A History of Architecture in England (Art Ebook)

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IJL'I
A HISTORY OF
ARCHITECTURE
ENGLAND
IN
is
__
a concise survey of architectural
development
in this
of each period
^
^ o
s
is
preceded by a well-balanced
summary
social
The
of the political,
and
text
of terms,
is
economic,
cultural trends of the time.

en
amplified by a glossary
and there
is
a short
bibliography covering each

architectural period, together with
a
list
of representative buildings, at
the end of each chapter.
An
important feature of the book
is
the
use of attractive line-drawings,
many of which the reader will be

able to reproduce for himself
without too
much difficulty.
For this second edition the text has

been extensively revised, and much
new material has been added.
Jacket designed by
Gerald Wilkinson
i:^
$4.95
in
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prehistoric times to the present day.
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Includes bibliographies.
Glossary: p. 168-173.
1.
Architecture
England.
Englan<lHist,
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V,i
A HISTORY OF
ARCHITECTURE ]N ENGLAND
<!
DOVER castle: The
twelfth-centun^ keep rises above the
bailey walls with their gatehouse
and mural towers
A History of
ARCHITECTURE
m
T.
W. WEST
M.A.
DAVID McKAY COMPANY INC

NEW YORK
To
Jane and Nicholas
First published 1963
Second edition
Printed and
copyright
bound
in
DAVID McKAY COMPANY,

by Cox and
.'^5
;^*
Wyman
1966 T.
W. West
Great Britain for the

INC.,
NEW YORK
Limited, London, Reading and Falcenham
PREFACE
As
part of the post-war renaissance of the arts there has undoubtedly been a revival of interest in the most social of them architecture. There was a time when no educated person was
without some knowledge of the subject, but for the past hundred
years and more this has not been so; with what results may be
judged in part from the state of our towns today.
Happily there are signs of change. Once again the appreciation
of architecture is considered a proper concern of intelligent
people. Notices appear in the more thoughtful newspapers and
weeklies of the latest essays in contemporary building and town
planning. The B.B.C. broadcasts appreciations of the work of
prominent modern masters like Le Corbusier and Gropius.
There has been television coverage of exciting new projects like
BrasiUa, and feature programmes devoted to historic houses.
Mr. John Betjeman and others have discriminatingly reassessed
the Victorian jungle. Guide books and coimty topographies now
give greater space to buildings both old and new, reflecting the
curiosity of the car-owning democracy that is suddenly aware of
its rich inheritance of ancient monuments, cathedrals and country
houses, which it visits in numbers far exceeding those of the
cognoscenti of the eighteenth century.
For this public a vast new spate of private building and
municipal development is being carried out, and that it is aware
of contemporary trends may be inferred from the lively controversies which take place whenever the plans of some forwardlooking new technical college or block of flats are published.
The views expressed are of less importance than the response
itself: the arousing of interest is a necessary first step towards
the growth of understanding.
Surely it is not too hopeful to suppose that out of all this may
come a whole new approach to our man-made surroundings ? It
should at least ensure the preservation of the best from the past,
and could also prove a foundation of sympathy and understanding
upon which architects of the not too distant future will raise
even finer buildings than the most successful of today.
PREFACE
The approaches
fruitful
is
to architecture are several, but one of the
the historical,
which
relates
social,
technical
most
and
aesthetic aspects in an evolutionary study of exceptional interest
and value. For many years the History of Architecture has been
an important optional subject in the art examinations of the
various School Certificate bodies, but it is also now being widely
recognized as a useful background study for students of general
history. Since architecture expresses more tangibly than any other
art the character and values of a society, the flavour of an epoch,
it is
particularly well fitted for this role. Cultural history has long
been neglected for

is
political, social,
at last receiving attention as
and economic history, but it

and indeed necessary
a valid
concern of the historian.

In following this trend, the Associated Examining Board has
introduced a History of Building syllabus for its G.C.E. 'O'
level History paper and it is out of experience gained in preparing
students for this examination that this book has been wTitten.
It will, however, be found useful by all classes taking a general
course in the History of Architecture, such as those now forming
part of the art-historical education given by colleges of art
complementary to their main concern with practical training.
The
subject
is
especially
recommended
to
teachers
who
are
looking for a less traditionally academic approach to history

and to those concerned with the development of liberal studies
in technical colleges, particularly
building subjects. After
nology
all,
here
where there are craft courses in

is a point where art and tech-
'two cultures'meet in a
The
course up to
teacher
socially useful function.
text gives adequate coverage of the essential facts for a
*0' level,
thus
setting free
both student and
from the bondage of note-taking so that the often hmited

their disposal may be more actively used for the visual
time at
study of buildings, whether in reproduction or *in the flesh',
and for the investigation of the manifold relationships existing
between each style and its historical context.
The book is illustrated with diagrammatic line drawings offering the student of no special drawing ability examples on which
he can base illustrations to written work. Each chapter is introduced by a short background note on the poUtical, economic,
social and cultural history of the architectural period.
CONTENTS
In order to relate the architecture to
is
its historical
preceded by a note on the political, economic,
history of the period;
and a
and
is followed
by a
list
context each chapter

social,
and
cultural
of representative buildings
select bibliography {except for chapters three
and five).
PREFACE
PREHISTORIC AND
CHAPTER ONE
Prehistoric: megalithic
dwellings
- hut
ROMAN
monuments - chambered barrows -
circles
hill-forts
stone
villages
features - ornament - general effect - the first towns - plans forum - basilicas - temples - thermae - hypocausts - theatres
- town houses - villas - Silchester church - the Wall -forts
Roman:
constructional system
CHAPTER TWO
Romanesque
use of orders
concrete technique
ROMANESQUE
25
definition
Anglo-Saxon: timber construction -
the
Kentish churches -
Northumbrian churches - Brixworth - Early Saxon carving

- the supremacy of Wessex - contacts with the Khineland later developments
general description
- burghs -
halls
and
huts
Anglo-Norman:
beginnings
character
constructional system
- eleventh-century work - High Roman- motte and bailey castles - the keep - domestic
buildings - masonry
churches -features
esque
CHAPTER THREE
GOTHIC
Gothic: origins -features
Early English: concentric

century
4I
analysis of the structural system

castles
fortification
thirteenth-
manor houses
Decorated: quadrangular castles -pele towers -fourteenth-century
manor houses
Perpendicular: secular buildings
Timber Roofs
CONTENTS
GOTHIC
CHAPTER FOUR
57
Gothic Church Plans: evolution ofparish church plans - cathedral

east ends - the great church - monasteries
Medieval Building Industry

Tudor: country houses - plans - interiors
Timber Framing: crick
construction
later developments
RENAISSANCE
CHAPTER FIVE
Renaissance: definition
early
work
in
69
England
- country houses - plans - elevations interiors - ornament

staircases - smaller houses - colleges - gardens
Elizabethan: sources
windows Jacobean:
Vernacular Architecture
CHAPTER
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
SIX
82
Renaissance: the new Classicism
works - town planning seventeenth-century house - Webb and Pratt
Inigo Jones: chief
Wren:
St.
Paulas
churches
Renaissance craftsmanship
the square
the
- plan for Eondon - English

later seventeenth century - the
Queen Anne" house
CHAPTER SEVEN
Baroque:
definition
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
- Hawksmoor's
churches
100
Vanbrugh's
country houses
'^
Palladianism: Burlington and Kent - the Palladian country house landscape gardening
i
Adam and the Adam style - 'Gothick^ - the

- squares - 'palace fafades^ - later town planning public buildings - Georgian harmony
Eater Georgian:
terrace house
CHAPTER EIGHT
Regency:
NINETEENTH CENTURY
Nash
~ Neo-Renaissance - Gothic revival new

types of buildings
the
of
Engineering Architecture: new materials - new techniques
Domestic Architecture: the villa - plumbing - working-class
housing - legislation - factory estates - the garden city municipal planning - Norman Shaw - the changing scene
Revivalism: Neo-Greek
""battle
styles^
120
CONTENTS
CHAPTER NINE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
141
Kevivalism Continues: Edwardian Baroque and Neo-Classic
Domestic Architecture: Vojsej and
'free traditionalism^
- mock-
Tudor suburbs - Neo-Georgian

Pioneers
Abroad: Sullivan and Wright - Gropius and
the
Bauhaus - Le Corbusier
Modern Architecture:
of architecture
niques
- frame
characteristics
construction
thirties
past - a new philosophy
- new
steel
materials
and
and
tech-
ferro-concrete
siting and landscaping

-post-war building - prefabrication
of modern architecture
ipjo Onwards: the

and the modular
housing
the break with the
Functionalism
principle
- 'new
towns'*
public authority
high building
THE AESTHETICS OF
ARCHITECTURE
CHAPTER TEN
160
The Historical Styles of English Architecture

Distribution Map of Local Building
166
Materials
Glossary
Index
167
168
174
V.^^
LIST OF PLATES
DOVER CASTLE
ESCOMB CHURCH,
frontispiece
CO.
DURHAM
facing page
40
DURHAM CATHEDRAL
4I
king's college chapel, CAMBRIDGE

MORETON OLD HALL, CHESHIRE
64
WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAM

THE queen's HOUSE, GREENWICH
80
65
81
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, SUNDERLAND

OSTERLEY PARK, MIDDLESEX
112
THE PROMENADE, CHELTENHAM
II5
ST.
George's hall, Liverpool
II3
128
PANCRAS STATION, LONDON

THE R.N. BOATSTORE, SHEERNESS
LATE 19TH CENTURY MASS HOUSING
NORNEY GRANGE, SHACKLEFORD, SURREY
COVENTRY NEW TOWN
129
TWO SAINTS SCHOOL, LONDON

ALTON ESTATE, ROEHAMPTON
160
160
THORN HOUSE, LONDON
161
ST.
144
144
145
145
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks
are
due to the following for the use of photographs
Aerofilms and Aero Pictorial Ltd. (facing p. 144)
G. Douglas Bolton (facing

Chamberlin Powell
&
p. 80)
Bon (photo John Maltby
Ltd.) (facing
p. 160)
A. F. Kersting (frontispiece and facing pp. 41, 64,
-1
i':y-
London County Council

Eric de Mare (facing pp.
(facing p. 160)
Trustees of the Victoria

(facing p. 113)
&
65, 81)
40, 112, 113, 128, 129, 144, 145)
Albert
Museum - Crown
copyright
CHAPTER ONE
Prehistoric
and Koman
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN
The cave dwellers and nomadic hunters of these islands were

followed by the Neolithic pastoralists (2500-1900 bc), who
practised some hand cultivation, domesticated animals, and made
implements of polished stone. They mined flint as a raw material,
wove cloth, made pots, and buried their dead in long barrows.
After them came the metal- working Bronze Age folk (1900500 Bc), who were pastoralists at first but from about 1000 bc
became settled cultivators with ox-drawn ploughs. These people
traded with the Continent in Cornish tin and Irish gold, cremated
their dead and buried them in roxmd barrows.
The Iron Age lasted from about 5 00 bc into Roman times and
witnessed a more advanced phase of Celtic culture. Tribes were
organized socially into villages and 'states', used chariots,
wheeled ploughs and lathes, possessed a considerable agriculture,
and engaged in a trade that included corn and later money.
ARCHITECTURE IN PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

During the long ages before the Roman Conquest little that
was built could be called architecture. There must have been
various simple types of wattle shelters in use but the oldest stone
structures are the remains of megalithic monuments, the greatest
being Stonehenge. Stone circles such as these reveal a primitive
sense of ceremonial planning, but they are scarcely buildings.
The first claim might be made for the NeoHthic chambered
tomb with its flagged or corbelled roof heaped over with earth
or, better still, for the dry stone wall dwellings of Early Bronze
Age date at Skara Brae in the Orkneys, with their built-in furni-
ture of flagstones and, again, a corbelled roof. But the
commonest
seem to have been the circular huts whose

Bronze Age foundations are to be found in various parts of the
prehistoric structures
ARCHITECTURE
MOUND
OF
EARTH
IN
ENGLAND
FLAGGED OR.
CO RBELLED ROOF
CHAMBERED BARROW
CORBELLING TO
FORM A ROOF
it is these with their turf or thatch roofs which
continued to serve as the standard dwelUng of the Briton
throughout the Roman period.
country, and
TIMBER POST
EARTH
5TON ES
TURF OR THATCH
ON WATTLE
CIRCULAR. PIT
found in villages within the concentric ditches of the hill-forts that were a feature of Iron Age
Sometimes hut
circles are
ENCLOSURE
STAGGERED
ENTRANCES
DITCHES
6
lO
RON AGE HILL FORT
RAMPARTS
PREHISTORIC AND ROMAN

though the earliest earthworks were the Neolithic causeway-camps. The great ditches of the hill-forts followed the
contours of the ground and above them in their heyday rose
earth and stone ramparts surmounted by timber stockades.
Access to the central enclosure was across the ditches by causeways carefully staggered to hinder the approach of an attacker.
The finest of these fortified settlements was *Maiden Castle' in
times,
Roman invader.
stone built Iron Age village which continued
the Roman period may be seen at Chysauster
Dorset, which finally
An
example of a
in occupation into
fell
to the
near Penzance. There are the remains of four pairs of houses built
of granite rubble masonry and arranged across a cobbled street.

Each house consisted of an open courtyard surrounded by a
circular wall, in the thickness of which were rooms opening
inwards. Floors were paved and roofs corbelled or thatched.
THE ROMAN OCCUPATION
Age Britain and the richness of its

prompted the Roman Conquest. The invasion of
Claudius (ad 43) inaugurated a period of consolidation by
military governors in which Britain became a province of the
Empire, exporting metals, corn, wool and leather for the benefit
of Rome. Under Agricola, the first governor, the earliest real
towns were built and the first network of roads constructed.
Despite unrest in the north, the Pax Ro/p/ana maintained by the
legions gave the country four hundred years of more or less
settled rule with a civilization based on a high order of material
culture and the rule of law. By the fourth century there was a
developed agriculture in which the villa estates played an
important role, an export trade, a cloth-making industry, and
much mining of iron and other metals. When Roman rule came
to an end a hundred years later it was to take many centuries
The
prosperity of Iron
resources
before Britain again reached a comparable cultural level.
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE
When the Romans came they brought with them a fully
developed building technique, the expression of that practical
engineering skill for which they are famed. Their system of
II
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
GREEK
\ ACANTHUS
ABACUS
VOLUTE
LEAVED
CAPITAL
ENTA5I5
FLUTI NG
BASE
CORINTHIAN
IONIC
DOR.IC
ROMAN
PEDIMENT
CORNICE
TRIGLYPH-
^y<^
ENTABLATURE-
METOPE
CORNICE
FRIEZE
ARCHITRAVE
COMPOSITE
IONIC AND
CORINTHIAN
CAPITAL
SHAFT
PEDESTAL
FOR HEIGHT
TU5CAN DORIC
COMPOSITE
construction sprang from
two
sources: the
Greek column and
beam system; and the arch, vault, and dome of the Etruscans.*
They took over from the Greeks the three orders of pillar
* The post and beam system originated with the Egyptians, while the construction
of brick arches (from corbelling) and vaults was known to the Assyrians and
Persians.
12

and beam construction, modified them to suit themselves, and
added two of their own, so that in all they had five orders. In
each order the proportions and details of columns, capitals and
entablatures were all different. In practice however the most
frequently met with are the Tuscan Doric with its sHmmer,
unfluted shaft, and the Corinthian, its capital richly decorated
with an acanthus leaf motif.
But in a manner quite unknown to the Greeks, the Romans
frequently applied their orders to what was basically a pier and
arch structure, thus using them in a purely decorative manner
as well as in the orthodox way.
CORINTHIAN
i=L
^5
(vo
(>-o
"^
IONIC
/=i
c.
ZZ3
>
ej
SPANDRELS
KEY
STONE
ARCH
r USCAN
PIER
SUPERIMPOSED ORDERS APPLIED

DECORATIVELY TO A ?\EK AND ARCH SYSTEM
"
13
I
ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND
Masonry
set in
lime mortar really begins in Britain with the

technical innovation was their
Romans and another important
use of concrete, a mixture of stone fragments and lime which

could be made anywhere without the need for skilled labour.
It
was
vaults,
and barrel
domes, and even walls which were then faced with stone
particularly useful for the construction of cross
or brick.
Openings were generally semicircular or square-headed; roofs

tiles which the Romans introduced
to this country together with the knowledge of brick-making.
Embellishment of all kinds was a feature of Roman buildings, and
decorative effects were obtained in numerous ways. Facings on walls
enhanced as well as protected them if made of attractive stone,
marble, brickwork or mosaic. Interior surfaces were stuccoed and
adorned with mural paintings framed by painted pilasters. Floors
were of stone, marble, tiles, herringbone brickwork, or tessellated
with mosaic. Statues were placed in wall niches or on roof-lines
or at pediment angles, while there was much rather coarse and
low-pitched and covered with
commonest motifs being acanthus, ox-heads,

and garlands of fruit and flowers. The general feeling was one
florid carving, the
Roman architecture was heavy and

had a gravity and dignified grandeur
expressive of Roman power; at its worst it was ostentatious and
vulgar. But as Britain was one of the provinces farthest from
Rome its buildings were very much smaller, simpler, and less
grand than those we know existed in Italy. The first towns in
Britain were built by the Romans. Often they were former tribal
centres like Verulamium (St. Albans), which began as a Belgic
settlement and became under Agricola in the first century a
typical Roman town. Most were well sited. Some survived, as
at Chester and York, the great legionary garrisons in the North
others like Verulamium and Silchester (near Reading) were later
abandoned.
The most characteristic buildings were secular, connected with
the administration and with social life. Public buildings were
sometimes constructed with imported marble. They stressed the
political importance of the town as well as its economic function.
Street plans were usually rectihnear, with the building blocks
grouped in the spaces between and separated by footways. An
outer wall was provided with battlements and gateways, and it
of mass rather than space:
plastic.
14
At
its
best
it

was surrounded by
2.
fosse or ditch.
At the main
intersection
was
the forum, a marketplace-cum-civic centre and the focus of town

life. Rectangular and surrounded by basilicas, temples, baths,
1:
shops and peristyles (colonnades), it affords the earliest example

of town planning: the design of a group of buildings in their
spatial relationship to one another.
FORUM AT MAIN
INTERSECTION
[g]
gateways
li^.
RECTILINEAR
STREET PLAN
PLAN OF A ROMANO-BRITISH
TOWN
Basilicas were public assembly halls and served as town halls,

law courts and commercial exchanges. Rectangular in plan, they
consisted of a nave with two (sometimes four) aisles separated
by Corinthian colonnades carried right across the nave at both
ends making a complete ambulatory. In one of the short walls
was a semi-circular apse, containing a dais with wallseats or altar,
also screened off by a colonnade from the main body of the hall.
The roof was of timber which covered a coffered timber ceiling,
and the plain exterior usually contrasted with the rich decoration
within. At Silchester the basilica was 230 feet by 60 feet with
15
H
ARCHITECTURE
an apse
at
both ends, and
it
IN
ENGLAND
occupied the west side of a forum
300 feet square.
cD
OVEK
VAULT r\\i
APSE
\/ A
-T-
^00
o
o
APSE
dOD
000
Pion
0[
pi^
000
00
dDD
NAVE*.
000 000
\
COLONNADES
R.OMAN BASILICA
Temples dedicated to the pagan gods of Rome were either
The ce/Ia or chamber was usually raised
on a platform or podium and surrounded by a range of half
columns (Corinthian at the temple of Sulis Minerva, Bath)
^supporting' a cornice and pedimented roof. A flight of steps led
up to a deep portico of freestanding columns and sometimes
there was an apse at the rear. Floors were tessellated, with an
altar or cult object in the centre or on a dais in the apse. Ceilings
were vaulted or of coffered timber. The first stone building of
any size in Britain was Claudius' temple at Colchester (ad 50),
its mound now occupied by the remains of a Norman castle
rising from massive Roman concrete vaults.
rectangular or square.
Hot
baths or thermae played a central part in
in addition to their contribution to health
Roman
life,
for
and hygiene, they
acted as clubs or social centres. Similar in principle, they varied
16
/\wM
vj/
w m w MJWM^'
Z.
PEDIMENT
PODIUM
CELLA
/
PORTICO
1I-TO
o o rv-<>-^v-^v>>'>^-^^
:
^.
and details of planning. The schematized plan

shows one arrangement of the main elements.
The baths at Aquae Sulis (Bath) had an open air swimming
greatly in size
SCHEMATISED PLAN OF THERMAE
UNDRESSING ROOM
2 TEPIDARIUM, WARM
CHAMBER OR LOUNGE
1
1-
34 SUDATORIA, HOT
AIR
ROOMS
56 CALDARIA, HOT
WATER BATHS
7 FRI6IDARIUM, COLD
WATER SWIMMING POOL
ALSO OILING e MASSAGE
ROOMS, HYPOCAUSTS,
FURNACES
ETC.
17
by 40 and 6 feet deep, lined with lead from
the Mendip Hills and surrounded by a roofed pavement with
stone sreps down to the water. Later the pool was covered by a
barrel vault of hollow box-tiles supported on forty-feet columns.
It was provided with a culvert drain.
pool 80
feet
GROINED CROSS VAULT
BARREL VAULT
Certain chambers wxre heated by means of a hjpocaust or cellar
into
which glowing charcoal was pushed from
a stoking chamber.
The hot air and gases warmed the cement floor above (raised
on pillars of tiles) and passed through terracotta flue pipes up
the walls to be discharged under the eaves.
HEATED FLOOR.
FLUE
t
2i'
\
A HYP0CAU5T
Public sport represented another important aspect of hfe and
theatres to
By
accommodate it wêre built close outside the towns.

Verulamium had one for plays, and for
the second century
18
.ARENA
THEATRE
VERULAMIUM
ENTRANCE
STAGE
OPEN TO 5KY
t4
DRESSING AND
PROPERTY ROOMS,
LEAN TO ROOF
circus performances consisting of animal fights
combats.
tiers
It
The auditorium was open
to the sky
and gladiatorial
and consisted of
of stone seats enclosing a circular area of eighty feet diameter.

slope, raised on concrete vaulting
was often hollowed out of a
or, as in this instance, excavated, the
the seats. Entrance was
The
theatre derived
upcast forming a bank for
by means of vaulted tunnels.

from the Greeks who made a more
civi-
but the amphitheatre (two semicircular theatres brought together) was a Roman invention. Like
its descendant the bull ring, it was essentially for combat,
Roman domestic buildings may be considered under two
lized
and
less brutal
use of
it,
town and country. Town houses varied in size. The

medium-sized domus had plain facades with perhaps shops on the
street frontage. Amenities were good for the time. Windows
were of glass but most light came from above a central court.
The front door had a mortice lock, the roof was tiled and the
principal rooms were heated with braziers. Larger houses had
central heating by hypocaust and the luxury of tessellated floors.
Sometimes house plans were L-shaped or of the corridor type
with rooms opening off a passage. Slaves occupied insulae,
storeyed like tenements or barracks.
Romano-British country houses or villas were centres of large
farming estates growing corn for the towns and the army. They
heads:
19
were constructed of half timber raised on stone footings, and
when complete must have resembled Tudor buildings of similar
design. Another point of resemblance was the way the courtyard
type had its ranges of rooms along three or four sides of a quadrangular court, though opening on to pent-roofed verandas.
MAIN BLOCK
SLAVES'
GRANARIES,
QUARTERS
WORKSHOPS
WALL WITH GATE
OR.
ANOTHER RANGE
OF BUILDINGS
ROMAN
The main block
offices,
VILLA
consisted of living-rooms,
with a central
ETC.
bedrooms and
hall placed opposite the entrance.
The
side
blocks contained the quarters of the servants and slaves, and the
barns, granaries, threshing floors and
workshops necessary for a

were equipped with a heated corn-drying
floor, an innovation useful in a damp cHmate, and a large walled
farmyard was frequently attached. As with the larger town
houses the best rooms had tessellated floors, patterned or pictorial, and were decorated with frescoes and heated by hjpocaust.
A second type of villa was the corridor type. The plan was
simpler with a single range of rooms opening off a colonnaded
veranda; sometimes a pair of side blocks or short wings were
added. A few larger courtyard villas had corridors both inside
and outside the quadrangle, thus combining the two kinds of
large farm.
Some
villas
Upper storeys are conjectural.

which resembled manor houses or farmsteads were
of the columned barn type, with a nave and two aisles divided
plan, as at Folkestone.
Small
20
villas
SOMETIMES
SIDE-BLOCKS
OR WINGS
^
aa
mUOiui
^,
TYPE OF ROMAN VILLA
CORR.IDOR.
by timber posts supporting the roof. Rooms were constructed

inside or built on at the end and floors were of rammed earth.
Being less substantial, however, fewer of these have survived.
At Silchester are remains, unique in this country, of a small
fifth-century Early Christian basilica, probably derived from the
hall or basilica of a private villa and first used as a chapel when,
in 312 under Constantine, Christianity became the state
religion. Such buildings as this were the prototypes of the
basilican church of the Middle Ages.
off
The
EARLY CHRISTIAN
CHUR.CH
SILCH ESTER.
plan was rectangular with a nave and
two
parallel aisles
separated by colonnades that carried a clerestory range of win-
dows and helped
to support the roof. But unlike the basilica
proper, the colonnades were not carried across the building.

