THE WINDOWS in the earlier examples are plain lancet shaped, and generally narrow, sometimes they are richly moulded within and without, but frequently have no

of this

thing but a plain
chamfer outside and
a wide splay within:
by means
splay two or three
windows which are
completely separate
on the outside are
made to form one
composition within,
and two, three, or
more lancets are
sometimes included
under one hood-
mould on the out-

side. When there are three, the middle

one is generally the

Warmington, Northamptonshire, c. 1250.

highest, or there is a trefoil or quatrefoil above; the spaces between these becoming afterwards pierced, led to the introduction of tracery.

In the Early Eng

lish style we have, in the later examples, tracery in the heads of the windows, but it is almost invariably in the form of circles either plain or foliated, and is constructed in a different manner from genuine Decorated tracery. At first the windows have merely openings pierced through the solid masonry of the heads,

the solid portions

This kind of tracery is called by Professor Willis plate tracery, being, in fact, a plate of stone pierced with holes; it is

thus left gradually become smaller and the openings larger, until the solid parts are reduced to nearly the same thickness as the mullions, but they are not moulded, and do not form continuations of the mullions until we arrive at real Decorated tracery.

The origin of tracery has been much discussed, and it is commonly asserted that the French and the Germans had considerably the start of England in this particular and important part of Gothic architecture, if not in the whole style. This is, however, by no means a settled point, but one fairly open to further investigation. It has been already observed in speaking of the change from the Romanesque styles to the earliest Gothic, that this progress was very nearly simultaneous in England and in the northern parts of France, and later in other parts of Europe. It is difficult to obtain accurate dates of the precise parts of any building even in Eng

extensively used in Early French work. The more usual kind of tracery is called by Professor Willis bar tracery, to distinguish it from the earlier kind.

land, and still more difficult in foreign countries, windows are often inserted, and the tracery of windows is not unfrequently of a different age from the arch and jambs, it therefore requires more careful investigation than we have yet had applied to this subject before it can be decided satisfactorily.

One thing however is clear, that Tracery was of home growth, it was an indigenous plant, and not an exotic imported full grown; the same progress may have been made simultaneously in other countries, and particular ideas may probably have been borrowed, but we have no need to go abroad to search for its origin and progress. Like all other parts of Gothic architecture it appears to have grown gradually and naturally from the necessity of supplying a want that was felt.

The origin of tracery may be carried back even to the Norman period, from the time that two lights were combined under one arch, a space was left between the heads of the lights and the arch, which was an eye-sore that the architect tried to get rid of in the best way that he could. Thus at

Sutton Courtney, in Berkshire, (see p. 60.), in a window of the tower, which is late Norman work, the mouldings of the sub-arches are continued and carried across each other on the flat surface in the head of the window, if the spaces between these mouldings were pierced, we should have tracery. At St. Maurice's church, York, in the west front is a Norman window of two lights of the usual form, with a small round opening through the head, under the dripstone which supplies the place of the connecting arch over them (see p. 61.); in the tower of St. Giles's, Oxford, is a transition Norman window of two lights, with a small lancet-shaped opening in the head, under the enclosing arch.

At Linchmere, Sussex, a two-light Early English window of very early character has a large circular opening in the head, cut through the plain stone without any mouldings; at the Deanery, Lincoln, is a window of the same form but well moulded, and having capitals to the shafts and to the mullions. At Woodstock, Oxford