Chapter II: TRANSITIONAL.—About 1145 innovations began to be made in Anglo-Norman

Romanesque. Among other things the pointed arch was introduced; at first chiefly in arches supporting central towers or vaults. In 1155 the founder received a grant of the forfeited estates of Roger de Berkeley; and, owing to this vast accession of wealth, was able to finish his Norman and Transitional work with exceptional richness. (1) In the _Vestibule_ to the Chapter-house, the bays being oblong, pointed arches were used on the short sides of each bay, so that their crowns might rise to the same height as those of the semicircular arches on the longer sides, as the builders thought was demanded by the requirements of vaulting. In the same way, beneath the central towers of Oxford Cathedral and Bolton Priory, pointed arches were built over the narrow transepts; while over the broader nave and choir the semicircular arch was employed. (2) The _Chapter-house_, as in most monastic establishments, _e.g._, Gloucester, Canterbury, Oxford, Chester, was oblong; the more beautiful polygonal form being more in favour in cathedrals served by Secular Canons. It was originally 71 by 25 feet. The vast scale of these conventual arrangements, here and elsewhere, is exceedingly striking. The monks of St. Albans thought that their church required a nave 300 feet long; the six canons of Bristol must have been lost in a Chapter-house 71 feet long. The recessed arcades round the walls here and at Worcester are interesting; simple as they are, they are the germs of the beautiful arcades of canopied niches round the Chapter-houses of York and Wells and the Lady Chapel of Ely. Here is preserved a fine piece of archaic sculpture (see CHICHESTER). (3) Exceedingly rich, too, is the lower part of the _Great Gateway_ in College Green; “its courses, however, are nearly double the height of Norman masonry; the hood-moulds of all the arches are perpendicular, and at the crown of each arch are mitred into a perpendicular string-course; which, with the high finish of the ornament, points to the gateway having been wholly rebuilt in Perpendicular times”; in which case, like the eastern bay of the triforium of Rochester, it is an early example of “architectural forgery.” Fitzhardinge’s nave and aisles seem to have been pulled down in the sixteenth century with a view to rebuilding; which, however, was not carried out till 1877.