21
ARCHITECTURE
Though
IN
for the greater part of the
ENGLAND
Roman
occupation a firm
and competent rule resulted in internal peace, along the turbulent frontiers the story was different. Towns had stone walls in
the late third century, but the greatest
monument
to
Roman
military power, Hadrian's Wall, goes back to the early second
century. Constructed of concrete faced with stone,
Tyne
to Solway, punctuated at intervals
by
it
ran from
mile-castles (guard-
and smaller turrets or watchtowers. In the hills to the

was supported by a network of roads and forts.
These forts or castella were not the big fifty-acre legionary
forts such as York and Chester, but smaller ones of two and a
half to five acres, and they occurred at intervals of about five
miles. Similar ones were built elsewhere in the interior at strategic
points of the internal communication system. Basically they were
square or rectangular enclosures with rounded corners and
battlemented ramparts of stone or turf faced with stone. Each
wall was provided with a gateway, angle and interval towers,
and round the outside ran a berm and ditch of V-section. At the
posts)
south
it
principal intersection stood the principia or headquarters building,
and a
shrine.
Nearby were the praetorium (commandant's
villa),
and granaries with supplies for a year

or two. Farther away were the long barrack and stable buildings.
At Housesteads (Borcovicium) there was a bath-house outside
officers' quarters, stores
the walls that served as a recreation centre.
Other military structures guarding the East Coast or Saxon

Shore' were walled coast-forts and signal stations. Roads too
had defensible posts a day's journey apart, providing accommodation and remounts. Some of these later became market
towns. The usual method of crossing rivers was by flagged
*
fords but the remains of
some bridges
exist, as at
Chollerford
over the Tyne.

The long colonial interlude of Roman civilization and building
was, however, destined to end with the crumbling of the Empire.
Rome was sacked in 410 and though there was no dramatic
withdrawal of the legions as is sometimes thought, Britain was
gradually left to itself to suffer the Teutonic incursions which
followed. When the Saxons arrived they usually preferred their
own sites to those of the Romans, whose towns and buildings

slowly perished through disuse rather than sudden violence.
22

INTERVAL TOWER
[aap<
H i <i
iririnrvTrvTnr|y
j
wu
i t
ii
GATEWAY
u rT>
ANGLE TOWER
virvvVTrj^|^^
GRANARY
REGULAR
STREET
PLAN
W
VIA
PRINCIPALIS
BARRACKS
e
HOSPITAL
STABLES
PRINCIPIA OR H.Q.BUILDING
PRAETORIUM,
COMMANDANT'S HOUSE
BARRACK BLOCK
I4-'
LDiif
Jl^
WALL
da.
!Jl!ii!l
EARTH
-\
DITCH
ROMAN FORT
MILITARY WAY LINKING F0RT5
VALLUM OR PALLISADED
EARTHWORK OF UPCAST
SECTION THROUGH HADRIAN'S WALL

23
LIST OF REPRESENTATIVE BUILDINGS
PREHISTORIC
Hetty Pegler's Tump, Uley,

Glos; Stoney Littleton, Radstock, Som.
Bronze Age temple Stonehenge, Amesbury, Wilts.
Bronze Age hut settlement: Kestor, Chagford, Devon.
Iron Age hill-fort: Maiden Castle, Dorchester, Dorset.
Iron Age fortifications Stanwick, Yorks.
Iron Age and Romano-British village Chysauster, Trevarrack, CornNeolithic chambered long barrows:
wall.
ROMAN
Town
Town
forum, houses, theatre: Verulamium, St. Albans, Herts.

with basilica and public baths: Viroconium, Wroxeter,
Salop; Calleva Atrebatum, Silchester.
Military base and settlement: Corstopitum, Corbridge, Northumbersite,
site
land.
Fort and sections of Hadrian's Wall: Borcovicium, Housesteads,
Northumberland.
Aquae SuHs, Bath, Som.

Chedworth, Glos; Bignor, Fishbourne and Southwick, Sussex;
Public baths
Villas:
Folkestone, Kent.
Burgh
Coastal fort:
Castle,
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk; Richborough,
Kent.
Signal station
Scarborough, Yorks.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
PREHISTORIC
Clark, G. Prehistoric England (fi2iX.siot6. 1940).
Hawkes, J. and C. Prehistoric Britain (Chatto & Windus 1947).
Thomas, N.
Guide to Prehistoric Eng/and (B2itsfotd i960).
:
ROMAN
Haverfield, F. J.: The Ro/ân Occupation of Britain (O.U.P. 1924).
Plommer, H. Ancient and C/assica/ Architecture (Longm2Lns 1956).

Richmond, I. A.: Roman Britain (Penguin 1955).
Robertson, D. S. Greek and Roman Architecture (C.U.P. 1943).
Winbolt, S. E. Britain under the Romans (Penguin 1945).
:
^4
CHAPTER TWO
Romanesque
ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
The
its name and laid the foundaEven before the collapse of Roman
Anglo-Saxons gave England
tions of English culture.
order bands of Anglo-Saxons from Germania had begun to raid

these shores and later, in the fifth and sixth centuries, they
came
The Saxons were pioneer colonizers in the thickly

forested lowlands, their new villages based on the cultivation of
open fields in separately owned strips grouped into furlongs.
to settle.
Their society of thanes, free peasants and slaves had a rudimentary organization, and shire and local courts applied the
laws and settled matters of common policy.
of the Roman Empire Britain had become
Christian in 312, but the Saxons were pagans and not until
the arrival of St. Augustine from Rome in 597, and the Irish
missionaries from lona, did churches again appear. Differences
With the
between
rest
Celtic
and
Roman
settled at
Whitby
Rome, and when
villages
Christianity
in 664 with England's adherence to
were
were provided with churches - mostly timber but a few of

stone - the pattern of English parishes emerged. English monasteries became noted centres of art and learning, and by Bede's
time in the eighth century, Northumbria, one of the several
independent kingdoms of the Heptarchy, enjoyed the rich
civilization which produced the Lindisfarne Gospels.
Saxons in many ways,
were attracted by the plunder, but after the ninth century they too
The Vikings,
came
seafarers resembling the
Under Alfred, remembered also for his contribution

and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ Wessex (now
risen to supremacy) engaged the Danes in a great struggle. Though
the Danes failed to conquer England they did succeed in estabto settle.
to learning, his laws
lishing themselves in the north-east (the Danelaw).
In 1016 a
Dane, Cnut, assumed the throne of a unified country.

^5
'I
<
\'-
The impact of the Danes not only helped to unify England into
monarchy advised by a Witan, but added to the number
of towns which had grown up in the tenth century for reasons
a single
of trade and defence. After the wars the Church too revived
under Dunstan, who also helped to establish a unified system of
laws and central government.
ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE
Romanesque is the stylistic name given to the architecture of
Western Europe in the period between the break-up of the
Roman Empire and the coming of Gothic towards the end of
the twelfth century. Its two principal sources were the surviving
architecture of Rome, particularly the Christian basilicas, and the
of the Eastern Empire. Both Anglo-Saxon
and the Anglo-Norman which replaced it after the
Conquest were local variations of Romanesque.
Byzantine
style
architecture
ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE
The Saxons were
familiar with timber as a constructional
material, as their splendid longships prove. It
would be reason-
able to conjecture therefore that the earliest of their buildings
were
built of timber like the great hall described in the Beowulf
and indeed this is confirmed by the findings of archaeoAt Yeavering (Northumberland) an Anglo-Saxon township of the seventh century had both a stone- wall burh or fortified
enclosure, and a royal palace of timber (built for Edwin of
Northumbria). Throughout the period timber was the chief
material for less important buildings, though all have perished
except the church at Greenstead (Essex), which shows the
saga,
logists.
upright, spHt-log technique used for wall construction.
But gradually, through contact with the Rhineland, the Saxons

acquired a stone technique. Writers in the eighth century mention
quite large buildings,
though the Saxon had a tendency to
exaggerate and surviving examples are certainly small.
The
earliest
buildings were stone churches erected in the
St. Augustine's
mission in 597. Under the influence of Rome there was built in
Kent of Roman brick a group of churches with naves, apsidal
seventh century after the conversion that followed
26
ROMANESQUE
and portkus (porches used as side
representative example is St. Pancras at Canterbury.
chancels, narthexes
chapels).
PORTICUS (SIDE CHAPELS)
APSIDAL
CHANCEL
NARTHEX
BLIND
ARCADING
BRADFORD
ON AVON
CHANCEL
PILASTER STRIPS
SQUARE-ENDED
CHANCEL
ANGLO -5AXON CHURCHES

A north-eastern group
was of stone, with long, high, narrow

naves, tall elevations and towers, and square-ended chancels of
Celtic influence. Monkwearmouth is a good example of this
27
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
second group, with a unique, above-ground groined vault in the

tower porch. (There are several Saxon crypts.) This is the first
time that the square-ended chancel is met with in England, a
feature associated with the Celtic Church which was so active
in the North until the Synod of Whitby in 664, and one that was
adopted for most English Gothic churches after becoming
absorbed into the tradition.
Besides these smaller churches there must have been some
larger ones of the basilica type but the only one extant is at
Brixworth in Northants. This is a simpHfied Early Christian
basilica consisting of nave, aisles, clerestory and apsidal east end.
Again it is constructed of Roman brick with Roman arcades.
The carved ornament of early Saxon churches is sparse but
boldly executed in the manner of the seventh-century high
crosses, and like them it combines Celtic interlacing with Mediterranean motifs such as vine and ivy scroll with animals and
figures, as can be seen at Ruthwell and Easby.
From the ninth century until the Conquest (the period of the
supremacy of Wessex and of the Viking invasions), later Saxon
work was influenced by the Carolingian revival. It brought
from the Rhineland, for example, the double cross plan of some
of the major churches now destroyed, and also the helm-shaped
roof. But in general churches continued to be small with elementary
compartment-like plans, though some had porches that became
incipient transepts giving a cruciform effect. The square east end
was
now
definitely preferred to the apse.
Workmanship continued
to be rather rustic and primeval-
looking but was sound enough, as can be seen today. High nave
walls were essayed and it is remarkable what the tenth- and
eleventh-century Saxons were able to achieve in the way of
monumental dignity in spite of the smallness of scale.
Piers were short and stumpy with square capitals. Vaults were
simple, either barrel or groined.
Windows were
small and round
or triangular headed, with narrow apertures but wide internal

splays to admit the maximum light. Late Saxon belfry windows
often had baluster shafts. There was
no glazing and
shutters
kept the weather out. Doorways were also round headed and
some in the eleventh century had carved tympana.
Emphasizing the angles of walls or articulating them at intervals were pilaster strips, which may also have served the practical
28
ROMANESQUE
7 ^
d.
INTERNAL
SPLAY
QUOIMS
quoiNS
FIVE
LONG
LIGHT BELFRY
MEGALITHIC
SHOR.T
6-
WINDOW
WOR.K.
LON6
5HOR.T
WORJC
LATTICE -mm
FORA/i
FROAA
RHIN ELAND
î^
WORK,
BLIND
iC^
^.
PILASTER.
STRIPS
HELM
mm
ARCADING
II
50MPTING
ENRICHED TOWETR
EARLS
BA RTONi
ANGLO-SAXON FEATURES
purpose of vertical bonding courses in the rubble or ragstone
walls. Another wall feature was blind arcading. Quoins, either
megalithic or long and short work, strengthened and decorated
the angles. Arches were usually left plain, though a few were
given simple but massive mouldings. By the eleventh century
c
29
western and central towers were common. They were without
buttresses and frequently terminated in the helm form of roof
already mentioned.
There was less carved ornament and it was not as successful.
The total effect of the abstract patterning, however, was often
quite rich, as can be seen from the tower at Earls Barton.
AMPAf^T,
PA LLISADED
TIMBER. TOWER.
AI^THWOR.K
DITCH
/
A
5AX0M BU HH
speaking there were no Saxon
castles, for the burh was

community defence and not the private fortress
of later times. The Saxon thegn lived in a single hall which
served him as a manor house. This must have been made chiefly
of timber, the roof supported by walls and wooden posts.
Windows were small, again for practical reasons, and the communal life of the hall was orientated on the central hearth, the
smoke from which escaped through a louvre in the roof overhead. The peasants continued to live in huts that were frameworks of wood turfed or thatched.
Strictly
essentially the
THE NORMAN PERIOD

The Conquest of 1066 was assured by the superior military
of the Normans with their developed techniques of fortifi-
skill
cation and cult of cavalry. It introduced a warlike, alien upper
f^
who
much
of the pre-Conquest machinery of

government and co-operation between Church and State but
who, pursuing an energetic policy of centralization, formed
England into an altogether more rigid and efficient feudal state.
All land was held ultimately from the Crown, in return for
mihtary and other services by the barons down to the villeins or
largely unfree peasants - a system that entailed the vigorous
class
30
inherited
ROMANESQUE
economic subjection of humble folk to a few powerful men.
The Domesday Book (1086) was the first human and economic
survey of England but much of value was lost.
Under the manorial system the open fields continued to be
the basis of agriculture - one field lying fallow every year; corn
CUSH lOM
POLYGONAL
COMPOUND
SCALLOPED
MOR.MAN PIERS
CAPITALS
&-
CHOIR.
Is/AVF
SANCTUAR.V
s.
NJOR.MAN CHURCH
THREE CELL TVPE
SMALLER
being ground
at the lord's mill;
and the surrounding woods,
commons, and wasteland providing fuel and grazing.

Under the Normans the Church flourished. Lanfranc brought
order and unity, encouraged church building on an immense
scale, and initiated a monastic revival. Wealthy Benedictine
monasteries were not only centres of education and learning,
but played an important part in social and economic life through
their charitable
work and
the
management of
their large estates.

31
first Cistercian monastery was founded; this was a
ascetic order which colonized the wastes.
and
more
stricter
French remained the courtly and aristocratic language until the
fourteenth century. Its permanent contribution was to make
English richer and more flexible.
In II 28 the
ANGLO-NORMAN ARCHITECTURE
Anglo-Norman was another form of Romanesque architecture,
many ways to Anglo-Saxon. It began even before the
Conquest, for we know that Edward the Confessor's court was
superior in
receptive to
Norman
ideas
building of Westminster
Anglo-Norman
suited to the
is
and adopted
this style for the re-
Abbey in grander, more spacious manner.

power
a style with breadth and a sense of
Norman
character. Its blunt, massive forms are
equally expressive of a structural system that seeks stability by
^.^\^f
depending upon great masses of solid wall. Aesthetically it is

successful, and it exhibits a unity of design hitherto somewhat
lacking in native work. Technically also it shows an advance on
Anglo-Saxon architecture, for though most of the craftsmen
must have been Saxon, the architects and master-masons were
often brought across from Normandy. Considering that the
population of England at this time was only about two million,
the extent of Anglo-Norman building is a remarkable tribute
both to the vitality of the style and to the energy with which the
Normans pursued their vast programme.
As always in medieval architecture, the pre-eminent building
type was the church. Anglo-Norman parish churches resemble
their Saxon predecessors since they are usually aisle-less and
compartmental in plan (though larger) and originally consisted
of up to four cells with an apsidal end.
Larger churches display a more complex type of plan, generally
cruciform with developed transepts to increase accommodation
and give light and tower abutment. Some are aisled basilicas of
three storeys, a triforium or blindstorey appearing between the
nave arcade and the clerestory, at the level of the aisle roof.
The arcades themselves have round arches resting on massive
cylindrical, polygonal or compound piers. Vaults are either of
the barrel or groined quadripartite types. In
nave
3^
is
some churches
the
barrel vaulted with cross vaults over the aisles, as can
ROMANESQUE
BLIND AR.CADIN6
WIN DOWS
/f^
OR-N/^MENTED MOULDINGS
H+H-
MAIL HEAD
LLET
CHE VR.ON
BEAIC-H EAD
TMBATTLED
BI
CA BLE
J'XTXIXXL DOU&LE CONE
ARCH
IN
ORNAMENTED
MOU LDINGS
/
^^
THREE
R.ECE
SSED
ORDERS
SHALLOW
^BUTTRESS
CARVED
TYMPANUM
3?\
"sZ
NOOiC SHAFTS
ANGLO- NORÂÂN
FEATUR.E5
be seen in the remarkably little altered eleventh-century interior

of St. John's Chapel in the Tower of London. Larger spans had
timber ceilings, until in the late twelfth century at Durham
Cathedral
(that
magnificent
culmination
of Anglo-Norman
problem was solved by the construction of the first

ribbed high vault in Europe, abutted by arches concealed under
effort) the
33
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
N.
TR>AN5
PT
CROSSING
S.
TRANSEPT
DURHAM CATHEDRAL
CLER.ESTOR.Y
TO LIGHT NAVE
TR.lFOR.IUM
OR.
BLIND-STOR.EY
MAIN ARCADE
WITH MASSIVE PIERS
N/AVE
SECTION OF AISLED BASILICAW CHUR-CH

THREE APSE TYPE
z;^^^-^
AMBULATOR-Y
PERl-APSIDAL
CHAPEUS
CHEVET
PARALLEL APSE
llth.CENT.
MORMAN EAST EMDS
the aisle roofs. Such a high vault was useful because of the
added protection it gave to the church against fire, and it marked

an important step in the transition to the Gothic style by the
way
it
unified the bays
more
emphatically.
The suggestion
the ribs were a purely technical device to save stone
34
is
that
discredited
ROMANESQUE
fact that here the panels of the web are no lighter than in
corresponding groined vaults.
Broad, flat buttresses mark the bay divisions externally but are
not really required for abutment on account of the thickness
and strength of the walls. Openings are roundheaded, some
recessed in 'orders' with nook shafts. Windows are commonly
of one large single light flanked by blind aracading. The towers
by the
of larger churches, mostly rebuilt during the
Norman
period,
were placed centrally and were squat and massive in appearance.

Some churches had two-tower west facades, a key element in
Romanesque and Gothic that originated at Strasbourg in loi 5 and
was imported here from Normandy. Pyramidal roofs were usual.
Two phases can be distinguished in Anglo-Norman architecture. That of the eleventh century was plain with meagre
decoration, such as simple mouldings and crocket foliage on the
capitals, and favoured a Continental east end either of the
parallel-apse or chevet type.
High Romanesque,
is
The
twelfth-century phase, called
characterized
by much
rich decoration,
notably the boldly executed designs of chevron, cable and beak

head (the latter an interesting motif of Scandinavian origin).
West
fronts are elaborate, as at Castle
Acre Priory, and doorways
particularly lavishly decorated with scrollwork filled with animals
and figures and perhaps adorned with a carved tympanum, as at

Malmesbury Abbey. Walls are embellished with blind arcading,
often interlaced, and pier capitals enriched with carving.
In High Romanesque can be detected what were to become
three of the favourite elements of Gothic architecture the square
east end of the native type, once again reverted to at Southwell
Minster; the double transept which began with the extension at
Canterbury; and the Lady chapel added to the east end to serve
the growing cult of the Virgin Mary.
So far only ecclesiastical buildings have been considered - the
:
most important type of building in this period since they served

not only as places of worship but as centres of communal life,
and they were often defensible in time of trouble. We must turn
now to the second important building type - the castle - of
which the Normans built the first examples in this country. The
castle is an appropriate embodiment of both Norman militarism
and the social organization of the feudal system which they
imposed on Saxon England.
35
The
who
castle was the private stronghold of the lord or magnate

held land from the Crown in return for service. It also
acted as the lord's residence or
government and
manor house, where he adminis-
and dispensed hospitality.

England were small 'motte and
bailey' structures of earth and timber dating from the Conquest
to the mid twelfth century. A classic example of this type can
still be traced at Berkhamsted. Such a castle was relatively easy
to erect with speed and with non-specialist forced labour, but
by the mid twelfth century its materials were being translated
tered local
The
first
Norman
into stonework.
justice
castles in
The timber
became the stone keep or
tower, the ultimate strongpoint,
donjon,
and the stockaded ramparts a
TIMBER. TOWER.
ULTIMATE STKOMSPOINl
PALLI5ADES ON
EARTH ÂMPAI^TS
MOTTE
MOUND
OR.
BR.IDGE,
PER.HAPS
t>R.AW
BRIDGE
FOSSE
WET OR. DR.r
DITCH
MOTTE
6r
BAILEY CASTLE!
stone curtain wall.

are
still
(Yorks).
Thus the two
Ilth.
&
IZth.
CENT.
original elements of defence
castle, as at Richmond
Some had in addition a square or twin-towered gatehouse
preserved in the keep and bailey
to defend the approach, and stone buildings in the bailey like the
eleventh-century aisled hall also at Richmond.

Keeps became quite elaborate. At first they were square in
plan, massive and thick walled, and because of their great weight
less often raised on a mound of earth. Sometimes there was a
splayed plinth to protect the base and strengthen it. The usual
practice was to divide the structure vertically into four storeys.
late
36
ROMANESQUE
The basement ground floor or undercroft was vaulted with stone
and served for storage. Above this the first floor lodged the
garrison, the second served as the great hall and the third contained the private apartments of the lord, such as the solar.
trally
The
were equipped with fireplaces but otherwise cenplaced braziers were used. There were a few small windows.
upper
floors
nnnTLr
DONJON
CR.ENELLAT10NS
ALU
R.E
OR.
R.AMPAR.T
WAUK.
GATEHOUSE
MID
A
IZth.
CENT.
double ridged timber roof completed the building, placed

level to preserve it from exposure and to assist
below parapet
fire
control.
The plan was
often divided by a lateral cross wall
to strengthen the structure of the keep and to facilitate flooring
and roofing. The vise or
solid
newel, spiral staircase (which was to
continue as the universal type of staircase throughout the Gothic

period which followed) was a utilitarian feature tucked away in
one of the four angle turrets. Garderobes were set in the thickness of the wall.
Entrance to the keep was at first floor level up a flight of steps

of the keep, leading to a forebuilding which protected
the castle door. In this way attackers exposed their flank and a
direct assault on the keep was impossible. Some keeps had a
chapel in the upper part of the forebuilding.
at the side
37
ARCHITECTURE
nnnnn
IN
ENGLAND
nonnnn
ANGLE TURRET
-innnnnnnnnnr
TIMBER. R.OOF
RÎDGETD
PARAPET
FEW
flIJ
SMAL L
Wl N DOW5
z
S
PLAYE
PLINTH S^^^^
POLYGONAL
CYLINDi^lCAL
DEEP SPLAYS TO OPENINGS
GAfcDEIÔBE5 ETC
IN
THICiC
WALLS
BUILDINGS
AGAINST WAL
RING
WALL
SPIRAL
STAIR.
SHELL
ON
is-t.
FOR.E
K.EEP
MOTTE
FLOOR. e:mtr.amce
BUILDING
The square keep or donjm
12th
is
by
CENTURY CASTLE KEEPS
far the
most usual twelfth-
century type, but there were some shell keeps (e.g. Windsor
built on a motte) where buildings were placed against a ring
wall. In the later part of the century these began to be superseded
by round keeps (a crusader fashion brought from the Near East)

which were less vulnerable since the angles of the square keep
were eliminated. There are also some polygonal examples.
38
ROMANESQUE
Very few Norman domestic buildings survive, but they
probably resembled the domestic buildings of the twelfth-century
monasteries, with or without aisles. For instance, Boothby
Pagnall is a simple, rectangular, stone manor house consisting of
a common hall with a solar at one end and kitchens at the other,
all raised upon an undercroft. It is probable that added protection
was given by surrounding the hall with a moat or wall.
The type of masonry used at this time continued into the
LOUVR.E
HALL
UMD>ER.CR.O FT
STONE BUILT NOR.MAN/ MANOR. HOUSE

earlier part
of the next period. Probably owing to the relative
shortage of skilled stone cutters,
it consisted chiefly of roughly

shaped or uncut rubble stones mixed with mortar to produce a
kind of concrete, and was finally faced with well-cut stone.
Arches, mouldings, shafts, ribs and carving were all executed in
cut stone. Herringbone work is an occasional feature of the
eleventh century, both Saxon and Norman.
ANGLO-SAXON
Seventh-century churches: St. Pancras, Canterbury, Kent; Brixworth,
Northants; Monkwearmouth, Jarrow and Escomb, Durham;
crypt at Repton, Derby.
Eighth-century: Offa's Dyke; crypts at Hexham, Northumberland
and Ripon Minster, Yorks.

Ninth-century church Britford, Wilts.
:
39
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
Tenth-century churches Deerhurst, Glos; Bradford-on- Avon, Wilts.

Wing, Bucks; Worth, Sussex; Breamore, Hants; Clapham, Beds;
Earl's Barton and Wittering, Northants.
Eleventh-century churches: Stow, Lines; Bosham and Sompting,
Sussex; Greensted, Essex; foundations of St. Augustine's Abbey,
Canterbury; remains of cathedral at North Elm ham, Norfolk.
:
ANGLO-NORMAN
Work
at the cathedrals
of Durham; Winchester; Hereford; Oxford;
Norwich; Chichester; Ely; Gloucester; Peterborough; Rochester;

St. Albans; Southwell; Worcester (crypt).
Abbeys: Tewkesbury, Glos; Waltham, Essex; Malmesbury, Wilts.;
Bury St. Edmunds, Herts.; Furness, Lanes.; Kirkstall, Yorks;
Romsey, Hants.
Priories: Castle Acre, Norfolk; Blyth, Notts; Christchurch, Hants.
Parish churches at Adel and Lastingham, Yorks;

Chester; Kilpeck, Herefs.; Barfreston, Kent;
St.
John the Baptist,

Oxon; Mel-
Iffley,
bourne, Derby; Stewkley, Bucks; Studland, Dorset; Elkstone, Glos;

St. Sepulchre and St. Peter, Northampton; Castor, Northants;
Walsoken, Norfolk St. Batholomew the Great, London.

