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ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 479
The discussion of these later vaults has taken us beyond the
point in the general history
ofarchitectural taste which we have
reached in the account ofthe work on Gloucester choir, which
was finished in the middle years of the fourteenth century, A
profound change had come into being in the later years of the
century which is possibly an example of the influence of the
great constructional carpenters on the whole attitude to archi-
tectural design. This is the vogue for the four-centred, rather flat
arch, a form which comes naturally in wood, where a slightly
cambered tie-beam roof gives a very spacious effect to the interior
of a church while providing the slope to the outside ofthe roof
which is suitable to the use oflead as a roof covering, a material
which lies more easily on a low-pitched than a high-pitched
roof. One of the finest early examples of this flat four/centred
arch treatment that survives to us is in the parish church of
Northleach in Gloucestershire, where all the arcades have this
form. This gives an entirely different kind of space effect, at
once broader and with less emphasis on the vertical direction,
than the more acutely pointed two-centred arches which had
prevailed up to that time. The later vaults, both lierne and fan,
but especially the former, tend to exploit this form ofarch and
so give a broader space effect to the whole interior ofthe build
ing. It seems likely that the taste for pendant vaults which we
have mentioned at Oxford and at Westminster may also owe
something to the invention of the great carpenters,
for in the
later fourteenth century a type of open timber roof was de
veloped whereby the trusses spanning the building have on
each side a series ofgreat wooden brackets known as hammerbeams,
the projecting ends of which are adorned either with
sculpture or earliest pendants.The known hammer-beam roof
is said to be a comparatively modest example in one ofthe sub
ordinate monastic buildings at Winchester, but the earliest
surviving important example is the astonishing roof of 67 feet
span built for Richard II in the 1390*5 at Westminster hall.
This was the work ofHugh Herland the king's master carpen
ter, and superseded the aisled treatment ofthe hall, which dated
from the late eleventh century. It seems likely that a great
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