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Courtyard. Canterbury Cathedral.

The eastern part of Canterbury Cathedral was destroyed by fire in September of 1174, as documented by Gervase of Canterbury, one of the monks. That part of the cathedral was rebuilt between 1175 and 1185, which was also documented by Gervase. According to him, the monks of Canterbury summoned masons from England and France, and were impressed by the French mason William of Sens, who decided to demolish the Norman arcades and clerestory which survived the fire. Gervase chronicled the construction year by year. In 1175, two piers on each side of the west end of the choir were constructed. In the next year an additional pier was added on each side, with arches and supporting aisle vaults for the first three bays. Two more bays were added the following year, along with a gallery, clerestory, and vault for the first five bays of the choir. In 1178, the sixth bay of the choir and the transept were constructed. The building project went smoothly for the entire ten years, except for the accident of William of Sens in 1178, when he fell from scaffolding while supervising work on the vault over the high altar, after having completed the sixth bay of the choir and the transepts, which forced him to retire to France, and to be replaced by William the Englishman. The new architect completed a new crypt by 1181, and began construction of the outer walls of the Trinity Chapel. The piers for the chapel were completed by the next year, and the walls of the Corona behind it, Becket’s Crown.

The shrine of Thomas Becket, who was murdered in the cathedral in 1170 and canonised as St Thomas of Canterbury in 1173, was added to the short Norman choir built under Bishop Lanfranc (1070–1077), after the Norman Conquest, which consisted of two bays and an apse, and was extended in the 12th century under Bishop Anselm (St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1093–1109) and Bishop Conrad (Prior Conrad, d. 1127) to include a pair of eastern transepts and the chapels of St Anselm and St Andrew. The body of Thomas Becket, which was originally buried in the crypt, was placed in the new shrine, Trinity Chapel, built by William the Englishman, in 1220. For the Trinity Chapel, William the Englishman followed the main lines of the choir.

Becket was murdered after he returned from exile in Sens, which resulted from his arguments with King Henry II. In the north transept of the crossing, four knights, acting in support of the king, stabbed Becket to death. Afterwards, a hair shirt swarming with lice was found under his robe. He was recognised as a saint, and Henry II performed penance at his tomb, being flagellated by monks. The tomb of Thomas Becket became the most important pilgrimage destination in medieval England, as Becket became a symbol of resistance to tyrannical authority. The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer were inspired by the journey along the Pilgrim’s Way from London to Canterbury to see the shrine. So many offerings accumulated at the shrine that by 1538, when it was destroyed by Henry VIII, who was determined to destroy the symbol of resistance to the king, twenty-six wagons were required to cart all the offerings away.

Stained-glass windows, called the Becket Miracle Windows, were installed around Trinity Chapel. Completed by 1220, the windows portray images of pilgrimage and miracles associated with Becket. A Becket Window was also installed in Chartres Cathedral in France in the early 13th century, illustrating the exploits and death of the saint in 1170. Earlier stained-glass windows at Chartres include the Blue Virgin Window, the Jesse Window, and the Life of Christ Window, all installed around 1150.

The importance of Canterbury was established long before the murder of Becket. In 597 CE, the missionary St Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory from Rome to Canterbury to convert England to Christianity. He gave a sermon to the Anglo-Saxon King of Kent, Ethelbert, and later that year Ethelbert was baptised, according to St Bede the Venerable’s history of England. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and Canterbury became the see of the primate of England. Following the Norman Conquest, the Archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm, who initiated the building of the great cathedral, would also come to be considered the fathers of English Scholasticism, based on their writings and sermons. Archbishop Lanfranc built the largest monastery in England, with a complex of Benedictine buildings, including a cloister, chapter house, dormitory, refectory, and cellarer’s lodgings on the north side of the cathedral.

Choir, 1175–1185. Canterbury Cathedral.

