 In England stout columns of large diameter supported decorated arches, gallery and clerestory, as at the nave of Malmesbury Abbey (see "Piers and columns", above).By the early 12th century composite piers had evolved, in which the attached shafts swept upward to a ribbed vault or were continued into the mouldings of the arcade, as at Vézelay Abbey, Saint-Étienne, Caen, and Peterborough Cathedral.The nature of the internal roofing varied greatly, from open timber roofs, and wooden ceilings of different types, which remained common in smaller churches, to simple barrel vaults and groin vaults and increasingly to the use of ribbed vaults in the late 11th and 12th centuries, which were to become a common feature of larger abbey churches and cathedrals.