Berkhamsted, Herts.; Restormel and Trematon, Cornwall;
Rochester and Dover, Kent; Orford, Sussex; Keep of the Tower of
London (with the Chapel of St. John) Colchester and Hedingham,
Essex; Castle Rising, Norfolk; Carlisle, Cumb.; Richmond, Helmsley, Scarborough and Conisbrough, Yorks.
Manor houses at Burton Agnes, Yorks; Boothby Pagnall, Lines;
Aaron the Jew's House and St. Mary's Guild, Lincoln; Merchants'
Houses, Bury St. Edmunds and Southampton; eleventh-century
Scolland's Hall, Richmond Castle, Yorks; twelfth-century halls at
Oakham, Rutland and Bishop's Hall, Hereford.
;
Castles:
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ROMANESQUE
Hunter: Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Eng/and {C.U.F. 1956).
Clapham, A. W. English Romanesque Architecture, 2 vols. (O.U.P. 1934)Clapham, A. W.: Romanesque Architecture in Western Europe (O.U.P.
Blair, P.
1936).
Conant, K. J. Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture (Pelican History

of Art: Penguin 1959).
Talbot Rice, D.: Oxford History of Art, S71-1J00 (O.U.P. 1952).
Whitelock, D.: Beginnings of English Society (Penguin 1952).
:
40
ESCOMB CHURCH, CO. DURHAM:
simple, seventh- century
Saxon church; its masonry is constructed of large blocks brought

from a Roman fort. The porch and pointed windows are not
original
grandeur of
round arch, and sparse abstract ornament
DURHAM cathedral: The Anglo-Norman

massive pier,
CHAPTER THREE
Gothic I
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
At
first
under the Normans the EngUsh
people but by Angevin times
(i
felt
themselves a subject
54-1272), after the loss of John's
French possessions, the two elements fused into a progressive

national development with a distinctively English culture, typified by the general use of English as the language. But this
consolidation of the nation came only after a struggle between
Church and State that ended in the supremacy of the Crown.
The period was marked by rebellions of the barons against the
despotic power of the king. In Magna Carta (121 5) John was
obliged to subscribe to a definition of national rights and
liberties, the foundation of our constitutional system. Later came
Simon de Montfort's Provisions of Oxford (1258) - significantly
first official document with a text in English as well as
Latin - and the establishment of the representative principle by
the
Henry Ill's reign. Parallel with these

developments in government were others in law and finance,
and Henry II (who clashed with Becket) was a notable reformer
in both fields as well as a great castle builder.
Trade and industry grew. Organization was into gilds or
unions of merchants or craftsmen for the protection of their
interests and the maintenance of standards. Towns began to
develop at the expense of feudalism as burgesses bargained for
charters, though for the rest manorial obligations were still the
rule. Among the upper classes chivalry fostered noble ideals and
the Parhament of 1265 in
knightly
skills.
This was a time of deep and widespread religious conviction.

Church building, monastic reform, the advent of the Cistercians,
the work of the Dominican and Franciscan friars in the towns,
the pilgrimages, the
testify to this.
endowments of hospitals and almshouses,
So do the Crusades, fought
at
all
any rate partly to

41
keep the Holy Land out of infidel hands, and orders
Knights Hospitallers which blended the military and
like the
spiritual
impulses of the time.
expanded under the auspices of the Church.

Cambridge was founded
in the thirteenth. Notable scholars included Roger Bacon (d.
1292), the natural philosopher, and the jurist, Bracton (d. 1298).
Among such men the use of Latin and the universality of the
Roman Catholic Church gave something of an 'internationaF
character to medieval Europe.
Later Plantagenet times (1272-13 99) saw a period of national
expansion during which Edward I completed the conquest of
Wales and essayed that of Scotland. By the beginning of the
Hundred Years War (13 38-145 3) - Crecy was fought in 1346 Intellectual life
Oxford flourished
^.%
in the twelfth century,
Edward III sought to conquer France and found a commercial

empire stretching from the Low Countries to the south of
France. Partly as a result of this, and ultimately more important,
was the continued growth of early constitutional government. In
1295 a 'ModeP Parliament, representative of the upper classes,
was participating in legislation, and two years later the Confirmatio Cartarum established its exclusive right of taxation. The
financial needs of Edward III thus strengthened its position,
which was maintained against Richard II. The law became a
common law enforced everywhere.
Economic and social life continued along lines already laid
down. The enterprising middle classes increased as trade prospered, encouraged by the legislation of Edward I and Edward
II. But after the mid fourteenth century, however, high taxes and
food prices, and a labour scarcity resulting from the Black Death
(1349) and the French Wars, precipitated economic and social
changes. Services were commuted to money wages, thus freeing
many peasants from their feudal ties and leading to the break-up
of the manorial system. Statutes of Labourers (13 51) attempted
to prevent this, but only added to the other causes of unrest and
the equahtarianism of the time to produce the abortive Peasant's
Revolt (13 81). The lord's answer to this problem was to enclose
his land for sheep pasture, since England was the chief producer
of wool in Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.
Subsistence farming began to give way to profitable farming for
a market. As there was now less reliance on export the home
42
GOTHIC
cloth-making industry was stimulated, but among the villagers

brought much poverty as we know from sombre passages of
the poem Piers Plowman.
Reformers like WyclifFe (d. 1384) and the Lollards anticipated
the Reformation. Middle English literature culminated in
Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales (1387) mirrored the life of the
time and helped to shape modern English. Drama was born in
the miracle and later the morality plays of Church and gild.
The fifteenth century saw a renewal of the French Wars but
despite Henry V's brilliant victory at Agincourt (141 5) the final
result was the loss of all but Calais.
Enclosures and the development of wool as a cash crop continued and a substantial woollen industry grew up in East Anglia
and the Cotswolds, as the splendid churches built from its profits
bear witness. But though the towns under their mayors and
corporations were very prosperous, the gilds had already begun
it
monopoly and power.

The Middle Ages ended with the chaos of the Wars of the
Roses (145 5-85) which resulted from the weak rule of Henry VI
to lose their
and the
selfish,
power-seeking ambitions of the great feudal
nobles allied to the houses of York and Lancaster. Their outcome
weakened the old aristocracy, strengthened the middle classes,

and prepared the way for the strong rule of Henry Tudor (14851 5 09) who maintained the peace and promoted trade.
In some ways this last phase pointed forward to the Renaissance, as for
example in Caxton's introduction of printing in
1476 and Cabot's voyages.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE
The
sources of the Gothic style were certain great churches of
the lie de France and the later Cistercian abbeys of Burgundy. It
emerged in this country towards the end of the twelfth century

and prevailed for the next three hundred and fifty years. Essentially it was a new synthesis of existing features for the realization
of original technical and aesthetic aims.
First,
the pointed arch
made
possible the construction of
amount of
support for the high vault. At the same time ribs concentrated
the vault thrusts and directed them to particular points. Pointed
rectangular vaults that were stable, thus doubling the
arches and ribs together created the Gothic cross vault.
43
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
Flying buttresses or, more commonly in England, half arches

concealed under the aisle roofs, may be seen conducting the
thrust of the high vault over the aisles to vertical wall buttresses,
which then direct it to the ground. This concentration of thrusts
along certain lines, and the bringing down of the weight of the
building to isolated points, allow the walls to be opened up by
large windows which are such a characteristic feature of this
style.
mm
FLY( NG
BUTT
R.E55
00 00
BAY DIVISION
EXTER.NAL1_Y
_ C
LE R-ESTOR-Y
CONCEALED
PINNACLE
BUTTR.ESS
WALL
BUTTR-E5S
R.CADE
NAVE
AISLE
The Gothic system may
AISLE
therefore be seen as an organic one,
achieved not by great masses of masonry as

in Romanesque but by a tense balance of opposing forces that is
in
which stabiHty
44
is
GOTHIC
both ingenious and logical. In other respects, however, its

- the great churches - carry on the Romanesque tradition of the staggered basilican elevation and cruciform
plan, sometimes with Romanesque eastern transepts.
One transition from Romanesque to Gothic has been noted in
the high vault at Durham, but the first consistently Gothic
buildings in England were the Cistercian abbeys of the north
(Roche, 1 165) and the rebuilding of the choir of Canterbury
principal structures
Cathedral, also in the late twelfth century.
For general study
it is
still
useful to adopt Rickman's early
nineteenth-century classification of English Gothic into Early

English, Decorated and Perpendicular, corresponding roughly
to the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
though
it
should always be remembered that the style is really a continuously

evolving one and most buildings are composite.
EARLY ENGLISH (THIRTEENTH CENTURY)

The first flowering of Gothic is noticeably lighter than the
preceding Romanesque. It emphasizes the vertical and its general
lines are clean
and
simple in form
(e.g. quadripartite);
one of austere aspiration.

Arcades are pointed and slender, the piers formed of clustered
shafts, often detached and of marble, but later merged with the
main column. Capitals are adorned with stylized foliage and
outlines are emphasized with bold mouldings and deep hollows,
some bearing ^dogtooth' decoration. Other ornaments are diaper
patterns and arcading on walls. Vaults are ribbed but relatively
crisp. Its feeling is
wall buttresses project boldly,
often receding in stages with niches, offsets and gablets. Fenestration
is
typically in pairs or
groups of lancet windows united
by a dripstone. Later the spandrels were pierced to give plate

tracery which in turn developed into geometrical bar tracery.
Roofs are high-pitched and towers finished with a spire of stone
or timber, often with 'broaches' to make the transition from
four-sided tower to octagonal spire.
The keep and bailey castle continued to be built in this period
but the special innovation of the thirteenth century was the
concentric castle, in which the keep had become redundant owing
to the improvement of bailey defences by the addition of mural
towers. The type can be traced back through the Crusades and
D
45
the Turks to the military architecture of
form
it is
Rome. In
its
latest
an organic system of concentric curtain walls, quad-
rangular or polygonal in plan and carefully exploiting the contours of the
At
first
site,
strengthened at intervals by towers.
these towers were square but later polygonal and
W.
BARBICAN
COMWAY
E.
BAR.BICAN
12.83
OUTER.
WAR,D
MOAT
BAR.BIC
BEAUMM^(5
46
1295
GOTHIC
circular.
Though
curtain they
they projected to
were often
command
the face of the
were given a
were guard rooms
flush inside. Their bases
batter or spurred to strengthen them. Inside
and apartments.
The
principal defensive parts of the concentric castles
were
the gatehouses, twin-towered in the twelfth and early thirteenth
above the gate to make a

narrow entrance passage, with
centuries but later joined
single massive
structure over a
portcullis
and
machicolations (apertures in a corbelled parapet) above. Unlike

the keep they were not entirely defensive, being thrust forward
more
aggressive manner. Other features playing a similar

were posterns and barbicans. Crenellation was further
improved in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: merlons
were narrowed, embrasures and loops multiplied and stone
machicolations evolved from overhanging timber hoarding.
in a
role
Though
its
the concentric castle
is
essentially a functional design
frequent symmetry and geometrical forms often
endow
with a remarkable aesthetic quality, as at Harlech.

Some examples of planned fortified towns of this period
survive, such as Flint with its chequer-board plan.
The
manor house was
thirteenth-century
still
it
still
basically a hall
serving as the chief living-room and general dormitory, but
ORIEL WINDOW
K.1TCHEN
GREAT HALL
PANTRY
"
STAIR.
S
/
O
FIRE
BUTTERY-
<
iiJ
PARLOUR
SOLAR
OVER
r
I
^PORCH
T
I
47
more rooms began
above
to be added - perhaps a parlour with solar
upper end, and a kitchen, buttery, pantry and
at the
larder at the lower. Licences to crenellate permitted fortification,
such as the tower
Open timber
roofs were still the

and chimneys began to
make their appearance instead of shutters and louvres.
rule but glass,
at Stokesay.
hooded wall
fireplaces
DECORATED (FOURTEENTH CENTURY)

This phase of Gothic began with Henry
reconstruction of Westminster Abbey.
name
suggests,
by
It is
Ill's
sumptuous
characterized, as
rich decoration but also
by new
effects
its
of
and shade, surface movement, and space, such as the

lantern tower (the octagon) that 'floats' over the crossing at Ely.
The ogee arch is typical in windows and canopies.
Arcades are now wider, piers taller and more slender, with all
light
engaged. Vaults are composed in elaborate web-like

by the addition of extra ribs such as tiercerons and
non-structural Hemes with decorative bosses at the intersections.
lesser shafts
patterns
R.iB>BED
TIÂNSVERSE AI^CH
VAULT
LI
er.me:s
tie:r.cetôns
Buttresses are
more
IÎDGE
DIAGONAL
varied and usually enriched with ogee forms
and other ornament. Walls are thinner and into them are introduced larger, broader windows with curvilinear bar tracery, a
Gothic invention, making flowing, organic patterns based on
ogee curves, as at Selby Abbey. Their stained glass is more
translucent and freer in design. Roofs are still high-pitched but
the broach spire is replaced by one that is more slender and
graceful, springing from within a parapet and ornamented with
48
GOTHIC
angle
pinnacles,
quatrefoil.
crockets,
Towers show
spirelights
and bands
of incised
a decorative use of angle buttresses and
between plain and enriched surfaces, as on the west

York Minster. Wave-like and ogee mouldings are
broader and shallower than Early English ones and appear for
the first time on the chamfer plane. Decorated ornament is
profuse and flowing, based on the naturalistic foliage of ivy, oak
and vine. Ball flower is a typical motif and niches are common.
contrasts
front of
From the late fourteenth century the castle declined in importance with the decay of feudalism, the increase in the central
power of the monarchy, the changes in social life and the
development of field armies and gunpowder. In the years between
1350 and 1550 domestic amenities grew at the expense of defences
until in late Tudor times the castle merged with the manor house.
The fourteenth-century quadrangular castle without curtain walls
shows this transition, as at Bolton (Yorks.) and Lumley
(Durham), where residential buildings are compactly disposed
round a courtyard and equipped with angle tower to create a
building that is both fortress and residence. On the Scottish
GUAR.DR.OOM
GATEHOUSE
'i
CHAPEL
,1
GfÊAT HALL
QUADRANGULAR- CASTLE
BODIAM CASTLE
1335
49
ARCHITECTURE
border the pele towers,
set in
ENGLAND
IN
walled courtyards
(barmkins),
preserve the earlier keep and bailey tradition.
still
In fourteenth-century manor houses like Penshurst Place, often

new city merchants, the hall remains
the country retreats of the
the centre, but screens, with minstrels' gallery above, shut out the
and windows are larger with a bay or oriel window at the

The buildings, sometimes including a chapel, are
roofed separately, entered from the outside, and generally
offices,
high-table end.
SCREENS
WITHDRAWING
R.OOMS
NAPEf^r
KITCH N
GR.EAT
I
"^
BA^CER.Y
PINING
R.0OM
BUTTER, r
COUR.TrAR.D
GATE HOUSE
LATE GOTHIC MANOR HOUSE

OXBUR.GH HALL
4-
arranged round a quadrangular court with a fortified gatehouse

opposite the entrance to the hall. Their total effect is asymmetrical
and picturesque. Like the castles, the manor houses of this period
are often moated.
PERPENDICULAR (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)

Perpendicular is a form of late Gothic architecture peculiar to
England: a kind of national medieval style. It is a rather materialistic version, its vertical and horizontal emphases giving it a
characteristic squareness of outUne. The earliest Perpendicular
work is actually of the fourteenth century and can be seen in
Gloucester Cathedral choir and the nave of Canterbury rebuilt by
the famous Henry Yevele. The first of these has the broad arched
50
GOTHIC
EARLY
ENGLISH
GEOMETRICAL
GROUPED LANCETS
DECORATED
PERPENDICULAR
\
yn
CURVILINEAR
RECTILINEAR
network of glazed panels, the 'applied'

vault ribs and the stonework panelling that are typical Perpendicuto
lar features; the second shows the Perpendicular tendency
the
heighten both aisles and nave arcades, often at the expense of
triforium, to create a two-storeyed building in which the internal
windows with
spaces
rectilinear
merge and thereby achieve
a greater unity.
51
Though
now
arcades are high their arches are
broader, the mouldings often continuing
down
lower and
the piers since the
almost disappear or are replaced by horizontal moulding.

pier shafts almost merge and become like mouldings.
Carrying on the Decorated trend of elaboration, vault ribs multicapitals
Engaged
ply further into complicated patterns of non-structural features,

often merely carved
on the vault
surface.
These rich
designs continue, therefore, together with
GOTHIC
EARtr ENGLISH
new
lierne stellar
types developed
P1ER.S
DECOR.ATED
PER.PFNDICULAR-
from them: the fan vault - appearing first in the Severn Valley
- and its variant the pendant vault. All have a flatter curvature
to accord with the lower arches, the broad windows and the stone
panelled walls, so that the whole impression is a remarkably
unified one.
on account of the wider

they
and
often end in pinnacles.
windows and more
The t)^pical Perpendicular window has a low arch, transoms,
'gridiron' tracery, and less opaque pictorial glazing. Roofs are lowpitched, lead being preferred to tiles, and they are often provided
with battlemented parapets, usually panelled or pierced.
The tower is a special late Gothic feature and many were added
during this period of extension. There are even recognizable
regional 'schools' of design like those of Somerset and East
Angha. Most have 'crowns', some are 'lanterns' lighting the crossing (a Romanesque motif), some have an octagonal lantern on
top, and a few continue to support spires of the Decorated type.
Mouldings are shallow, lean, wiry and cut on the chamfer. The
Buttresses are structurally important,
slender piers,
'casement' type
is
common. Ornament
shallow rectilinear paneUing,

52
includes the repeated
framing cusped arches (already
GOTHIC
E. E.
DOGTOOTH
DEC,
PER.
P.
'MMMM
TABLET FLOWER.
PE
R.P.
Fl NIIALS
sS
CR.OCK ETS^
PINNACLE
EMENT MOULD
FLYl
NG
GABLET
~hNICHE.
u
-OFFSET
I
E. E.
DEC.
PER.P.
BUTTR.ESSES
and
Tudor roses and
referred to)
also heraldic
emblems, miniature battlements,

it is harsher and more
fleurs-de-lis. Generally
geometrical than Decorated ornament.

Castles and manor houses like Haddon
and Great
Chalfield followed fourteenth-century trends, arranged round
Hall
53
J.
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
5PIR.ELIGHT
FLYING
BUTTRES5
BROACH
ANGLE
BUTTRESSES
DECORATED
EARLY ENGLISH
PINNACLE
OCTAGON
CROWN -
PERPENDICULAR
GOTHIC TOWEKS
t 5PIR.E5
with the addition of more space, bedrooms and

supplementary offices. In the countryside more small halls appeared
for prosperous wool farmers and merchants whose wealth financed
the rebuilding of parish churches and the erection of town and
courtyards
GOTHIC
gild halls, markets, inns, schools, colleges, tithe barns, dovecots
and bridges.
from region to region sandstone in the North

and West, limestone along the Jurassic outcrop, brick and flintwork in East Anglia, and timber framing everywhere that wood
was plentiful and stone scarce.
Materials varied
TIMBER ROOFS
Timber
roofs,
open from below in unvaulted buildings, are
among the many interesting features of Gothic construction. They

culminate in the elaborate superstructures that were a special
English achievement of the late Middle Ages.
The
earliest
type was the simple tie-beam designed to prevent
EARLY
TIE-BEAM TYPES
sfDffia
LATE
HI
COLLAR.
TRUSSED RAFTER
ARCH-BRACED
from spreading. Probably the only Norman type of

was in common use for smaller buildings throughout the
the roof
roof,
it
55
i\
Gothic period. There were many variations on the theme, how-
For example, in the Perpendicular phase the low-pitched

roof often rested directly on a sHghtly curved tie-beam.
In the mid thirteenth century new types began to emerge, such
ever.
as the trussed rafter
with
its
timbers joined by collars stiffened by
Another type was the archbraced roof where curved timbers spring from the upper parts of
braces, thus giving greater height.
the walls. But the most splendid medieval timber roofs are the
hammer-beams, usually fifteenth century, though that of Westminster Hall by Hugh Herland dates from the late fourteenth.
This is a development of earlier types, its curved timbers springing from brackets projecting from the walls with supplementary
buttresses outside to help divert the thrust earthwards.
need a
hall
be
aisled, for a
ingenious arrangement.
much wider
The most
span
is
No longer
possible
by
this
inventive and decorative ex-
amples are those of the East Anglian churches. Coloured, gilded

and combined with large clerestory windows, they give a
spacious, lantern-like effect. March (Cambs.) has a splendid double
hammer-beam with angels hovering overhead. It is a feature
which often compensates for the prosaic uniformity of some
Perpendicular interiors.
DOUBLE HAMMER-BEAM
Roof covering
consisted of stone
tiles, tiles,
in the earlier period, with lead later
or
wood
shingles
becoming more usual on
roofs of lower pitch.
English medieval architecture is noted for the number of

domestic and administrative buildings which survive from the
great religious establishments and among these the polygonal
chapter houses like Lincoln and York are of outstanding merit
and unique to
this country.
Select Bibliography
at the end of chapter four.
56
and List of Representative Buildings will
be
found
CHAPTER FOUR
Gothic 2
GOTHIC CHURCH PLANS
Gothic church planning reflects very closely the changing needs

of the Middle Ages. Twelfth-century parish churches were aisled
or unaisled, with or without transepts. But as the population
expanded they grew piecemeal by the addition of aisles or the
lengthening of chancels. South porches were common throughout the period. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries brought
much remodelling that resulted in lighter and more spacious
aisles, and the cruciform transeptal type became less usual until
in the later fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries there was a
reversion to the undivided plan, following the example of the

friars'
preaching
hall.
This was
first
achieved by carrying forward
the aisles to the length of the chancel, as in certain East Anglian
churches ; then in larger ones by designing aisled
from basiUcas
halls, as distinct
and lastly by unaisled halls as at

King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
The typical English Gothic cathedral has a spread-out, ramifying plan with large transepts, often double. This results in a group
composition that requires a central tower to give it unity. East
ends are square and of two types. One, the south-west episcopalian (e.g. Salisbury), has a projecting chapel lower than the
choir which combines with the double transepts to create a
grouped composition. The other, the north-east episcopalian (e.g.
York), is an aisled parallelogram with a towering monumental
fagade - the definitive east end of the English cathedral. Chapter
houses are a distinctive national feature and there are many
interesting versions, as at Wells and Westminster.
The great Gothic church affords a good example of how buildings express the culture and values of their time, for they are the
embodiment of the religious spirit of the Middle Ages. The plan
expresses the ritual of the Church. There is singleness of purpose
(e.g.
Bristol);
57
I'll
EPISCOPALIAN
N.E
5.W
LADY
CHAPEL
<
LADY f
f
IchapelI
ALTAK
r4-
PRESBY
O
o
<^
R
E
S
<)
(^
C
H
ALTAR
V
E.
TRANSEPTS
<>oOro ooo
I
CROSSING
CROSSING
UNAISLED CHANCEL
AISLE
N.
O
NAVE
/
o
5.
/ER
CHANCEL
o
AISLE
FT
AISLED HALL
ooooooooo
ooooooooo
TOWER
h.j^ PORCH
PAR.ISH
CHURCHES
in the uninterrupted progress of the arcades towards the high

altar, and aspiration in the soaring verticals of piers, buttresses,
pinnacles,
and towers. The vast scale of the building evokes the

God and the effects of space and light His mystery.
sublimity of
58
GOTHIC
Yet despite the grandeur, the medieval sense of the nearness of God
also present in the intimacy of carved detail from nature and the
Bible. The spirit of the great church strikes a balance between the
awful seriousness of life and its homeliness, between the austere
beauty of faith and the rich profusion of the world. But in interpreting the meaning of architecture along these lines we must
beware of confusing aesthetic values with the personal associations which we bring to the object of contemplation.
Another expression of the medieval religious spirit was withdrawal from the world, a recognized ideal that gave rise to
monastic communities either ascetic like the Cistercians, who
farmed in remote places, or scholarly and learned like the more
aristocratic Benedictines, many of whose churches became
is
cathedrals.
CHURCH
^N CHAPELS
W-
NAVE
IcHOlR CHANCEL+
NIGHT STAIR
CLOISTERS
CHAPTE/^
LAY
BROTHERS'
CLOISTER
GARTH
HOUSE
QUARTERS
KITCHEN
CALEFACTORY
DORMITORY
DRAIN
FRATER OR
REFECTORY
CISTERCIAN
MONASTERY
59
These settlements were of course centred round a great church,
on the north to give shelter to the conventual
buildings. The processional entrance was in the west end of the
nave to which the public was confined by screens. But there was
another door in the south transept. The chapter house where the
business and discipline of the community were carried on lay off
the east cloister, on the same side as the monks' day room,
with dorter over. The refectory was usually along the south
cloister, away from the church, and was arranged like a secular
hall but equipped with a pulpit or reading desk. Adjacent were
the kitchens and calefactory (warming room for recreation).
The lay brothers' quarters were on the west side of the garth and
one cloister was usually furnished with carrels for study.
Detached from this well-balanced and orderly main group lay
the abbot's lodging, the guesthouse, the infirmary with herb
garden, servants' hall and kitchen, granary, brewhouse, bakery,
almonry, workshop, mill, fishpool and all the other appurtenances of a self-contained commiinity, economic as well as spiritual.
usually sited
MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY

The amount of medieval
building carried out in relation to the
population of from two to four millions is astonishing and could

only have been possible with a highly organized and competent
Some Romanesque clerics had architectural knowledge,

but by Gothic times there was a complete lay organization and
the architect was the 'master of works', usually a mason like
William of Sens who rebuilt Canterbury. Under him were the
master craftsmen in charge of their various departments. From
the thirteenth century the names of architects began to be recorded when their status became recognized. Plans were merely
diagrammatic, since drawing technique was very elementary,
industry.
and the tools of their workmen untempered and inferior. The

labour force consisted of large numbers of skilled itinerants whose
wages accounted for two-thirds of the building costs. They included rough masons, free masons, carpenters, smiths, plasterers,
glaziers, tilers, paviers,
hodmen,
clerks,
woodmen,
sawyers, lime-
workers, miners, and carters; together with impressed labour as

required. At Beaumaris Castle there were four hundred masons,
thirty smiths and carpenters, two hundred carters, and a thousand
60
GOTHIC
unskilled labourers.
were used in
quarries and
as far
away
At Durham
fifteen hundred tons of masonry

These materials either came from local
or were transported by water, some from
five years.
forests
as
Caen
in
Normandy.
TUDOR (early sixteenth CENTURY)

Tudor
really the last phase of Gothic. It is

with a few graftings of the new Renaissance influence from Italy. The mullioned windows, flattened
four-centred arches of the wide arcades, the piers and vaulting
architecture
is
essentially Perpendicular
types are
all
Perpendicular; though there
is
a further evolution of
fan vaulting into 'pendant vaulting', where the main vault springs
from pendant voussoirs of the transverse arches and not from the
appears to be suspended overhead. The vault
of Henry VIFs chapel at Westminster is an example of this.
side walls, so that
it
The Renaissance element
is chiefly confined to a few superdecorative forms of Italianate ornament executed by foreign

craftsmen. Such are Henry VIFs tomb by Torrigiani, the stalls
at King's College, Cambridge, and the amorini and terracotta
ficial
roundels with Roman emperors' heads at Hampton Court Palace.

