transept - Other senses of the word

The part of a cruciform-planned church that projects out at right angles to the main body of the building, usually between nave and chancel.

Full descriptions of the elements of a Gothic floorplan are found at the entry Cathedral diagram.

In Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture, the transept is the area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building. The transepts cross the nave at the "crossing" (plan, right), which belongs equally to the main nave axis and to the transept.

Since the altar is usually located at the east end of a church, a transept extends to the north and south.

Some basilicas and the church and cathedral planning that descended from them, were built without transepts, but this is rare. More often the transepts will extend well beyond the sides of the rest of the building, forming the shape of a cross; this is called a "Latin cross" groundplan, and these extensions are known as the arms of the transept.

When churches retain a single transept, as at Pershore Abbey, there is generally a historical disaster, fire, war or funding, to explain the anomaly.

Other senses of the word

The word "transept" is occasionally extended to mean any subsidiary corridor crossing a larger main corridor, such as the cross-halls or "transepts" of The Crystal Palace of glass and iron that was built for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

In a metro station or similar construction, a transept is a space over the platforms and tracks of a station with side platforms, containing the bridge between the platforms.