Respond (2)

Respond a half-pillar or pier, in Middle-age architecture, attached to a wall to support an arch, etc. Responds are very frequently used by themselves, as at the sides of the entrances of chancels, etc., and are also generally employed at the terminations of ranges of pillars, such as those between the body and aisles of chunrches. In these last-mentioned situations they usually correspond in form with the pillars, but are sometimes different. The name frequently occurs in mediaeval contracts, and may have its origin in the notion of the two pilasters responding to, i.e. corresponding with, each other. Thus the breadth of the nave of Eton College chapel "between the responsders" was directed by the will of king Henry VI to be thirty-two feet. SEE ARCH.