The rebuilding of the eastern end of Canterbury was directed by William of Sens, a French architect who imported stone from Caen in Normandy for the project, from 1174 to 1179. William of Sens’ work consists of the choir, which contains stalls for the monks across five bays between the central tower and the eastern crossing; the presbytery or retrochoir, across three bays east of the crossing, with a high altar raised on a few steps; and a final bay of the presbytery, containing the throne of St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the 6th century. William of Sens was able to replace the piers in the new French Gothic style, but he was limited to the original Norman plan. The resulting new building was much higher, with thinner proportions, pointed arches, and a ribbed vault. While Gothic elements appeared at Durham, and at Ripon and Roche Abbey, Yorkshire, around 1170, the choir of William of Sens is considered to be the earliest surviving Gothic building in England.

The architecture is a compromise between the desire to build a new cathedral in a French style, and existing local requirements. The architecture is French in that it has a semicircular ambulatory, flying buttresses hidden under the aisle roofs, coupled columns, acanthus capitals, and two-bay sexpartite vaults. While the walls along the plan are thick Norman walls, with thick piers alternating between cylindrical and octagonal, a combination repeated in the sculpted capitals, the height of the arcade suggests the French cathedral; it comprises about sixty percent of the elevation, and the gallery and clerestory above look diminished in relation to it. Responds rising from the cylindrical columns support transverse ribs which transform a quadripartite vault into a sexpartite vault in the French style, but the continuity of the French system is interrupted by the alternating piers. A single shaft supports the extra transverse ribs, while tripartite bundled shafts support the diagonal ribs and the main transverse ribs, creating an alternation which expresses the hierarchy of supports, as at Notre Dame in Paris or Laon.

The ribs of the vault rise from corbels with alternating square and canted abaci, corresponding to the alternating circular and octagonal piers at the bottom of the respective responds. The square abaci are placed on top of the single slender shafts, which support the extra transverse ribs which intersect with the diagonal ribs at a boss along the ridge line of the vault, while the canted abaci are placed on the tripartite bundled shafts, which support the diagonal ribs and the main transverse ribs which delimit the bays of the vault. The corbels are placed at the bottom of the round arches of the gallery, at the same level of the abaci of the arches and sub-arches, so the springing of the vault is carried to below the base of the clerestory, in contradiction to French standards. The diagonal ribs receive the most well-articulated support. The responds rest on top of the abaci of the piers, propped up on their projecting ledges, as in contemporary French cathedrals, such as Notre Dame in Paris (similar arrangements can also be found at Ripon, Reims, Laon, Senlis, Sens, and Vézelay). While the arcade is extended and the gallery is well-articulated with arches set in arches and doubled Purbeck columns, the clerestory is pushed back behind Purbeck columns and almost hidden under the severies of the vault.

The sexpartite vault was the first in England, and its use was short-lived, as variations developed by the end of the 12th century, beginning with the ridge rib at Lincoln. The sexpartite vault was used at St Denis in France in the 1140s, and at Senlis and Noyon, though those vaults have not survived. The best example of the sexpartite vault in France can be found at Sens, though it was partially reconstructed in the 13th century. As at Canterbury, the diagonal ribs at Sens are semicircular arcs, and the transverse ribs are pointed and all the same pitch, reducing the thrust of the vault. Unlike Canterbury, the shafts in the elevation are designed to correspond to the static forces from the ribs; they rise from the ground, and continue in front of the clerestory, forming a complete skeletal structure, as opposed to the variety of subdivisions to which the shafts are subjected in the elevation of the Canterbury choir. This is made possible in part at Sens by the use of the flying buttress, which allowed the vault to be supported without a heavily articulated clerestory level, like the one at Canterbury, and allowed for greater expanse of glass in the clerestory, thus more light. The profiles of the ribs at Sens were excessive and inconsistent, and this problem was corrected at Notre Dame in Paris, begun in 1163. The culmination of the development of the sexpartite vault in France occurred at Bourges, begun 1172, and soon thereafter it was replaced by the quadripartite vault, as the additional thrusts were no longer needed in the development of the flying buttress.

Corona (Becket’s Crown), 1175–1182. Canterbury Cathedral.

St Hugh’s Choir. Lincoln Cathedral.

West front. Lincoln Cathedral.

Angel Choir, 1256–1280. Lincoln Cathedral.

Choir and Angel Choir vaults. Lincoln Cathedral.

