PERPENDICULAR PERIOD, in architecture, the latest style of English Gothic, roughly embracing the period from 1375 to the introduction of the Renaissance, during the 16th and 17th centuries. It gains its name from the dominance of vertical lines in window tracery and wall panelling; in windows the vertical mullions sometimes carry unbroken from the sill to the under side of the arch and the upper part of the window is further sub-divided by additional, smaller, vertical mullions carried by the apex of arches connecting the larger mullions. Continuous horizontal lines of arches and cornices are sometimes carried across high windows to divide the whole into many small arched lights, in each one of which could be placed the effigy of a saint in stained glass. In structure the tendency is toward the reduc tion of wall surface, the increase of window area, the continuity of vertical lines and supports and the lavish development of decorative vaulting by means of liernes and, later, the elimination of structural vaulting ribs altogether, and the substitution of cut stone, traceried fan vaults (q.v.).
Timber-trussed ceilings and roofs were developed to a point of great perfection and richness as in that of Westminster hall, London (1395-99) and in countless simpler parish churches, e.g., Chipping Norton, Holy Trinity, Hull. The period also saw the construction of many beautifully outlined and lavishly detailed church towers, usually square and without spires. Those of
Gloucester cathedral (1450-57), Magdalen college, Oxford (1492-1505), the central tower at Canterbury and the west towers of York (I432-7o) are typical. In decorative detail the period is marked by the introduction of the four-centred or Tudor arch, the covering of wall surfaces with ranges of traceried panels, chiefly rectangular, the general flatness of moulding pro files, diminished importance of the capital, the enclosing of door and window arches within a rectangular hood mould and the replacement of the earlier naturalism in carved ornament by a rather dry, incisive and, at times, mechanical, conventionalism.
The Perpendicular Period appears first in work in Gloucester cathedral about 1360, but the spread of the style was so rapid that by 1380 Perpendicular work was being built throughout the country. It was a style so vital that it yielded but slowly to the influx of Renaissance ideas, and, particularly in Oxford, its effect is felt in building well into the i 7th century. Characteristic examples are: the choir (1347-77) and cloister (1351-1412) of Gloucester cathedral; nave and west transepts of Canterbury cathedral (1378-1411) ; choir of York (1389-1407) ; King's college chapel, Cambridge (1447-1512) ; St. George's chapel, Windsor (completed 1508) ; Henry VII. chapel, Westminster (completed 1512) and the hall of Christ Church college, Oxford (1630). (T. F. H.)