Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/199

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Bk. VI. Ch. III.
183

Bk. VI. Ch. III. PARISH CHURCHES. 183 however, if they are not in themselves so monumental and so grand, they had at least this advantage, that the absence of the vault allowed the architect to play with the construction of the substructure. He was enabled to lighten the pillars of the nave to any extent he thought consistent with dignity, and to glaze his clerestory in a manner which must have given extreme brilliancy to the interior when the whole was filled with painted glass. Generally with a wooden roof there were two windows in the clerestory for one in the aisles; with a vaulted roof the tendency was the other t>l4. Koof at Truuoli Church. (From a Drawing by H. Glutton.) way. Had they dared, they would have put one above for two below. But the great merit of a wooden roof was, that it enabled the architect to dispense with all flying buttresses, exaggerated pinnacles, and mechanical expedients, which were necessary to support a vault, but which often sadly hampered and crowded his designs. So various were the forms these wooden roofs took that they al- most defy classification. The earlier and best type was a reminiscence, rather than an imitation, of the roof of St. Stephen's Chapel or Westminster Hall, but seldom so deeply framed. That at Trunch Church, Norfolk (Woodcut No. 614), may be taken as a fair average