middle section being nearly square) instead of being concentrated, as in French vaulting, upon the pier. 
FIG. 75.The upright supports of these vaults consist of a single vaulting shaft against each pier, upon the capital of which the ribs are all gathered. This vaulting shaft descended to the pavement, forming one of the members of the compound pier of the ground-story.[1] The lower piers
vary in design, but are alike in general principle. The typical form is that of a central octagonal column of coursed masonry, having four of its sides hollowed. Against these hollowed or channeled sides are grouped respectively four slender monolithic shafts carrying the ribs of the central vaults, the ribs of the aisle vaults, and the sub -orders of the pier arches. The whole system is shown in the section, Fig. 76, through one bay of this choir.
Unlike the pier of Chichester before noticed, this pier of Lincoln has a functional relation to the vaulting similar to that of the westernmost pier of the Cathedral of Paris, though in its proportions and in its details it is very different. It is constructively like a French pier throughout its whole height, having a buttress (a, Fig. 76) incorporated with it from the level of the triforium. This buttress is reinforced by an arch, b, thrown across the triforium, and a flying buttress, c, over the aisle roof; the united pressures of the central vault, the aisle vault, the triforium arch, and the flying buttress, being met by the great outer buttress, d, against the respond pier of the aisle. This buttress, like nearly every other part of the structure, is French in general form, and Anglo-Norman in decorative detail.
- ↑ At present these vaulting shafts are carried on ill-designed corbels inserted in the wall above the imposts of the lower arcade. This damaging alteration was made in the fourteenth century, when the space formerly occupied by these shafts was wanted for the existing stalls.
