Investigating forms and formwork in the nave aisles at Tewkesbury Abbey

Recent study of medieval vaults using digital scanning methods has tended to focus on the design and construction of the ribs, with less scholarly attention being directed towards the webs in between. The study of webbing has been impeded by the limitations of both the raw data and the range of research methods which are available to architectural historians. This paper focuses on a series of vaults which were added to the 11th-century nave aisles of Tewkesbury as part of an extensive 14th-century remodelling scheme. It considers whether or not formwork was used in erecting the webbing at Tewkesbury, using a variety of digital methods including contour analysis, course tracing and normal vector mapping to investigate the structure and three-dimensional curvature of the masonry.