Durham roofs a great nave with ribbed vaults
The high vaults of Durham Cathedral are built in stages from the 1090s to about 1133, the earliest surviving large-scale rib vaults over a major church. Pointed transverse arches appear in the nave. The building around them is emphatically Romanesque, which is the point: the structural device arrives long before the architectural language usually credited with it.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Durham Cathedral · site · United Kingdom
- The Gothic rib vault · technology system · Western Europe · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
The Construction of Gothic Cathedrals: A Study of Medieval Vault Erection
Reconstructs how Gothic vaults were actually erected, with centring, falsework and sequence as the central problem, and treats the economy of timber formwork as a driver of the rib vault. Supports the STRUCTURE_GOTHIC_VAULT and Gothic site records. V55 verification basis: real and standard, not consulted in this session.
Oxford University Press, John Fitchen · 1961 · Partly verified
Fitchen, J., The Construction of Gothic Cathedrals: A Study of Medieval Vault Erection, Oxford University Press, 1961
Architectural Technology up to the Scientific Revolution: The Art and Structure of Large-Scale Buildings
Comparative structural analysis of large pre-industrial buildings, treating span, thrust and material strength as the variables that determine what each period could build. Supports the load-path framing used throughout this pack and the structural contrasts drawn between post-and-lintel, corbelling, the voussoir arch, the dome and the rib vault. V55 verification basis: this volume is a real and standard reference named in the Journey declaration, but it was NOT consulted in this session - WebFetch is refused by the environment egress proxy for all research domains and the session WebSearch budget was exhausted before production began.
MIT Press, edited by Robert Mark · 1993 · Partly verified
Mark, R. (ed.), Architectural Technology up to the Scientific Revolution, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1993
Recorded on Durham Cathedral
- Durham roofs a great nave with ribbed vaults
- Suger's choir at Saint-Denis is consecrated
- The high vaults of Chartres close at about 36-37 m
- Fire destroys the roof and spire of Notre-Dame de Paris
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.