92 The Architecture of Malmesbury Abbey Church. 



All these windows, have a close analogy with the class which have 

 a spherical square for their centre-piece. 



On the north side only a single Decorated window has been 

 inserted in the aisle, but this is one which deserves attentive study 

 on many grounds. It will be remembered that the cloister stood 

 on this side, consequently the window was necessarily inserted at 

 a higher level than those in the north aisle. The Norman arcade 

 therefore below the window is spared. But between the roof of 

 the cloister and the vault of the aisle there was not room for a 

 window of the same height as those which were inserted on the 

 south side. The designer was therefore driven to the ingenious 

 expedient of carrying his window up into a separate gable, rising 

 from the parapet of the aisle like a dormer, and internally cutting 

 away one cell of the Norman vault, which he reconstructed after 

 his own fashion. This has been done in other cases where the same 

 reason made it necessary, as at Leominster. There is also a window 

 similarly placed on the north side of the Priory Church at Brecon, 

 but the circumstances here are somewhat different, as its position 

 was not necessitated by the cloister — the conventual buildings being 

 situated to the south of the church — and indeed it is placed over 

 another window. 



The tracery of this window is no less worthy of remark than its 

 position, but, as I have already described and figured it in my work 

 on that subject, 1 I will not repeat the observations which I have 

 there made. 



I cannot pronounce any opinion whether it was intended to alter 

 the windows throughout the aisles, so that we have merely the first 

 instalment of a change which was never brought to perfection ; or 

 whether larger windows were simply inserted where they were 

 practically wanted. An argument that the former was not the case 

 may perhaps be found in the fact that on the south side the sills of 

 the Norman windows have been brought down lower, so as to cut 

 into the arcade, apparently at this time. At any rate, I feel sure 

 that the insertion was not merely owing to aesthetical considerations, 

 but was intended to remedy the very practical deficiency of the 

 1 Pages 80, 271, plate 70, fig. 12. 



