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460 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
which can be traced
typical ofa west country school of design
at Malmesbury from about 1150, at the neighbouring great
church of Glastonbury, and at various other important build'
ings in the lower Severn basin and South Wales. Though the
Wells work has so strong a regional character and seems to re'
present a different tradition from that of Canterbury and Lin'
coin, French influences are almost as marked in the design as at
Canterbury itself.This is very clearly
seen in the character ofthe
clerestory treatment and ofthe vault. The clerestory has, indeed,
a passage in normal Anglo/Norman tradition, but whereas at
Lincoln everything is done to exploit this feature with elabo'
rate is arcading, everything done at Wells to minimize its effect
and almost to deceive the
spectator into supposing that a French
galleryless clerestory existed. The original form of the clere'
story windows at Wells rather broadly proportioned lancets
and the form ofthe middle storey ofthe eastern limb and parts
ofthe
transept, equally suggest French influence, but rather of
the kind that is represented by Roche and may well also have
come through some Cistercian building as an intermediary.
The vault is also rather French in character, being a simple
quadripartite ribbed treatment, very accomplished but, as
compared with the many/ribbed vaults of Lincoln, curiously
inconsistent with the elaborate linear treatment of the lower
parts of the interior elevation. Wells before the fourteenth
century had a bold and well'designed lantern tower over the
crossing, a feature which is common to almost all the great
churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England.
The most celebrated features of Wells cathedral are the north
porch ofabout 1215 and the great west front, which was being
finished about i240.The north porch, which is the main cere'
monial entrance to the church, is the most sumptuous example
of the later work of the west country school of masons men'
tioned above. The west front, however, with its elaborate de'
tached shafts of special material, shows a complete breakaway
from this regional style and implies the influence ofeither Lin'
coin or Canterbury. This most celebrated of English medieval
facade designs is partly distinguished from the great facades