Glossary
- Septum
- Low wall between the choir and nave of a church.
- Serlian window
- In classical architecture, a window with an arched central light flanked by two lower straight-headed ones; the motif is also used for other openings. Also called a Serlian motif, Serliana, Palladian window and Venetian window.
- Session house
- (Scots): A room or separate building for meetings of the elders who form a kirk session, or a shelter by the entrance to a church or churchyard for an elder collecting for poor relief; built at the expense of a kirk session. A sessions house is an English term for a court house.
- Set-back buttress
- A buttress placed slightly back from the angle of a building.
- Set-off
- Inclined, projecting surface to keep water away from the wall below. Also called weathering.
- Setts
- Squared stones, usually of granite, used for paving or flooring.
- Sexfoil
- A six-lobed opening.
- Sexpartite rib-vault
- A rib-vault, usually set over paired bays, with an extra pair of ribs springing from between the bays.
- Sgraffito
- (Italian): Decoration scratched, often in plaster, to reveal a pattern in another colour beneath.
- Shaft
- Vertical member of round or polygonal section, including the main part of a classical column, and by extension also of a pilaster.
