The interior of the chantry chapel, Worcester Cathedral built to commemorate Prince Arthur the
eldest son of Henry VII. He die in 1502 age 16.
A structural innovation to break the limitation of the Roman builders was new form of the
arch based not on the circle, but on the oval. This does not seem a great change, and
yet its effect on the articulation of buildings is spectacular. A pointed arch is higher, and
therefore opens more space and light. But, much more radically, the thrust of the Gothic
arch makes it possible to hold the space in a new way, as at Rheims. The load is taken
off the walls, which can therefore be pierced with glass, and the total effect is to hang the
building like a cage from, the arched roof. The inside of the building is open, because the
skeleton is outside. John Ruskin describes the organic effect of the Gothic arch with a
natural analogy.
"Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone
passively incumbent on another; but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness
analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree; an elastic tension and communication
of force from part to part, and also a studious expression of this throughout every visible line of the
building".
