The Architecture of Malmesbury Abbey Church. 



Decorated architects was to adapt the aisles to the style now in vogue ; 

 but at Malmesbury, while this design was less completely carried 

 out than in those instances, the change was extended to another 

 portion to which their benefactors of this period gave but little 

 attention; the clerestory was remodelled throughout the nave and 

 apparently throughout the whole church. 



I have already stated how far this last change was an actual 

 rebuilding of the clerestory, and how far a mere insertion of win- 

 dows in a previously existing wall. The windows are rather tall 

 compositions of three lights, with the exception of those in the 

 eastern bay, which, the bay itself being narrower, are of two only. 

 The tracery is of a somewhat singular form, composed of imperfect 

 spherical triangles, of which some examples occur in Exeter Cathe- 

 dral. 1 In the south aisle two large Decorated windows of three 

 lights have been inserted, low in the wall, so as to cut into the 

 decorative arcades below. The tracery is very remarkable. The 

 main lines are the same as in a very beautiful window in the 

 Mayor's Chapel at Bristol, 2 the general notion being a subarcuated 

 window with a large quatrefoil for the centre-piece, but with two 

 perpendicular lines substituted for its lower foil ; they are there- 

 fore instances of the accidental forestalling of Perpendicular in a 

 Geometrical design. The intention of this form here and elsewhere 

 probably was to receive a representation of the Crucifixion in 

 stained glass. But our Malmesbury example is by no means to be 

 compared to its Bristol fellow. It not only lacks the beautiful 

 enrichment of ball-flower which embellishes the latter, but the 

 actual lines of its tracery are of a very inferior kind. The fenes- 

 tellse at Malmesbury are simply cinquefoiled ; the centre-piece is 

 not foliated again, as at Bristol, and there is a sort of awkward 

 flowered cusp instead of an arch in the head of the central light. 

 There is another window in Bristol, in the porch of St. Mary 

 Kedcliffe, of the same character, and whose primary lines are the same ; 

 but here the quatrefoil is completed on a secondary plane, which 

 makes it much more satisfactory as a mere piece of tracery than the 

 other two, but not so well adapted for the purpose above suggested. 

 1 Essay on Window Tracery, p. 71, 270, 2 Ibid. p. 82, 271. 