Along with the sexpartite vault, the proportions of the elevations in the choir, the profiles of the bases and archivolts, and paired columns with attached shafts, have been cited as derived from the cathedral at Sens, the home town of the architect in France. The cathedral at Sens had an important symbolic connection to Canterbury, as it was where Thomas Becket spent his years in exile, and it contained the only important relics of Becket outside of Canterbury, namely his mass vestments. The necessity to build in relation to the original Norman church at Canterbury prevented the result from being French Gothic architecture, so the architecture consists of elements of pure French Gothic architecture, distorted French Gothic architecture, and local Norman traditions. The upper walls of the elevations at Canterbury are much thicker than in France; they are supported by transverse arches in the galleries and aisles, and an internal passage above in the clerestory. This combination has some precedent in Norman churches, and in French churches like Laon, so, as in other details, the architecture is a compromise between French and Norman traditions. Many of the decorative motifs used by William of Sens, including chevron and roll mouldings on the vault ribs, dogtooth in the stringcourses, waterleaf capitals, and polished Purbeck marble shafts, are derived from previous work at the cathedral under Prior Wilbert (1153–1174), which is classified as Romanesque. Wilbert supervised several changes to the Norman cathedral, and the construction of the Infirmary Chapel and the Treasury. French influences were already present in the work under Wilbert, and many of the masons and sculptors continued on with William of Sens, perhaps further inspired by his origins.

Along with stone from Normandy, William of Sens made liberal use of polished Purbeck marble (fossiliferous limestone from the south coast of England) for shafts and stringcourses, as did his successor from 1179 to 1184, William the Englishman, set against a light-coloured stone background. The eclectic polyphony of French and Norman themes, materials, colours, and patterns, was to be very influential in the development of English Gothic architecture, establishing a precedent for pattern and texture. The influence can be seen in a new nave and choir at Chichester after a fire in 1187, with piers surrounded by freestanding Purbeck marble shafts. The influence can be seen in the retrochoir of Winchester Cathedral, built between 1189 and 1204, and a new presbytery at Rochester, built in 1214, with sexpartite vaults. The influence can be seen in the nave at Lincoln Cathedral in the height of the arcade, the archivolts of the pointed arcade arches, the Purbeck marble shafts around the piers, and the bundled responds which rise from each pier to approximately the same height of the arcaded gallery.

William of Sens’ choir aisles are two-storied, because he preserved the original windows and arcading from the choir built under Anselm. The responds in the first level are the original, while the responds in the second level were designed by William. In the triforium, trefoil windows replace the original tribune windows. William inserted an arcaded interior wall passage above the aisles and behind the clerestory, a motif which did not exist in France. The wall passage provides additional support for the vault, independent of the buttressing. The presbytery of William of Sens was complete by 1178, including ten piers for the three bays and altar, aisle vaults, gallery, and clerestory. The design of the elevations is the same as the choir, based on contemporary French architecture, except for a more elaborate and experimental treatment of the freestone piers and attached marble shafts (the fact that they were experimental is shown by the fact that the designs were revised more than once during construction).

From the eastern crossing, the first piers are encased in a number of thin Purbeck marble shafts with acanthus capitals, which continue through the arcade level, similar to Notre Dame in Paris. The second pier is a simple, thick, cylindrical pier with a Byzantine version of a composite Roman capital. The third pier is octagonal with widely spaced, thin, attached Purbeck shafts, then a pier consisting of coupled columns with attached marble shafts, then finally a pier which is octagonal at the floor but becomes circular halfway up. The design of the aisle vaults of the presbytery is experimental as well, with lopsided five-part vaults on the north side, connecting the original Norman aisle wall with a new arcade, and distorted quadripartite vaults on the south side. This experimental vaulting can be seen as a precedent for the ”crazy vault” of St Hugh’s Choir at Lincoln Cathedral, believed to have been designed by Geoffrey de Noyers, who was trained at Canterbury. The vaults in the north presbytery aisle at Canterbury connect two bays of the Norman aisle with one bay of the new arcade, so William set additional responds in the aisle wall and created a ribbed groin vault, as at Durham, with transverse ribs which are not parallel, and a fifth rib in each bay which is a transverse rib in the severy on the aisle wall side. According to Gervase of Canterbury, this was necessitated by the preservation of the eastern towers above the chapels of St Anselm and St Andrew, which formed part of the Norman ambulatory.

