sses (_see page 17_) of this period are, as a rule, simple
in form, and in small churches consist of two or more stages, each
set-off or division being sloped at the top to carry off the rain. In
larger buildings the buttress generally finishes with a triangular head
or gable, and is frequently carried above the parapet, except where
stone vaulting is used, in which case it is covered with a pinnacle
either plain or ornamented. The edges are often chamfered or the
angles ornamented with slender shafts. A niche to contain a statue is
occasionally sunk in the face of the buttress, but this feature is
more common in the next or Decorated period, although the change from
one period to another was so gradual that the exact date of a niched
buttress would be difficult to determine were there no other features to
guide us.

[Illustration: Salisbury Cathedral. Begun in 1220.
The spire was added, 1350. _Drawn by Sidney Heath._]

Flying buttresses were first introduced at this period, and are common
in all large buildings with vaulted roofs. They are generally of simple
design, with a plain capping and archivolt, and they spring from the
wall buttress to the clerestory (_see page 17_).

[Illustration: Examples of Early English Capitals and Ornament.]

CHAPTER V.

THE DECORATED STYLE.

The best examples of Gothic architecture may be said to have been
erected between the years 1180 and 1300, and from the latter year many
writers date the commencement of its decline. In England we owe nearly
the whole of such magnificent buildings as the cathedrals of Lincoln,
Salisbury, Worcester, and the abbey of Westminster to the 13th century,
and there is scarcely a cathedral or abbey that does not owe some
beautiful portion of its structure to the builders of the same period,
the transepts and lady chapel of Hereford Cathedral, the eastern
transepts of Durham, the nave and transepts of Wells, the transepts of
York, the choir presbytery, central and eastern transepts of Rochester,
the eastern portion of the choir of Ely, the west front of Peterborough,
the choir of Southwell, the nave and transepts of Lichfield, and the
choir of S. David's being a few of our most characteristic examples of
this period. The style which followed the Early English is known as the
Geometric or Early Decorated style, and it embraces roughly the end
of the 13th century and the first twenty or thirty years of the 14th
century, and continued in its l