Here is a full excerpt from Trachtenberg and Hyman that I referenced in vid-chat question for today:
(This is the textbook for the History of Architecture course series taught to undergraduates at the University of Washington Seattle)
Page 246, second edition, Architecture from Pre-History to Post-Modernity Prentice Hall Publishers
Marvin Trachtenberg: Edith Kitzmiller Professor of Fine Arts / Institute of Fine Arts New York University
Isabelle Hyman: Professor of Fine Arts / College of Arts and Sciences / New York University
"English cathedrals differ from the French not only in stylistic character but also in basic aspects of planning. In French tradition, churches tend to be built on single designs. Detailing might change during the long process of construction, but the ground plan, elevation, and scale usually were maintained, or at least not radically altered. If a larger or more modern church was desired, the old building was almost always razed and rebuilt, not merely altered piecemeal or added onto.
In England, the situation could not have been more different. There, we almost never find older churches replaced completely by new ones. Instead, an irregular process of change can be observed, whereby individual buildings develop and grow in an almost evolutionary manner. This is particularly true of the way piece-meal accretions were made over the centuries along the main axis of a church. Elongated, rambling, composite fabrics resulted, often without any two parts having the same style. The most extreme case is undoubtedly the nave of St. Albans Abbey: its left wall built in primitive Romanesque style, the right, in a sleek, Early English manner (fig 7-43).
Perhaps the archetype of this tendency is the Cathedral of Canterbury (colorplate 30; fig 7-44), begun around 1100, and composed of the following: a Perpendicular nave built over early Anglo-Norman foundations; an Early English choir built as a remodeling of a later Anglo-Norman nave; a second eastward extension beyond the High Romanesque apse (which was dismantled) in the form of an Early English, horseshoe-shaped chapel (Trinity Chapel); and finally, the famous Early English circular chapel, known as “Becket’s Crown.” No greater contrast in church planning can be imagined than that of this sprawling composite of diverse extensions and the unified ground plan of Chartres or Notre-Dame in Paris (the latter despite its many additions). Nor was there less contrast in the ways churches were perceived by the visitor. One has only to enter the nave or transept of Chartres to grasp its shape and extent, but Canterbury is revealed only gradually, its parts unfolding episodically in all their suspenseful and unpredictable variety of shapes and styles. To the architect of Chartres, the motley variety of Canterbury would have been intolerable. But the English positively favored such architecture. The siting of the cathedral is also connected with its form. French cathedrals were compact masses set tightly into the dense fabric of medieval cities, with houses and shops crowding up against them. But the English cathedral was generally set in ample close with a vast lawn around it - a situation that encouraged sprawling additions.
Aesthetic attitudes counted most in the development of different cathedral styles. England, although part of the Roman Empire, remained far removed from the Mediterranean core of Classical culture - distant from the traditions of the Greek temples and the great Roman buildings, with their almost compulsive unity and order. In its long history, England was to experience various waves of continental influence, but no matter how diligently architects attempted to assimilate the lessons of the Latinate French and Italians, the unique Englishness of the island’s architectural traditions stubbornly persisted."