South-west transept. Lincoln Cathedral.

In the design of the Trinity Chapel, William the Englishman did not have to conform to any pre-existing Norman conditions. A shrine was necessary for the martyred St Thomas, who had already become a popular cult figure, and the shrine was placed directly above the tomb in the crypt where Thomas was previously buried. The floor level was raised above the high altar to create a procession through the choir and presbytery, culminating in the Trinity Chapel and Corona. For an unknown reason, the aisles of the chapel are not parallel, and the arcades bow outwards from the presbytery arcade walls of William of Sens. The chapel is supported by the massive walls of the crypt below, which is spacious because of the raised floor level.

The Trinity Chapel above is filled with richly coloured marbles, sculpture, and sparkling stained-glass, creating a luxuriant opulence, an opulence that could originally be found in many English Gothic cathedrals, as walls and furnishings were often originally painted to create a colourful fantasia in combination with the stained-glass windows. The clerestory and gallery of the chapel are the same as in the presbytery, with the minimal amount of masonry in the clerestory, just twin slender piers modelled on the clerestory of Sens, to maximise the light in the chapel. The vault behind the arcade is not supported by the outer aisle wall; instead its ribs terminate on freestanding bundles of shafts, and a passage, wide enough to walk through, is inserted between them and the exterior wall, which is filled with tall, lancet stained-glass windows. William the Englishman rejected the thick wall arcade of William of Sens, and dematerialised the architecture to allow the chapel to be flooded with light. The vaults are separated from the wall to create a skeletal structure, which was made possible by one of the earliest uses of the flying buttress.

The dematerialisation is reminiscent of the ambulatory of Abbot Suger at St Denis north of Paris, where arcade walls are replaced by thin arcade shafts. The Abbot Suger is believed to have been inspired by the light mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysus, to allow the worshipper to enjoy the presence of light as much as possible, to signify the presence of God, but the most important thing that St Denis and the Trinity Chapel have in common is their function as national shrines, so the light would play an important role in the illumination of ritual nationalistic ceremony. The same would be true later in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and at Westminster Abbey. The skeletal structure of the chapel aisles, considered to be William the Englishman’s most important innovation as an architect, establishes an important precedent for experiments in later English Gothic architecture, at Bristol and Gloucester, for example, where the vaulting arrangement becomes independent of the structure it is supporting, and independent of a structural system altogether, as in the pendant vault.

Above the arcade in the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury, the gallery of the presbytery is transformed into a triforium with a wall passage, and William of Sens’ system of paired arches each with paired sub-arches is replaced by a series of thin lancets with pointed arches, archivolts, and sub-arches with their own supporting shafts on either side of the main shaft, as opposed to a shaft in the centre in William of Sens’ scheme. The effect, based on the triforium of Laon Cathedral, continues the effect of the arcade vaulting: it is a more skeletal, attenuated, dematerialised system, more rigorous mathematically, and less decorative. The Corona, or Becket’s Crown, continues the themes of the chapel: dematerialisation and light, with tiers of arcaded galleries and extra light through the clerestory. William of Sens was the last important French architect to work in England (except perhaps Henry of Reyns at Westminster Abbey and Windsor in the 13th century), and the immediate influence of French architecture in the development of English Gothic architecture ends at Canterbury, until at least it is taken up again at Westminster in the Decorated style. To the extent that French motifs would be employed at Lincoln Cathedral, such as the sexpartite vault, they are subject to extreme revision, and rendered unrecognisable. Nevertheless, the sexpartite vault, elevation scheme, bundled shafts, and experimental spatial relationships of Canterbury are continued at Lincoln.

South-east transept. Lincoln Cathedral.

Retrochoir north aisle. Canterbury Cathedral.

Dean’s Eye. Lincoln Cathedral.

