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Updated: June 15, 2025
The walls and buttresses which enclose the aisles are plain, and it is only by comparison with this architectural Puritanism that the façade may be considered ornate. Near the top of its wall, which is supported by sturdy piers, are three round windows, with deep, splayed frames.
The square of the upper ward, added by this monarch, occupied a space of four hundred and twenty feet, and encroached somewhat upon the middle ward. Externally the walls presented a grim, regular appearance, broken only by the buttresses, and offering no other apertures than the narrow loopholes and gateways.
A very remarkable feature in these trees is the growth of buttress-shaped projections around the lower part of their stems. The spaces between these buttresses, which are generally thin walls of wood, form spacious chambers, and may be compared to stalls in a stable; some of them are large enough to hold a half- dozen persons.
The buttresses which help the walls to support the vaulting of the nave and choir are the most remarkable feature of the design, and, together with the tower, which rises in diminishing stages to the height of 260 feet and there ends in an embattled platform, account for the singularly feudal and fortress-like character of the building.
And to assure the further safety of the roof they supported the ribs of the roof by so-called "flying buttresses," a very simple method of construction which you will understand at once when you look at our picture. This new method of construction allowed the introduction of enormous windows.
Gertrude's indifferent manner drove her in upon herself and made her shy. A hundred feet and more below them the sea was washing into innumerable rocky fissures with a hollow booming sound. The cliff-line was broken into all sorts of bold forms, buttresses and parapets and sharp inclines, with here and there a shallow cave or a bit of shingly beach.
All the ground floor is vaulted, as is the chapel, but the main rooms on the first floor had wooden roofs, except the one next the chapel which forms the middle floor of a three-storied tower, which, rising above the rest of the building, has a battlemented flat roof reached by a spiral stair. This stair, like the round buttresses of the chapel, is capped by a high conical plastered roof.
In the valley on the west side of the city is a singular curiosity, several of the arches of a mediæval aqueduct. Pointed arches, and buttresses against the piers, are what we are not used to in such buildings.
The façade, between the towers and the extraordinary buttresses, is completely filled with an ample Gothic portal, which, though entirely destitute of sculpture, or indeed carving of any sort, offers a significant opportunity for some future efforts in this direction.
The last flush of evening has died in the west, and the scattered worshippers are indistinctly seen by the dim lights, which, bringing out into strong relief the parts immediately adjacent to the massive yet graceful pillars to which they are attached, throw the rest of the interior into deeper gloom, brought into sharp contrast with the illuminated portions, by intersecting arch, clustered shaft, and all the endless intricacies of Gothic architecture; exuberant with profusely decorated spandrils, sculptured bosses, light flying buttresses, and delicate fan-like tracery.
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