]G6 ON THE ARCHITECTUEE OF in the presbytery it divides a single vast window, in the aisle it is placed between two of smaller size. This arrangement is in fact only the greatest development of one by no means unusual in the smaller churches of the neighbourhood, during both the Early English and Decorated styles.^ A west front is often found consisting of a buttress running up between two small windows, either single lancets as at Ellestield, or small two-hght windows as at Wilcot and Clifton Hampden. The form is adapted only to a front without a tower, the buttress naturally running up to support a bell-cot. That at Wood-Eaton has suffered much by the subsequent addition of a tower. A similar front occurs at Wantage, but it is less pleasing, being carried out, without modification, on a scale much larger than that for which it is adapted. Besides that the buttress prevents the presence of a doorway, which the west front of a large cruciform church clearly demands, the windows, running up into the gable, just as in the smaller examples, leave an unpleasant space unoccupied below.® The Wantage example failed from the architect not modifying the form to the requirements of its position. The designer of that at Dorchester succeeded by adapting the idea suggested by the village west fronts to the necessities of much larger dimensions, and an eastern position. In an east end his buttress was not required to support a bell-cot ; to carry it up far into the gable without such a purpose would have been both useless, and, as that at Wantage proves, cesthetically unpleasing. Several small east ends occur,^ though I am not aware of any in the neighbourhood of Oxford, in which an arrangement is followed similar to the Oxfordshire west ends, except that the central buttress is finished much lower down, and a quatrefoil or similar figure pierced in the gable. In the east end at Dorchester, from its greater size, something of this kind is still more imperatively demanded. The width required much larger windows, and larger windows could not possibly run into the gable ; they must, together with the central buttress,
- See the author's History of Architoc- ^ For the first suggestion of the analogy
tiire, p. 3.58. This locahsm has beeu judi- between Dorchester and Wantage I have ciously followed in the new chapel of to tliank the late President of Trinity. Cuddesden Palace. Local peculiarities are " See the author's Essay ou Window too commonly neglected by modern archi- Tracery, p. 6. tects.
