Plantagenet style

Plantagenet style is an architectural building design of churches and cathedrals during the 12th century, characterized by cross-ribbed vaults and extremely curved dome vaults which resulted in the use of thick walls and piers. It is also the start of the transition from the Romanesque style to the Gothic style of architecture.

Characteristics
The Angevin Gothic is distinguished by facades different from those of Île-de-France , which have three portals. The bedside does not systematically include flying buttresses (such as the cathedral of Saint-Pierre de Poitiers , whose bedside is a simple vertical wall).

But it is especially the vaults that characterize the Angevin Gothic: the Angevin vault has a very curved profile (keystone substantially higher than the doubleaux and the formets), while the vault is slightly flatter (keystone at the same level than the doubleaux and the formets ).

These strongly domed Gothic vaults often armed with 8 toric veins that radiate around a round keystone. This vault with multiple ribs concerns in the Maine-et-Loire about forty buildings, and in the Indre-et-Loire about thirty buildings.

In the nave of the cathedral of Angers , the keystone is 3,50 meters higher than the key of the doubleaux and the formets.

In the twelfth century, more numerous and more graceful ribs fall on the top of the round columns. As at the Saint-Serge d’Angers abbey .

This typical mid- twelfth century system is a combination of Gothic revival (ribbed vault) and Romanesque architecture in western France (churches with cupolas such as Saint-Front Cathedral Périgueux or the Saint-Pierre cathedral of Angoulême ). It is characterized by a nave that can be a single vessel (without low sides) or three vessels, very domed warheads that grow little to tilt and do not require flying buttresses.

In Poitiers, Aliénor d’Aquitaine built in the palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine and Counts of Poitou , the magnificent King’s Room or room of the Pas-Perdus, at the end of the 12th century.

Source From Wikipedia