Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
Though it underwent great alteration in the Perpendicular period much of the Norman work remains. The east wall is in the best preservation, and is certainly entirely Norman with the exception of the groining. It is covered with five series of arcades, which may be divided into three stages. In the middle stage is a notably good triforium passage of very short Norman arches.
They are similar in general character to those at Winchester, which were built by Abbot Simeon's brother. The transepts at Winchester were ready for consecration in 1093, and this was seven years before Simeon came to Ely. The triforium is probably only in part Simeon's work; and the clerestory was almost certainly added by his successor.
At the north end is a desk for the reader or readers made out of two Early English stalls; there are three double shafts with admirably carved wooden foliage in the capitals. A very fine little Norman door leads to the staircase to the triforium.
At the same time it would seem that the walls above, in the triforium range, were heightened, because the parapet at the top is of Early English work, although the three-light windows beneath it are Decorated, and were not inserted until the next century.
In addition to the changed form of the bases, careful observers can detect proofs of later work in the capitals of the shafts in the triforium. In front of each pier a shaft rises to the roof; and on these the original ceiling rested. On some of the piers in the south aisle, near the west end, may be seen several very curious masons' marks.
In the naves of Salisbury or Beverley the eye is led on from west to east by the circling band of the rich triforium; in the naves of Winchester and Canterbury it is attracted from floor to roof by the upspringing clusters of shafts; at York it wanders from point to point without any prominent feature to catch it.
The triforium again shows in each bay a round arch; indeed, no better example than this choir could be found of the truth that the form of the arch is not a safe guide to the date of a building, but was often dictated by convenience; for here in the triforium are round arches, of which some belong to the twelfth, others to the thirteenth, and others to the sixteenth century.
Each of these windows, like that on the west side, and several in the other transept, has been divided by a mullion into two lights, presumably in the fourteenth century. The third stage, which corresponds to the triforium within, is blank here as on the west side, and in the fourth stage are three round-headed windows, plainly recessed and chamfered.
He sent up out of those corbels upright shafts along the walls, in the likeness of the trees which sprang out of the rocks above his head. He raised those walls into great cliffs. He pierced them with the arches of the triforium, as with hermits' cells. He represented in the horizontal sills of his windows, and in his horizontal string-courses, the horizontal strata of the rocks.
The triforium walls in the nave were raised in the fifteenth century, as those in the presbytery had been raised in the fourteenth. The style of the tracery shews that this alteration was carried out quite late in the century, perhaps about 1480. In the south transept there is also a large Perpendicular window.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking