pinnacle
Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk, Ostend, Belgium

A pinnacle (from Latin pinnaculum, a little feather, pinna) is an architectural ornament originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (960x1280, 346 KB) Please see the file description page for further information. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (960x1280, 346 KB) Please see the file description page for further information. ... Ostend (Dutch: Oostende, French: Ostende) is a municipality located in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of West Flanders. ... Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Architecture (in Greek αρχή = first and τέχνη = craftsmanship) is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. ... A buttress (and mostly concealed, a flying buttress) supporting walls at the Palace of Westminster Three different types of buttress: diagonal, on the statues plinth; an ordinary buttress supporting a flying buttress, to the right of the statue; a small ordinary buttress to the right side of the picture... A parapet consists of a dwarf wall along the edge of a roof, or round a lead flat, terrace walk, etc. ... A tower is a high structure, usually man-made. ...

Some have stated that there were no pinnacles in the Romanesque style, but conical caps to circular buttresses, with finial terminations, are not uncommon in France at very early periods. Viollet-le-Duc gives examples from St Germer and St Remi, and there is one of similar form at the west front of Rochester Cathedral. Romanesque St. ... Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (Paris, January 27, 1814 - Lausanne 1879) was a French architect, famous for his restorations of medieval buildings. ... Rochester Cathedral is a Norman church in Rochester, Kent. ...

In the 12th-century Romanesque two examples have been cited, one from Bredon in Worcestershire, and the other from Cleeve in Gloucestershire. In these the buttresses run up, forming a sort of square turret, and crowned with a pyramidal cap, very much like those of the next period, the Early English. As a means of recording the passage of time, the 12th century was that century which lasted from 1101 to 1200. ... Bredon is a village in Worcestershire in England, on the banks of the River Avon. ... Worcestershire (pronounced /ˈwÊŠstÉ™.təʃə/ or /ˈwÊŠstÉ™.təʃiːɜː/ or /ˈwÊŠstÉ™.təʃaɪə/; abbreviated Worcs) is a county, located in the West Midlands region of central England. ... Shawn Keogh runs in carrying a cleeve on his back, followed by the Widow Quin. ... Gloucestershire (pronounced [ ˈglɒstəʃəʳ]; GLOSS-ter-sher) is a ceremonial and administrative county in southwest England. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...

In this and the following styles the pinnacle seems generally to have had its appropriate uses. It was a weight to counteract the thrust of the vaults, particularly where there were flying buttresses; it stopped the tendency to slip of the stone copings of the gables, and counterpoised the thrust of spires; it formed a pier to steady the elegant perforated parapets of later periods; and in France especially served to counterbalance the weight of overhanging corbel tables, huge gargoyles, etc. For the land-speed record breaking car, see ThrustSSC and Thrust2 For the computer game, see Thrust (computer game) Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newtons Second Law when a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction to propel a vehicle in the opposite direction. ... In architecture, a vault is an arched structure of masonry, forming a ceiling or canopy. ... GOBBLES! ... A modern spire on the Lancaster University Chaplaincy Centre A spire is a tapering conical or pyramidal structure on the top of a building, particularly a church tower. ... In Medieval architecture a corbel or console names a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. ... A gargoyle on the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur, Paris showing the water channel In architecture, gargoyles, or gurgoyles (from the French gargouille, originally the throat or gullet, cf. ...

crockets on finials
Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk; Ostend, Belgium

In the Early English period the small buttresses frequently finished with gablets, and the more important with pinnacles supported with clustered shafts. At this period the pinnacles were often supported on these shafts alone, and were open below; and in larger work in this and the subsequent periods they frequently form niches and contain statues. About the Transition and during the Decorated period, the different faces above the angle shafts often finish with gablets. Those of the last-named period are much richer, and are generally decorated with crockets and finials, and sometimes with ballflowers. Very fine groups are found at Beverley Minster and at the rise of the spire of St Marys, Oxford. Perpendicular pinnacles differ but little from Decorated, except that the crockets and finials are of later character. They are also often set angle-ways, particularly on parapets, and the shafts are panelled. Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... Beverley Minster, in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, is generally regarded as the most impressive (architecturally speaking) church in England that is not a cathedral. ...

In France pinnacles, like spires, seem to have been in use earlier than in England. There are small pinnacles at the angles of the tower in the abbey of Saintes. At Roullet there are pinnacles in a similar position, each composed of four small shafts, with caps and bases surmounted with small pyramidal spires. In all these examples the towers have semicircular-headed windows.

See also:

• Gothic architecture
• Cathedral architecture

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. Notre-Dame Cathedral seen from the River Seine. ... Montreal (Canada) cathedral Cathedrals are among the most ambitious buildings ever conceived, far exceeding the size and complexity of most other constructions and often requiring many years to complete. ... Supporters contend that the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) represents, in many ways, the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...