The lierne vault of JL Pearson

When J.L. Pearson cleared the area of the medieval cloister of the cathedral, in which he intended to build this new cloister, a series of bosses from the vaults of the 14th-century cloister was recovered. Careful examination of these bosses by Pearson allowed him to provide an archaeological reconstruction of the medieval vault, incorporating the older pieces.

Pearson built a lierne vault, in which short ornamental ribs or liernes join the main structural ribs. In this view the medieval bosses of white limestone quarried at Beer in south-east Devon may be distinguishable from the cream-grey limestone, quarried at Doulting in Somerset, used in the 1880s.

Acknowledgments: Exeter Archaeology