to the master-mason John Aylmer in 1506. Cloister A cloister (from Latin claustrum , "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against a warm southern flank, usually indicates that it is (or once was) part of
899-404: Was designed in c. 1332 by William de Ramsey : a chapter house for Old St Paul's Cathedral , the cathedral of the bishop of London . The chancel of Gloucester Cathedral ( c. 1337–1357 ) and its latter 14th-century cloisters are early examples. Four-centred arches were often used, and lierne vaults seen in early buildings were developed into fan vaults , first at
930-412: Was the earliest example of Perpendicular Gothic. Alec Clifton-Taylor agreed that St Paul's chapter house and St Stephen's Chapel at Westminster Palace predate the early Perpendicular work at Gloucester. In the early 21st century the outline of the foundations of the chapter house was made visible in the redeveloped south churchyard of the present 17th-century cathedral. The chapter house at St Paul's
961-569: Was widespread across the country, from Melrose in Scotland to Wells in Somerset. Under the pious Henry VI the official style of the Court became relatively austere, as seen at the chapels of King's College, Cambridge and Eton College . However, the original intentions at both buildings are now obscured as the building work continued long after the King was overthrown, with design changes resulting in increasing ornamentation. The same process occurred at