A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Inside the church the work is easily distinguished 

 from what preceded it by the difference in the tooling, 

 which is diagonal in the old work and vertical in this. 

 The design of the old clearstory is carried on,' the 

 only changes being that the shafts of the arcade, which 

 are monoliths in the older work, are now built in 

 courses of masonry, and the external corbel-table has 

 pointed arches and mask corbels instead of round 

 arches. 



The rest of the internal work, however, including 

 the west jambs of the three-light windows in the ends 

 of the transepts, is more advanced in style, retaining 

 nothing of Romanesque detail or design except the 

 semicircular rear arches of the three doorways and the 

 plan of the four responds of the tower arches. 



The tracery of the three-light windows in the 

 transepts cannot be earlier than the last quarter of 

 the 13 th century. In the original design there may 

 have been three lancets side by side under the main 

 arch, afterwards altered to the present arrangement 

 to give more light in the transepti 



The intersecting wall arcades in the ground story 

 of the transepts have been cut away to give a little more 

 space. This seems to have been done r. 1280, as a 

 double piscina like those in the presbytery aisles has 

 been inserted in the south wall of the south transept, 

 in the wall face exposed by the cutting away of the 

 arches. 



The point at which this third work stopped in the 

 transepts was at the string over the clearstory windows, 

 but the line on the inner face of the west wall of the nave 

 is not easy to define, the alteration in design consequent 

 on the fourth and final arrangement of the west end 

 having probably entailed the destruction of the upper 

 parts of this wall. 



If the design had been completed the west end of 

 the nave would have been very badly lighted, and it is 

 probable that it was abandoned chiefly for this reason, 

 one object of the fourth and final arrangement being 

 to throw as much light as possible on the west wall 

 of the nave. The narrow side arches of the third 

 design were therefore superseded by arches as wide as 

 the dimensions of the front would allow, their re- 

 sponds being set against the west ends of the side walls 

 of the porch, so that they were wider than the cen- 

 tral arch, which retained its original plan. The 

 three arches were carried to the same height, and the 

 porch vaulted in five bays, the three in the middle 

 arranged as in the former design, and the other two 

 each covering two bays of the old arrangement. 



The necessary abutment to the widened arches was 

 given by building st.iircase towers at either end of the 

 front, and the final development was thus reached. 



The western tr.insepts, towers, and main span are 

 vaulted with quadripartite ribbed vaults, those under 

 the towers having bell-ways in the crown. The 

 springing of a vault in the tenth bay of the nave 

 shows that a second scheme for vaulting the nave was 

 under consideration at this time, but like the first it 

 was abandoned. The pointed arches carrj'ing the 

 north and south walls of the western towers are 

 richly moulded, with details retaining marked Ro- 

 manesque feeling, and it is probable that the first 



few stones of the arches on the east side belong to 

 Benedict's work, and were copied when the arches 

 were completed. 



The method of providing abutment to the pro- 

 jected nave vaults by rough masses of rubble masonry 

 in the clearstory pass.iges is in the west transepts im- 

 proved on by treating the masses as steps. 



The three great arches of the front are of six 

 orders, with six banded marble shafts in each jamb, 

 having foliate capitals and moulded bases on a tall 

 moulded plinth. In the jambs of the central arch 

 foliate crockets are set bet\veen the shafts, and a line 

 of large dogtooth in the inner order, while in the side 

 arches the jambs are plain. The alternate orders of 

 the arches — the inner, third, and fifth — are enriched 

 with dogtooth, leaf ornament, and the Romanesque 

 double cone respectively, while the second, fourth, and 

 outer orders are moulded. The labels have a line of 

 leaf ornament. 



Above the arches a string with a line of foliate 

 crockets runs across the west front and is returned 

 round the towers and the transept gables. In each of 

 the six spandrels thus formed over the arches are two 

 trefoiled niches containing figures, with two trefoiled 

 recesses and a quatrefoil below them, and a cinquefoil 

 with a central boss in the upper corner of the 

 spandrel. 



Between the arches and at all the angles of the 

 turrets are clustered shafts of rounded or keeled sec- 

 tion, stopping at the ornamented string, or in the case 

 of the towers running up to the parapets and con- 

 tinued upwards as shafts to the later angle pinnacles. 



These clustered shafts belong to the final design, 

 and have been added to the triangular piers of the 

 central arch. They finish somewhat awkwardly below 

 the main string, as the octagonal pinnacles flanking 

 the central gable are not set directly over them, but 

 slightly outside their lines.' 



Each of the three gables over the great arches has 

 at the base an arcade of seven trefoiled arches with 

 half arches at either end,' three of the arches in each 

 gable containing figures. Over the arcades are 

 circular windows with wheel tracer^', that in the cen- 

 tral gable of eight divisions, and the others of six. 

 On either side of each window is a trefoiled niche, 

 and there is a third and wider niche in the apex of 

 the gable above, all three containing figures. On 

 each side of the central gable is a tall octagonal 

 pinnacle rising from a square base ; the octagonal 

 shaft has a string at half height, with a blank arcade 

 below and eight pointed openings above, with a line 

 of dogtooth in the heads and jambs, and is capped by 

 a plain octagonal spirelet. 



The stair towers have four tiers of blank arcading 

 below the main string course, the lowest of two plain 

 pointed arches, the second of four small trefoiled 

 arches on the north tower and two between two half 

 arches on the south tower, the third of two tall arches 

 intersecting above, and sub-divided by a secondary 

 arcade, the heads of the main arcade being treated as 

 niches for statues, which no longer exist ; and the 

 fourth of two plain arches. Above the string is a 

 trefoiled arcade of four arches, ranging with the 



^ The clearstories ia the gable walls of 

 the transept, though of different propor- 

 tions, are built to harmonize with those 

 of the nave, with scalloped capitals and 

 square abaci. 



2 The reason for this is evident. It 

 was an attempt to avoid the unpleasing 

 effect of having a narrow central gable 

 between two wider ones, and the pinnacles 

 are therefore set as far apart as the con- 

 ditions will allow. 



442 



* The half arches suggested to Mr. J. T, 

 Irvine that the gables had been altered, 

 the arcade having at first been continuous. 

 See his paper in Journ. Brit. Arch, Ass, 

 xlix, 138-150. 