In 1538 Henry VIII broke with Rome and the Reformation
E
61
Hi
were dissolved and their
merchants who built for themselves
new country houses. The Middle Ages had provided England with
a rich dower of ecclesiastical buildings and now, after the ReforMonastic
began.
establishments
estates sold to eager buyers,
mation, the church as the principal architectural type was to give
way
to the country mansion
which was dominant
until the
nineteenth century.
ELABORATE
CH IMNEYS
CLASSICAL
ORNAMENT
HAMPTON COURT PALACE
1515
Typical Tudor country houses are of two kinds either on the

old quadrangular plan with a gatehouse, or the newer type consisting of a rectangular block to which are attached short, compact
:
wings and often a projecting central porch. As yet there is no

internal symmetry, but there is a tendency to greater symmetry
in the elevations - no doubt an indirect classical Renaissance influence.
62
Once more
the
number of rooms
increases with the
GOTHIC
addition of summer and winter parlours, study, and bedrooms,

though the latter are still 'thoroughfare' rooms. For the first time
*state rooms' appear, like the Great Chamber and the DiningChamber. But the basic arrangement of a great hall with service
rooms at one end and private apartments at the other is still a
medieval conception.
KITCHEN
WING
PAKLOUK
BAR.RINGTON COURT
1515
Mi
The individual features of these houses are also Gothic - for

example, the square-headed windows with mullions and transoms and sharply pitched roofs and gables. Brick was being more
now and bay and oriel windows became more
common. Tall and elaborate chimneys are notable external features
resulting from the use of coal, functional yet ornamental.
widely used
63
11
linenInternally there are wall fireplaces with rich overmantels,
exhighest
its
fold panelling, and relief plasterwork that finds
with ribs,
pression in the decorative ceilings of the period, replete
standard
vine trails and pendants. All these speak of an improved
of material comfort.
SQUARE
HOOD
MOULD
FOUR
CENTERED
ARCH
nr
Jr-i
i'
lULli
LINENFOLD PANELLING
already mentioned, some Tudor houses like Layer Marney
- perhaps
and Coughton Court retained the separate gateway
it was
though
battlements
and
turrets
towers,
with octagonal
knight.
carpet
the
for
symbol
for display, a status
As
TIMBER FRAMING
doubtless in stone districts some of the smaller houses
stone conof the Middle Ages and Tudor times were of simple
buildings
timber-framed
primitive
were
majority
struction, the
units of
or
'bays'
in
built
were
These
type.
of the ^cruck' or 'crick'
that
timbers
spHtting
by
obtained
were
sixteen feet. Pairs of crucks
was
pairs
these
of
more
or
two
naturally curved, and across
Though
were
placed a ridge pole.
The timbers were roughly squared with an
'wattle and daub'

adze and pegged together. Walls were filled with
with clay and
daubed
(hazel or willow twigs woven into hurdles,
64
king's college chapel, CAMBRIDGE: Perpendicular

windows and fan vaulting unify a great hall church. Note
Renaissance screen
the
MORETON OLD HALL! A Tudor

the contrast of black and white
is
timber -framed house in which

vigorously exploited
GOTHIC
RIDOE POLE
TIE-BEAM
CRUCK
RAFTER.
PURLIN
TIE-BEAM
OVERHANGING
JETTY
BRACKET
AN6LE POST
BRICK OR
/ STONE FOOTING
chopped Straw, and coated with hme
plaster).
The roof was
thatched with straw or reeds.

Ties were used to prevent the crucks from spreading and by extending the ties outwards to posts carrying horizontal 'pans',
vertical walls could
From
'post
be
raised, giving
more
height.
these earlier examples developed the
more ambitious
and truss' timber-framed houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth

65
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
centuries, with their rectangular wall-frames supporting proper
These were the yeomen's houses in the country,

merchants' town houses, exchanges, gild and market halls erected
roof-trusses.
anywhere that stone was scarce. Timbers were prepared before

being brought to the site and were assembled by being pegged
together on stone footings. Again the spaces were filled with
wattle and daub or, in some later instances, brickwork 'nogging',
often of the herringbone type. Houses were of several storeys,
with
earlier
infilling
examples
jettied (i.e.
overhanging).
The
plaster of the
was whitewashed and the frame painted
black, thus
producing a decorative pattern of strong contrasts. Occasional

further embellishment was coarse carving on timbers such as
barge-boards. In East Anglia the wood framing was often plastered over and decorated with moulded designs called 'pargetting'.
EARLY ENGLISH
Work
at the cathedrals of Canterbury; Salisbury; Lincoln; Wells;

Worcester; York; Beverley; Ripon; Southwark.
Abbeys: Westminster; Roche, Rievaulx, Fountains and Whitby,
Yorks; Tintern, Men.

Hexham and Tynemouth, Northumb. Finchale, Durham.
Parish churches: Ketton and Empingham, Rutland; Raunds and
Warmington, Northants Newark on Trent, Notts. Threekingham,
Lines.; Cherryhinton, Cambs; West Walton and Blakeney, Norfolk;
Chipham and Ockham, Surrey; Abbey Dore, Herefs; Whitchurch
Canonicorum, Dorset; Skelton, Yorks; Darlington and St. Andrew
Auckland, Durham; Haltwhistle, Northumb.; Stone, Kent.
Castles: Beaumaris, Anglesey; Caernarvon and Conway, Caern;
Pembroke, Pembs.;
Flint and Ruddlan, Flint; Harlech, Merion.
Caerphilly, Glam; Kidwelly, Carm; Chepstow, Mon; Goodrich,
Herefs; Framlingham, Suffolk; Corfe, Dorset; Clifford's Tower and
city walls and gateways, York Pevensey, Sussex.
Manor houses: Stokesay and Acton Burnell, Salop; Little Wenham,
Priories
Suffolk; Charney-Basset, Berks; Old Soar, Kent.

Merton College, Oxford.
Tithe barns at Bredon, Worcs Coxwell, Berks Glastonbury Abbey.
Town planning at (New) Winchelsea, Sussex.
DECORATED
;
Work
at the cathedrals
of Exeter; Bristol; Lichfield; Lincoln; Ely;
York; Chester; Beverley.

66
GOTHIC
Abbeys: Westminster; Selby, Yorks; Tewkesbury, Glos; Tintern,

Mon. Milton, Dorset; Dorchester, Oxon; Malmesbury, Wilts.
Parish churches: Winchelsea, Sussex; Patrington, Otley and Skipton,
Yorks.; Holy Trinity, Hull; Heckington, Boston and Grantham,
Lines.; Holy Trinity, Coventry; Yaxley, Hunts; St. Mary, Stamford;
Rushden, Northants.; Ashbourne, Derby; Bloxham and Chipping
Norton, Oxon; Cley, Norfolk; Woolpit, Suffolk; Melverley, Salop;
Ledbury, Herefs Wakefield, Yorks (chantry chapel and bridge).
Castles: Bodiam, Sussex; Warwick; Ludlow, Salop; Nunney, Som;
Bolton, Yorks Lumley and Raby, Durham.
Manor houses: Penshurst Place, Kent; Haddon Hall, Derby.; Grevel's
House, Chipping Camden, Glos Markenfield and Spofforth, Yorks
Maxstoke, Warwicks.
Cruck cottage at Spilsby, Lines.
Tithe barn at Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts.
;
PERPENDICULAR
Work
at
the
cathedrals
of Canterbury; Winchester; Manchester;
Gloucester; York; Beverley; Worcester.
Sherborne Abbey, Dorset; King's College Chapel, Cambridge; St.

George's Chapel, Windsor; Great Malvern Priory, Worcs; St. Mary
Redcliffe and St. Stephen, Bristol; Prior's Lodging, Much Wenlock.
Parish churches: Chipping Camden, Northleach and Cirencester,
Glos; Brunton and Wells, Som; Edington, Wilts; Launceston,
Cornwall; Fotheringhay, Northants; Gedney and Louth, Lines.;
St. Nicholas, King's Lynn, Terrington St. Clement, Walpole St.
Peter, S waff ham, Cawston and Sail, Norfolk; St. Peter Mancroft,
Norwich; March, Cambs; Long Melford, Lavenham, Needham
Market, Blythborough and Southwold, Suffolk; Ormskirk and
Hawkshead, Lanes; Thirsk and Giggleswick, Yorks; Gawsworth
and Lower Peover, Cheshire; Holy Trinity, Stratford upon Avon.
Castles: Herstmonceaux, Sussex; Tattershall, Lines.; Warkworth,
Northumb; Raglan, Mon; Dunstanburgh, Northumb.
Manor houses: Great Chalfield, Wilts; Wingfield, Derby; Hoghton
Tower, Lanes; Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk; Cothay and Lytes Cary,
Som.; Bradley, Devon; Cotehele, Cornwall; Ockwells, Berks.
Yeomen's houses: Stoneacre and Synyards, Otham, Kent; Bignor,
Sussex; Giffords Hall and
Lavenham
Hall, Suffolk; Coggeshall,
Essex.
Houses at Chiddingstone, Kent; Colston's, Bristol.

Cruck cottages at Didbrook, Glos. and Spilsby, Lines.
Eton and Winchester Colleges; Queen's, Camb; Lincoln, Oxford.
67
Grammar
Hospital and
pital,
School, Ewelme,
Oxon; Bede House Hos-
Stamford, Lines.
Guildhalls at Norwich, Norfolk and Cirencester, Glos;
St.
George's
Guildhall, King's Lynn, Norfolk; Guildhall and Merchant
AdvenYork roof of Westminster Hall, London.

Glastonbury, and George Inn, Norton St. PhiHp, Som.
turer's Hall,
George Inn,
Poultry Cross, Salisbury.
TUDOR ;
appears at the end of chapter six.
list
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
GOTHIC
Atkinson, T. D.
'Local Style in 'English Architecture (Batsford
& Fry, C.
& Fry, C.
Batsford, H.
Batsford, H.
947).
Cathedrals of England (Bîtsford i960).
The Greater English Church (Batsford 1944).
Oxford History of Art iioo-i2i(j (O.U.V. 1953).

Bond, F.: English Church Architecture, 2 vols. (O.U.P. 191 3).
Brieger, P. H. Oxford History of Art, 1216-iôy (O.U.P. 1957).
Boase, T.
R.
S.
Brown, R. A.: English Medieval Castles (Batsford 1954).

Cook, G. H.: The English Medieval 'Parish Church (Phoenix 1954).
Cook, G. H. English Monasteries in the Middle Ages (Phoenix 1961).
:
&
Cox,
Ford, C. B. The Parish Churches of England (Bsitsford 1950).

J. C.
Crossley, F. H.: The English Abbey (Batsford 1959).
:
Crossley, F. H.
English Church Design (Batsford 1948).
H. English Church Craftsmanship (Batsford 1947).

Crossley, F. H. English Church Monuments, iijo-ijjo (Batsford 1921).
Evans, J.: Oxford History of Art, ijoy-1461 (O.U.P. 1949).
Harvey, J.: English Cathedrals (B2itsford 1956).
Harvey, J.: English Medieval Architects (Busford 1954).
Crossley, F.
Harvey,
Harvey,
Henry Yevele (Batsford 1946).

England {B2Xîotd 1948).
Hurhmann, M. Meyer, P. English Cathedrals{Th2imts & Hudson 1950).
Hutton, G.
SmithjE. English ParishChurches{Th3.mQs & Hudson 1952).
Myers, A. R. England in the Late Middle Ages (Penguin 1952).
J.:
J.: Gothic
&
&
Rickman, T.
An
5th ed. (1848).

Salzman, L. F.:
Attempt
to
Discriminate Styles of English Architecture,
Documentary History Medieval Buildings,
(O.U.P
1952).
Stenton, D. M. English Society in the Early Middle Ages (Penguin 195 1).
Thompson, A. Hamilton: Military Architecture in England (O.U.P.
:
1912).
Toy,
Great Britain (Heinemann 1953).

Architecture in Britain: The Middle Ages (Penguin
S.: Castles of
Webb, G.
PeHcan History of Art).

68
1956-
CHAPTER FIVE
Renaissance
THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD
The
first
task of the
Tudors was to restore
internal peace and
The result was strong personal rule that gave little scope for
parliamentary development. Henry VII succeeded in his main
order.
was also responsible for reforms in the administration

and agreements in the interests of our now extensive trade with
Flanders and the Mediterranean.
The sixteenth century saw a new critical concern with religious
matters, and a series of reforms known as the Reformation resulted
in the foundation of the Protestant Churches. At first, however, it
was on nationalist grounds (objection to the Pope's power) and for
task and
Henry VIII severed the connection with

making himself Supreme Head of the English
personal reasons that
Rome
in 1534,
Church. He then proceeded to dissolve the monasteries (i 5 36-40)

- many of which had in fact grown lax - seize their wealth, and
disposed of their properties for ready money. After a CounterReformation movement under the Catholic Queen Mary, a
middle-of-the-road settlement was reached under Elizabeth I.
The biblical scholarship of the Reformation, with the challenge
it presented to hitherto unquestioned authority, was one aspect of
the Renaissance, that 'rebirth' of learning which sprang from the
rediscovery of Classical art and literature, aided by the invention
of printing. In the arts there was a 'break-through': scholars,
artists, and universities flourished, and new grammar schools
were founded. Everywhere there was intellectual ferment.
This new independence of thought and the secularization of art
was part of the Classical legacy of Humanism, in which man and
the temporal world were the centre of interest. Man was seen as a
unique individual with infinite capacities for development, both
intellectual and spiritual. Instead of being rejected the physical
world was welcomed as a source of pleasure and delight, and as a
field for scientific inquiry, though despite Copernicus science was
69
Still largely medieval. Leonardo da Vinci - artist, scientist and
engineer - was the typical ûomo umversale\ expressing all
Renaissance characteristics in his
The
own
personality.
great voyages of discovery were attempts to seek
routes to the East
when
new
after the fall of Constantinople (1455)
came under Turkish control. They were also another

example of Renaissance curiosity. Columbus sailed in 1492;
Drake, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, in
1 5 80; and it was voyages such as these that served the new trading
companies (like the East India Company), and founded overseas
the old ones
empires.
The whole of the Renaissance movement can in fact be

reshaping of European culture in
its
widest sense as
it
seen as a
began to
assume modern forms in many of its essentials.

The Tudor period was one of great social change. New men
were rising and there was greater intercourse among all classes
than ever before. Poverty was widespread, among its causes being
unemployment as a result of enclosure, and inflation from the
influx of gold and silver from the Americas - though merchants
benefited from higher prices. Government acts culminated in the
great Poor Law of 1601 and private charity was expressed in
almshouses and schools.
The age of Ehzabeth brought England to a new level of prestige.
The Queen's cautious policy maintained her position abroad and
secured order at home. As the Protestant champion she faced
Catholic Spain, whose sea power she challenged and whose
Armada (1588) she defeated. Patriotism and national self-consciousness were active, while commerce and industry throve as the
centre of gravity of trade shifted westwards, and there was much
capital development to finance them. Above all, the drama of
Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson reflected the tremendous richness and vigour of Elizabethan society and the music of Byrd,
Bull, and Morley was among the finest in Europe.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE
As we have
Classical
already seen, the Renaissance was the 'rebirth' of
culture,
when
the
more
circumscribed
medieval
ways of life and thought were replaced by the rediscovered philosophy and art of ancient Greece and Rome, bringing a new
70
RENAISSANCE
emphasis on Humanism, reason, and objective inquiry. The
movement came to England first through literature, then the
began in Italy in the fifteenth

hundred years to influence architecture
in England, at first making its way tentatively in the decorative
motifs, monuments and church fittings of the Tudor period, and
when it did eventually affect the buildings themselves, coming indirectly to us through France and the Low Countries.
Before turning to Early Renaissance architecture in England
it is helpful to look at its ultimate source - the Renaissance
architecture of Italy. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Italian architects took up the elements and principles of Roman
architecture and made out of them a new synthesis, a learned
visual arts,
and
lastly architecture. It
century, but took over a
Classical style that
of their
own
on
sought to re-create the antique mode in terms

Much was based on Vitruvius, the Roman
time.
whose ideas were revived early in the

and developed by Alberti, and in the sixteenth
century by Vignola and Palladio.
A distinctive feature of their approach was the way they sought
a theoretical basis for architecture in mathematics and philosophy,
examples of which are their theories of proportion based on
mathematical ratios. In their search for harmony in plan and
elevation they subjected not only the building as a whole to this
authority
architecture,
fifteenth century
but also every part of it, so that each

its proper position, contour and proportion; each
wall, column, pilaster, pier, arch and lintel its exact dimensions
and place. The result was a highly self-conscious style, and
Brunelleschi, Alberti, Bramante, Michelangelo and Palladio all
show this awareness of an intellectual side to their art.
Early Renaissance building in England took place during the
second half of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the
seventeenth. There was the usual time-lag between what took
place in Italy and the repercussions north of the Alps. The English,
however, did not follow Classical precedent with anything like the
strictness of the Italians. They did not, for example, observe the
correct proportions of the orders nor did they keep the style pure,
so that the result in this country was a hybrid of debased Classicism and traditional English late-Gothic forms expressed in a
rough symmetry.
intellectual discipline,
moulding had
71
ELIZABETHAN
Elizabethan
{a)
is
a composite style deriving mainly from:
the continuation of late Gothic and
structures with their triangular gables
Tudor brick or stone

and straight-headed,
mullioned and transomed bay windows;

(b) the French Renaissance style of the early sixteenth century - the style of the Loire valley chateaux from which Italian
Renaissance influence was felt at one remove, as in the Gate of
Virtue at Caius College, Cambridge (1564), with its triumphal
arch motif on the ground floor, three superimposed orders and
a triangular classical pediment.
{c) decoration from the Low Countries, and Germany, such
PORCH
KITCHEN
--
DRAWING
ROOM
i
DINING
SERVANTS*
ROOM
HALL
MONTACUTE HOUSE
1588
RENAISSANCE
as
Flemish strapwork and curved Dutch gables taken from pattern

new medium of communication.
Owing to the poverty of the Crown there was no royal school
books, a
to set a fashion
and the dominant type
is
the individualistic
country house of the new nobility. Plans, though varied, moved

towards a greater unity, those of the larger houses continuing
Tudor shapes
with their emphasis on
symmetry. Originally the blocks were only one room thick and
therefore lit from both sides.
Despite WoUaton's central hall and Hard wick's at right angles
to the front, until the end of the sixteenth century the hall was
usually parallel to the main axis, and entered from a screened passage. The courtyard house declined as the need for defence
diminished, but the gatehouse is often retained as a display feature.
Elevations also show a greater unity and symmetry, opened
up by numerous windows which became a basic element of the
the
^^h
//^^.
^^^=,
^^\
rrTTTTT
FLOOR. PLAN
1st
HIGH GREAT
CHAMBER
>
DRAWING' BED
R.OOM ROOM
I
room)
rg
LONG GALLER.Y
5TAIP,S
N._
STAIKS
BAY
HAKDWICK HALL
BAY
I590
75
ARCHITECTURE
ENGLAND
IN
>^,
'^;d:i>^'^!i^ ^.^
CLASSICAL
ORDERS
OF ODD
ROPORTION
KIRBY HALL
575
^^:
COBHAM HALL
159^
design as at Hard wick Hall
(1590). Most typically they are

(whether plain or bay) large, rectangular, mullioned and transomed
windows a simple and dignified type that goes back to an earlier
period, though the Early Renaissance usually made them larger
and more uniform. The diamond or square panes are set in lead
canes. The central feature of the fagade is often a two- or threestoreyed porch or pavilion with perhaps a round-arched door and
superimposed orders, topped by an odd assemblage of decorative
motifs which include strapwork, obelisks, pediment and Gothic
coat of arms. The porch at Kirby Hall, Northants (1575), shows
French inspiration, those of Cobham (1594), Flemish. Roof lines
are characteristically lively and broken with their curved or triangular gables, domed pavilions or turrets and groups of tall
column-like chimneys. This is so even where there are balustraded
parapets of Classical origin, and there is a general contrast with the
rather more sober lower part of the fa9ade. Robert Smithson's
Wollaton (1580), however, has both an elaborate skyline and
:
^.
*\\
rich Flemish-Classical fagades
74
and
is
unusually extravagant.
RENAISSANCE
Elizabethan interiors show a tendency towards a greater
number of Hving-rooms, and shifts of emphasis in which upper
floor rooms grow in importance and the Great Chamber develops
as the hall dwindles. A feature is the long gallery on the first floor,
often running the whole length of the house, and used to display
pictures
and for indoor
exercise,
music or dancing. Walls are
commonly wainscotted in oak panelling (small panels corresponding to a plank's width), or hung with tapestry. The friezes and
from late Gothic vaults.
and herms (debased caryatids)
ceilings are plastered in patterns derived
Fireplaces have coupled columns
carrying elaborate
overmantels embellished with geometrical

which oval and diamond-shaped marbles
patterns of strap work, in
and ornamental stones are set like gems. Stone staircases are
of the winding type but much broader than Gothic ones.
'
still
TRANSOM
MULLION
DOMED TURRET
MULLIONED WINDOW
CRESTING
ST RAP WORK
ORNAMENT
75
Ornament in general repeats the same mixture of sources already noted. Classical motifs such as mouldings, columns, small
obelisks as finials, and statuary rub shoulders with 'Gothic' vault
designs and tangles of Flemish strapwork. Like the style
itself,
ELIZABETHAN DOORWAY
is rich, fertile and vigorous at its best, at
worst coarse, dull and clumsy. But it is always strong and
virile, a fit embodiment of the spirit of Elizabethan England.
Elizabethan ornament
its
^^
w
00
0000000 OOlOO
CLÛ^^^^Ô
a
ELIZABETHAN CHIMNEY-PIECE
76
RENAISSANCE
LANTERN
BLICKLING HALL
l<Î^
KOBT.
LYMINGE
JACOBEAN
Jacobean
is
the
name given
architecture in the
first
to the development of EHzabethan
quarter of the seventeenth century.
It is
from the mature ItaHanism of Inigo Jones, which is

the next chapter. Compared with the earUer period a
quite different
described in
number of modifications can be observed. The great houses have

a more restrained and less bizarre character which makes them
more Classical in feeling, but they still have enough late medieval
features (such as their windows and turrets) to justify the appellation 'King Jamie's Gothic'. Hatfield House by Robert Lyminge
(1607) is a good example, more typical than splendid Knole.
There is now less pretension and more comfort. Planning
continues the same trends but is more compact, so that some side
blocks are two rooms thick. Facades, more often now of
brick, have greater areas of plain wall since windows are sometimes smaller, though still large. In late Jacobean windows many
lights are replaced
by four and these are sometimes crowned with
a triangular or segmental pediment. Skylines are quieter.
now becomes
specifically the êntrance' hall
and
is
The
hall
symmetrically
placed behind the porch, often with a floor of black and white
marble squares. The staircase receives special attention. Probably

F
77
BALUSTRADE
A
ft
m>itiijimiiHiiitMiauiH!mi!iHHiianMiii^^
11
IMW/
ffl
fTTTTf
inininKMiu
tmnnirniiiiiiimtliiillKiiffnl (jiitiiiuiiiuurmTf Inniluulff imllurilin
iTiiiniiUImmn n^
TEMPLE NEW5AM, LEED5

of sixteenth-century Spanish origin, the usual type is of oak
is in three flights arranged round an open rectangular or
square well, the landing being on the fourth side. The balusters
and newel posts at the angles are enriched with Flemish-
and
carving, including figures
Italianate
or heraldic beasts. Alto-
BAUUSTERS
NEWEL POST
gether
it
an impressive feature, though compared with the

its proportions are
cramped. Ornament is still very lavish but perhaps less
is
elegance and spaciousness of later staircases

still
little
fantastic.
78
RENAISSANCE
The smaller houses of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I
continued in the Tudor manner; small stone houses in the late
Gothic vernacular, or timber-framed buildings. The latter reached
their peak during this period. In the early seventeenth century the
frame is usually in a single piece so that overhanging storeys are
discontinued, reducing the risk of fire in confined towns. The
timber struts of the frame now become more widely spaced, a
LATE
TIMBER FRAME
WORK
MARKET
feature that
may be
make more economical use of the
members
to
material.
much deliberate exploitation of the

make elaborate patterns, and different
the other hand, there
structural
IG03
the result of a greater constructional experi-
ence which was able to
On
LEOMINSTER
HALL,
is
preferences can clearly be seen
by comparing the
rich decoration
of the north-west with that of the south-eastern counties.

