United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
You see the edges of it, instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crocketed, are mouldings of severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no fantasies, no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each of one polished block; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between them; your panel above it; thereon your story of the founder of Christianity.
On the south wall are the recessed tombs of four of their younger sons. The eldest, Dom Duarte, intended to be buried in the great unfinished chapel at the east, but still lies with his wife before the high altar. Each recess has a pointed arch richly moulded, and with broad bands of very unusual leaves, while above it rises a tall ogee canopy, crocketed and ending in a large finial.
Its church is distinguished for an exceptionally beautiful W. tower. Though it is not lofty, its decoration is unusually rich. It has double windows in the belfry stage, and the single windows in the stage below are flanked with niches; whilst the summit is crowned with pierced battlements and graceful crocketed pinnacles. The S. door is Norm., with rather uncommon mouldings.
Within comes the doorway itself; a large trefoiled arch of many mouldings of which the outermost, richly crocketed, turns up as an ogee, to pierce the horizontal line above with its finial. Every moulding is filled with foliage, most elaborately and finely cut, considering that it is worked in granite.
One of the few Gothic chimneys remaining, a gem with a crocketed and pinnacled canopy, was taken down some thirty years ago, while the Priory is said to be in danger of being pulled down, though a later report speaks only of its restoration. In the coaching age the town was alive with traffic, and Burford races, established by the Merry Monarch, brought it much gaiety.
The minutes passed, fewer and fewer people were visible, and still he serpentined among the shadows, for had he not imagined these scenes through ten bygone years, and what mattered a night's rest for once? High against the black sky the flash of a lamp would show crocketed pinnacles and indented battlements.
A fine niche, eight feet high, with a crocketed canopy, stood at the north-east corner of the chancel, but has disappeared. The windows of the nave and the west doorway have perished. It has been for a long time desecrated. The nave is used as a bakehouse. There is a large open grate, oven, and chimney in the centre, and the chancel is a storehouse for logs.
Beyond this hollow are two tall round shafts ending in large crocketed finials, while tied to them with carved cords is a curious hood-mould, forming three reversed cusps ending in large finials, one in the centre and one over each of the arches, and at the two ends curling across the hollow like a cut-off branch.
On each side of the large central door are square buttresses, running up to above the level of the aisle roof in six stories, the four upper of which are panelled with what looks like English decorated tracery, and ending in large square crocketed and gabled pinnacles. The door itself between these buttresses is another strange mixture.
Sir John put his head out of the coach window, and looked anxiously along the straight road, peering through the shades of evening in the hope of seeing the crocketed spires and fair cupolas of Louvain in the distance. But he could see nothing save a waste of level pastures and the gathering darkness. Not a light anywhere, not a sign of human habitation.
Word Of The Day