Lincoln Cathedral is the Cathedral Church of St Mary in Lincoln. It was a Roman colony, Lindum Colonia, and William the Conqueror built a castle there following the Norman Conquest, in 1068. Bishop Remigius, a Norman monk appointed by William the Conqueror, began building a Norman cathedral in 1072; it was consecrated in 1092 by Robert Bloet, the second bishop. The cathedral provided a chapel for canons, and the nave served as a parish church for St Mary Magdalene. By 1235 nothing is believed to have remained of the original Norman structure of Lincoln Cathedral except for the central portion of the west façade built by Remigius. The original roof was destroyed by fire in 1141, and much of the original structure was destroyed by an earthquake on 15 April 1185. Alexander, the third bishop, made repairs after the fire. He is credited by Giraldus Cambrensis with building the first masonry vaults at Lincoln.

Rebuilding after the earthquake was begun by St Hugh of Avalon, the seventh bishop, who became bishop in 1186, and continued under Hugh for eight years, from 1192 to 1200. Hugh was a French Carthusian monk who was invited to England by Henry II, and was the only bishop of Lincoln to be canonised by the Catholic Church, although great efforts were made to canonise Robert Grosseteste as well. Hugh was the only person to supervise the building of a Gothic cathedral to become a saint. Bishop Hugh of Avalon employed Geoffrey de Noyers, who had worked at Canterbury. Geoffrey worked under William of Sens at Canterbury, and the influence can be seen in certain places at Lincoln. Geoffrey may also have worked under William’s successor at Canterbury, William the Englishman.

The plan of Lincoln Cathedral, with two pairs of transepts, follows the plan for the rebuilding of Canterbury between 1175 and 1184. The east end of Lincoln, which was built during the time of St Hugh, and only the footprint of which remains in the Angel Choir of the cathedral was very similar to the choir at Canterbury. A footprint of the original apse of Remigius can be seen in St Hugh’s Choir. From excavations, there were a hexagonal chapel at the east end of the choir for the relics of Bishop Remigius, and eastern transepts, based on the architecture at Canterbury. These were destroyed in 1255 to make room for the new Angel Choir. In general, details of the architecture at Lincoln can be seen as elaborations of the details at Canterbury: plain piers are surrounded by shafts, crockets are allowed to run down the piers; multiple-layered triforia, multiple clerestory windows per bay, sexpartite vaulting, the paired apses in the transepts, and an abundance of Purbeck marble. Purbeck marble was from the beginning one of the most distinguishing features of the cathedral. It is referred to in the Metrical Life of St Hugh as lapidum preciosa nigrorum materies, and was seen to evoke the most spiritual qualities of light and material. Purbeck marble is not actually a marble, but a fossiliferous limestone polished to simulate marble, from the Isle of Purbeck. The Metrical Life of St Hugh, “How St Hugh built the cathedral church of Lincoln, 1192–1200”, was the second biography of Bishop Hugh of Avalon, written by Henry of Avranches, a friend of Robert Grosseteste, between 1220 and 1235, when Grosseteste became Bishop of Lincoln.

The vaulting throughout the aisles at Lincoln is based on the vaulting of one bay at Canterbury. The freestanding responds and multiple clerestory windows at Lincoln can be found in the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury. The building of Canterbury Cathedral, especially the reconstruction of the choir beginning in 1174, inspired a proliferation of cathedral building in England. Minsters around England were inspired by the activities of Thomas Becket, in fighting for the liberties of the church against the king, to build new buildings and reliquaries for patron saints. Communities also became increasingly nationalistic in response to the expansion of French power, especially after the Norman Conquest and the invasion of England in 1216. After 1214, French influences were almost nonexistent in English architecture.

Chapter house, c. 1220–1245. Lincoln Cathedral.

Lincoln is seen as the first significant departure from the French Gothic style, and the first instance of pure English Gothic architecture. There is a geometrical elaboration beyond any precedent at Lincoln. While many, in particular Nikolaus Pevsner, have created a romantic view of the architecture in the succeeding years as being a product of the visionary genius of Geoffrey de Noyers, it is uncertain what exactly his role was in the design of the architecture. His involvement is certain, as reported in the Magna Vita, the first biography of St Hugh, written by Adam of Eynsham in 1210. There he is called nobilis fabrice constructor, which means he would have been either the architect or the Clerk of Works. Constructor or construxit could mean the person for whom the work is built, such as the bishop or other members of the clergy, or a canon acting as custos fabricae, keeper of the fabric. In the Metrical Life of St Hugh, Geoffrey was instructed by St Hugh on his deathbed to finish the work quickly for the council of the king and bishops. The nave and chapter house, and even the present choir vault, may have been built by the “third master”, Alexander the Mason, who held property in Lincoln at the time. The rebuilding of the cathedral began with the transepts and St Hugh’s Choir.

