18-10.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



365 



ON BUTTRESSES, PINNACLES, &c. 



F—B. Bent of the force 

 communicated to the 1st 

 flying-buttresses. 



F. B. P. C. Parallelogram 

 of forces. 



C—F. Direction of the 

 combined forces. 



f—b. Bent of the force 

 communicated from the 

 1st to the 2nd Flying- 

 buttress. 



p—f. The direct downward 

 force of the gravity of 

 the 2nd pinnacle. 



e—f. The active direction 

 of the combined forces 

 after leaving the 2nd 

 buttress, and more and 

 more inflected till it 

 reaches the ground at ff. 



ON BUTTRESSES, PINNACLES, &e. 

 By Alfred Bartholomew, Architect.* 



Were it the author's wish to prove by one example more striking 

 I'lan any other, the falling off of science in the absolute practice of 

 ;ircl)iteclure, in these times of pretended superiority, in which the 

 ill-taugbt pr;ictitioner who wishes to pursue the integrity of his art, 

 is obliged, after he is turned adrift by his master, to re-educate himself 

 as far as he is ab!e, by picliing up whatever scraps of scientific infor- 

 mation may fall in his way, instead of receiving from his master at 

 once the full depth of skill whicli (he free-masons for centuries handed 

 down from father to son, from master to pupil, without diminution pnd 

 without reserve, — he would fearlessly instance the most singular ad- 

 vancement whicl) the mid-eval architects seem, by nothing short of 

 inspiration, to have made in the most delicate acquaintance with 

 Architclural DynamicB ; a knowledge which taught them at once to 

 unite in their abutments, strength with economy, uje with beauty: 

 wliile in our ignorance we fancy that strength and economy are ene- 

 mies of eacli other and tliat use and beauty are of necessity opposite 

 qualities. This refined intelligence taught them to render every ne- 

 cessary part of their constructions such exquisite ornaments, that the 

 ignorant modern looking at them, without knowing their use, fancies 

 them to be merely ornamental. 



They first began in their vaultings with reducing the lateral thrust 

 of the work to the smallest limits, by cutting out all the otherwise 

 more level and hazardous parts of the vaulting, so that what remained 

 scarcely left its perpendicular bearing upon the walls : they next 

 greatly reduced further the weight of the vaulting, by forming it of 

 small stone ribs, with a mere thin cuticle of lighter materials in short 

 and narrow panels between the ribs ; and whereas in our modern brick 



* \V"e have through the kind permission of the author, taken this paper 

 from a vvurk recently published by him, entitled, '• Speciticatioiis for Practical 

 Architecture ; preceded by an Kssay on the decline of excellence in the 

 Structure and in the Science of Modcin English Buildings." 



No. 38.— Vol. III.— November, 1840. 



vaultings, tlie groin-points are weak by their bond, and are still weaker 

 from the soft and inferior nature of the bricks of which they are com- 

 posed (vulgarly termed "ctil/ers," and wholly unfit for the purposes of 

 any good work), and we know scarcely any thing of the dytiatnics of 

 such a vault, — the mid-eval builder put all the strength in the ribs, 

 strutted his ribs across as he deemed necessary, and made every strut 

 a beauty, conducted the active force down those ribs as easily as water 

 is conducted down a pipe, and then, instead of leaving the active force 

 within each rib to expend itself in committing unknown and unre- 

 strained damage to the walls of the fabric, he united their force in one 

 [loint so that he could deal with it as an active power well ascertained; 

 then knowing by the laws of the resolution of forces the way in which 

 the united thrust of the ribs would move, he counter-acted by the 



N, nave. A, A, aisles. R, R, &c., ribs of the vaulting, the several thrusts 

 of which all uniting at the centre C ; the dynamic action is confined to one 

 point lending to move from V to F. F, flying-buttress, falling against the 

 point C, in the direction exactly suited for opposing the united thrust of the 

 vaulting-ribs. B, wall-buttress from which the flying-buttress springs. 

 P, pinnacle. The small letters indicate the repetition of sets of the same 

 parts belonging to other divisions of the vaulting. 



3 



