had its origin in Norman Caen, Durham, and Gloucester,
is almost purely French in its later developments. The
Norman builders after inventing, or adopting, the principle
of the Gothic vault and its necessary buttress, and even
after beginning to make use of the pointed arch as a con-
structive expedient, showed extreme unwillingness to adopt
it frankly and thoroughly, whereas the French builders
used it freely at once, and consequently there is much less
appearance of mixture of style, a less evident transition in
their buildings than in those of the Normans. On both
sides the true Gothic ribbed vault had appeared at about
the same time, during the first twenty years of the twelfth
Century, but in a far more complete form, and on a much
larger scale at Durham than in the corresponding French
examples, of which the earliest is possibly the vaulting of the
little ambulatory of Morienval (p. 71 ), dating from about 1120
or rather earlier. The whole church is essentially round-
arched, in spite of one of the choir arches being pointed,
of a somewhat ruder type than the contemporary buildings
in Normandy or England, and much more so than Durham;
and the towers are of distinctly Lombard character.

A little later in the twelfth century we have St. Etienne of
Beauvais, another round-arched building, in some respects
not unlike Durham, and with segmental ribs to the aisle
vaults. Then come a number of buildings near Beauvais,
of which the chief are Bury, and the porch of St. Leu
d'Esserent and Cambronne (about 1125). In these the
pointed arch already appears, at Bury ¹ surrounded with
zigzags as at Malmesbury, but the columns are heavier,
and their carving more Romanesque than in Normandy.
In the regular use of the pointed arch, therefore, this part
of France was clearly ahead of England, and even of Paris,
for the church of Poissy ( 1130?), though vaulted throughout,
is entirely round-arched. The finest transitional example
in Paris is the choir of St. Martin des Champs (Conser-
vatoire des Arts et Métiers), which in style as well as date
(about 1135) stands exactly half-way between Romanesque
and the more fully developed Gothic of' St. Denis. The
arrangement of its apse, with double ambulatory and radiat-
ing chapels, is that of many later churches, and the vaulting

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