The architecture of the east transept of Lincoln Cathedral (north-east transept, illustration 1, 2; south-east transept: illustration 3, 4), from between 1190 and 1240, represented a significant departure from precedent, and had a decisive influence on the development of the Decorated style. To the north, there is an open, two-storey room between the openwork arcading and the exterior wall, the purpose of which is not known. It is possible that a ceiling was intended between the gallery and clerestory levels. Each vertical plane, the exterior wall with just two tiers of tall lancet windows, and the elaborate openwork screen façade set inside it, can be taken as the north façade of the transept, the interior façade providing a clear view of the exterior façade behind it. The two façades seem to fit into the general programme of the architecture at Lincoln Cathedral at the end of the 12th century, attributed to Geoffrey de Noyers, working for Bishop Hugh of Avalon, of a series of experiments in vistas and visual experiences, and experimental spatial configurations, as in the asymmetrical vault and the syncopated double arcading of St Hugh’s Choir, but there is no indication that the coexistence of the two north façades in the transept had any functional purpose in terms of the organisation of the space.

Across from the arcaded screens of St Hugh’s Choir in the north aisle is the double arcade. The double arcade also appears in the four semicircular chapels attached to the east side of the eastern transept, two in the north bay and two in the south bay. The eastern transept was built before the collapse of the crossing tower in 1237 or 1239, but the semicircular chapels, though part of the original design, were probably not built until after the collapse. The vaulting of the eastern transept is the earliest surviving at Lincoln, and departs from the French model in that it is a sexpartite vault over a single bay rather than over two bays. This required an additional springer for the intermediate transverse rib. The springers rising from below the clerestory recalls Canterbury Cathedral. The triforium of the east transept is similar to that of St Hugh’s Choir, with two arches in each bay divided into two sub-arches, and trefoils and quatrefoils in the tympana, except in the northernmost bay, which is the earliest. The clerestory of the east transept only contains single lancet windows in each bay. The transept is not very well lit, as the clerestory windows are obscured by the curved web of the sexpartite vaulting condensed into one bay. The design of the vault of St Hugh’s Choir may have resulted in part from a desire to correct this problem. The pointed arches of the arcade in the lower walls of the transepts are similar to those in St Hugh’s Choir, as is the exterior buttressing.

The vaulting of the chapels of the transept is quadripartite. A chamber on the western side of the northern arm, called the Dean’s Chapel, contains a column with an octagonal pier, surrounded by four circular Purbeck shafts alternating with hexagonal, concave, fluted stone shafts, with crockets running up the side of the pier in between them. The column is repeated in the same location on both sides of the north and south bays. These are referred to as “Trondheim Piers”, as it is believed that Lincoln masons worked at Trondheim Cathedral.

One of the piers is without the crockets. Nikolaus Pevsner considers this to be the original, an invention of Geoffrey de Noyers, while the rest of the columns are ruined by the excessive crockets. The original pier is exactly like piers found at Canterbury, which was completed in 1184, six years prior to the start of Geoffrey de Noyer’s work at Lincoln. Other columns in the eastern transepts display clustered marble piers and stone shafts, stiff-leaf foliage capitals, and the circular Gothic abacus at the top of the column, replacing the square Norman abacus. The columns have a cruciform core with hollowed-out, chamfered angles forming diagonal shafts, which is repeated in St Hugh’s Choir, except with only four detached shafts.

Bishop’s Eye, west transept. Lincoln Cathedral.

North-east transept. Lincoln Cathedral.

South-east transept. Lincoln Cathedral.

