FAN VAULT, in architecture, a type of English late Gothic vaulting, in which many equidistant non-structural, decorative ribs of similar curvature rise from each support in a generally conoidal form. These conoids either intersect at the ridges or leave small, flat areas between the circles which are their top and outside circumferences. The entire surfaces thus formed are usually covered with a network of tracery. The earliest example is in the cloisters of Gloucester cathedral (1351-1412). Other notable examples are that at King's college chapel, Cambridge (c. 1512), and that of the chapel of Henry VII., Westminster Abbey, of about the same date, notable for the fact that the conoids are supported on pendants from great cross arches and not directly on the piers. (See VAULT; GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.)