Note 148 — HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS. (continued 2)

Of the coved or waggon roofs of the West of England and South Wales, which modern church-restorers generally think it such a great feat to get rid of, I have written and spoken till I am nearly tired of the subject. The arch employed is of all manner of forms, but in a wooden construction the semicircular arch has the best effect. A roof of this sort is the same thing in wood which a barrel-vault is in stone, and the vault of the choir at Wells is a barrel-vault, modified by the clerestory windows. Earlier barrel-vaults of Romanesque date, identical in principle with the Somersetshire wooden roofs, may be seen in Saint Sernin at Toulouse and the chapel in the White Tower of London, and, to come nearer home, in the priory church of Ewenny in Glamorganshire.