DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29899#0436
416
ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE.
Pakt II.
that at Westminster, but still clisplays clearly the characteristics
of the style. It would have been better if the trusses hacl sprung
from a line level with the sills of the windows, ancl if the arched
frame hacl been less flat ; but that was the tendency of the age,
which soon became so exaggerated as to destroy the constructive
proportion altogether.
We are not able to trace the gradual steps by which the hammer-
beam truss was perfected, but we can follow it from the date of the
hall at Westminster (1397), to Wolsey’s halls at Hampton Court and
Oxford, till it passed into the Jacobean versions of Lambeth or the
Inner Temple. Among all these, that of Kenilworth, though small
(86 ft. x 43 ft.), must have been one of the most beautiful. It
belongs to an age when the style adopted for halls hacl reached its
acme of perfection (micldle of 15th century), when the details of
carpentry had been mastered, but before there was any tendency to
tame the deep framing down to the flatness of a ceiling. The wooden
roofs of churches were generally flatter ancl less cleeply framecl than
those of the halls, which may have arisen from their being smaller in
span, and being placed over clerestories with little abutment to resist
a thrust ; but, whether from this or any other cause, they are generally
less beautiful.
There are few features of Mediæval art in this country to which atien-
tion could be more profitably directed than the roof ; for, whether applied
to secular or ecclesiastical buildings, the framed and carved wooden roof
is essentially English in execution and application, and is one of the most
beautiful and appropriate manifestations of our national art.
Did space admit of it, it would be easy to extend these remarks,
and in so doing to explain and prove a great deal which in the previous
pages it has been necessary to advance as mere assertion. The subject
is, in fact, practically inexhaustible ; as will be easily understood when
it is remembered that for more than five centuries all the best intellects
of the nation were more or less directed towards perfecting this great
art. Priests and laymen worked with masons, painters, and sculptors ;
and all were bent on producing the best possible building, and im-
proving every part and every detail, till the amount of thought and
contrivance accumulated in any single great structure is almost incom-
prehensible. If any one man were to devote a lifetime to the study
of one of our great cathedrals—assuming it to be conqflete in all its
Mediæval arrangements—it is questionable whether he would master
all its details, and fathom all the reasonings and experiments which
led to the glorious result before him. And when we consider that not
in the great cities alone, but in every convent and every parish,
thoughtful professional men were trying to excel what had been done
and was doing, by their prcdecessors and their fellows, we shall under-
stand what an amount of thought is built into the walls of our
ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE.
Pakt II.
that at Westminster, but still clisplays clearly the characteristics
of the style. It would have been better if the trusses hacl sprung
from a line level with the sills of the windows, ancl if the arched
frame hacl been less flat ; but that was the tendency of the age,
which soon became so exaggerated as to destroy the constructive
proportion altogether.
We are not able to trace the gradual steps by which the hammer-
beam truss was perfected, but we can follow it from the date of the
hall at Westminster (1397), to Wolsey’s halls at Hampton Court and
Oxford, till it passed into the Jacobean versions of Lambeth or the
Inner Temple. Among all these, that of Kenilworth, though small
(86 ft. x 43 ft.), must have been one of the most beautiful. It
belongs to an age when the style adopted for halls hacl reached its
acme of perfection (micldle of 15th century), when the details of
carpentry had been mastered, but before there was any tendency to
tame the deep framing down to the flatness of a ceiling. The wooden
roofs of churches were generally flatter ancl less cleeply framecl than
those of the halls, which may have arisen from their being smaller in
span, and being placed over clerestories with little abutment to resist
a thrust ; but, whether from this or any other cause, they are generally
less beautiful.
There are few features of Mediæval art in this country to which atien-
tion could be more profitably directed than the roof ; for, whether applied
to secular or ecclesiastical buildings, the framed and carved wooden roof
is essentially English in execution and application, and is one of the most
beautiful and appropriate manifestations of our national art.
Did space admit of it, it would be easy to extend these remarks,
and in so doing to explain and prove a great deal which in the previous
pages it has been necessary to advance as mere assertion. The subject
is, in fact, practically inexhaustible ; as will be easily understood when
it is remembered that for more than five centuries all the best intellects
of the nation were more or less directed towards perfecting this great
art. Priests and laymen worked with masons, painters, and sculptors ;
and all were bent on producing the best possible building, and im-
proving every part and every detail, till the amount of thought and
contrivance accumulated in any single great structure is almost incom-
prehensible. If any one man were to devote a lifetime to the study
of one of our great cathedrals—assuming it to be conqflete in all its
Mediæval arrangements—it is questionable whether he would master
all its details, and fathom all the reasonings and experiments which
led to the glorious result before him. And when we consider that not
in the great cities alone, but in every convent and every parish,
thoughtful professional men were trying to excel what had been done
and was doing, by their prcdecessors and their fellows, we shall under-
stand what an amount of thought is built into the walls of our