There are a number of interesting colleges of this period which
resemble quadrangular, late medieval country houses, with a gatehouse opposite the hall which has the master's lodging at its
upper end, e.g. Trinity College, Cambridge (1604).
Finally, the formal 'Dutch' garden is another fashion from the
Low Countries. The layout of walks and flower-beds bordered
with box and yew hedges is geometrical, and topiary adds a touch
of fantasy.
79
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
CENTURY
NORTHERN STONE DISTRICT
LATE
I6th
TILE
/ HANG/NG
17th
CENTURY
SOUTHERN CLAY
DISTRICT
COTTAGE BUILDING
VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
though much
from the period of the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. As the poorer classes were
now generally better off, their dwellings were in consequence
rather more substantial than those of earlier periods though their
constructional systems were of the simplest. They have either
weight-bearing walls or a timber frame. Since materials at hand
great
altered
80
many
cottages and small farmhouses,
through the
years, survive
mi
.'
4 II*
"Si""'
woLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAM: An cxubcrant Elizabethan

Renaissance design. The Classical influence comes via Flanders
mm
THE queen's house, GREENWICH: The

Classicism of an Inigo Jones facade.
restrained, scholarly
The colonnades
are later
RENAISSANCE
were used there is a close relationship between type and region
and this, together with their informal appearance and their usually
low, horizontal line, keep them in admirable harmony with their
surroundings. Economy of arrangement was, of course, an important factor in their design, so that windows are small, and
where there is a second storey it is often of the dormer kind since
bedrooms occupy part of the roof space (another reason for this
is that walls are kept dehberately low for strength on account of
insufficient bonding).
Timber frame construction, already described in the section on

Tudor building, is characteristic of the north-west lowlands, the
west midlands and the south-east. Infilling is either of wattle and
daub with a coat of plaster, or brick 'nogging', but an interesting
is the patterned plaster work or pargetting of East
Anglia which covers up everything, including the timbers of the
local feature
frame.
much of the midlands.

or thatched and sometimes the top half or weather
gables of the buildings are tile-hung or barge-boarded with overlapping planks of elm, and in chalk districts flint, 'knapped' or
Brick
is
Roofs are
typical of clay districts such as
tiled
squared, appears in a brick framework.
In some parts of the south-west, *cob' (layers of pressed
and straw coated with
plaster)
mud
with rounded corners to prevent
is used for walls, and roofs are thatched; but in the far
west large, rough, unsquared granite stones and slates are the rule.
Stone districts possess some of the finest examples of vernacular
cracking,
architecture. Better quality freestone results in a
more
finished
appearance and there is a tradition of good carving in the historically prosperous Cotswold country. Here and elsewhere windows
have stone mullions, labels or dripstones. Roof pitches are usually

lower when roofing material is heavy, such as stone slabs.
Such dwellings lacked, of course, the elaboration of larger
houses but the low rooms of those of the more prosperous
franklins and clothiers were made handsomer and warmer by
carved chimney pieces and oak panelling of the type surviving
at East Riddlesden Hall, Keighley.
A. Select Bibliography and
lîst
of Representative Buildings will he found
at the end of chapter six.
8i
BANQUETING HOUSE, WHITEHALL
CHAPTER
1619
SIX
Seventeenth Century
ENGLAND
The
IN
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
seventeenth century witnessed a great struggle between the
Stuart kings with their absolutist ideas of 'Divine Right' and their
Catholic sympathies, and a Parliament representing a broadening
new merchant classes, among whom Puritan

was growing. By the Civil War (1642-51) Cromwell and
the Puritans safeguarded Parhament and the 'liberty of conscience',
though final settlement came with the Revolution of 1688 when
the Bill of Rights confirmed England as a constitutional monarchy
under William and Mary. The end of the century saw the birth
of party politics in the rivalry of Whigs and Tories. As in Tudor
times, local government was the responsibility of Justices of the
Peace who met at Quarter Sessions and the Assizes.
By 1600 most of the earlier enclosures had been effected and
there was even some reversion to corn growing w^hich absorbed
some surplus labourers who now worked for squire or yeoman.
Domestic industries which had replaced the gild system (particularly cloth-making) continued to grow, and regulation passed from
squirearchy and the
feeling
gilds to
82
government. The export trade expanded, despite competi-
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
from the Dutch and French with whom the country was at
war in the second half of the century, and the commercial interests
of the City grew wdth it. The Bank of England was estabUshed in
1694. The West Indian slave plantations prospered and settlements in New England and Virginia laid the foundations of
modern North America.
Internal movement increased despite the bad roads, but life
for the population of five million was largely rural and only a few
towns like York and Bristol were of any size. They resembled
medieval towns with their narrow streets and overhanging
timber-framed houses - conditions which favoured the Great
Plague (1665) and the Great Fire of London (1666), before the
tion
the greater use of stone.

Living standards rose steadily, as exemplified by the rebuilding
of many farmhouses and cottages, and the fashion for coffee
houses with their novel contribution to the social life of the
towns, described by Pepys. Forms of social life, however, changed
slowly despite the contrast between the mood of the earlier part
of the century, sober and puritan, with the intellectual tastes of the
Metaphysicals and the moral seriousness of Milton, and that of
latter resulted in
the post-Restoration period (1660) which was more exuberant and

indulgent, as reflected in the plays of Wycherley (though it was
equally the time of Dryden's
satire).
came from Holland, grown rich

and powerful through her maritime trade, and the France of Louis
XIV and glittering Versailles. EngHsh music reached new heights
in the baroque splendours of PurcelFs music and in the work of
Newton and Boyle. This was the era of science, mathematics
and physical experiment, when the Royal Society was formed.
Wren himself being a founder member. The empirical philosophy
of Locke fostered the liberal politics of the Revolution (1688)
and a more rational and tolerant approach to religion.
The
chief cultural influences
INIGO JONES
In the early part of the seventeenth century there came upon
the scene a highly significant figure, Inigo Jones (1573-165 2), the
first English architect in the modern sense; not a master mason but
one who was responsible for the entire design and its execution
throughout. Beginning as a designer of scenery and costumes for

85
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
court masques, Jones visited Italy twice to study the

Palladio.
when
As
work of
a result he brought back to this country, at a time
traditional
Jacobean structures were
still
building, a pure
Italian Renaissance style
of a revolutionary character. In 1615 he

became Surveyor-General of Works to the Crown (i.e. chief
and his two seminal designs were the Queen's House

Greenwich and the Banqueting House, Whitehall.
architect),
at
BALUSTRADE
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-CORNICE
w~s
JUD,
,33)
dnipj^mntjnr^
QUEEN'S HOUSE, GREENWICH
i
1616
i
The Queen's House (16 16) is a villa based on Palladian examples
though rather longer and lower with larger windows better
adapted to conditions of English light. Instead of the more
ramifying Early Renaissance plan it is a compact rectangle
(originally two linked blocks) expressed in plain, dignified, completely symmetrical facades. The wide windows of many lights
have been banished in favour of smaller, narrower and carefully
proportioned rectangular windows of regular size. The broken
skyline and vertical accents of gables and turrets are replaced by
a strongly marked horizontal line produced by an unbroken
and crowning balustrade that shuts off

from view. This horizontality is further emphasized by
the rusticated ground floor which also gives an appearance of
soUdity and strength.* External ornament is used with extreme
restraint. Almost the only features are the moulding of the corstring-course, cornice,
the roof
* This became the usual way of imparting an impression of grandeur to a house.

In a debased form it is still present in the nineteenth century half-basement with
a short flight of steps to the front entrance.
84
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
nice, the rustication,
first
and the regularly spaced Ionic columns of the
floor central loggia.
The
was planned in accordance with Palladian precept,

rooms on the first floor ot piano nobile (hence the
loggia). The entrance hall is a mathematically harmonious cube,
and the smaller rooms are in simple ratio to one another. There is
ample accommodation for a staircase of a new and spacious
nobility. The original interior was in deliberately rich contrast to
the severity and discipline of the exterior and introduced a new
note of Italianate magnificence to replace the oak wainscoting and
tapestries. The best surviving Jones interior is the Double Cube
Room at Wilton House (1649), one of a suite of splendid state
rooms with white panelled walls. The panels are large and outlined by mouldings, the pictures are incorporated as part of the
design, the ornament, chiefly palms, fruit and flowers, is in high
relief and gilded. The massive overmantel and doorcase with
broken pediment borne on columns are part of the room's
architecture. The height of its double cube proportions is subtly
modified by the coved ceiling.
The Banqueting House (i 6 1 9) is the only part of Jones' design for
Charles Ts great Palace of Whitehall that was actually built, but
it was his most influential work. Again there is the compact
interior
with the principal
rectangular plan, this time for a large hall of double cube propor-
two storeys above a basement. The lower storey has

an Ionic order, the upper a Corinthian in front of a channelled
wall. Ornament and interest are derived from the alternating
lower storey window pediments, triangular and segmental, and
the carved frieze of masks and swags at the level of the Corinthian
capitals. The total effect resembles an Italian palace facade with
details from Palladio, though it lacks his Mannerist tension and is
closer in feeling to the earlier High Renaissance calm and serenity
of Bramante and Raphael. Its Portland Stone was to find much
favour with Wren.
Another importation of Jones' was a town-planning concept
without precedent in England at that time. This was the Italian
idea of the square, though the actual lay-out of the ensemble of
the first - Covent Garden dating from the thirties, with its garden
on one side, two sides of uniform brick houses, and the fourth
side the church of St. Paul flanked by two isolated houses - is
possibly derived from Henri IV's scheme for Paris. It was
tions rising
85
much that was to follow in London
towns over the next two hundred years, as were
Jones' terrace town houses and together their descendants are to
be seen at Bath and in the Regent's Park terraces.
certainly the prototype of
and
in other
The basic type of Jones' town houses is

dressings and has a
built of brick with stone
with a fenestration
tallest of
its rectangular windows on the first floor, now the main one, and
the smallest on the top floor. At Covent Garden the houses had
ground-floor loggias. Lindsay House, Lincoln's Inn Fields, with
its rusticated ground floor and giant order of pilasters supporting
an entablature and balustrade, is a particularly impressive specimen.
St. Paul's (Covent Garden) is the earliest surviving Classical
church in England, though it was rebuilt in the eighteenth century.
Its portico with Tuscan columns and pediments is modelled on
sixteenth-century Italian examples, and is the first one with freestanding columns in northern Europe. Unfortunately Jones' additions to old St. Paul's, including his portico of ten fifty-feet
columns, were lost in the Great Fire.
The genius of Inigo Jones was handicapped by the times in
system
later
which he
tall,
plain, dignified facade
copied in Georgian buildings. This has the
lived, for
owing to
religious
and
political troubles
culminating in the Civil War, opportunities for building in the

first
three-quarters of the seventeenth century were severely cur-
remarkable in how many ways Jones was an

who succeeded in imposing new standards of
taste and knowledge in English architecture. Though his work
is in a sense derivative, in that it is a conscious attempt to reprotailed.
But
it is still
important innovator
duce a sixteenth-century Italian style, it comprehends principles as

well as forms and is not meticulously copyist. Without breaking
the conventions, Jones
knew how
to practise the Renaissance
and modify its monumentality to suit the

EngHsh temperament and scene.
His influence on domestic architecture was somewhat delayed
because the style of the Queen's House was too new and startling
to be assimilated quickly, and most early seventeenth-century
houses are late Jacobean in style, or under contemporary Dutch
influence, but with more compact planning and a Classical feeling
of repose and grave dignity. Their Palladian detail, however, is as
much due to Jones as to a greater familiarity with Classical forms
from the study of translations of such works as Serlio's.
tradition with vitality
86
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
But some architects who came after Jones were more directly
influenced by him, so much so as to form a recognizable 'school'.
The classic example of their work was Coleshill House (Berks.) by
Sir Roger Pratt, with Jones as consultant. Typical is John Webb's
Thorpe Hall, near Peterborough (1656), planned as a compact
block in four storeys over a basement. The main feature of the
ffl
ffl
ffi
LIBRARY
EB
H a
ANTE
DINING
ROOM
ROOM
i
MORNING
ROOM
HALL
THOKPE HALL
1656
BED
ROOM
J.WEBB
87
I<
ARCHITECTURE
facade
is
IN
ENGLAND
the fenestration system in which the even rhythm of
windows
rectangular
is
relieved of
monotony by
tall
the introduction
of triangular and segmental pediments to the second floor and the

attic.
At
Coleshill the
windows
are also subtly
grouped in threes
wooden
for a similar reason. Originally they had heavy
bars dividing
them
ments since the sash had not yet made
Above
glazing
into four lights, and they opened as caseits
appearance.
marked cornice rises a steeply sloping

pitched roof broken by dormer windows and massive chimney
the strongly
stacks, all finely
Coleshill
The
is
proportioned to the mass of the house below.
finished off with a balustrade.
is not pretentious and behind it lies the hall, the

being a three-flight arrangement with pierced panelling and carving (not balusters) as was usual in the mid seventeenth
century. At Coleshill, however, baluster staircases* rise up both
walls of the hall to a landing, the Great Parlour lying behind the
hall with the dining-room above, opening off the landing. Bold
but not heavy Classical decoration includes mouldings, swags,
pedimented doors and antique busts in roundels.
entrance
staircase
Mid
still
seventeenth-century and later interiors generally
influence of Jones, their walls having plaster or
made of
larger panels
gether. Fireplaces
now
wood
show
the
panelling
that thin sheets could be joined to-
become simpler and more
architectural with a
picture frame as part of the chimneypiece.
The
of Jones was carried forward well into the later part

of the century and its influence can be seen in Trinity College
Library, Cambridge, and the east end of St. Paul's Cathedral, both
by Wren. It also inspired the Palladians of the eighteenth century
style
who found Baroque
too extravagant for their taste and saw in

Jones the purest English exponent of Renaissance architecture.
CHRISTOPHER WREN
The second
Christopher
great
Wren
name of
the seventeenth century
(163 2-1 72 5), a
man
of
many
parts
is
that of
who
in ad-
of his time
dition to being an artist epitomized
and did not speciaUze in architecture until after the Great Fire of
1666 when he was appointed Surveyor-General.
the scientific spirit
* Later from Italy came a type that was corbelled out from the wall without any
other support. It became common in the eighteenth century.
88
SEVENTEENTH
CENTUR'X'
WEST FRONT
5T.
Though
PAUL'S ^CATHEDRAL
as
already observed
Wren
IG75-I7(0
continued the
classical
came under the influence of contemporary

French work in his public buildings and Dutch in his domestic
ones. Out of these he produced a version of Classicism that was
original, not only because it inclined to the Baroque, but more
importantly because it was an AngUcized Classicism with a distinct national character such as had not yet appeared in England.
His structural skill was remarkable, as can be seen from the double
dome of St. Paul's, and this is marked by a masterly use of traditional materials and by the Portland Stone which he virtually introduced to London and which later became so popular.
trends of Jones, he also
Wren's principal work was, of course,
St.
Paul's Cathedral
(167 5 -1 710). The design shows him embracing ideas from several
sources yet making out of them a great building which bears un-
mistakably the stamp of his originality.
89
The plan combines
the central plan of the Renaissance (originat-
ing in Byzantine architecture), as exemplified in
St. Peter's,
and the Latin cross of the Middle Ages. The Jones-like
of
its
ment.
Rome
east
Italian-palace exterior facades has already received
The coupled columns of
dome
is
are Baroque.
splendidly Classical but the lantern
colonnade round the drum
is
com-
the imposing west front derive
from Perrault's Louvre, and the flanking towers

reposeful
end
is
not.
The
The
Classical but not the variety of its
and loggias. The interior walls and piers have

niches and hollows which endow them with plasticity and something of the Baroque quality of movement, and there is a complication and flow of space in the way windows are cut into vaults
and saucer domes. In sum, it appears a highly individual blend of
Classical and Baroque elements.
Besides St. Paul's, Wren was responsible for the rebuilding of
over fifty London churches destroyed by the Great Fire. These
city churches were the first to be built since the late Middle Ages
and being post-Reformation were conceived as preaching halls
suitable for Protestant services centred on the sermon.
Their plans reveal the intellectual basis of Wren's art by their
underlying geometry. They are very varied and cleverly adapted
to the small, awkwardly shaped sites at his disposal, and they
alternating niches
succeed in retaining a remarkable sense of space. Exteriors are

usually plain and boxUke, full of Classical repose, but set off by
one of
him
his highly inventive
and elaborate
steeples
which show
translating the Gothic spire into the language of Classical
and many-tiered, beautifully proportioned

both construction and variety of design.
Their interiors are large, clean rooms, well lit by big windows
and decorated with white plasterwork and gold leaf. Extra accom-
forms.
They
are
and ingenious
modation
90
is
tall
in
provided by a
gallery.
The
altar is
now
a simple
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
ST.
MAR.Y
LE
BOW
ST. BR.IDE
STEEPLES
ALTAR.
TOWER.
TOWER.
1
ST.
-L JMARTIN LUDGATE
ST.
AAARY AT HILL
body of the church. The general effect

is
and logical and therefore classical, but the Baroque
tendencies already noted in St. Paul's are also present. At St.
table, often placed in the
lucid
91
ST.
STEPHEN WALBfÔOK
ALTAR
Stephen, Walbrook, the
supported by twelve
r
\
saucer
dome
rests
on eight arches
sHm columns, an arrangement
that leads to a
Baroque confluence of spaces.

Wren's plan for rebuilding the fire-devastated city indicates
that he was capable of making a major contribution to the art
of town planning, envisaging as
9*
it
does the replacement of the
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
'^medieval network by new, long, wide streets in a rectilinear
arrangement, underpinned by star-shaped 'squares' or ronds-points
with radial streets, an Italian Renaissance motif copied by France
during Louis XIV's reign. The scheme was, however, regrettably
dropped owing to difficulties of land appropriation and perhaps
seemed too vast and uncompromising a proposal

(A similar opportunity for replanning
the city was missed after the last war, for the same reasons.)
Associated with the architecture of Wren is a fine school of
English craftsmanship which included Tijou, maker of wrought
iron grilles and staircases, Grinling Gibbons, the naturalistic wood
carver, Thornhill, the painter of murals and ceilings in a Baroque
style, and Gibber the sculptor.
also because
it
for English preferences.
The
smaller scale domestic architecture of the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries was one of the most successful

solutions to the problem of how to combine comfort and moderate size with spaciousness and the dignity of a Classical design.
The type is commonly known as the 'Queen Anne' house, though
in fact it is of Dutch origin, is not confined to England, and was
already established in the eighties before Queen Anne came to the
throne. The earliest example seems to be Eltham Lodge (1663)
by Hugh May, but the type chiefly evolved here under Wren.
There are, of course, local variations but the general characteristics
are as follows. Plans are simple rectangles of Classical
proportions, though sometimes short wings are added.
The
plain
brick fagades are symmetrical with a pedimented centre and

Classical rectangular
windows with
thick
wooden
glazing bars.
Windows are of the sash type, imported from Holland in the

eighties. Doorways, of which there are many kinds, have triangular or rounded pediments or 'shell' canopies, usually supported by brackets or attached half columns. Roofs are of a steep
pitch, hipped and without gables, and strongly marked off from
the fa9ade by a cornice or eaves-line. Above this there is often an
attic to provide third-storey accommodation without spoiling the
by making it too tall. Proand Webb, have triangular and
Classical proportions of the elevation
jecting dormers, following Jones
curved pediments. Chimneys are rather large.

The chief ornament to these houses is in the form of stone quoins
and dressings. The windows are framed by architraves of 'long and
short' work and have a carved keystone or scroll at their heads.
93
I
FENTON HOUSE, HAMP5TEAD
1693
A 'QUEEN ANNE' HOUSE

Only in the larger versions were the main rooms on the first
They are large, simple in plan and of dignified proportions,
floor.
well-lit
and comfortably panelled. Ceilings are
either plain or en-
riched with high relief plasterwork of fruit and flower designs in

the bold naturahstic style of the period.
17th
94
The generous
CENTURY STAIRCASE
three-flight
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
round an open well often have turned or spiral balusters. Fireplaces are heavy and architectural, the earlier ones
sometimes pedimented.
The total result of such an arrangement of features was an
uncommonly satisfying design: serviceable and functional yet
Staircases
aesthetically pleasing. It is no wonder that the basic type has

never really gone out of favour.
Town houses of the period may be distinguished from later
Georgian ones by their 'Queen Anne' treatment of doors and
windows and
their
prominent stone dressings.
SHELL CANOPY
^S
\snnzzz27
ARCHI-
TRAVE
mn
D
B
n a
D DD
SEGMENTAL PEDIMENT
\
BULL'S EYE
WINDOW
95
CUSTOM
H0U5E, KINGS LYNN

)G5I
H.BELL
BELTON HOUSE
96
)<3S9
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
TUDOR
(15 00-1600)
Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster; Bath Abbey, Som; Nicholas West's

Chapel, Ely, Cambs.
Deal Castle, Kent.
Country houses: Compton Wynyates, Coughton Court, Warw; East
Barsham, Norfolk; Hengrave, Suffolk; Layer Marney Hall, Essex;
Barrington Court, Som; Loseley Park, Surrey; Parham Park, Sussex;
Breamore, Hants; Hampton Court Palace, Middx; Pitchford Hall,
Salop Speke and Rufford, Lanes Bramhall and Little Moreton, Ches
Sizergh and Levens, Westmorland.
Houses at York; Shrewsbury; Henley-in-Arden, Warw; Merchant's
House, Nantwich, Cheshire. Parish church, Standish, Lanes.
;
St.
John's College, Cambridge.
Guildhalls at Lavenham, Suffolk; Thaxted, Essex;
Old Market
Hall,
Shrewsbury; Leycester's Hospital, Warwick.

Staples Inn, Holborn; The Feathers, Ludlow.
ELIZABETHAN RENAISSANCE
(l
50-1600)
Houses: Longleat, Wilts; Montacute, Som; Hardwick and Barlborough, Derby; Burton Agnes, Yorks; Burghley and Kirby,
Northants; WoUaton, Nottingham; Chastleton, Oxon.
Caius College, Cambridge; Guildhall, Exeter.
JACOBEAN (1600-162 5)
Country houses: Knole, Kent; Audley End, Essex; Hatfield, Herts;
Raynham and Blickling, Norfolk; Fountains, Temple Newsam and
East Riddlesden, Yorks; Aston, Birmingham; Swakeleys, Middx;
Castle Ashby, Northants; Kingston, Bradford, Wilts.
Colleges: Merton and Wadham, Oxford; Trinity and Clare, Cambridge.
Charterhouse,
Schools:
London; Market Harborough Grammar
School, Leics.
Market Halls
at
EARLY STUART
Leominster and Ledbury, Herefds.
(i
625-50) - Inigo Jones
Houses: Queen's House, Greenwich; Lindsay House, Lincoln's Inn

Fields Wilton House and Palladian covered bridge, Wilts.
Banqueting House, Whitehall.
St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden.
Colleges (transitional from Jacobean) St. John's and Lincoln College
Chapel, Oxford.
Vernacular houses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at Chiddingstone, Kent; Broadway, Glos; Salisbury, Wilts.
;
97
LATE STUART
St.
650- 1 700) - Christopher
(i
London, and Wren's churches
Cathedral,
Paul's
Wren
in
the City;
Staunton Harold Chapel, Leics.

Country houses: Ham House, Surrey; Petworth, Sussex; Upton House,
Coombe Abbey, and Honington Hall, Warw; Coleshill and Milton,
Berks; Kingston Lacey, Dorset; Forde Abbey and Tintinhull
House, Som; Lyme Park, Ches; Astley, Chorley, Lanes; Chatsworth, Derby Thorpe Hall, Northants Belton and Gunby, Lines
Mompesson House, Salisbury; Medford, Glos; Fenton, Hampstead;
Eltham Lodge and Owletts, Kent; Denham Place, Bucks.
University buildings: Pembroke Chapel and Trinity College Library,
Cambridge; Sheldonian Theatre and The Queen's College Library,
;
Oxford.
Blue Coat School, Liverpool; Read's School, Corby Glen, Lanes.
Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals, London; College of Matrons,
Salisbury;
Almshouses
Morden
College, Blackheath,
London.
Chipping Norton, Oxon.
at
Abingdon Town
Hall, Berks; Customs House and Duke's Head Inn,

King's Lynn, Norfolk.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
RENAISSANCE
Ashley,
M. England in
the Seventeenth Century (Penguin 1954).

