hole question as to where the French William
left off and his English namesake began is extremely uncertain, as there
can be no doubt that William of Sens had fully planned out the work which
he was destined never to complete, and it is more than probable that his
successor worked largely upon his plans. We are on safer ground when we
assert that the new choir was altogether different from the building which
it replaced. The style was much more ornate and considerably lighter: the
characteristics of the work of the Williams are rich mouldings, varied and
elaborately carved capitals on the pillars, and the introduction of
gracefully slender shafts of Purbeck marble. Gervase, in pointing out the
differences between the works before and after the fire, mentions that
"the old capitals were plain, the new ones most artistically sculptured.
The old arches and everything else either plain or sculptured with an axe
and not with a chisel, but in the new work first rate sculpture abounded
everywhere. In the old work no marble shafts, in the new innumerable ones.
Plain vaults instead of ribbed behind the choir." "Sculptured with an
axe," reads rather curiously, but Professor Willis points out that "the
axe is not quite so rude a weapon in the hands of a mason as it might
appear at first sight. The French masons use it to the present day with
great dexterity in carving." The mouldings used by Ernulf were extremely
simple, and were decorated with a "peculiar and shallow class of notched
ornament", of which many examples exist in other buildings of the period;
while the mouldings of William of Sens "exhibit much variety, but are most
remarkable for the profusion of billet-work, zigzag and dogtooth, that are
lavished upon them." The first two methods of ornamentation are Norman,
the last an Early English characteristic. This mixture is not confined to
the details of decoration but may be observed also in the indiscriminate
employment of round and pointed arches. This feature, as Willis remarks,
"may have arisen either from the indifference of the artist as to the
mixture of forms or else from deliberate contrivance, for as he was
compelled, from the nature of his work, to retain round-headed arcades,
windows, and arches, in the side-aisles, and yet was accustomed to and
desirous of employing pointed arches in his new building, he might
discreetly mix some round-headed arches with them, in order to make the
contrast less offensive by caus