Decorated style

Replacement by Perpendicular

Around the year 1330, designers began to look again at the possibilities presented by St Stephen's Chapel, and in particular by the descending window mullions dissolving the walls of the lower chapel. These were used at the chapter house of Old St Paul's (1332, by William Ramsey, destroyed after the Great Fire of 1666) and the south transept of Gloucester (1331, now the cathedral), to make the walls disappear behind a stone scaffolding. This new form of architecture, now known as Perpendicular Gothic, was more austere and standardised than the Decorated, taking the arched panel as its basic unit just as the Rayonnant had the window mullion. While the consistent application of the descending mullion and the panel were new, both work occasional features of Decorated works like the lantern at Ely, and the first Perpendicular projects may be considered as another line of Decorated experimentation, which only later crystallised into a new style. Although the influence of the style was initially limited, the combined effects of royal patronage and the death of much of the workforce in the Black Death meant that it was well-established by the mid-14th century. Nonetheless, the Decorated style continued in use at least into the 1360s, partly due to ongoing cathedral projects like the Carlisle choir, the Ely lady chapel and the York nave. Some buildings, like Edington Priory, combined Decorated and Perpendicular features, sitting between the styles. The Perpendicular style was not fully adopted until three major projects of the 1360s and '70s - the naves of Canterbury and Winchester and the east end of York - established it as the accepted style for church buildings. These were the first major new church projects after the Black Death.