Tudor England (Penguin 1950).
Bindoff, S. T.
Blomfield, R.
Short History of Renaissance Architecture in England
(Bell 1900).*
Briggs,
M.
Wren {AWtn
S.:
H.
&
Unwin
Timber Building
1953).
England: from early times

century
the
seventeenth
(Batsford
195 1).
of
Dutton, R. The Age of Wren (Batsford 195 1).
Crossley, F.
in
to the
end
K. A.: English Church Monuments, ij 10-1840 (Batsford 1946).

Gotch, J. A.: Inigo Jones {Methucn 1928).
Gotch, J. A.: Renaissance Architecture in England (B^Ltsford 1901).*
Harvey, J.: An Introduction to Tudor Architecture (Art & Technics
Esdaile,
1949).
The Age of Inigo Jones (Batsford 1953).

Tudor Renaissance (Batsford 195 1).
J.
Mercer, E. B.: Oxford History of Art ijjj~-i62j (O.U.P. 1962).
Cottages of England in the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries
Oliver, B.
Lees-Milne,
J.
Lees-Milne,
(1929)*.
Sitwell, S.
British Architects
and Craftsmen, 1600-18^0 (Batsford 1949)
* Useful also for chapter seven.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (Pelican History
J. N.:
of Art: Penguin 1953).*
Summerson, J. N.: IFr^w (Collins 1953)Whiffen, M. An Introduction to Elitâbethan and ]acohean Architecture
Summerson,
&
Technics 1952).
Whiffen, M. Stuart and Georgian Churches (Batsford 1948).*
Whinney, M. and Millar, D. Oxford History oj Art 162J-1714 (O.U.P.
(Art
1957)* Useful also for chapter seven.
GUILDHALL, WOR.CESTER
yy Vj ABOVE CORNICE
DQ
f^
r%
=3=
=^
1721
fL^^?
su.
^"z^Q
fn^
r\
r^^
ABINGDON TOWN HALL
1677
99
CHAPTER SEVEN
Eighteenth Century
ENGLAND
IN
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Though scarcely affecting the lives of most people, war with

France provided a backcloth to the century at the beginning, in
the middle, and again at the end. Marlborough, Clive and Wolfe
:
were chief among those captains who secured for England influence in Europe or, in pursuance of Chatham's aims, commercial
supremacy over her colonial rival France in India and North
America. In the process they founded the British Empire, though
a setback came with the break-away of the American colonies
which declared their independence in 1776 and became the
United States. Sea power played a crucial role in the struggle with
France, and the great victories of Nelson were the brilliant climax
of a whole series of successful naval operations.
At home, under the leadership of Walpole, Chatham and Pitt,
government was really oligarchical. Parliament being dominated
by the great landowning families, both Whig and Tory. The
Shires were also controlled by them and by the squirearchy in
their capacity as J.P.s. Despite the Jacobite risings of 171 5 and
1745 conditions were stable, undisturbed by great political upheavals or religious differences. Society was still founded on a
predominantly rural economy in which each had his place, and it
was free of the kind of class war that was to come later.
Throughout the century agrarian innovations such as better
methods of cultivation, new crops, and improved stock-breeding
brought increased yields to feed a rising population. Since only
consolidated holdings of reasonable size were suited to the new
methods there was a revival of enclosure, this time by parliamentary acts. English noblemen were not only connoisseurs of art
but, unlike their French counterparts, improving landlords
interested in the practical aspects of farming.
The Empire and

100
trade continued to expand, sustained by sea
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
power and fed by growing industries. The
Georgian England saw her *take-off' into an
later
decades of
industrial society
changes in production. The smelting

of iron with coke, the use of steam power, the textile inventions,
and the transition from the domestic to the factory system all
brought about a greatly increased output. The most fundamental
change in modern times had begun, though the impact of the
Arkwrights and the Strutts on the face of the country had as yet
as a result of revolutionary
made
little
impression.
Trade and industry together

transport. In response
came
first
called for
canals
and
an improvement in
later
turnpike roads
with their regular coach and wagon services.
With some exceptions, in the Church as in the universities this

was a time of laxity, when many unspiritual parsons neglected
pastoral care for the hunting field. Against this, however, must
be set the evangelicalism of Wesley and the Methodists, and the
Humanitarian movement with its charity organizations, prison
reform, and anti-slavery activities.
Methodist 'enthusiasm' was not unrelated to the upsurge of
Sentiment and Romanticism in literature and the cult of the
Picturesque. Imagination and Feeling arrived in the later part of
the century to challenge the rule of Reason, and this was in contrast to the Classicism of Pope in the early Augustan age, the
common sense of Dr. Johnson, or for that matter the dignity and
serenity of Handel. But the culture of the *polite' classes, as
Reynold's portraits show, was still Classical, leavened by a robust
native element that appears in Fielding and Hogarth.
BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE
The work of Wren extends
into the eighteenth century and it is

work, Greenwich Hospital, the most grandiloquent
in spirit, that the next stylistic phase in English architecture
emerges. This is the so-called English Baroque, a version of a
style which began in Italy in the early seventeenth century and
later spread across Europe in an exuberant wave.
Baroque is a Classical Renaissance architecture that developed in
a highly original and often un-Classical way, sacrificing rules and
conventions in order to achieve arresting effects of grandeur and
complexity, richness and movement. Typical of its features are
out of his
last
lOI
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
giant double columns and pilasters, grandiose curves of volutes,

scrolls and even walls, emphatic projections and recessions,
broken pediments and twisted columns. Baroque is sensuous and
emotional in spirit and has none of the intellectual calm of
Classical art. Its exaggeration is theatrical but it is not in any sense
LANTERN
BROKEN
PEDIMENT
/
SCROLL
^^H^
PLAN
SCROLL
PEDIMENT
CONCAVE
CURVE
TWISTED
COLUMNS
two-dimensional, for
conscious of space.
Its
it
is
at
once monumental and superbly
forcefulness and ostentation are contrary
it was practised here it

produced some remarkable buildings.
Wren's pupil, Nicholas Hawksmoor (i 661-173 6), continued
where Wren left off, designing for the growing suburbs of London
churches that have the same free inventiveness and grasp of
architectural values, though they seem colder and more forbidding than Wren would have made them. Their plan is original and
to English reticence, but for the short time
102
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
'GOTHIC'
SPIR.E
MOTIF
a a a
aa ana
CLASSICAL
lUMPHAL
ELEMENTS
ÂRCH
USED IN AN
UNCLASSICAL
WAY
MAR.Y WOOLNOTH
N.HAWK5M00R.
I7IG
ST.
CHRISTCH URCH, SPITALFIELD5

ijz5
N.
HAWKSMOOK
they are massively constructed in bold heavy forms, all but one
with imposing and dramatic towers in which Hawksmoor, like
his master, translates an essentially Gothic motif into the Classical
idiom of
MOTIF
his day.
John Vanbrugh (i 664-1 726), soldier and dramatist turned

architect, was the pre-eminent exponent of Baroque in England.
Again his work is characterized by originality, only this time there
is an even greater leaning towards the massive and the portentous.
Huge masses of masonry and cyclopean columns struggle against
Sir
103
one another in compositions of tremendous weight and heroic
grandeur. In the rich profusion of forms the Baroque spirit is
everywhere. When compared with Continental work, however,
it is evident that Vanbrugh is still something of a Classicist, for
his work is more static than dynamic and despite a certain Flemish
KITCHEN COURT
GREAT COURT
BLENHEIM
PALACE
coarseness of detail he
still
grouping and
and movement. For
architectural
I705
J.
VANBRUGH
reUes for his main effect

scale, rather
upon broad
than upon profuseness of
comby Blenheim Palace and Castle

Howard have a magnificent unity. Deriving from the Palace of
detail
all
the diversity of his exterior
positions, his plans as represented
104
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Versailles or Palladio's villas with wings, they are symmetrical
arrangements with a central corps de logis with massive outstretched

wings, each one of which embraces a smaller court.
Though Vanbrugh's country houses have

as
inconvenient and lacking in
utility, it
often been criticised

should be remembered
ELEVATION OF MAIN BLOCK

DINING ROOM
SALON
KITCHEN COUKT
GREAT
COURT
CASTLE HOWAR.D
I702
\
STABLE COURT
J.VANBRUGH
were designed primarily as ceremonial

background against which their
owners could display the art treasures which they had collected
on their tours through Europe. It is by such standards that they
should be judged.
that these great houses
buildings and to
form
a suitable
105
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
PEDIMENT
RUSTICATION
RUSTICATED
COLUMNS
PEDJMENTED GATEWAY
PROJECTING
STONES
RUSTICATED
BAROQUE WINDOW
PALLADIANISM
After the
first
twenty years of Baroque experiment and
in-
novation English architecture settled down in the 1730s to a

more sober period of what became known as Palladianism. This
was a version of Classicism in vogue for country houses (town
houses were little affected), based on the villas built by Palladio
in the Veneto during the sixteenth century. Inigo Jones, it will be
recalled, was the first to hark back to Palladio, but the eighteenth106
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
much more widespread, involving a number
of architects under the patronage of Lord Burhngton, among
whom were William Kent (i 684-1 778), the designer of the Horse
Guards, Colen Campbell (Mere worth Castle) and Leoni (Lyme
century fashion was
The movement was
Hall).
considerably influenced by the publi-
cation of a fine edition of Palladio in 171 6, followed
by the works
of Jones in 1727. And like Palladio, the BurUngton circle were

guided by the precepts of Vitruvius, the Roman writer on
architecture.
Lord Burlington's house at Chiswick is a transcription of the

Rotonda but the usual plan has a central block flanked by
wings, Hke Prior Park by John Wood the elder (1700-54).
Holkham (Kent) and Kedleston (Paine), however, were designed
Villa
to have four angle pavilions connected to their corps de
logis.
All
have the immensely dignified pedimented portico to give an

imposing central accent to the composition.
^2:::^
PAVILION
CHAPEL
WING
RTICO
RAW HO
R,OON\S
PC R.TICO
Lr-.
.LIBf?.ARY
Wl NG
'
SALON
BEDR.OOMS
K.1TCH
N/G
EN
r^
HOLKHAM HOU5E
(;aller.y
yiSITOR.S'
DINING
R.OOM
173^ W.
"Wl
IC
NG
MT
107
NOR.TH FIÔNT
SALON
COIÎLIDOR
COR.R.IDOR.
HALL
VATE
PR.I
VVI
Kf
ICITCH
rm
Ifii
5
1
EM
VVI NO,
POR.T1CO
KEDLESTON HALL
BUILT BY R.ADAM PR-OM
ALLY TO HAVE HAD
OfL\G\N
I7GI
DESIGN BY
TWO
MOk.E
J. PAINE
PAVILIONS
Compared with their originals, EngHsh Palladian villas are

and more solid and there is greater variety in room shapes
larger
and
details.
On
the whole the style did not produce masterpieces
is aloof, conventional, and at its worst even dull.

But after the excesses of Baroque its restraint and lack of bombast
were more in keeping with eighteenth-century taste and temper.
Certainly its insistence on canons had a most salutary effect on the
ordinary Georgian building tradition, since it firmly established
*rules of proportion' and standards of decency and taste that per-
in this country. It
colated
The
down
to the jobbing builder.
rooms of some of the smaller houses of the period

were panelled in pine, now preferred to oak, though both were
io8
best
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
painted; but the great houses had their plaster walls decorated
with architectural details and mouldings that incorporated the

paintings and stucco reliefs as integral parts of the total scheme.
Some of the state rooms still have walls lined with silk or velvet
damask and ceilings that are elaborately patterned, painted and
gilded. The new Chinese wallpaper came into use, and Roman
statuary was much in evidence both inside and out.
In the early years of the century the formal, symmetrical
garden layout based on Le Notre's work at Versailles, with its
and radiating walks, was preferred. But the
canals, basins, alleys
work of London and Wise in this style was soon to

new conception. Parallel with the evolution of
give
way
to a
the Palladian
country house there developed the art of landscape gardening,

initiated by Kent and reaching a peak in the designs of Lancelot
'Capability' Brown (1715-83). Prior Park illustrates the mid
eighteenth-century ideal. Sited on a gentle slope, its spreading
wings
relate
it
to a large landscaped park, a formal house in an
informal park or 'English garden' which became a European taste.

The park, however, was really anything but natural. Sweeping
hills, groves and serpentine lakes were all in fact
very carefully contrived at great labour and expense and furnished
with a romantic sprinkling of temples, mausoleums. Classical
bridges and the like. The aim was a picturesque composition in a
piquant, artificial manner which appealed to the sophisticated
taste of the cognoscenti^ formed by contemplating the fashionable
lawns, gentle
PALLADIAN HOUSE
R.OM AM
MAU50LEUNA
G OT H C
I
K.!-
^^]^
(TTiYfrv^
HER-MIT'S
PALLADIA N
BR.I
-4:dSX-.
DGE
CAVE
S E R.P E
(dam
NTI NE
MED
5TR.E
IC
am)
109
landscapes of Claude and Poussin, painters of heroic or idyllic
Roman Campagna. The material

means and power of the landed magnates who commissioned these
houses and parks was so great that if an ancient and untidy village
impaired the view it was demolished and rehoused elsewhere, as
at Milton Abbas and Harewood, Yorkshire.
Classical scenes set mainly in the
LATER GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE

In the second half of the eighteenth century the Palladian
tradition continued but
Chambers (1726-96)
became less homogeneous. Sir William

more eclectic style that incorporated
built in a
contemporary French influences. He adapted Palladianism to the

needs of a public building housing the expanding bureaucracy of
the day. In Somerset House he produced for the Admiralty and
Departments of State a design remarkable for its polish and

though one that remains perhaps too domestic
in scale and lacking in the necessary grandeur.
The outstanding name from the sixties onwards is that of
Robert Adam (1728-92), the most famous of the Adam brothers.
After studying Roman architecture and publishing his drawings of
Diocletian's Palace at Spalato he set to work designing country
houses. His exteriors are modified Palladianism and his bent may
be judged by comparing earlier Palladian work with the slender
grace of the portico at Osterley and the echoing curves and lighter
touch of the south front at Kedleston.
But Adam made himself responsible for the entire scheme and
his most original work was done on the interiors. There he and his
team of artists created what is in effect a new style of decoration,
refined Classicism,
based upon his imaginative reinterpretation of chiefly
Roman
motifs, in an attenuated and lively style executed with great
delicacy and refinement. The heavy stifl&iess and pomposity of

much Palladianism is replaced by a new and subtle chasteness.
The Roman plaster technique of hard stucco which Adam revived
was admirably suited as a medium for his richly varied though
always crisp and elegant ornament. Especially characteristic are

ceilings, sometimes delicately tinted, with their shallow
curved mouldings and painted panels and medallions. Despite the
his
he has been called 'the father of the Classical Revival'

on account of his interest in original Roman sources, there is little
of Roman gravitas in his work and his rhythms are closer to
fact that
no
Bi
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
VENETIAN Wl NDOW
^^^
fT^lt^^^
i
a.
ti
SOUTH FRONT,
IC
E D LE S
TON
K.JKOAtsA
Rococo. Though occasionally he is a little saccharine for some

tastes, at his best he is quite incomparable.
Adam's country house plans are usually complex, appropriate
to the aristocratic life they served. Original features are their unPalladian employment of curves and effects of spatial movement.
Ill
and apses, especially
when screened by columns with an entablature open above the
cornice, and in his interior domes and wall niches.
Both
are exemplified in his use of alcoves
OF ALCOVE, APSE
OPEM 5CR.EEN OF COLUMNS
ADAAA'S USE
6
PLAM
His town houses are conventional eighteenth-century houses
except for the original interiors. He was, however, the first major
architect to apply a ^palace fagade' to a
London
terrace.
Other features popularly associated with the 'Adam' style are

doorways with webbed fanUghts, tall well-proportioned windows
with narrow glazing bars, and elegant white marble fireplaces,
all of which in fact belong to most late Georgian buildings. His
influence did, however, affect a great deal of the art-work pro112
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, SUNDERLAND: A
plain, wcll-
proportioned eighteenth-century interior reflecting a rational

Christianity
OSTERLEY PARK, MIDDLESEX! Adam's Grecian

(approached from the garden by a grand
flight
portico
of steps). Note
the slender Ionic columns and characteristic ceiling design
THE PROMENADE, CHELTENHAM: The

elegance of a Regency terrace.
The
facade unifies the terrace and gives
rl*.
-l^>:
it
light, clean-cut
'palace' treatment of the
dignity
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
duced in the
furniture,
last thirty years
Wedgwood
of the century, including Sheraton
pottery,
and silverware. Abroad
it
made
an eventual contribution to the Empire Style.

One of the elements of eighteenth-century culture was the undercurrent of Romanticism that flowed with increasing strength
beneath the broad expanse of Classicism and Reason. One aspect
of this was an incipient medieval Revivalism which was to become
a main preoccupation of the next century.
Gothic never quite died out in England, and the vernacular
farmhouses of stone districts like the Cotswolds and the Pennines
are clearly based on the later manifestations of this style. Per-
work was done
at Oxford in the seventeenth century

Hawksmoor's quadrangle at All Souls in the early
eighteenth. But generally at this time it was commonly regarded
as a barbaric style, as its name suggests, and there were few who,
pendicular
and there
like
is
Vanbrugh,
Though he
felt
its
picturesque and associational appeal.
and gave a suggestion of the medimassing of Blenheim and Seat on

sombre
eval castle to the
Delaval, it was not until the late eighteenth century that fashionable taste followed him and found expression in the romantic
and picturesque *Gothick' fancy of Walpole's Strawberry Hill and
Wyatt's Fonthill. Complete with matching interiors of delicate
plaster fan-vaulting, such dilettante medievalism had little in
common with the seriousness of the Victorian Gothic Revival.
Another offshoot of the Rococo spirit was the fashion for
chinoiserie that produced such oddities as Chambers' pagoda at
Kew, Chippendale's Chinese-style furniture and, eventually, by an
built Blackheath
extension of this orientalism, the pavilion at Brighton early in the

next century. This and the taste for porcelain afford a neat
example of the interaction of economics and aesthetics, since both

were made possible by the expansion of overseas trade and in their
turn stimulated the import of tea, china, silk and even the first
wallpapers.
By
the late seventeenth century the well-to-do in
London were
already living in a standardized type of terrace house that
was to
remain fundamentally unchanged throughout the following

century. The English have generally preferred to live in the
country rather than in the town when they could afford to do so,
and town houses were often regarded only as pieds-d-terre by
people who considered their main home a country house in the
"3
Shires.
most
Hence they remained modest and unpretentious
part, unlike the ^hotels* of the
French aristocracy
for the
in Paris.
on a simple rectangular
narrow but runs up to four
storeys. Dividing walls are thick to reduce the fire risk and
accommodate the flues. The entrance is placed to one side, approached by steps, and leads forward to the staircase. Front doors
Construction
plan.
The
TO
is
in either brick or stone
street frontage is relatively
1st.
FLOOR.
SERVANTS BEDS
BEDR-OOM
BED R-OOM
LI BR.AR,Y
S
i
ER.VANTS' ÔON\
SETR-VAMTS' B E D?
2F
BEDR.OOM
DR-AW NO R-OOM
D1N1M6 R.OOM
&F
B
RONT
K\
TCH EN
SER.VANTS^
ENTR.ANCE
DOOR.
are large
and panelled with semicircular fanhghts to give
light to
the hall and are usually pedimented or topped with a semicircular
arch and often flanked by classical columns.

Opening off the hall is a large front room and a large back
room, with two
rooms on each
similar
feature of the fagade
is
floor.
The
principal
the fenestration scheme which reaches
back to Itahan Renaissance prototypes. Carefully proportioned

for visual effect,
windows
are usually shorter
on the ground
floor
to give an impression of solidity, taller on the first floor for

importance, shorter again above and finally, to check the upward
movement of the eye, very short on the top floor. The result is
114
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
most
dignified.
Windows
are of the sash type with thin
wooden
glazing bars, and the repeated pattern of regular sized panes acts
as a unifying feature, relating not only the separate windows of a
house front, but also facade to facade, since all conform to

is one of the reasons for the harmonious effect which we usually associate with a street of Georgian
single
the same proportions. This

houses.
By the late eighteenth century it was frequently the practice to

conceal the sloping slate roof of lower pitch by means of a
parapet above the cornice, and chimneys were
nent.
The
greater
LATE
ISth.CETM.
made
less
promi-
TE^R-ACE HOUSE
general tendency as the century aged was towards
simpHcity and
refinement,
pointing forward to
the
Regency spas.
Houses like these, arranged in terraces, formed building units
that were both economical and graceful, and in many ways their
replacement by sprawling suburban villas is a matter for regret.
It was Inigo Jones, first in the field in so many ways, who took
the step from straight street to square in his Covent Garden, based
on an Italian piazza, built about 1630. It was not, however, until
the later seventeenth century that the square became popular,
though once established it became one of London's most characteristic features and a great many were built between 1720 and
i860. Their dignified grace and urbanity may be regarded as a
elegancies of the early nineteenth-century
115
English achievement in the art of town planning. Though
each was a self-contained compartment, the surrounding houses
fine
were not monotonously
identical
and there was scope for
attractive variations within the accepted conventions.
Enghsh love of nature found expression
Just as the
in the
juxtaposition of Palladian country house and landscaped park, so

it
did in the central garden introduced into the
town
square.
It
was a Picturesque feature contrasting pleasantly with the formaUty

of the architecture.
Later practitioners continued the square but leavened its use
with new shapes such as the circus, crescent, oval and polygon;
one led into the other, opening them up and breaking down their
former separateness.
WITH
PALACE FACADE
TER.IÂCE
TER-IÂCE
MOUSES
CI R.CUS
ROYA
CR.E
C E M
GAR.de
iZ^
BATH
Another later innovation was John Wood's use of the 'palace
impose unity on the terrace.* In Queen Square, Bath,
he gave the terrace a central portico with pediment and corner
blocks, linking them with a giant order in the Palladian manner.
John Wood the Younger combined both these contemporary
tendencies in the Royal Crescent, Bath, where he designed a
terrace in which a giant Ionic order binds together some thirty
houses into a semi-eUiptical palace facade which looks down on to
an open, gently-sloping sweep of turf that heightens the resemfacade' to
blance to a Palladian mansion.
As already noted, Adam introduced the palace-front motif to

London in the Adelphi terrace (now destroyed), and it reappears
in Nash's Regent's
* First
ii6
Park terraces of the early nineteenth century.
used by Edward Shepherd in Grosvenor Square but since destroyed.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Not
all
eighteenth-century architects
fit
neatly into stylistic
James Gibbs, for example, inclined to

the Baroque in his powerful Radcliffe Library at Oxford but to
a more restrained Palladianism in his Senate House, Cambridge.
categories of the period.
Besides the Woods, the work of other 'regionaF designers

such as Carr of York, Smith of Warwick, Harrison of Chester,
and the Bastards of Dorset did much to enhance the Georgian
scene while excellent pattern books ensured decorum among the
small builders.
No summary of town buildings of the eighteenth century would

be complete without some reference to Georgian public building.
The town halls, assemblies and customs houses had all the
virtues of the ordinary domestic architecture. They are full of
'good sense' neat, well-proportioned, serviceable and in perfect
harmony with one another. The shops in particular with their
curved or flat patterned window fronts and elegantly lettered
:
fascias
are
in
assertiveness of
agreeable contrast to the strident commercial
some shop
fronts today.
No
century before or
more
mannered way than the eighteenth century.
since could integrate a street of diverse buildings in a
graceful and well
1767
R.OYAL CR.E5CENT, BATH J.WOOD THE YOUNGEK
A PALACE FR.ONT IMPOSED ON TE.R.R.ACE HOUSES
117
AmiUJj
\\\\\\IU[
AU-Tlun
"^
--
\i
iwnm
HOUSE Of THE LATE
S th.
C E NTU
R.Y
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Churches:
St.
Mary Woolnoth;
St.
Botolph, Aldersgate; Christchurch,

St. George, Bloomsbury; St.
;
Mary-le- Strand; St. George-in-the-
Spitalfields; St. Martin-in-the-Fields
George, Hanover Square;
St.
Anne's, Limehouse (all London); St. Philip,

Birmingham; St. Anne, Manchester; Holy Trinity, Sunderland,
Durham; Blandford, Dorset; All Saints, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
East,
Poplar;
St.
Country houses: Blenheim, Oxon; Castle Howard, Beningbrough

Hall, Bramham Park, Harewood, Nostell Priory, Newby, Serlby and
Sewerby, Yorks; Knowsley, Lanes; Heaton Hall, Manchester;
Kedleston and Melbourne, Derby; Seaton Delaval and Wallington,
Nthmb; Attingham, Shrewsbury; Saltram, Devon; Badminton,
Glos; Prior Park, Bath; Stoneleigh,
ii8
Warw;
Stourhead,
Wilts;
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Norfolk;
Plolkham,
Peckover
House, Wisbech,
Cambs; West
Wycombe, Bucks; Mereworth, Kent; Clandon and Hatchlands,

Surrey; Syon and Osterley, Middx; Kenwood and Chiswick House,
London, Easton Neston, Northants; Lyme Hall, Cheshire.
Terraces and squares Bedford, Hanover, Cavendish, Berkeley, Fitzroy
and Finsbury, the Adelphi and Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster,
London; Queen Square, The Circus and Royal Crescent, Bath; The
Crescent, Buxton, Derby Queen's Square, Bristol.
Town houses at 20 Portman Square, 20 St. James's Square and Portland Place, London; York; Ludlow; Winchester; Wisbech;
Shrewsbury; Richmond; York.
The Queen's College, Clarendon Building and Radcliffe Library,
Oxford; Senate House and University Library, Cambridge.
Clubs: Boodle's, Brooks' and White's, St. James's, London.
The Mansion House, Somerset House and Horse Guards, London.
Town Hall, Liverpool; Guildhall, Worcester; Market Hall, Barnard
Casde, Durham; Almshouses, Kirkleatham, Yorks; Mansion House
and Assembly Rooms, York; Mansion House, Doncaster.
Theatres at Bristol and Richmond, Yorks. Iron Bridge, Salop.
Strutt's mill, Belper, Derby; warehouses at Portsmouth Dockyard.
Gothick: Strawberry Hill, Twickenham; Arbury Hall, Warw.
:
The Pagoda, Kew,
Chinoiserie:
Surrey; Palladian Bridge, Prior Park.
Mow
Cop, near Congleton, Ches.; garden temples,

Stourhead, Bristol; Castle Howard, Yorks.
Follies:
etc., at
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Downes, K. English Baroque Architecture Zwemmer
Downes, K. Hawksmoor (Zêmmet 1959).
:
(1966).
Hussey, C. English Country Houses, ijij-60 (Batsford 1955).

