Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
1977
Keywords
Architecture, Gothic, Church architecture, Great Britain
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Art History
First Advisor
François Bucher
Second Advisor
Stanley Ferber
Third Advisor
Lawrence McGinniss
Series
Humanities
Abstract
Romanesque survivals have long been considered puissant elements in the formation of an English Gothic architecture. Introductions and innovations within the architectural vocabulary of the British Isles can be equally salient. One such innovation of visual prominence is the polygonal plan for chapter houses.
Chapter houses are the board rooms of ecclesiastic foundations. They are usually square or rectangular in plan. Only in England do we find the appearance of a new plan-type, a circle, in the chapter house of Worcester Cathedral from ca. 1120. But from the year 1200 through the 1400s the polygonal and not circular plan is the one that consistently repeats in some thirty-one examples. Specifically, it is after the chapter house of Westminster Abbey from 1246-55 that octagon chapter houses mostly with large traceried windows appear at least fourteen times at widely dispersed sites throughout England and Scotland. Writers have speculated about or interpreted the origins and meaning of that planning innovation within English Medieval society. My study surveys the known examples of those chapter houses, suggests a source for the centrally planned polygonal chapter house, and offers practical explanations for the popularity of the octagon plan with the designers and users of those buildings.
Investigating the geometric means that craftsmen most probably used to plan these structures yields four principles. First, masons usually scaled the diameter of the chapter house to the relative size of the religious community. Next, architects experimented with various faceted plans of polygonal chapter houses just as continental designers empirically created polygonal chevets, chapels, and pier bases throughout the early thirteenth century. Some have suggested that masons favored the octagon for chapter houses over other polygons because the eight sides allowed greater wall space for tracery. An equally important reason may be that an octagon is easier to set out than a dodecagon or decagon. Finally, the craftsmen of octagon chapter houses—the tilers, masons, and carpenters—probably shared the same design system, rotational geometry, in order to achieve quality control at all levels: floor, walls, vault, and roof.
Users, both ecclesiastic and royal, illuminate another aspect of practicality since they define the functions of a chapter house. The building is, above all, the judicial and administrative nerve center of a monastery or cathedral. Those predominant functions lead me to suggest that the chapter house originates from Medieval misconceptions about the Temple of Solomon; the Temple constructed by a biblical king renowned for his justice and wisdom. A ca. 1250 description of Lincoln’s decagonal chapter house of ca. 1235 - ca. 1250, visual correspondences among some chapter houses and some Medieval descriptions and illustrations of the Temple, Solomon as an ideal of kingship, English and Scottish royal patronage of octagon chapter houses, and consistent parliamentary use of Westminster's octagon, are some of the data that support my suggestion that the centrally planned polygonal chapter house derives from Solomon’s Temple. Royal and ecclesiastic users also help explain the national popularity of the octagon chapter house since many ecclesiastics and architects worked for the king. Both the probable and documented court connections of clergy and craftsmen acted as a likely catalyst for the transmission of the octagon plan and the traceried windows that were fashionable in court circles.
Similar analyses of other spaces that were introduced and popularized in English Gothic architecture, namely detached belfries and spires on crossing towers, may offer even greater knowledge of the architectural priorities held by designers and users in Gothic Britain.
Recommended Citation
Zukowsky, John Robert, "The polygonal chapter house: architecture and society in Gothic Britain" (1977). Graduate Dissertations and Theses. 412.
https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses/412