Seminars
Participants are taught in small seminar groups of up to 10 students, and receive two one-on-one tutorials with their tutor.
Sunday
Seminar 1: Normandy to Westminster and Canterbury
The Normans of north west France had adopted the magnificent bulk of the Romanesque architectural style. Its early appearance in England in its Anglo-Norman form saw the most intensive programme of cathedral building in English history.
Seminar 2: Anglo-Norman Cathedrals in England
Surviving architecture will give us a vivid sense of the grandeur of this architecture. Examples will include Winchester’s transepts, Ely and Rochester’s naves and the Anglo-Norman core of Lincoln’s massive west front.
Monday
Seminar 3: Late Anglo-Norman Development
Norwich and Peterborough retain the semi-circular apses at their east ends. Almost universal in Romanesque cathedrals, but lost elsewhere in England, these give us a valuable insight. Durham cathedral is of Europe-wide importance for its development of the earliest rib vaulting.
Seminar 4: Notre Dame Cathedral - Early Gothic in France
The extraordinary story of its first construction from the 1160s, its rescue and reconstruction under Viollet le Duc in the 1860s, and the remarkable restoration since the fire in 2019. The latter including the creation of its third central spire!
Tuesday
Seminar 5: Canterbury and the Early Gothic of England
The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket led to the early Gothic remodelling of Canterbury to create a fitting shrine chapel. The arrival of William of Sens brought his knowledge of this new style from northern France.
Seminar 6: The Influence of Burgundy
Here a second thread of architectural influence came with the spread of the Cluniac and Cistercian monastic orders. Examples of these links include the great abbey church at Cluny itself and Castle Acre priory in Norfolk and the surviving Cistercian church at Pontigny and the great abbeys of Rievaulx and Fountains in Yorkshire.
Wednesday
Seminar 7 and 8 : Visit to Lichfield Cathedral
Lichfield, with its triple spires, has a range of English architectural style for us to study. Its glorious Lady Chapel was modelled on the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.
Thursday
Seminar 9: The Early English Style
Into the 1200s England’s cathedrals took on their own distinctive variant of Gothic. This featured fine colonettes with 'stiff leaf' capitals, use of polished Purbeck 'marble' and the evolution of soaring rib vaults. Fine examples will include Salisbury and Lincoln cathedrals.
Seminar 10: French High Gothic
A new phase of French cathedral architecture opened from the 1190s onwards, with the building of Chartres, and then in the 1200s the coronation church of Reims. Reims was to directly influence the design of the rebuild of Westminster Abbey – also of course a coronation church.
Friday
Seminar 11: The Sainte-Chapelle and the Rayonnant Style
High Gothic had seen the first introduction of window tracery, formed with simple stone mullions. Rayonnant marked the move toward complexity in tracery, which with stained glass, was a glory of the Gothic in cathedrals.
Seminar 12: England’s Decorated and Perpendicular Styles
The Decorated style flowered from the late 1200s until the black death in 1348. Exeter, Ely’s remarkable octagon and Wells demonstrate the richness of this style. But did the Decorated in England influence the later Flamboyant style of France?
The Perpendicular dominated English architecture over 200 years from the 1330s to the Reformation - we will examine its origins and its impact on cathedrals from its early experimental work at Gloucester onwards.
Programme timetable
The daily timetable will normally be as follows:
Saturday
14.00–16.30 - Registration
16.30–17.00 - Orientation meeting
17.00–17.30 - Classroom orientation for tutor and students
17.30–18.00 - Drinks reception
18.00–20.00 - Welcome dinner
Sunday – Friday
09.00–10.30 - Seminar
10.30–11.00 - Tea/coffee break
11.00–12.30 - Seminar
12.30–13.30 - Lunch
13.30–18.00 - Afternoons are free for tutorials, individual study, course-related field trips or exploring the many places of interest in and around Oxford.
18.00–19.00 - Dinner (there is a formal gala dinner every Friday to close each week of the programme).
A range of optional social events will be offered throughout the summer school. These are likely to include: a quiz night, visit to historic pubs in Oxford, visit to Christ Church for Evensong and after-dinner talks and discussions.
