United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The principal façade of the fifteenth century accredited to one Martin Chambige and erected just after the nave took form is of the richness of Gothic only just previous to its decline. There are three portals, which are bare of sculptured figures, as indeed is the whole west front.
Therese understood at once, and a smile came to her lips and eyes. They were passing near the porch, before the stone figures that wear sceptres and crowns. "Let us go in," she said. He did not wish to go in. He declared that the door was closed. She pushed it, and slipped into the immense nave, where the inanimate trees of the columns ascended in darkness.
Proceeding towards the west, Solomon Eagle arrived at a small recess in the wall opposite one of the broad-arched openings looking into the nave, and entering it, pressed against a spring at the further extremity, and a stone door flying open, discovered a secret cell, on the floor of which his brazier was burning. Depositing his burden on the floor, he said to Nizza, "He is now safe.
There were no transepts or central tower, but two porches, one on the north and the other on the south, and in the angle formed by them with the choir, Gundulph built towers, one a belfry, the other a fortress detached from the church. To the south of the nave stood the first monastery and it is there that we may still see fragments, five arches in all, of Gundulph's nave.
It is when the nave is entered that the full beauty and vast proportions of the Norman church are revealed, for this is in essence a Norman building encased with Perpendicular details and additions. As Wykeham's alterations were merely added to the original piers, the stateliness of the whole remains.
He died, and his son, a generation younger and imbued with the newer architectural theories, even went so far as to alter his father's plans; he built the nave higher than was customary in Romanesque churches, and gave elegance to the whole structure by employing the pointed arch even in the triforium, otherwise a copy of that of Santiago.
Here we may see the solid grandeur of Norman masonry in the nave, with its massive arcading and richly-wrought triforium; the graceful beauty of the Early English in its north porch and in the windows of the north aisle of the nave; the more fully developed Decorated in the windows of the south aisle of the same; and Perpendicular in the tower and Lady Chapel.
Almost all the persons buried in the abbey were women, but one curious exception may be noted. In 1845 a coffin was discovered in the nave, under an enormous slab of stone, measuring 11 ft. 5 in. by 3 ft. 9 in. Mr. Ferrey, the architect, under whose supervision the restoration of the abbey was then being carried out, thus describes the discovery: "Great care was exercised in raising the stone.
Their Majesties acknowledged this enthusiasm most courteously as they passed through this long and brilliant gallery leading to the chapel, which was a sort of nave of the temple where their August union was to be consecrated anew." The chapel was the Salon Carre, which lies between the picture-gallery and the Apollo gallery. Two rows of seats had been placed all around it.
Still he thought it a good omen that she had bidden him thus, though some might have read it otherwise. Godwin entered the church, walking softly on the rushes with which its nave was strewn, and by the light of the lamp that burnt there always, saw Rosamund kneeling before a little shrine, her gracious head bowed upon her hands, praying earnestly. Of what, he wondered of what?
Word Of The Day