Hussey, C. English Country Houses, 1 760-1 800 (Batsford 1957).
Lees-Milne, J.: The Age of Adam (Batsford 1947).
Plumb, J. H. England in the Eighteenth Century (Penguin 1950).
Richardson, A. E. An Introduction to Georgian Architecture (Art
Technics 1949).
Richardson, A. E. Georgian England (BsLtsfor d 193 1).
Steegman, J.: The Rule of Taste (Macmillan 1936).
Summerson, J. N. Georgian London (Plei2idQS 1945).
Technics 1952).
Turner, R. James JVyatt (Art
Whisder, L. Vanbrugh (L^Ltic 1938).
:
&
119
&
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nineteenth Century
ENGLAND
In the
IN
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
peak of her prestige,

world poHtically and industrially. But though she was to
be transformed by unprecedented material advance there was no
dramatic break with the previous century, and superficially the
Regency was still a largely aristocratic, Georgian world.
The French Wars ended with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo
(1815), by which time the changes leading to 'high farming' were
more than half over, a General Enclosure Act being passed in
1 801. The Industrial Revolution was profoundly affecting the
economic and social life of England and the English scene.
Production was rising rapidly, bringing mass-produced manufactured goods within the reach of large numbers. New industries
like engineering were being created. The population was increasing - from nine million in 1800 to thirty-six million in 1900.
In the coalfields ugly, unplanned and insanitary towns were
springing up, inhabited by new middle class merchants and
'captains of industry', and by a vast proletariat attracted by the
prospect of work from the dechning domestic industries, the
changing countryside, and the poverty of Ireland. These 'labouring classes' lived in the harsh circumstances which produced first
riots and later Chartism. The main causes of distress were the postwar slump, an unregulated economy, mechanization, and a
government which believed in latsse^-Jaire - except for the Corn
Laws passed for the agricultural interest and not repealed until
1846 when that of the manufacturers prevailed.
Repression was no cure. Gradually, under the stimulus of
democratic ideals fostered by the French Revolution and Benthamite ideas, and the changing social and economic conditions,
came reform. As a result of modifications to the electoral system
and extensions of the franchise. Parliament passed from the control of the aristocracy, through middle-class rule to democracy
early nineteenth century Britain, at the
led the
120
NINETEENTH CENTURY
by the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884, while local government was reformed by the acts of 1835 and 1888.
Political reform begat social reform. Slavery was abolished
in 1833. The Poor Law of 1834 in the long run ended pauperism,
and a series of factory and education acts did much to improve
the lot of the poorer classes. The setting up of administrative
machinery to implement these enactments was the beginning of
modern bureacracy.
Other sources of relief were the 'self-help' of Trade Unionism
and Co-operation, organizations which gave legitimate expression
to working-class needs and contributed to social stability, as did
was a feature of Victoria's reign (1837-1901). Not

Methodism take strong root but the established church
was invigorated by the Evangelicals and the Oxford Movement.
religion. Piety
only did
Also related to the new industrialism were organizational

changes in banking (Bank Charter Act, 1 844), the foundations of
joint stock companies, and the creation of modern communica-
- the railways from the thirties, steamships that became the

world's carriers, and the telegraph (1844). Trade went on increasing and captured vast markets in China, India and Africa. Canada,
tions
New
Zealand were colonized and moved towards

but Ireland with her religious and agrarian
grievances was a persistent source of trouble and ultimately
Australia and
dominion
status,
demanded Home Rule.

The first half of the century was summed up by the Great
Exhibition (i 8 5 1), the symbol of mid- Victorian achievement. Free
from revolution and (except for the Crimean War) enjoying a long
period of peace with greater material power and increased comfort, the country assumed a sober self-confidence and belief in
progress that sometimes ran to complacency.
its
It
had, however,
own critics in Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin and Morris, and Liberal-
ism meant more than free trade. It was a philosophy of freedom

and individualism that sympathized with national and liberal
movements everywhere.
After the watershed of the 1860s the character of the period
underwent a change. Before
this, Britain was preoccupied with

developing her industrial resources, free trade, and social reform.
Afterwards, in addition to the birth of democracy, there was the
aggressive imperialist expansion of Disraeli (Suez Canal, 1869)

and Salisbury with the 'scramble for Africa', haisseî-faire thinking
121
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
of the Manchester school was challenged by Protectionists and

Socialists alike. The last decades were marked by industrial
though better off than before, the workers' conditions

below today's standards. There was a growing
interest in politics and an extension of Trade Unionism among
the unskilled. After the *Golden Age' of 1850-70, farming
entered a decline following the import of cheap foodstuffs from
North America and Australia, and though industrial output of
coal, textiles, iron and steel, and the national wealth were greater
than ever, Britain lost ground in relation to the new giants of the
U.S. and Germany, who also began to rival her as a colonial and
naval power and to erect tariff barriers.
Immense progress in technology throughout the century was
paralleled by a phenomenal growth of scientific knowledge ranging from atomic theory to geology and medicine. Darwin's
contributions to biology were outstanding and there was general
acceptance of 'scientific method' and 'evolutionary' ideas.
Romanticism, the rich imaginative world of Keats and Turner,
had flourished in the earlier years of the century, but under
Victoria culture became 'bourgeois'. Painting descended to a
banal Naturalism or Tennysonian Romanticism, but the new form
unrest, for
were
still
far
of the novel rose to great heights in the
work of Dickens,
the
Brontes, and Hard}^, and the serious spirit of 'social conscience'

at work. Behind much of the art of the period was an
enthusiasm for Nature inherited from Wordsworth and Constable,
a reaction from the ugliness and artificiality of the new urbanenvironment. The nineteenth century also saw the growth of the
popular press with its mass readership, a product of political
was
emancipation and elementary education.
REGENCY ARCHITECTURE
The Regency style of 1800-30 represents the last phase of
Georgian Classicism, simplified and modified by Adam's influence
in the direction of further elegance and refinement. Some consider it to have been at the cost of robustness - it is certainly
lighter
and gayer.
Its
typical
buildings
are
domestic:
the
of Brighton, Weymouth, Cheltenham and

Leamington, faced with painted stucco, an inexpensive material
for achievixig the effect of a smooth stone surface and of carved
brick-built terraces
122
NINETEENTH CENTURY
Stone ornamental details. Sometimes a form of terracotta was used
for the latter.
Windows
are
tall
and narrow with very thin glazing
bars and their surrounds are plain and clean-cut, a design that
enhances the simplicity of the facades. Curved bays and garden

windows were fashionable features of the time, together with
elegant wrought-iron veranda balconies, some with convex
^Chinese' roofs.
low-pitched
Doorways
with
are often round-headed.
Italianate
projecting eaves.
Roofs are
Some
are
flat.
Decoration is sparing, invariably classical, and prefers 'Grecian*

motifs and Ionic or Doric orders to Corinthian.
[
Uy
WR.OUGHT- IRONiWOR.K
GfÊCI
KEY
AN
*
1^5
The dominant figure in Regency architecture was John Nash
(175 2-183 5), whose symmetrical terraces at Regent's Park (181125) with their pediments, side paviUons
and giant stucco columns
continue the unified eighteenth-century palace-facade treatment.
He could also build in various exotic styles as required
the 'Hindu'
of Brighton Pavilion, Gothic or Italianate country houses, and
cottages ornes - for the taste for Revivalism was already established.
Nash's talent also embraced the art of town planning. It was
he who conceived the organic scheme for London's West End,
:
<>
n
NASH'5
linking Regent's and
PLAN OF IÊGENTS PAR.K

St.
James's Parks with Regent Street (since

it to Buckingham Palace and
rebuilt in feeble Classic), relating
new upper class

and picturesque land-
Whitehall, and creating round Regent's Park a

residential district of noble terrace houses
scaped park. That he was able to do all this without the autopowers of a Napoleon is a tribute to his resourcefulness.
Sir John Soane (175 3-1857) was a contemporary of Nash but
very different and highly original. Reacting from the more
cratic
popular Adam, he evolved a personal style that blended Baroque

grandeur of composition with a Grecian severity of detail. His
124
NINETEENTH CENTURY
QQOniQQjOQfiQQQ
A
prince's STR.EET, LOTHBUR.Y

I805 J. 50ANE
REGENCY FACADE
works are few, but his austerity, crisp line, simplicity of surface
and feeling for cubic relations and space are all to be seen at his
own
house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, now the Soane Museum

These are characteristics which anticipate something of
(1812).
the twentieth century despite the elements of the antique.
.xa
HOLMWOOD,
I8Z5
ICENT DECIMUS BUR.TON
REVIVALISM
The underlying theme of nineteenth-century architecture is

RevivaUsm. Classical revival of the Antique, as distinct from
Renaissance
eighteenth
architecture,
century
began in the second half of the
with
the publication of archeological

research Hke Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens (1762) in
which Greek and not Roman Doric appeared for the first time
I
125
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
GEOR.GE'S HALL, LIVER.POOL 1839

ELMEIS, COMPLETED BY C. R. COCK.ER.ELL
ST.
H. L.
and shocked the Palladians and Adam. There were others besides
'Athenian' Stuart* who paved the way for purist Neo-Greek
(1820-40), a scholarly, academic style expressive of the ideals of
contemporary culture and quite suited to large public buildings

such as Robert Smirke's British Museum (1823). It is not, however, merely imitative, for behind the British Museum's Ionic
front the grouping of the composition is really Palladian still, and
the triumphal arch at the entrance to Euston Station| was a
Roman motif, not Greek. Successful essays in this manner are
Charles Cockerell's provincial branches of the Bank of England.
By the mid century Neo-Greek had been ousted on the Classical
side by a Neo-Renaissance style chiefly inspired by the High
Renaissance architecture of Rome. Early examples are Sir Charles
Barry's Travellers' Club (1829) and Reform Club (1837). This
''palazzo' style is at once richer and more materialistic, in keeping
with the commercial prosperity of Victorian England. And
though the Classical Revival reached its peak in the 1860s, the
Graeco-Roman
tradition
staggered
wearily on
into the
first
decades of this century.
The first correct use of Greek Doric in England was his garden temple at Hagley
Park (1758) and Ionic he employed at Lichfield House, St. James's Square, 1763.
fits recent demolition is a
126
good example of official vandalism.
NINETEENTH CENTURY
Among
the best
town houses of
the period, however, were
those of a speculative builder of note,
Thomas
Cubitt,
whose
Belgravia (1830-40) gave opportunities to George Basevi.
GRANGE
z 10
HANTS
PAR.K;
(D
R.
WM. WILHINS
C)
Gothic Revival also began in the late eighteenth century, this

time as the rather frivolous and fanciful 'Gothick'. But with the
more serious cult of the Middle Ages which was part of early
nineteenth-century Romanticism, it became a very different thing.
A. W. N. Pugin (181 2-5 2), the first serious exponent of Gothic
Revival, was a medieval enthusiast, architect and writer who not
only admired the aesthetic and religious values of the Middle
Ages but saw
in their structural principles
and logical ornament
the true essence of architecture. This was at a time
when
structure
was of less interest to the average architect than a Classical fagade,

to which had been applied a great deal of heavy and often rather
coarse, obscuring decoration. Pugin himself, however, had a
genuine flair for decorative design, so that he was able to give to
Barry's basically Classical plan and Palladian river front of the new
Houses of Parliament (1836) a national colouring of Perpendicular
detail that is amplified by the aspiring medieval verticality and
romantic asymmetry of the towers and spires.
But generally Pugin and the later Gothicists preferred Early
English, or the Middle Pointed of the Camden Society's ecclesiologists: 'morally' they were purer. Some were more eclectic or
127
ARCHITECTURE
ENGLAND
IN
went abroad for inspiration to Italy or France. At its worst much

of their work is crude and inappropriate, but a few architects,
out of a deep understanding of the real nature of Gothic, did
succeed in creating buildings that were in effect contemporary
reinterpretations of the style. Archaeological
refinement belong most to the

J.
L. Pearson's
Truro Cathedral,
last
knowledge and
quarter of the century (e.g.
1880).
The
best
known Gothicist
Pancras Hotel, 1866), but the most

original was William Butterfield whose Keble College Chapel,
is
perhaps Sir Gilbert Scott
(St.
KEBLE COLLEGE CHAPEL, OXFOR.D IS67

WM. BUTTER. FIELD
Oxford
(1870),
though employing only the
common
bricks,
of the ordinary builder, genuinely recreates

Gothic without affected antiquarianism and displays a remarkable
individuality in its odd proportions, dramatic outline and textural
ornament. The majority of medievalists, however, did not not
succeed in adapting the Gothic vocabulary to the new needs of
timbers and
the age and
same
tiles
most of
spirit as
their
work now
strikes
one
as
being in the
Pre-Raphaelite protest and similarly fated.
In the 'battle of the styles' both the main traditions had their
it was tacitly consented
supporters, but by the end of the century

that
Gothic Revival was suitable for
ecclesiastical
and scholastic
buildings, and a ponderous Neo-Classical for civic buildings and
128
ST.
George's hallliverpool: Sumptuous

Roman Revival.
Victorian
H
>
\"^
ST.
PANCRAS station: Gothic
practicality clothed in
Revival. Railway
romantic medievalism
Age
NINETEENTH CENTURY
business premises, while designers of country houses (like
Salvin) reproduced medieval castles
Jacobean great houses.
It
was
Anthony
and Tudor, Elizabethan and
chiefly a question
of association,
since the central aristocratic tradition of the eighteenth century
had come to an end in the confusion of Victorian middle class

historical Romanticism, which was more concerned with picturesqueness than with aesthetics or functional expression.
The most
town
of them - public
libraries,
banks,
were
were its public

and exchanges. Many
successful buildings of the age
buildings, such as
offices,
virtually
halls,
market
halls
museums,
art galleries, infirmaries,
mechanics' institutes, workhouses and prisons -
Money was not spared on their

and though many had new and flexible plans,
new
elaborate facades
types.
fundamental aspect was unfortunately by no means a preoccupation of their architects. Outside London the most typical
products survive in the industrial Midlands and particularly in
this
the towns and cities of the North.
TOWN
While the
HALL, ROCHDALE
architect per se
was studiously busy with styles and

mind nostalgically backwards to a
traditional materials, casting his
romanticized past, the engineer, that representative of a
new
profession born of nineteenth-century industrial technology, was

I2<
ENGINEERING ARCHITECTURE
experimenting with structures like the great suspension bridges:
Menai (1819) by Thomas Telford and Clifton (1831) by I. K.
Brunei. They welcomed the challenge of the problem posed by
the needs of a
new kind of society and new
materials.
from the beginning of the century* and steel

after 1855. Cast-iron stanchions combined with traditional loadcarrying walls produced some impressive utilitarian industrial
Cast-iron was used
buildings. Telford's St. Katherine's
Dock warehouses
(1824) and
/^s^n^fsvf^nf^
m m
m
m
m
M
m m
m
m
some of
the early Pennine and Cotswold textile mills are im-
on accoimt of their massive bulk, but because

of the dignified simplicity deriving from their sense of scale and
proportion, and functional integrity. Though the engineer need
not possess the sensibility of the architect, it so happened that
pressive not only
the greatest nineteenth-century engineers were naturally gifted
with a sense of form and designed structures which were not

only practical and efficient but also aesthetically satisfying.
Iron and steel also made possible wide-spanning roof trusses
carrying an envelope of glass. This and the new tendency for
traditional craftsmanship to give way to factory production of
standard parts are both illustrated by Joseph Paxton's Crystal
Palace. Its structural system was independent of weight-bearing
and roofed over a vast space without internal supports,

cast-iron girders and glass sheets were all prefabricated
and assembled on the site. Techniques like these bore fruit in
walls
while
its
the great railway termini with their characteristic 'barrel vaults'
flax mill at
130
Shrewsbury had cast-iron beams
in 1777.
NINETEENTH CENTURY
of glass Stretching over great volumes of space, supported by
an intricate lattice-work structure of iron members in tension (e.g.
1. K. Brunei's roof of Paddington Station, 1854). The boatstore
at the R.N. Dockyard, Sheerness (1858-60) is an iron-framed
structure
whose
elevations foreshadow the twentieth century.
an engineering material in the first

it was not until the introduction of the technique of reinforcement that concrete could be
fully used in architecture.
Cements too were developed
as
half of the nineteenth century; though
TT
T ^"T
"
"IT TT
Hf
T T
un M
TT
""i
vr
"f
t T
T T
TT-
"vr
ri
1
-1
'
CRYSTAL PALACE,
J.
T T
r TTTTH 1]"TT1T^
u IIT^r
*T
GR-ETAT
m
1
n r
11
Tl
EXHIBITION
IS51
PAXTON
CENTRAL STATION. MANCHESTER.
S76
T
T
THE
ENGLAND
ARCHITECTURE
IN
R.ED house:
1859
P.
WEB
B>
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE
Before turning to domestic architecture, mention must be
proselytizing work of John Ruskin and his disciple
William Morris. The former was a protagonist of Gothic whose
made of the
precepts often led to absurd imitations of the Doge's Palace, but
who indirectly did
useful work in drawing attention to the socioand functional aspects of architecture and in reconsidering
the whole question of structure, materials and workmanship.
Morris attempted to apply Ruskin's theories and his insistence on
the basic importance of good design had a salutary effect on the
decorative arts. But he failed to come to terms with the new
technology as Gropius did later at the Bauhaus.
It was for Morris that PhiHp Webb built the Red House,
Bexleyheath (1859), which is a landmark in domestic building,
logical
the forerunner of the 'garden city' house.
It
has the sturdiness
of late Gothic, pointed arches and a medieval picturesqueness;

but its plain red-brick walls, steep roofs and segmental-headed
sash windows derive from Queen Anne and the vernacular cottage
architecture
of
the
traditional materials
results
south-east.
is
typical of
The craftsmanly feeling for

Webb. Though the immediate
of the Red House were not spectacular, indirectly, through
popularization and even vulgarization of
on succeeding
132
villa architecture
its
ideas, its influence
was considerable.
NINETEENTH CENTURY
The
eighteenth-century concept of the villa was a modest
country house, secluded and informal, the merchant's retreat.

By about 1800 it had moved nearer the town, and in small estates
of detached houses it offered an alternative to the terrace town
house. Influenced by the prevailing architectural fashions,
its
changed every twenty years or so through the century:

Greek, Italian, Gothic, Queen Anne and Tudor. Finally in the
style
LASSICAL*
I230
GOTH
870
133
1930s came the pseudo-modern villa with flat roof and corner
windows, though the basic design altered little. The typical larger
Victorian villa had many rooms making its plan complex and
crowded, and its silhouette was often broken and 'picturesque'.
Terracotta was a typical late Victorian material in abundant use.
Each house had, extravagantly, its own garden to secure a
semi-rural privacy. The semi-detached villa was a cheaper compromise which used less land and became the standard middleclass dwelling. One feature was the improved plumbing. The
W.C. was known in Queen Elizabeth's time but was not found in
the houses of the well-to-do until the last years of the eighteenth
00
00
PARLOUR HALL
DINING
R.OOts^
IS30
COMPACT &
SYMMETRICAL
LI
BR.AR.Y
ta K\rc\-\EN
HALL
t
134
S70
COM FLEX
NINETEENTH CENTURY
century.
By the
nineteenth
it
was a middle-class amenity, together

by the end of the century. The
with lavatory basins and baths
working classes had to wait until the twentieth before they could
enjoy what formerly the aristocracy had to do without, though
many, of course, are still waiting for a bath. In middle-class
town housing
gas lighting was normal by 1850 and electricity in

use by the 1890s, though gas continued into the new century.
The
disgrace of the age was the slum.
At first the new
industrial
labouring classes were herded into jerry-built terraces of ugly

drained, insanitary boxes, literally back to back or
dark
airless
architecture
ill-
round squalid
Architects were not interested in social

problems, and housing provision was left to
courts.
and
its
the speculative landlord and jerry-builder, checked only by the

few scanty regulations of a laisseî^-faire economy. Thousands, of
course, were below this level and 'cellar dwellings' without
windows were commonly shared by several families. Both the
Prince Consort and Lord Shaftesbury concerned themselves with
the private improvement of the artisan's dwelling, and there were
the early flats put up by the Peabody Trust, but there was little
change until after Disraeli's housing and health acts of 1 875 which
,
empowered
local authorities to enforce building regulations en-
suring safe construction and sanitation, and to begin slum clear-
and housing. After this

poorer houses were better built and more commodious,
and the 'by-law' street of minimum width allowed more air to
ance, and, eventually, municipal planning

legislation
135
MODEL DWELLING
FOR. AR.TISANS
|S5|
GRETAT EXHIBITION!
But there was still much drabness and ugly uniformity

which showed too little regard for the quality of human environcirculate.
Some
enlightened employers, however, built factory

such as Sir Titus Salt's Saltaire (1853) with mill, church,
chapel, streets of terrace houses and a park. Later came Lever
Brothers' Port Sunlight (1888) and Cadbury's Bournville (1895),
planned as 'garden suburbs' in a freer, more 'picturesque' style,
ment.
estates,
WORDING CLASS TENEMENT FLATS

136
18
65
NINETEENTH CENTURY
The garden city was an attempt to provide new residential
communities for the growing number of people with middle-class
means but discerning taste whose ideal at that time was a suburban villa and whose progressive aesthetic was that of the arts
and crafts movement, made viable by the development of modern
HOUSE
BY
C.
F.
A.
VOYS EY
190I
ZOM ES
p-^
I
INDU
HOUS
SCHOi
PUBLIC BUILdTnG:
OPEN
SPACES '^
[3
BOUNDAR.r OF TOWN
LETCHWORTH GARDEN CITY
903
137
facilities. The architect again re-entered the field of town
planning, and before long estates of small houses in a traditional
transport
style with gables and small windows, each set in its own treeshaded garden, began to appear outside the built-over area of
towns. They differed from earlier Victorian suburbs, not only in
their architectural style but also in the fact that they were designed
as a whole and not piecemeal. The first was Bedford Park, Chiswick (1876) with 'Queen Anne' houses by Norman Shaw, but the
full flowering did not come until the early 1900's with Letchworth,
Hampstead and Welwyn. These were the prototypes of the
between-wars suburb and they also influenced the planning and
development of municipal housing estates both at home and abroad
The first modern Town Planning Act dates from 1909.
GARDEN
CITY HOUSE,
Norman Shaw
and
LETCHWOR-TH
190^
(1831-1912) was one of the most representative
influential architects of the later nineteenth century.
He was
1870 a Gothicist, after which followed twenty years of

offices, flats and country houses in a picturesque, eclectic style
until
owed much to Tudor halftimber, Dutch Renaissance, Queen

Anne and vernacular work of the seventeenth and eighteenth
that
centuries. His final phase was Edwardian Imperial, the bloated and
bombastic decadence of Victorian Classicism. At best Shaw is
lighter and more animated and New Scotland Yard and the
P.S.N, offices, Liverpool, are happier examples of wôrk in brick
and
stone.
In retrospect
it
becomes clear that at the close of the century

were at work clearing away the rank
certain isolated figures
growth of imitative period

138
styles
preparatory to the cultivation
NINETEENTH CENTURY
new and more genuine
one. This is evident from the greater

and simpHcity of the work of C. R. Mackintosh in the
Glasgow Art School (1898), with its singular art nouveau interior,
and also from C. F. A. Voysey's domestic designs. As the latter,
however, are an important part of twentieth-century architectural
of a
directness
history, consideration of
By way of postscript,
them
it
is
deferred until the next chapter.
may be noted
whole vernacular buildings
lost
that in the country as a
most of
their regional character
in the nineteenth century, partly as a result of the uniformity of
Victorian culture and partly owing to the general decline in the

practice of using local materials, in the face of competition
inexpensive brick brought from outside by cheap
rail
from
transport.
REGENCY
Country houses: Dinton House, Wilts; Rudding Park, Harrogate;
Eastnor Castle, Herefds.; Belvoir Casde, Leics; Pitshanger Manor,
Ealing (now Public Library) Arlington Court, Devon.
Town houses at Brighton and Hove; Hastings; Weymouth; Sidmouth;
Exeter; Cheltenham; Leamington; Clifton; Regent's Park, London.
Royal Pavilion, Brighton; Blaise Hamlet cottages ornes, Bristol.
;
REVIVALISM
Neo-Greek: British
Museum;
Triple Arch,
Bank of England branches

Library, Manchester;
Classic Revival:
Town
Town
at
Hyde Park
Bristol
Corner, London;
and Manchester; Portico
Hall, Salford; St. Pancras Church.
Halls at Leeds and
Birmingham;
St.
George's
House Terrace; New

Scotland Yard; Reform Club; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge;
Foreign Office; Great Eastern Hotel, Harwich, Grand Hotel,
Scarborough; Oxford Museum. Athenaeum, Manchester.
Gothic Revival: Houses of Parliament; Law Courts at London and
Hall, Liverpool; National Gallery; Carlton
Birmingham; Prudential, Holborn;
Town
Halls at Manchester and
Bradford; Natural History Museum, South Kensington; Truro

Cathedral; Keble College Chapel and University Museum, Oxford;
St.
Augustine's, Kilburn; St. Alban's, Holborn; All Saints,
Marylebone; St. Mary Magdalene, Paddington; St. Mark's,
Leamington; Lancing Chapel; All Souls, Ackroyden nr. Halifax.
ENGINEERING ARCHITECTURE
Suspension bridges: Menai, Anglesey; Clifton; Chirk Aqueduct.
Railway stations: King's Cross and St. Pancras, London; Central
Stations at Manchester and Newcastle; Curzon St., Birmingham.
139
St. Katharine's Dock
Kew; VictuaUing Yard,
Boatstore, R.N. Dockyard, Sheerness, Kent;
London;
Warehouses,
Plymouth.
Palm
House,
Country houses Osborne, I. of W. Knebworth, Herts. Qiveden and
Ascott, Bucks.; Thoresby, Notts.; Harlaxton, Lines.; Scarisbrick,
Lanes.; Bryanston, Dorset.; Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent;
Orchards, Godalming, Surrey. Penryn Castle, Caern.
Classical terraces in Bayswater, Belgravia and Kensington, London.
Gothic villas at Malvern, North Oxford and Manchester.
Early Victorian town development: city centre, Newcastle-uponTyne; Public Buildings, Islington, Liverpool.
;
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ashton, T.
Barman, C.
S.:
The Industrial Revolution {O. I].'?. 1948).

