Even Masons have their Vaults

Even Masons have their Vaults

This is the story of two masons and their experiments.  I am quite sure they were friends, certainly collaborators.  One was Head Mason of Tewkesbury Abbey, and the other of Gloucester Abbey, now the Cathedral.  They are only twelve miles apart, well within a day's walk, and they were both built at about the same time.  Both churches were originally built in the Romanesque style, and in the 14th Century the ceilings were vaulted,  Both churches retain lierne vaults, where ribs called liernes sprang from the columns, and the liernes were reinforced by secondary ribs called tiercerons.  This example is in the choir of Tewkesbury Abbey.

The Suns were added at the command of Edward IV after his Yorkist army had won the Battle of Tewkesbury in  1471.  Shakespeare probably saw them (Stratford is only a short distance up the river) and wrote about "These suns of York" in Richard III.  When Isabella, Countess of Warwick died, she had a chantry chapel built.  Time for an experiment.

The ceiling wasn't particularly heavy, and so radial liernes were used in the upper storey.

You can see how the liernes radiated without any need for tiercerons, giving a flatter ceiling.  In this case the liernes would have been fitted with hanging bosses, since broken off.  Downstairs there is a most interesting vault, completely new in design.  Not a lierne vault, but a decorative transition.  Again, there would have been hanging bosses, but the vault itself is unique to this chapel.

The ceiling of this vault is still flatter, but the two masons found that it was still capable of load bearing. In the next chantry chapel to be built, that of Edward Despenser, the "classic" design of an English fan vault is achieved.

These eight tiny vaults, I contend, are the very first English Perpendicular style fan vaults.  They carried the weight of the ceiling.  The Gloucester mason still built his main church with lierne vaulting, but the lighter weight of the cloisters allowed him to use fan vaults.  Sadly, the Tewkesbury cloisters were destroyed, but they may have been fan vaulted, too.  Fan vaulting became the norm in St Georges Chapel Windsor, Eton College, Wells Cathedral and Kings College Cambridge, but I maintain that those eight tiny vaults in Tewkesbury were the first to be built.