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ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 477
rather than a structural feature. All the main ribs except the
transverse are interrupted by rectangular or kite/shaped foiled
figures made up ofthese small subordinate ribs so that the vault,
though a perfectly sound structural piece of masonry, no longer
expresses its structure but appears like an elaborately decorated
stone ceiling. At Gloucester the subordinate ribs are multiplied
to such a degree that a tight mesh all-over
pattern was pro/
duced, giving a continuous effect from the west side of the
crossing to the east end of the church. The continuity of this
pattern is strongly reinforced by no less than three parallel
longitudinal ribs. At Tewkesbury, which is almost content
porary with Wells, the is pattern less elaborate but equally
de/
signed to subordinate structural expression to linear pattern
used to reinforce the unity ofeffect. All these late vaults from the
mid/thirteenth century onwards are natural, if in the later cases
extreme, examples of the English tendency to exploit the
springing ofthe ribbed vault as a sort oflarge stone/built corbel
or bracket. This tendency reaches its full development in the
later fourteenth century with the invention ofthe fan vault. In
the fan vault the ribs are spaced equally and generally of equal
curvature from the springing, so that a symmetrical part/
conoidal/shaped bracket is achieved. The orthodox fan vault,
ofwhich the grandest examples date from the later fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries, covers the surface of these conoidal
brackets with a system of panelling formed out ofthe ribs, and
thereby achieves a continuity of pattern motifwith the tracery of
the later medieval windows and the stone panelling applied
to wall surfaces and piers* Sherborne minster is perhaps the
most complete example of this (PL 87 H). The early fan vaults,
however, show this process just beginning. With reference to
chronology,
knowledge was built for the new chapter/house at Hereford
it seems that the earliest fan of which we have
and completed by 1 371 : this vault is only known from a draw/
ing by the antiquary Stukeley, made in the early eighteenth
century, but the surviving fragments of the building bear out
the accuracy of Stukeley's detail. This is of extraordinary in/
terest, for the tracery patterns formed by the ribs on the vault at