Cathedrals, one slice at a time

Back in 2009 I created a series of models and animations showing a 'typical' medieval English parish church 'growing up' from the seventh century through the fifteenth century.  While this was a fun distillation of three centuries of architectural history and archaeological scholarship, as well as my own research, it was also intended as a resource for the English Parish Church Through the Centuries DVD-ROM produced by the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture (CnC, for short).

A 'typical' English parish church as it may have appeared in the early sixteenth century.  From The English Parish Church Through the Centuries, Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture.  Source: A Masinton

You can see one of the final animations here.

Fastforward four years and I'm at it again, this time for the followup DVD-ROM from CnC, Cathedrals and Monasteries.  This time, it's an architectural style guide, illustrating medieval church architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation - at cathedral scale.  Rather than following one 'typical' cathedral through the centuries, the idea here is to provide an interactive field guide to individual architectural components, illustrating the key features that will allow you, the interested cathedral-goer, to put a name to 'that fiddly bit up high' and, to broadly understand how old it might be and what it's doing there in the first place.

To do this, I'm taking a leaf from Viollet-le-Duc's book and building one bay of four different cathedrals, one from each of the main periods of medieval church architecture in England, in a kind of 'cutaway'.  You'll be able to take this for a spin, select individual components for closer examination, see common variations on the theme from examples in the wild, and go in-depth with text by noted architectural historian Jon Cannon.

Over the next few weeks I'll post a series of updates to this work-in-progress (WIP) as I develop these pieces.  For now, I'll leave you with a previews of a bay of a Romanesque cathedral based on Durham, and a Decorated Gothic bay based on Exeter.  Enjoy!

Romanesque c1070-1180, based on Durham Cathedral choir (geometry complete but texturing has a ways to go).  Source: A Masinton

Decorated Gothic (c1280-1350), based on Exeter Cathedral nave (geometry nearly complete, no texturing). Source: A Masinton