Development
of the Vaulted Ceiling
When Durham Cathedral was completed in 1133 it was the
first building in England to be completely covered by
ribbed
vaults. Whether or not it was the first in northern
Europe is a more contentious issue.
By the late eleventh century various alternative ways
of vaulting the main spaces of a great church were available
to medieval masons: barrel
vaults for example, were employed in the 'pilgrimage
churches' at Santiago de Compostela and Toulouse,
whereas groin
vaults were used in the remodelling of the cathedral
of Speyer after 1081. It is likely that some north Italian
churches had already introduced domical ribbed vaults
by 1090s; a building in the Lombard style, complete with
ribbed vaults, was erected at Utrecht, possibly in the
1080s.
In Normandy high vaulting appears to have been restricted
to the choir,
where groin vaults survive in the churches of St Nicholas
and La Trinité at Caen. This approach—the
use of groin vaulting, but only over the choir—was
found in England after the Norman
conquest, most probably at Lincoln and St Albans.
English practice however was far from consistent. Barrel
vaults were employed in the west country (Tewkesbury and
Gloucester), whereas stone vaulting was eschewed altogether
in east Anglia, an area in which ecclesiastical patrons
apparently preferred wooden ceilings. The ribbed vaults
of Durham thus appeared amidst a rather diverse picture.
There is considerable evidence to suggest that high vaults
were originally intended only for the choir at Durham,
following the pattern seen in other Anglo-Norman buildings
(La Trinité Caen, St Albans). The reasons for reaching
this conclusion are that the clerestory
is more solid in the choir (there are no mural passages),
the compound
piers are larger than those elsewhere, and the irregular
layout of the piers in the transept
implies that a vault was not envisaged. Moreover, with
the choir complete, it appears that a wooden ceiling rather
than a stone vault was erected in the south transept;
it was only when the north transept was under construction
that the decision was taken to extend ribbed vaulting
throughout the church. As argued by Bony, and accepted
by most historians, the original intention was for a partly
vaulted church, with the high vaults being restricted
to the choir as a way of emphasising the most important
part of the building.
The introduction of ribs
has generally been regarded as a structural innovation
rather than a visual one. Ribs have frequently been regarded
as a means of reinforcing the cells of a groin vault,
as well as serving as a temporary skeleton during construction.
It is unlikely, however, that this is why they were introduced
at Durham. As a highly articulated building, the plain
surfaces of a groin vault would have been out of keeping
with the rest of the design, and a desire to accentuate
the angles of the vault was perfectly consistent with
the aesthetic aims of the Durham builders. Even in groin
vaulted structures, the angles of the vaults were sometimes
painted in order to give the impression of ribs (Jumièges
nave aisles, St. Albans choir aisles). It has also been
suggested that diagonal
ribs provided a sort of baldacchino
over the most sacred part of the building, much as a ribbed
ciborium
is known to have been located over the altar in St. Peter's.
The introduction of ribs at Durham, therefore, may owe
more to aesthetic and even 'iconographic' considerations,
than to structural concerns.
The transverse arches found inside the galleries
at Durham (semi-circular in the choir, quadrants in the
nave) have sometimes been interpreted in structural terms.
The view is that they acted as proto-flying
buttresses reinforcing the upper walls of the building
just below the springing point of the high vault. This
interpretation is open to doubt. The spandrels of the
arches in the choir are not filled with masonry, limiting
their value as buttresses, and in the nave the quadrants
arches were composed of only one order before they were
enlarged in the nineteenth century. An alternative view
sees these arches as a means of supporting the gallery
roofs, rather than as an important stage in the evolution
of the Gothic structural system.
While there is no way of telling whether the ribbed vaults
over the choir were the first in northern Europe, there
is no question that the Durham masons learnt to handle
ribbed vaulting with increasing assurance over the course
of forty years. The structure of the vaults falls into
at least three technical phases, suggesting that the masons
were prepared to rethink their methods as the building
progressed. The final solution (in the nave) involved
the construction of pointed transverse arches, which were
among the first (if not the first) pointed arches to be
constructed in England. The exploitation of the pointed
arch in this position allowed the apex of the vault to
be kept level throughout its length, while at the same
time avoiding the need for stilting, as happened in the
north transept. While it could be argued that pointed
arches were first introduced into English architecture
to solve a geometrical problem, they may also have helped
to improve the stability of the vault.
Despite the spectacular appearance of the vaults at Durham,
the concept of the fully ribbed-vaulted church was not
exploited by English builders, at least not until the
closing decades of the twelfth century. |
 |
England,
Durham Cathedral, View of the nave looking east showing
rib vaulted ceiling
Cathedral
Santiago de Compastela, Interior of nave
Cathedral
Santiago de Compastela, Interior detail of nave
France,
Caen, St. Etienne, Nave looking east
England,
Durham Cathedral, Semi-circular arches in the gallery
of the choir
England, Durham Cathedral, View of nave showing pointed
transverse arches
|
