Śladami Gotyku w Wielkiej Brytanii

Today I would like to take you for an amazing trip around the United Kingdom. I'm going to show you some British relics built in Ghotic-the most beautiful and mysterious architectural style which has ever been created. The Ghotic style appeared in Europe at the beginning of the twelfth century. Buildings, mainly churches and cathedrals, made of brick were very high and gave the imprssion that they were provided with an open-work ornamentation. They had big windows, many galleries and balconies.

Let's start our journey from the south-east part of the country. One of the earliest major Ghotic buildings in Britain is Canterbury. The cathedral was built in Early English which was the first phase of British Ghotic according to Thomas Rickman's classification.It extended between 1180 and 1270 and was the transitional phase between Romanesque and typical Ghotic so it contained the features of both styles. There were still built linear windows mostly with no traceries and massive towers usually without any spires, but there appeared some newnesses: cross-rib vaulting and leafy and geometric embellishment. The Canterbury cathedral was the seat of the British primate and the center of cult of Thomas Becket-Canterbury's Archbishop who was murdered there in 1170. Soon after his death there started to work miracles in the presence of his body so he was canonized in 1173. A year later the great fire largely destroyed the choir at the east end. After this disaster leading master-masons from Englad and France were asked to advise how to rebuild the metropolitan cathedral. The choice fell on the Frenchman, William of Sens, who started his work on reconditioning the cathedral. In 1178 William of Sens was seriously injured by falling from scaffolding and his place was taken by master-mason called William the Englishman who continued the work but in a little different way. One of the departures from the French norm was the extreme length of the cathedral. Amazing is the fact that it was doubled in the years between 1096 and 1130. Visiting the cathedral it is impossible not to see the beautiful stained glasses. At first there were only three of them placed in a temporary wooden screen which divided the finished part, the choir and the presbytery from the site outside where the work on Trinity Chapel was still in progress. Common sense dictated that the windows which were close to the ground level should contain figures of a small scale, these higher were to have larger forms, so they could be seen clearly from the distance. The sequence of the figures representing the ancestors of Christ began at the north-west with Adam and proceeded via the eastern apse to the south-west ending with the Virgin and Child. In many cases the New Testament's subjects were juxtaposed to the thematically related episodes from the Old Testament. Because of complexity and rarity of some of the ideas expressed in the typical windows, they were supplied with quite long inscriptions.

Moving a little north-west we change the style from Early English to Decorated Style. This phase of Ghotic began in the middle of the thirteenth century and created the most beautiful style of building. As the name of the phase says buildings were full of magnificence. Windows were bigger and had traceries in the shape of geometric patterns or plants for example: grapevine, rose or oak. There appeared the so-called high arcades, additional ribs and the Lady Chapel. Towers had picked helmets surrounded with turrets.
The climax of this phase we can see in Ely. In this cathedral the area of desolation caused by the collapse of the Norman crossing tower seemed to suggest the creation of a huge centrally-planned space with an octagonal tower, which was over 65 feet (about 20 meters) in diameter. Nowhere else was that spatial preoccupation given more poetic and dynamic expression. Ely was the monastic cathedral and it was beneath this tower that monks set up their choir. To assist them in the design of a great lantern the Ely masons called on the king's master-carpenter, William Hurley, since wood was the only possible material for such constructions. England isn't specially rich in stone quarries but an abundance of timber encouraged carpenters to produce the timber voult imitating stone at Ely's octagon. In the nineteenth century Ghotic architecture was believed to have been the truthful way of building. However nothing could be less truthful than the Ely's octagon. The lantern there didn't rest on the vault beneath as it seemed to, but on the cantilevered frame of timber brackets supporting eight mighty timber posts. Both, the frame and the posts are deliberately hidden from a spectator. After the reconstruction of the destroyed part of the cathedral, the Lady Chapel became one of the loveliest Decorated rooms in Britain, with the huge spreading star pattern of its vault, the flowing traceries of its windows and the rippling tree-dimensional arcade of nodding ogee arches which run around all four walls.

The last phase of English Ghotic had its beginning after the lasting one hundred years war with France and had the name Perpendicular Style. Its evolution ran a little bit different way than it had been expected. There came the time of reversion to more rational and simplified forms after the opulence of the Decorated Style. Windows covered with crates were much bigger. The wall surfaces were often panelled with traceries of the same pattern as this used in the windows. Arches gradually flattened into the familiar four-centered shape.
Perpendicular features were applied for the first time to a major church when the south transept and the choir of the Benedictine abbey-church was remodelled. The choir may have been conceived as a shrine for the remains of King Edward II who was hoped to become the royal saint. The work was probably supervised by the royal archtects from London, perhaps William Ramsey or Thomas of Canterbury. The letter was the king's chief architect when the building of the south transept at Gloucester began, but the window it contains is close to the style of Ramsey. The most amazing aspect at Gloucester is, that the walls of the eleventh century choir were left intact beneath a veneer or grid of descending mullions and cusped panels. It is the culmination of the imaginative recreation in stone techniques originating in carpentry. The east end of the choir at Gloucester is a wall of glass articulated with tracery composed of the same cusped panels which adorn the walls. The choir vault is made of the complex lierne variety of countless small compartments emphasized by bosses. It was not long before a fan vault-the type of vaulting more in harmony with the walls panelling was invented. The panels were inspired by windows traceries and were divided by mouldings which resemble ribs, but they aren't. The fan vault represents the last phase of the English preoccupation with decorative vaulting petterns.
The style of Gloucester made a great impact on the York cathedral which was one of the major enterprises in the history of British medieval architecture. It was a gradual rebuilding of the old metropolitan cathedral church of St. Peter and was completed in the fifteenth century after the Black Death. It is the longest cathedral in Great Britain. It's 147 meters in length.

And here we finish our short journey. Of course these cathedrals aren't all Ghotic cathedrals in Britain-there are many more of them for example: Lincoln, Salisbury, Wells or Exeter. Many churches and cathedrals built in Romanesque where later rebuilt in Ghotic because the British people considered this style to be the most appropriate to the times they lived in. Ghotic was the style of austerity and subtlety, of gloominess and clarity, of stability and movement. It had a great influence on the whole culture including architecture, music, poetry and prose.