The main, western transept (south-west), which contains the Dean’s Eye and the Bishop’s Eye, was more or less completed by the time of the collapse of the tower. Only the innermost bays had been completed by 1200, and the subsequent bays were built between 1200 and 1235. Bishop Hugh of Wells, bishop from 1209 to 1235, is believed to have contributed to the construction of the transepts and later the nave (illustration) by donating all of the timber from his land upon his death. The western transept is believed to have been started by Geoffrey de Noyers, and continued by the “second master”, Michael, or Master Michael the Mason, referred to as magister operis, “master of the works of the Church of Lincoln”, and “master of the Fabric of the Church of Lincoln”, active from around 1210 to 1234. Michael held land in the parish of St Michael on the Mount of Newhouse Abbey. He was succeeded by Gilbert de Burgo, who was active from about 1230 to 1235. The architect who completed the western transept is considered to be a different architect than that of St Hugh’s Choir, in its original form, and the architect of the nave still a third architect. The “third master”, Alexander, active from around 1240 to 1257, is also credited by John Harvey with the crossing tower, chapter house, Galilee Porch, and the upper part of the west front. Alexander was referred to in various places as cementarius (mason), magister operis (master of the works), and magister fabricae (master of the fabric).

The western transept features piers composed of eight stone shafts and eight marble shafts, reiterating the number eight as symbolic of creation. The bays of the transept are similar to the bays of St Hugh’s Choir. The architecture changes above the capitals of the piers, though, seeming to be the work of a different architect. The vaulting of the main transept is sexpartite, and is the same height as St Hugh’s Choir, seventy-four feet. Each bay is divided into six cells by a transverse and two diagonal ribs, a simpler, conventional variation of the vaulting of St Hugh’s Choir, and, as a result, far more influential to subsequent architecture. The vaulting of the western transept was not built high enough, and the bay at the north end above the Dean’s Eye is higher than the others.

The main sources of light in the cathedral are the Dean’s Eye and Bishop’s Eye. The windows are the best example of stained glass in early-13th-century England, preceding the stained glass at Canterbury. Both windows in the transept are twenty-four feet in diameter. The Dean’s Eye retains its original tracery, while the tracery of the Bishop’s Eye is from the Decorated period in the 14th century, inserted around 1320 in honour of John of Dalderby. Both windows are described in the Metrical Life of St Hugh. The windows would have been completed during the bishopric of Robert Grosseteste. It is probable that the windows were not part of the original design of the transept. The Dean’s Eye is too big for its position, resulting in an alteration in the vaulting. The Bishop’s Eye interrupts a buttress shaft between the lancet windows, intended for a springer rib for the vault; the buttress as built serves no purpose. The Dean’s Eye faces the deanery to the north, while the Bishop’s Eye faces the bishop’s palace to the south, next to the Galilee Porch, the ceremonial entrance to the cathedral for the bishop. As described in the Metrical Life of St Hugh, the Dean’s Eye protects the cathedral from the spirit of the Devil to the north, while the Bishop’s Eye invites the Holy Spirit from the south into the cathedral.

The Dean’s Eye is considered to be the culminating example of a rose window with plate tracery in Gothic architecture, along with earlier examples in Chartres Cathedral from the 12th century. Plate tracery was the earliest form of tracery in the Gothic stained-glass window, with lights or glazed openings inserted into openings in a sheet of masonry. Plate tracery was replaced by bar tracery, with thin, individual stone mullions, after the Dean’s Eye, around 1225. Bar-tracery windows allow much more light through the window into the interior of the cathedral, so the plate tracery of the Dean’s Eye and the windows at Chartres are seen as limiting the amount of light allowed to enter into the cathedral. The later bar-tracery windows in the Angel Choir at Lincoln, for example, allow in much more light.

The subject of the images in the glass of the Dean’s Eye is the Church on Earth, the Church Militant, paired with the Church in Heaven, the Church Triumphant, in sixteen circular openings surrounding a quatrefoil. Christ is seated in the centre surrounded by the blessed in Heaven. Four compartments surrounding the central image, which are probably not in their original positions, forming the quatrefoil, show various subjects, including the relics of St Hugh. Subjects in the sixteen outer circles of the window include angels with the instruments of the Passions, St Peter conducting people to Heaven, the Resurrection, and bishops and archbishops. Below the window, five lancet windows can be seen through an arcade of seven lancet arches. Large lancet windows on either side of the Dean’s doorway, dating from the 14th century, contain images of angels playing musical instruments and geometrical patterns. The musical instruments of the angels are a reference to the musica cosmica in contrast to the musica mundana, that there corresponds to all music created by human beings a celestial music.

