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Page 7 of 10

• 1. Anglo-Saxon Church
• 2. Normanisation
• 3. Statements of power
• 4. Gothic origins
• 5. English Gothic
• 6. Architecture as power
• 7. Architecture for worship
• 8. Building a cathedral
• 9. Church as landholder
• 10. A way of life ends
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Architecture for worship

Light was important to medieval theologians, as it symbolised God's first creation. The use of stained-glass windows transformed ordinary light into something divine, and Gothic architecture developed partly out of a desire to build churches with larger windows so that God’s light could shine throughout the building.

This is another component of the idea of the church as a ‘machine for worship’. This quest is epitomised in the glass-box churches of the late medieval English Perpendicular style.

'The crowning glory was a vast east window ... which filled the choir with pure light. '

Perpendicular (or 'Perp') is an extension of Decorated style. Rather than using flowing ogees to disguise surfaces, Perp uses a rectangular grid of tracery. The idea had its first full-scale outing in the choir of Gloucester Abbey, now Gloucester Cathedral. Here plans to harmonise the existing Norman crypt, aisles and galleries with a brand new eastwards extension of the choir, begun in around 1337, required a radical redesign of the old interior.

The grid patterns in the large clerestory windows were extended down over the former galleries and arcades, concealing them behind a new cage of tracery. The crowning glory over the top was a vast east window, the largest in medieval Europe, which filled the choir with pure light.

'The glory of the building is its pendant fan vault, covered in spider-web fine tracery.'

The ultimate Perp building - perhaps the ultimate English medieval building - is the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey. It was built c.1503-9 as a combined Lady chapel and shrine chapel for Henry VI. Literally every square inch of the building, inside and out, is covered with decoration that completely and entirely disguises its structure. Because the chapel is connected to the choir of the main church only by a low passage, it has clerestory windows on all four sides

The effect is like walking into a huge birdcage. The glory of the building is its pendant fan vault, covered in spider-web fine tracery. The tracery is made up of endlessly decreasing rows of tiny arcades and little curved loops. It is so deeply under-cut that it looks as if light is shining through it. Looking up, it is as if the building has dissolved, leaving only the celestial light all around.

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Published: 2005-02-02