fan vault

Fan vaulting over the nave at Bath Abbey, Bath, England. Made from local Bath stone, this is a Victorian restoration (in the 1860s) of the original roof of 1608.

A fan vault is a form of vault used in the Perpendicular Gothic style, in which the ribs are all of the same curve and spaced equidistantly, in a manner resembling a fan. The initiation and propagation of this design element is strongly associated with England.

The earliest example, dating from about the year 1351^[1], may be seen in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral^[2]. In the fourteenth century the structure was known as the Abbey Church at Gloucester. A fine later example, from 1640, is the vault over the staircase at Christ Church, Oxford. The largest fan vault in the world, however, can be found in the chapel of King's College, Cambridge.

Birth of the fan vault

The fan vault is attributed to development in Gloucester between 1351 and 1377^[3], with the earliest known surviving example being the east cloister walk of Gloucester Cathedral^[4]. Harvey (1978) hypothesises that the east cloister at Gloucester was finished under Thomas de Cambridge (Thomas de Cantebrugge) from Cambridge, Gloucestershire, who left in 1364 to work on the chapter house at Hereford Cathedral (also thought to have been fan vaulted on the basis of a drawing by William Stukeley)^[5]. The other three parts of the cloister at Gloucester were begun in 1381, possibly under Robert Lesyngham.

Other examples of early fan vaults exist around Gloucester, implying the activity of several 14th century master masons in this region, who really created the fan vault and experimented with forms of its early use.

List of buildings with fan vaulting

• King's College Chapel, Cambridge, the world's largest fan vaulted structure
• Gloucester Cathedral, cloisters
• Canterbury Cathedral, crossing tower
• Bath Abbey, Somerset, England, nave and chancel (1860s restoration)
• Henry VII's Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey, London, England, 1503-1519^[6] (with pendants)
• Christ Church, Oxford, staircase to the great hall
• St. George's Chapel, Windsor, crossing
• Peterborough Cathedral, Cambridgeshire, retrochoir
• Sherborne Abbey, nave
• Tewkesbury Abbey, cloister (only 1 bay remains)
• Church of St. John the Baptist, Cirencester, porch and north chapel
• St Andrew's Church, Cullompton, south aisle
• St Mary's Church, Ottery St Mary, aisle
• Dean's Chapel, Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick
• Ely Cathedral, Bishop Alcock's Chantry Chapel
• Red Mount Chapel, King's Lynn
• Manchester Cathedral, under the tower

Gothic revival buildings with fan vaulting

• Wills Memorial Building, University of Bristol
• Middlesex Guildhall, Westminster
• Saint Patrick's Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (apsidal fan vault)

References

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Fan vaults

• Barrel vault
• Gothic architecture

This architectural element-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e