In the Metrical Life, the Dean’s Eye and Bishop’s Eye are compared to heavenly bodies. While the two windows in the transept can be seen as the sun and the moon, the rest of the windows are seen as the stars. Inscriptions above the windows describe “dwellers in the Heavenly City and the weapons with which they overcame the Stygian Tyrant”, so that the windows represent the heavenly cities, as in the De Civitate Dei of St Augustine. The windows allow the architecture to play the role of reinforcing standards of Christian justice in medieval society. The Bishop’s Eye is the greater of the two windows, because it faces south to receive the Holy Spirit, while the Dean’s Eye faces north to protect the church against the devil. The two windows illuminate the cathedral from the “lantern of heaven”, the great transept, which “with these eyes surveys the gloom of Lethe”, the oblivion of the river of forgetfulness in Hades. While the two great windows symbolise the Bishop and Dean, the clerestory windows below symbolise the canons, and in the aisles, the vicars, in a descending hierarchy from spiritual to more material and mundane affairs.

St Hugh’s Choir consists of four bays, and is eighty-two feet wide between outer walls. There are two arches in each bay of the triforium, each divided into two sub-arches, with trefoils and quatrefoils in the tympanum above. It is believed that the original triforium had a continuous row of lancet windows. There are three clerestory windows instead of two in three of the four bays, corresponding to the Trinity, with an arcade of Purbeck shafts in front of them, and five arches, which may contribute to an explanation of the asymmetrical vaulting. There are two clerestory windows in the westernmost bay, which has regular sexpartite vaulting, as in the transepts. The first bay to the east of the choir, which crosses the lesser or eastern transept, and connects St Hugh’s Choir to the Angel Choir, begun later around 1250, also has asymmetrical vaulting.

A major debate among historians is whether the present form of the vault of St Hugh’s Choir was conceived prior to the collapse of the tower, or supporting walls, in 1237 or 1239, or whether it was invented after the collapse, during the bishopric of Robert Grosseteste. It is possible that the original structure built during the bishopric of St Hugh of Avalon, possibly designed by Geoffrey de Noyers, had a timber roof and a flat wooden ceiling, supported by thin walls, including the outermost arcade in the aisles, with flat buttresses on the aisle walls. The flat buttresses may have been for a planned sexpartite vault, which was abandoned during the process of construction for the present asymmetrical vault. This would explain the alternating circular and hexagonal vaulting shafts, which would accommodate alternating patterns of ribs in a sexpartite vault, between the single transverse rib and the transverse rib and two diagonals, while the patterns of ribs from the springers are consistent in the asymmetrical vault.

North-east transept. Lincoln Cathedral.

Nave, c. 1205–1230. Wells Cathedral.

Galilee Porch portal, c. 1215. Ely Cathedral.

Galilee Porch arcade, c. 1215. Ely Cathedral.

Lady Chapel, arcading, c. 1205–1235. Winchester Cathedral.

Cloister east walk vault, c. 1220. Chester Cathedral.

When the present vaulting was added later, perhaps after the collapse, the walls needed to be shored to support the extra weight. Part of the shoring involved building a second arcade over the first to support the increased wall thickness above, but the builders did not want to conceal the original arcade, so the piers and arches of the second arcade were made to alternate with the piers and arches of the original arcade, resulting in the present syncopated double arcade. The apexes of the arches of the first arcade are also visible through pierced openings in the second arcade. The first arcade is of limestone; the second overlapping arcade is built with Purbeck marble in the south aisle and Alwalton marble in the north aisle. The builders also added additional vaulting shafts to the wall to support the new vault, resulting in the present shafts one on top of the other. The bays of the arcading do not correspond to the bays of the vault as established by the vaulting shafts. Flying buttresses were added to the exterior existing buttresses, and transverse arches were built in the triforium chamber, a method of shoring which was repeated in the nave and Angel Choir, or retrochoir, of the cathedral.