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Updated: June 16, 2025
The last three bays of the clearstorey and the last two of the aisle are Decorated work, probably of the end of the thirteenth century, and here the level of the plinth is again lowered to suit the slope of the ground. In the aisle the two bays are separated from the rest and from each other by buttresses having a projection of 8 feet.
In the clearstorey the wall is considerably set back from the Transitional bays, and the three windows are very elaborate. Their arches are richly moulded and acutely pointed, the springing-line being rather low down.
Though the aisles differ so much, the clearstorey is much the same on this side as on the other, and again one of Archbishop Roger's buttresses is visible, imbedded between the Perpendicular walling and the west tower.
The clearstorey has a second plane of tracery, a feature not very common in England. The vaulting-shafts are in clusters of three and are filleted, and the string-course below the triforium is not carried round them. Each cluster springs from a semicircular corbel resting on a head, and has its capitals enriched with foliage.
Except at this end the wall, as in the clearstorey of the nave, is not buttressed, notwithstanding the size of the windows and their nearness together.
Here the round arches of the triforium have been built up, and the clearstorey harmonizes with the more elaborate scheme of the choir. The wall is divided into three bays by flat pilasters received in the cornice, and each bay contains a round arch, pierced and glazed, between two lower and narrower pointed arches, all resting on single detached shafts.
The two bays of Archbishop Roger's work incorporated in the towers, taken together with another Transitional bay at the east end, make it possible to imagine the whole interior of what must have been the most remarkable nave in England. It was unusually broad. According to Sir Gilbert Scott the triforium and clearstorey were probably continued across the west wall.
At each corner of the transept the thickening of the wall over the clearstorey arcade is carried by a shaft which rises from the bench-table or the ground. The roof is entirely modern, and the shields on its corbels bear the arms of the chief promoters of the last restoration. The figure of Lady Markenfield has, unfortunately, been destroyed.
In consequence of Archbishop Roger's arrangement the shafts of the comprising arch stand, not upon the sill of the triforium, but upon corbels, each of which carries two of them and also a roof-shaft which forms with them a cluster. The clearstorey shows in the broad bay a stilted round arch, pierced, between two small blind lancets, and in the narrow bay three small blind lancets.
And, even as it stands, the exterior of Ripon is dignified and not unworthy of its commanding site. The size of the clearstorey windows, the severity of the transept, the obvious variety of style and date throughout the building these are the features that strike the observer most forcibly. Several kinds of material have been employed.
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