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472
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
space was covered in by a wooden roofsurmounted by an open
lantern, one ofthe most remarkable feats ofstructural engineer^
ing in European architecture. The effect is to break up the
logical rectangular system of planning which had been in'
herited from the late eleventh century when thegreat church was
first undertaken. The construction of the octagon roof and
lantern is, with the roof of Westminster hall built some years
later, the best known and most spectacular
ofthe
great timber
constructions ofthat It is
age. not, however, the first. In the last
decade of the thirteenth century
a new chapter/house was
undertaken at York and this is 58 feet across, covered with a
wooden roof without internal support,
ceiled in imitation of
vaulting. The York chapterhouse has round seven ofits sides
a series of canopied stalls, the canopies having bayed fronts,
part octagon in plan, so giving the effect of a rippling line
around the great building immediately below the window
level. This is a good and early example ofthe tendency to dis^
solve the logical structural lines of a building of which the
planning at Wells and Bristol are more complicated and
elaborate examples. The same tendency appears in the hand"
ling ofthe clerestories at Exeter and later, in the early fifteenth
century, at Winchester, where the traditional way of treating
the clerestory in two planes, an inner arcaded gallery and an
outer arcade containing the window, is abandoned in favour
ofa gradual stepping'in from the inner wall to the plane ofthe
window so as again to produce a effect
rippling down the
length ofthe church. This tendency to develop effects in depth
or in the thickness ofthe walls is to be seen in the exploitation of
niche forms as well as in the treatment ofthe jambs ofwindows.
One ofthe most remarkable of all these niche compositions is
to be found at the east end ofHowden (PL 84), a composition
with a great eastern fagade, comparable to, though not as large
as, that of Lincoln. In it the great east window is surrounded
by a pattern of elaborately decorative niches which not only
provide the contrast ofareas ofplain and enriched stone surface
but also ofa play oflight and shade between the outer surface
ofthe wall and the shadowed recesses ofthe niches. The most