has some precedent in Norman churches, and in French churches like Laon, so, as in other details, the architecture is a compromise between French and Norman traditions. Many of the decorative motifs used by William of Sens, including chevron and roll mouldings on the vault ribs, dogtooth in the stringcourses, waterleaf capitals, and polished Purbeck marble shafts, are derived from previous work at the cathedral under Prior Wilbert (1153–1174), which is classified as Romanesque. Wilbert supervised several changes to the Norman cathedral, and the construction of the Infirmary Chapel and the Treasury. French influences were already present in the work under Wilbert, and many of the masons and sculptors continued on with William of Sens, perhaps further inspired by his origins.
Along with stone from Normandy, William of Sens made liberal use of polished Purbeck marble (fossiliferous limestone from the south coast of England) for shafts and stringcourses, as did his successor from 1179 to 1184, William the Englishman, set against a light-coloured stone background. The eclectic polyphony of French and Norman themes, materials, colours, and patterns, was to be very influential in the development of English Gothic architecture, establishing a precedent for pattern and texture. The influence can be seen in a new nave and choir at Chichester after a fire in 1187, with piers surrounded by freestanding Purbeck marble shafts. The influence can be seen in the retrochoir of Winchester Cathedral, built between 1189 and 1204, and a new presbytery at Rochester, built in 1214, with sexpartite vaults. The influence can be seen in the nave at Lincoln Cathedral in the height of the arcade, the archivolts of the pointed arcade arches, the Purbeck marble shafts around the piers, and the bundled responds which rise from each pier to approximately the same height of the arcaded gallery.
William of Sens’ choir aisles are two-storied, because he preserved the original windows and arcading from the choir built under Anselm. The responds in the first level are the original, while the responds in the second level were designed by William. In the triforium, trefoil windows replace the original tribune windows. William inserted an arcaded interior wall passage above the aisles and behind the clerestory, a motif which did not exist in France. The wall passage provides additional support for the vault, independent of the buttressing. The presbytery of William of Sens was complete by 1178, including ten piers for the three bays and altar, aisle vaults, gallery, and clerestory. The design of the elevations is the same as the choir, based on contemporary French architecture, except for a more elaborate and experimental treatment of the freestone piers and attached marble shafts (the fact that they were experimental is shown by the fact that the designs were revised more than once during construction).
From the eastern crossing, the first piers are encased in a number of thin Purbeck marble shafts with acanthus capitals, which continue through the arcade level, similar to Notre Dame in Paris. The second pier is a simple, thick, cylindrical pier with a Byzantine version of a composite Roman capital. The third pier is octagonal with widely spaced, thin, attached Purbeck shafts, then a pier consisting of coupled columns with attached marble shafts, then finally a pier which is octagonal at the floor but becomes circular halfway up. The design of the aisle vaults of the presbytery is experimental as well, with lopsided five-part vaults on the north side, connecting the original Norman aisle wall with a new arcade, and distorted quadripartite vaults on the south side. This experimental vaulting can be seen as a precedent for the ”crazy vault” of St Hugh’s Choir at Lincoln Cathedral, believed to have been designed by Geoffrey de Noyers, who was trained at Canterbury. The vaults in the north presbytery aisle at Canterbury connect two bays of the Norman aisle with one bay of the new arcade, so William set additional responds in the aisle wall and created a ribbed groin vault, as at Durham, with transverse ribs which are not parallel, and a fifth rib in each bay which is a transverse rib in the severy on the aisle wall side. According to Gervase of Canterbury, this was necessitated by the preservation of the eastern towers above the chapels of St Anselm and St Andrew, which formed part of the Norman ambulatory.
South-west transept. Lincoln Cathedral.
In the design of the Trinity Chapel, William the Englishman did not have to conform to any pre-existing Norman conditions. A shrine was necessary for the martyred St Thomas, who had already become a popular cult figure, and the shrine was placed directly above the tomb in the crypt where Thomas was previously buried. The floor level was raised above the high altar to create a procession through the choir and presbytery, culminating in the Trinity Chapel and Corona. For an unknown reason, the aisles of the chapel are not parallel, and the arcades bow outwards from the presbytery arcade walls of William of Sens. The chapel is supported by the massive walls of the crypt below, which is spacious because of the raised floor level.
The Trinity Chapel above is filled with richly coloured marbles, sculpture, and sparkling stained-glass, creating a luxuriant opulence, an opulence that could originally be found in many English Gothic cathedrals, as walls and furnishings were often originally painted to create a colourful fantasia in combination with the stained-glass windows. The clerestory and gallery of the chapel are the same as in the presbytery, with the minimal amount of masonry in the clerestory, just twin slender piers modelled on the clerestory of Sens, to maximise the light in the chapel. The vault behind the arcade is not supported by the outer aisle wall; instead its ribs terminate on freestanding bundles of shafts, and a passage, wide enough to walk through, is inserted between them and the exterior wall, which is filled with tall, lancet stained-glass windows. William the Englishman rejected the thick wall arcade of William of Sens, and dematerialised the architecture to allow the chapel to be flooded with light. The vaults are separated from the wall to create a skeletal structure, which was made possible by one of the earliest uses of the flying buttress.
The dematerialisation is reminiscent of the ambulatory of Abbot Suger at St Denis north of Paris, where arcade walls are replaced by thin arcade shafts. The Abbot Suger is believed to have been inspired by the light mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysus, to allow the worshipper to enjoy the presence of light as much as possible, to signify the presence of God, but the most important thing that St Denis and the Trinity Chapel have in common is their function as national shrines, so the light would play an important role in the illumination of ritual nationalistic ceremony. The same would be true later in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and at Westminster Abbey. The skeletal structure of the chapel aisles, considered to be William the Englishman’s most important innovation as an architect, establishes an important precedent for experiments in later English Gothic architecture, at Bristol and Gloucester, for example, where the vaulting arrangement becomes independent of the structure it is supporting, and independent of a structural system altogether, as in the pendant vault.
Above the arcade in the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury, the gallery of the presbytery is transformed into a triforium with a wall passage, and William of Sens’ system of paired arches each with paired sub-arches is replaced by a series of thin lancets with pointed arches, archivolts, and sub-arches with their own supporting shafts on either side of the main shaft, as opposed to a shaft in the centre in William of Sens’ scheme. The effect, based on the triforium of Laon Cathedral, continues the effect of the arcade vaulting: it is a more skeletal, attenuated, dematerialised system, more rigorous mathematically, and less decorative. The Corona, or Becket’s Crown, continues the themes of the chapel: dematerialisation and light, with tiers of arcaded galleries and extra light through the clerestory. William of Sens was the last important French architect to work in England (except perhaps Henry of Reyns at Westminster Abbey and Windsor in the 13th century), and the immediate influence of French architecture in the development of English Gothic architecture ends at Canterbury, until at least it is taken up again at Westminster in the Decorated style. To the extent that French motifs would be employed at Lincoln Cathedral, such as the sexpartite vault, they are subject to extreme revision, and rendered unrecognisable. Nevertheless, the sexpartite vault, elevation scheme, bundled shafts, and experimental spatial relationships of Canterbury are continued at Lincoln.
South-east transept. Lincoln Cathedral.
Retrochoir north aisle. Canterbury Cathedral.
