The beauty of church vaulting

click photo to enlarge
The vaulting that graces many a church and cathedral ceiling, especially inside a tower, is a recurring topic on this blog. I am fascinated by the variations on a theme that medieval masons and carpenters wrought in their desire to beautify the space above the worshippers' heads such that an upward glance really did feel like a glimpse of heaven. Architectural historians have created a whole specialised vocabulary to describe the development of vaulting down the centuries from its beginnings in simple barrel vaulting, to groin vaults, rib vaults, quadripartite and sexpartite vaults, vaults with tiercerons and liernes, culminating in the glories of stellar vaults and fan vaults.

The purpose of vaulting is to take some of the weight of a roof or tower above and distribute it laterally on to arches, walls, piers and columns. In the crossing vault shown above the ribs that form fans stretching from the centre to the four corners are instrumental in achieving this weight transference. However, this vaulting also has a central star pattern made by the addition of short decorative ribs called liernes. Clearly it is a design that seeks to impress with its beauty as well as do an architectural job of work. In fact, all is not what it seems with this vaulting. The tower of Holy Trinity was built during the period 1500-1530 on a raft of oak trees for the lack of any firm bedrock below. These were replaced by concrete in 1906. The vaulting, however, was erected as late as the 1840s, and the beautiful, rich paintwork must surely originate from that time - a mixture of medieval ideas and Victorian interpretation and development of those ideas. When I magnify my photograph I can see that the infill is timber planks so I imagine the ribs must be timber too. This vaulting will have replaced an earlier ceiling. That may have been stone, but is more likely to have been timber too. I've often seen fine Victorian work that replaced an insensitive, flat Georgian ceiling (itself inserted in place of the medieval original) though I've no reason to believe that is the case here. In fact, timber roofs were more widespread in England during the medieval period than in any other North European country and exhibit a unique ingenuity and beauty. Here, at Holy Trinity, the wood mimics painted stone and is none the worse for that.

The organ pipes on north and south sides of the crossing belong to the largest parish church organ in Great Britain. The oldest of the more than 4,000 pipes date from 1756 and are by Johannes Snetzler.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

St Michael, Garton on the Wolds

click photo to enlarge
One of the things that visitors to medieval English churches admire is the stonework of the interiors. Walls usually display cut stone with mortar joints, or in poorer areas, and particularly the north and west, rough stone similarly treated. But it wasn't always so: this "fashion" for stark stone walls on the inside of the building is a reflection of Victorian and later taste.

The interiors of English Romanesque and Gothic churches were always painted to a greater or lesser extent. Columns and capitals were embellished with paint. The stone walls were plastered and "instructive" scenes painted in terracotta with colourful highlights. These decorated the spandrels of the nave arcades, the spaces above the chancel and tower arches, and any other flat area that lent itself to the painters' art. Popular subjects were St Christopher, martyrdoms (St Sebastian, St Catherine, St Lucy, etc), the "Dance of Death", scenes from the Bible, and "Dooms" (depictions of the fires of Hell contrasted with the righteous being saved.) The Reformation led to a removal of images of all sorts, and many of these paintings were white-washed over, to be replaced in in the C17 and C18 by pieces of text on painted scrolls and cartouches. Some of these wall paintings have been uncovered (as at Kempley and Pickering) either in total or in part, and restored, but most are gone for ever.

However, at the same time that many Victorian churchmen and architects were scraping plaster off walls to reveal rustic stone, others were painting them, though not in the manner of earlier centuries, but after the fashion of Renaissance Italy. This was particularly true where completely new churches were erected, but also occurred when older churches were restored, as in the example above at Garton on the Wolds, East Yorkshire. This work dates from 1872 when the local landowner, Sir Tatton Sykes, engaged the architect, G. E. Street, to design a decorative scheme for the whole of the Romanesque and Gothic building - the walls, windows, floors and roof! The spirit-fresco wall designs were completed over the period 1873-6 by Clayton & Bell, a prolific firm who specialised in stained glass. Old Testament scenes and the prophets fill the nave, whilst the New Testament is the inspiration in the chancel. In 1972, in the first edition of The Buildings of England - Yorkshire: York and The East Riding, the author, Nikolaus Pevsner urged the preservation of the decaying paintings. This was acomplished in 1986-91, fittingly, by the Pevsner Memorial Trust. The result is magnificent, quite unique in England, and has to be seen.

My photograph was taken a few years ago. It shows the view down the nave towards the chancel (with my wife looking at the reredos designed by Street). I don't know what I did to the camera to make the lights have their ethereal glow, - it must have been a combination of a long exposure, tripod and settings - but I quite like it!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1.5 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A