Q. Were there any buttresses used at this period?
[Illustration: Norman Buttress, Chancel of St. Mary's, Leicester.]
A. Yes; but the walls being enormously thick, and requiring little
additional support, those in use are like pilasters, with a broad face
projecting very little from the building; and they seem to have been
derived from the pilaster strips of stonework in Anglo-Saxon masonry. They
are generally of a single stage only, but sometimes of more, and are not
carried up higher than the cornice, under which they often but not always
finish with a slope. They appear as if intended rather to relieve the
plain external surface of the wall than to strengthen it. Norman portals
not unfrequently occur, formed in the thickness of a broad but shallow
pilaster buttress, as at Iffley Church, Oxfordshire, and at Stoneleigh and
Hampton-in-Arden Churches, Warwickshire, and elsewhere. This kind of
buttress was also used in the next, or Semi-Norman style.
Q. Were there any towers?
A. Yes; they were generally very low and massive; and the exterior,
especially of the upper story, was often decorated with arcades of blank
semicircular and intersecting arches; the parapet consisted of a plain
projecting blocking-course, supported by the corbel table.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56