Nave Windows

The periodically unsettled state of the kingdom throughout much of the fourteenth century prevented the reconstruction of the nave after the completion of the eastern limb. It was only on 27 April 1406, according to Myln, that Bishop Robert Cardeny had the foundations for the nave laid.

In a long-established tradition for major aisled buildings, the central space of the nave was designed as a three-storeyed structure. At the lowest level arcades carried on massive piers opened into the aisles; above these was the blind stage known as the triforium which corresponded to the roofs above the aisle vaults; at the top was a clearstorey of windows casting light directly into the central space. But, if so much was traditional at Dunkeld, there was also much that was new.

Foreign Influences in the Design of the Nave

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there had been a very close interchange of architectural ideas between England and Scotland, but this was interrupted by the out­break of the Wars of Independence in the 1290’s. Eventually, after a century of periodic warfare with England during which Scotland had attempted little major church building, there was probably no longer either the will or the ability to resume this interchange on the part of Scottish patrons and their masons.

Instead, we begin to find evidence that they were looking further afield for fresh inspiration, and for the first time we see a truly Scottish style of architecture emerging as masons started to develop these ideas in their own way. The new nave of Dunkeld is one of the earliest and most important buildings in which we become aware of this happening.

The most striking features of Dunkeld by comparison with work of the same date elsewhere in the British Isles are its cylindrical piers, its use of window tracery which is chiefly of the type known as curvilinear, and the great emphasis on flat and rather heavy-looking wall surfaces. Yet, if none of these ideas were common in England at the time, they were certainly to be found in parts of continental Europe, and in particular in the Low Countries. When we remember that Scotland was developing close commercial ties with the Low Countries in the fifteenth century, and that Netherlandish works of art were coming to be highly prized, it does not appear unlikely that buildings there were also being studied with interest.

On this evidence it seems likely that Scottish patrons and masons were begining to look for ideas in such areas rather than in England, as the need for new church architecture began to gather momentum once again. Yet, whilst they were prepared to draw some inspiration from those buildings which struck their imagination, they did not simply copy them wholesale, preferring instead to use them to modify established traditions of design.

At the same time there may also have been a tendency to look back to much earlier Scottish buildings for ideas, and this may be one reason why semi-circular arches were used in the triforium stage.

One of the most charming continental borrowings in the nave was the curvilinear tracery which fills the windows. By this date English masons were using rather grid-like rectilinear designs for their windows, which have earned the name Perpendicular. Perhaps a little confusingly, however, in the early fourteenth century it had been English masons who first developed flowing patterns of curvilinear tracery, although it was to be on the continent that this approach to window design was further developed in the course of the fifteenth century. It is perhaps in the general acceptance of curvilinear rather than rectilinear tracery forms that Scotland’s new tendency to look to Europe rather than to England in the later middle ages is most clearly illustrated.

The finest examples of these windows at Dunkeld are the chapels at the eastern ends of the aisles, where each side has two bays lit by windows with delightfully inventive patterns.

Changes in the Design of the Nave

Since the nave was only ready for consecration in 1464 it seems the building operation may have been rather drawn out, and we can find several of the changes of detail which tend to accompany a protracted campaign. The responds (half piers) which receive the eastern ends of the two arcades, for example, are of a different form from the arcade piers and their western responds. This suggests that the use of cylindrical piers in the nave may not necessarily have been the original intention.

It will also be seen that there are differences between the moulded arches around the three levels of openings on the two sides of the nave, whilst on the south side there are further differences between the eastern and
the western bays. Minor changes like this are not glaringly obvious, and certainly do not disturb the basic harmony of the building, but are valuable pointers to the stages by which the work was achieved.

Some of these changes may suggest that different teams of masons were introduced as the work progressed, and that no inconsistency was seen in the masons using their own preferred details. Other changes are less easy to explain. It is difficult to understand, for example, why the south aisle had stone vaulting above it, of which the springings and wall ribs survive in place, whereas it seems the north aisle had imitation vaulting in timber rising from stone corbels (projecting blocks).

The South Porch

Even before he had finished the nave, Bishop Thomas Lauder (1452—75) was planning additions to it. One of these was a porch to afford cover for the main public entrance, on the south side of the nave. An elaborate heraldic niche was placed above the doorway, which was embraced by an arch presumably intended as the seating for a stone vault above the porch.

Yet, as eventually completed, the porch appears to have been rather simpler than first intended, and at least one of the roofs which covered it during its life cut through the heraldic niche. This seeming conflict of evidence may be because the porch was partly rebuilt in the sixteenth century, and it may have been yet further adapted after the Reformation.