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ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 463
the upper parts of the composition. Evidence of the original
treatment with figure sculpture also still remains in the other
parts. The Peterborough fajade, the additions to the west front of
Lincoln made in the 1240*5, and, as it seems, the south fagade
of the great transept which was built at York minster in the
middle years ofthe century, probably inspired by the Lincoln
transepts, all share a manner of treating their decorative figure
sculpture in relation to the architectural lines ofthe composition.
The figures are placed on brackets against a flat, broad wall sur/
face and are framed in a relatively delicate linear system of
arcades. At Wells the sculpture is treated rather differently and
the main figures are placed in tabernacle/like housings with
gable tops. These give a far greater sense of design in depth than
the more clearly linear treatment at Peterborough and Lincoln,
and seem to point the way to the elaborate niche compositions of
the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
At its first setting/out the designers of the new church at
Wells made provision for a chapter/house to the north of the
choir; this was to be an octagonal building raised on an under'
croft. Only the undercroft, however, was completed in the
early part ofthe thirteenth century, and the chapterhouse itself
was not finally built until about a hundred years later (PL 82).
In the meanwhile, however, an early thirteenth/century chap/
teahouse of polygonal plan was built on a large scale at Lin/
coin. This was placed to the north ofthe church and provided
with a large and elaborate rectangular vestibule which rises to
the full height ofthe chapter/house itself. The chapter/house at
Lincoln is a decagon with pairs of lancets in each side. It is
vaulted to a central column with an elaborate ribbed vault.
It measures some 59 feet across. The fashion for polygonal
chapter/houses seems to have been initiated in the early twelfth
century by the work at Worcester, where, however, the build/
ing is a rotunda vaulted to a central column, but the circular
plan was soon translated into a polygon at Margam and a little
later at Abbey Dore (two Cistercian houses) which were both
examples with twelve sides. The most celebrated examples of
the polygonal chapter/house are the great octagons at West/
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