Introduction to Railway Architecture (Art
An
&
Technics
1950).
Blomfield, R.
Boase, T.
S.
Casson, H.
Norman Shaw (Batsford 1941).

Art 1 800-1 8yo (O.U.P.
R.: Oxford History of
An
Introduction to Victorian Architecture (Art
&
1959).
Technics
1948).
Clark, K.: Gothic Revival (ConstMc 1950).

Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1 660-1 840
Colvin, H.:
'
I
(John Murray 1954).

Gloag, J.: Victorian Taste (A. & C. Black 1962).
Goodhart-Rendel, H. S. English Architecture since the Regency (Constable
:
1953)Architecture, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Hitchcock, H. R.
(Pehcan History of Art: Penguin 1958).
Hussey, C. English Country Houses, 1800-40 (Batsford 1957)Pilcher, D.: The Regency Style (Batsford 1947).
Reilly, P.: An Introduction to Regency Architecture (Art & Technics
:
1948).
Summerson, J. N.: John Nash (Allen & Unwin 1949).

Summerson, J. N. John Soane (Art & Technics 1952).
Thompson, D. England in the Nineteenth Century (Penguin 1950).
Trappes-Lomax, M.: A. W. N. P/<g/// (Sheed & Ward 1932).
:
Turnor, R.: Nineteenth Century Architecture
140
in Britain
(Batsford 1950).
CHAPTER NINE
Twentieth Century
ENGLAND
IN
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Before
1914 the better-off classes of Edwardian England basked

opulent music of Elgar, enjoying the last phase of a
culture that was essentially nineteenth century. The Boer War
(i 899-1902) was the climax of Imperialism, and one of the issues
in the
of the day was tariff reform, an anti-free trade movement. In

response to Conservative policies such as these came the great
Liberal 'landslide' of the 1906 election.
The Liberal administration supported by the new Labour
M.P.s, backed by strengthened unions and Fabian socialists, intro-
duced a great programme of social and industrial reform. The

State had already begun to extend its concern to secondary education in Balfour's act of 1902, but it was Liberal measures like the
Old Age Pensions Act (1908) and the National Insurance Act
(191 1) which laid the foundations of the Welfare State. To pay for
these measures and for a naval building programme to meet the
threat of Germany, the government brought in the 'People's
Budget' (1909) which precipitated a constitutional crisis. The
Lords refused to pass it and had to have their powers curtailed by
the Parliament Act (191 1).
Industry, now organized into larger units, had made some
recovery by 1900 and continued to grow. Agriculture also improved slowly, becoming very important when the war reduced
imports and there was some reversion to corn.
Rivalry with a unified and expansionist Germany exploded in
1 9 14. Britain, allied with her traditional enemy France and later
the U.S.A., witnessed in the four terrible years of trench warfare
on the Western Front the disappearance of the old order and the
emergence of new, more equalitarian societies.
Women's emancipation began in late Victorian times and there
were suffragettes before World War I; as a result of their
K
141
contribution to the war effort the vote was conceded in 191 8,
though not to all adult women until 1928.
Ireland, whose problems the Land Acts of the late nineteenth
century had failed to solve, broke into the Easter Rebellion of 191
and became the Irish Free State in 1921 when a parliament was
granted to Ulster.
I
I
The *brave new world' looked forward to after 191 8 was beset
with complications. In 1926 there was a General Strike and
economic contraction culminated in the world crisis of 193 1,
which brought massive unemployment in the thirties. Later there
was some amelioration though this coincided with the rise of the
dictatorships of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
One feature of the period was a housing shortage partly
remedied by the Housing Act (191 9) which encouraged municipal
estates and speculative suburban building, especially in the southeast, to which there had been a return shift of population. The
impact of the motor car, the aeroplane and mass communications
began to have far-reaching effects on our economy and our social
habits, bringing unity with uniformity. Through developments in
such fields as atomic physics, electronics and man-made fibres,
science and technology have come to dominate our increasingly
complex modern society while the researches of Freud and Jung
have deepened our understanding of man's behaviour.
World War II (1939-45), which the League of Nations was
intended to prevent, was in some sense the continuation of the
struggle against
Britain
was
German
allied
militarism and imperialism.
Once more
with the U.S. and Russia, a communist state

was halted but the bUtzed
since the Revolution of 191 7. Building
gave opportunities for later reconstruction, already begun

under slum clearance policies. Victory was clouded by the first
atomic bomb explosion at Hiroshima, a turning-point in history.
The post-war Labour administration inaugurated the fullyfledged Welfare State. By regulation of their economies the
countries of the West have been able to avoid the disastrous
repetition of a slump and with them Britain enjoys a new affluence.
But against social security and material prosperity must be set the
danger of a world largely divided into two economic and ideological alignments, each side armed with a 'nuclear capacity', the use
of which would mean the end of man and architecture in Europe
and possibly the world, let alone England. There are also the
cities
142
TWENTIETH CENTURY
problems of the underprivileged countries, where the pressure of
an 'exploding' population on available resources is becoming
acute, and the rise of nationalism among the Afro- Asian peoples.
Industrially, mass production techniques and automation are
being ever more widely applied and there is an increasing recognition of the need for good design which exploits the properties
of material, process, and function.
The climate of literature has changed profoundly since the
publication of T. S. Eliot's Wasteland' in 1922, while in music
and the visual arts the last sixty years have been a period of
much experiment, as the variety of Picasso's work testifies and
the growth of abstractionism in painting and sculpture has
distinct affinities with modern architecture.
*
REVIVALISM CONTINUES
In the early part of this century Gothic Revival was still
favoured for churches and 'cultural' buildings, whilst most commercial and civic buildings, office blocks, banks, department
and town
halls were designed in some version of

was a pompous, overripe 'Baroque' like
Selfridges (1908), but later a rather more restrained though equally
monumental 'Renaissance' was preferred, of which Sir Edwin
Lutyens' Britannic House ('1926) is a controversial example and
Ralph Knott's London County Hall (19 12) a more successful one.
The architects of buildings like these had by this time adopted the
stores, hotels
Classicism.
At
first this
new
system of frame construction referred to later but still

them with facades that belonged to an older system,
though these continued the late nineteenth-century trend towards
larger windows, especially in commerical buildings, since the
steel frame made this easier. Often it is only the street frontage
that is done in stonework with Classical embellishments, the
other sides being left in utilitarian brick.
clothed
This fag-end of the Classical Revival style is one link with the
is the new domestic architecture of
C. F. A. Voysey, noted at the end of the last chapter. Voysey
(18 57-1941) was a member of the Arts and Craft movement (i.e.
a disciple of Norman Shaw and Morris), who went some way
towards breaking with the past by discarding definite period styles
nineteenth century. Another
143
i
on old English cottage and farm
house vernacular and the styles of Wren and the eighteenth
century. Working with traditional materials, he introduced a
fresh note of simplicity and naturalness. His plans are informal,
his elevations plain and clean-cut, with bold, bare walls, and small
horizontal windows. Roofs are steep with tall chimneys. The
consequence is an easy, unaffected, vernacular charm without any
specific revival effect. Though Voysey's was not a very positive
contribution to the foundation of an original twentieth-century
style, the honesty and simplification of his designs brought its adfor a *free traditionalism' based
It is quite certain, on the other hand, that vast numbers

of middling houses since built in this country owe as much to his
inspiration as to that of Shaw's garden city designs.
Letchworth, Hampstead and Welwyn have already been mentioned as twentieth-century examples of garden cities dating from
the first twenty years, but the period between the two world wars
saw the heyday of a type of speculative builder endowed with no
taste or ideals of any kind, who was responsible for an enormous
amount of middle-class suburban development based only very
crudely and imperfectly on garden city lines. Most of these
private estates were debased conceptions, formless sprawls of
semi-detached dwellings in tiny gardens, executed in the mock
half-timber of the popular *pseudo-Tudor' with its applied timber
'framing', the degenerate descendant of Norman Shaw's halftimber revivals. Where architects were consulted a Neo-Georgian
vent nearer.
was often the
which sometimes led to the

though it was often
employed in an inflated and un-Georgian manner as in the
Municipal Buildings at Norwich. Municipal housing estates and
some blocks of flats were also a feature of this period, the *corporation' houses being based on the same sources as those of the
private suburb. The first Town Planning Act was passed in 1909.
But to revert to the work of Voysey and others like him, such
promising developments were to be submerged beneath the rising
tide of Edwardian affluence and for the next thirty years Britain
was to disappear from the 'modern movement' (to use a term
which has already become historical). What was to emerge was a
cosmopolitan style - international in its origins - and it is to the
United States, Germany, and France that we must now turn
if we are to understand what later happened in England.
adoption of
144
result, a preference
this style for public buildings,
TWENTIETH CENTURY
PIONEERS ABROAD
Among
the American pioneers were Louis Sullivan and his

Frank Lloyd Wright. Sullivan erected some of the first
steel* skeleton 'skyscrapers' in the 1890s, eschewing Revivalism
for the honest expression of structure and function. Wright
revolutionized the private house in his 'organic architecture'
where flowing plans, the interweaving of interior and exterior
spaces, and low horizontal lines, later so familiar, first appear.
Wright was also a master of all types of construction, including
ferro-concrete and 'mushroom' construction, taking care always
pupil,
to design 'in the nature of the materials'.
The
first
houses made entirely of concrete were the work of

first years of this century, for after
Ferret and Garnier in the
1900 concrete rivalled steel and it was the French who were to
the greatest contribution to its use. But a few years before
make
1 914 Germany became the chief centre of modern architecture.

There Behrens grasped the imaginative possibilities of industrial
building and investigated the design of machine-made products.
This concern he passed on to his pupil, Walter Gropius, who after
the war became director of the famous Bauhaus school of applied
art and building. Here Gropius studied new methods of construction and manufacture and in his efforts to co-ordinate technique and good design, not only in a building but in all its
contents, he advised standardization and mass production. His
own work in Germany and later in the United States marks the
fulfilment of a twentieth-century style in its use of glass and steel
in energetic horizontal lines, and in a manner that is at once
severely rational yet 'ethereal' in its lightness and free flow of
space. Mies Van der Rohe is today a similarly influential figure.
Another post-1918 figure is Le Corbusier who has been extremely influential as architect, town planner, and propagandist
for the movement. Recognizing the functionalism of machine
design, he applied it to architecture, as in his definition 'A house
is a machine for living in' - but he has been quick to exploit the
surprising new opportunities which engineering developments
have brought about, and his work is a kind of 'romantic
:
* Steel came after i860 but was not established until the 1890s. Ferro-concrete
result of French and German researches in the last part of the nineteenth
was the
century.
ARCHITECTURE
functionalism' that
is
ENGLAND
IN
much more imaginative and creative than his
famous dictum suggests. Le Corbusier as ^social philosopher',

preoccupied with the human environment and the contribution
architecture and planning can make to it, exemplifies the sociological concern of many modern architects and town planners. His
Marseilles scheme (1947), which envisaged widely spaced 'living
towers' on a *carpet' of open spaces and loosely-knit low buildings unified by the tall towers into a fine composition, is the
of 'mixed development',
ideal
now
widely adopted.
These then are some of the outstanding pioneers, who were

the founders of a distinctive modern style and in whose work
and ideas those architects who are conceiving the best modern
buildings today found their inspiration as students in the 1930s.
MODERN ARCHITECTURE
The
really
modern
architecture of this century
'contemporary' architecture.
oast rather than evolves
new
materials,
new
It is a
from
it.
new kind
It is
is
not
just
that breaks with the
outcome of new needs,

new philosophy of archi-
the
techniques, and a
must not be confused with the modernistic style of the

between- wars factory or cinema - basically conventional buildings
tecture. It
meaninglessly
streamlined,
jazzed-up
with
decorative motifs like the zig-zag, and given a
vulgar
flat
roof.
'modern'
As much
genuine and original,

arising out of plan, structure, materials and purpose: the conception of a generation of architects who rejected revivalism of
an independent
as
Gothic,
all
kinds as irrelevant to present-day
it
is
fundamentalist reversion to
first
style,
life
and
who
insisted
on
principles.
The plan of a modern building is not in any way pre-conceived.

evolves from the careful but imaginative study of the needs of
its occupants and therefore becomes an expression of the buildIt
ing's function.
Once more
the plan
is
the central task of the
and increasingly the human sciences are providing

data for even better designs. Elevations develop organically from
the plan and reflect the inner structure externally. The facade that
masquerades as a load-bearing wall has been condemned as
spurious and wasteful. Economy of means is preferred, not only
on utilitarian grounds but because the absence of superfluity is an
essential of good style in any art, and one notoriously neglected
in architecture by the Victorians. Ornament in the sense of applied
architect
146
TWENTIETH CENTURY
decoration with all its associations of past styles is repudiated, for,
according to the early theorists at any rate, to be functional in
form was to capture the essence of beauty.
This emphasis on functionalism and integrity was undoubtedly
salutary when the foundations of modernism were being laid,
and it was, of course, a natural reaction against slavishly imitative

and totally unfunctional building, but perhaps by itself it was too
uncompromising, too puritanical to be always satisfying. It is
apparent, however, in all the new work of the twentieth century,
not only in established building types but particularly in the
types peculiar to this age: secondary schools, technical colleges,
public authority housing, community centres, airport buildings,
clinics, automated, electrically-powered factories, and all those
structures essential to our compHcated, collectivist society.
Technological progress has brought new materials structural
steel, reinforced concrete, alloys of aluminium and other non:
tiles, laminated woods, wall-boards, plastics,

and
rubber, asbestos,
asphalt mastics. Properties are now known
exactly, can be precisely calculated, and the effects of stress and
weathering determined, all of which leads to economy of means
and materials - with safety. Prefabrication now implies industrial
mass production. It is applied to all machine-made building
components and is the outcome of modern manufacturing
methods, the demands of the mass market, and the desire for
economy and speed of construction. Pre-cast wall units, beams
and building blocks are now widely used.
ferrous metals, glass,
REINFORCED
BEAM
COLUMN
(FERRO-)
CONCRETE
LOAD
i
TENSILE 5TR.ESS
TAICEN BY
STEEL RODS
147
New materials brought new methods of construction. The

most important innovation in building technique has been frame
construction with steel or reinforced concrete instead of the
timbers of the medieval builder. Steel-frame buildings where the
weight of the structure is brought down to isolated points

were appearing in Chicago in the 1890s, and reinforced concrete
construction in France early in the twentieth century, but the
frame in London was erected in 1904. Earliest

examples hid their frames behind ornate. Classical facades, and
it was left to the avant-garde to admit candidly that the outer
steel
first
R.EIN
FORCING STEEL
R.ODS
MESH
6r
CONCRETE
COLUMN
WOODEN SHUTTERING
INTO WHICH
CONCR.ETE
IS
POUR-ETD
STEEL OR.
R.EINFOR.CED CO NCR.ETE
STANCHONS
OF
UPPER STOR.EYS
CARRIED BY CANTILEVERS
r^
THIN SCREEN
WALL
Gl
RDER/
CANTILEVER
FRAME CONST R.UCTI ONI

14^
TWENTIETH CENTURY
were no longer responsible for the structural stability of the
new methods of design become possible. Internal
walls could now be treated as partitions and external walls as
thin insulating skins, screening the interior from the weather,
acting in short as 'cladding' or 'curtain-walling', with grids
walls
building so that
of factory-made glazed or panelled walling.
I
I
T5i5ii
FIN5BUR.Y HEALTH CENTR.E:

Frame construction makes for a
free, flexible, open planning;
1938
logical constructional system
with
it
economizes on space and

it provides an
allows larger spans, and lighter, taller structures;
opportunity to open up the non-structural wall panels in the

search for light,
air,
and the flow of space.
The massing of modern
buildings
is
often asymmetrical, some-
times even romantically so. All share the emphasis which they
give to the lightness of their frame construction, replacing the

massive soUdity of the past with a new poise. Characteristic too
is
their consciousness of space,
brought about by the open plan,
transparent walls, projecting roofs and balconies (made possible

cantilevering), and terraces, all of which
break down the former hard lines of division between compartments and between interior and exterior space.
by the development of
Flat roofs,
made more efficient by the new roofing and insulabecome most usual (except perhaps in domes-
ting materials, have
on account of their reposeful lines, the freedom

they allow to the shape of the plan, and their greater economy
tic architecture)
compared with the ridged
roof.
Service pipes are
no longer
excrescences but are properly integrated with the building and
concealed in ducts. Roofs of shallow curves, corrugated

149
or
domed,
are also
now
possible with concrete shell-vaults, while
three-dimensional steel 'space frames' are being used for supporting roofs instead of the old two-dimensional trusses.
Instead of applying ornament, the modern architect seeks to
bring out the formal quaUties of a building by the use of coloured
paints and glass, contrasting the colour and texture of machinemade materials such as stainless metals with natural stone, wood,
and patterned brickwork. A typical way in which surface pattern

obtained is by exploiting the repeated motif of the window
frames of an elevation to produce a grid effect.
is
HOUSE
MODEI^N
LOCAL STONE
-\
"~
"--III
III
II
CEDAR.
BOAt^DlNG
__
"
" ~ ~
USE OP NATUfÂL MATER.IALS

INI
MODERN CONSTRUCTION
Finally, the individual building
is
often better related to
its
environment. This can be seen in the layout of some

*mixed development' schemes where buildings of different types
and sizes are carefully disposed on a natural site, in an effort
to create a planned, life-enhancing environment in which man's
primal needs for air, light, sun, foliage, space, silence, freedom,
privacy and beauty are all satisfied. Not only do the blocks of flats,
maisonettes and houses of a mixed development scheme obtain a
good
sociological balance, but the designer
is
able to attain
through them vitaUty, contrast, and architectural coherence.

150
TWENTIETH CENTURY
NINETEEN THIRTY ONWARDS
This then
modern architecture. But

movement until the 1930s and
the background to
is
Britain did not re-enter the
was
there
against entrenched conserv-
at first Httle progress
One
of the best of the few buildings of this period,

Peter Jones' department store in Sloane Square
is
however,
(1936-9). In contrast with the ponderous Edwardian Revivalism
atism.
^=-i
m^
'
W^^v/.y/Y^/.v/A
mW^
i.- _
'm''/
-r
j_i
mW\
W7AW^
~"~
~~
~~
~"
Q.
=b
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n_
==
~\
._
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Jlllil
lilJiiiiiiiiiJJiiiiii
liUJiiir
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J U
o
00000
9
19345
PETER. J0NE5^
[well)
*^
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00
'39
DEPAR.TAAENT STORE
151
ARCHITECTURE
of,
say, Selfridge's, this
is
IN
a design
ENGLAND
which
expressive of present-day needs and values.
clearly far
is
Maximum
more
floor space
by the frank use of steelframe construction and, thanks to improved central heating now
available, the external walls have become mere screens of glass
easily cleaned and maintained and allowing unbroken window
space. Facades are articulated by vertical ribs which give pattern
and texture and are excellent examples of 'street architecture', for
there is no viewpoint from which the building can be comprehended as an isolated sculptural mass, as frequently happens on
an urban site. Suited also to the city context and the store's function is its general personality which is both stylish and urbane.
World War II halted developments along these lines and
it was not imtil 1945 that building was resumed, and then under
rigid controls. But the next decade saw the new ideas, the use of
pre-stressed concrete and pre-fabrication more widely applied
than ever before. Notable successes have been the numerous
Hertfordshire and Middlesex schools, and their successors in
Nottinghamshire and elsewhere, establishing a genuine school
vernacular in which it is diflficult not to produce a building that
is free of the worst faults. Aboyne Lodge Infants' School, St.
Albans (1950), illustrates the method (pioneered by Hertfordshire)
of constructing on the modular principle (i.e. in multiples or
subdivisions of a standard dimension), at the same time using a
system of prefabricated structural components mass produced,
light steel structural members and pre-cast concrete wall-slabs or
panels of mild steel. This makes for economy and rapid assembly,
for display
and free circulation
is
realized
HER.TFORDSHiR.E
:d
'
152
SCHOOL
=]"
1950
[zic:
TWENTIETH CENTURY
and since units of various sizes and shapes can be composed out
of the same basic elements, allows flexibility in planning and
concessions to the different needs of various schools and site
conditions. The effects of modular design can clearly be seen
in the elevations and plans of these Hertfordshire schools, and
their cheerful, airy character and remarkable lightness and grace
are the outcome of the imaginative handling of the methods
and materials described, together with a feeling for bright colour.
Another work of the fifties, the rubber factory at Brynmawr
(Brecon, 195 1), shows the way the modern architect designs an
SAUCER DOMES OF
SHELL CONCR.ETE
1951
R.UBBEI^
FACTORY,
BRYNMAWR.
concrete floor,
(no beams) \
MU5HROOM COMSTRUCTION
OF REINFORCED COMCRETE
155
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
industrial building only after close study of the manufacturing
processes involved. For example, the interior design here has been
influenced by the need to control dust settlement.
design functional but

materials,
its
it
makes
including
typically
Not only
is
the
contemporary bold use of
relatively
recent
technique,
shell-
which allows large shallow domes over the main production area and introduces curves into the profile to dispel some
of the earlier severity and rigidity.
The South Bank Exhibition of 195 1 was housed in buildings
of unusual structural lightness and originaHty, but its special
value resided in the implications it had for urban design, for it
was a remarkable essay in irregular planning in which relationships of character, scale, and space were all carefully studied.
Among the permanent features of post-war planning are the
'new towns', complete industrial-residential units whose designs
have been influenced by the garden city principle. Some, it is
true, lack visual coherence and proper urban values with adequate
amenities - though the latter has been due to lack of capital, not
of planning foresight. Architecturally, Harlow is on the whole the
most interesting. It is planned in 'clusters' of three 'neighbourhoods' round separate centres each neighbourhood is composed
of 'housing groups' and provided with some facilities. Its layout
gives an example of mixed development in practice.
Since about 1956, with the relaxation of controls, the amount
concrete,
of modern building has greatly increased, bringing a further

and ideas. But throughout the post-war
period housing has been almost a public service, some of the best
variety of building types
public authority housing
coming out of the
London County Council, now

Alton Estate West, Roehampton (1959),
the
It is
Architect's Office of
the world's largest.
Of this
the
will serve as an example.

scheme in which two groups of tall,
blocks of flats and one group of eleven-
a high-density housing
twelve-storey 'point'
all of reinforced concrete frame construction

with concrete panels, are disposed over a large wooded site in such a
way as to preserve its attractive park-like appearance. In addition
to these multi-storey blocks are four-storey blocks of maisonettes, two- and three-storey houses, single-storey dwellings, and
storey 'slab' blocks,
an old people's club, giving a mixed development that contrasts

with earlier, more repetitive layouts. Practical housing policy
and the English taste for the 'picturesque' have come together
154
TWENTIETH CENTURY
12
STOREY POINT BLOCK. OF FLATS

ALTON ESTATE WEST 1959
show how far and how successfully public responsibility for

housing can be carried.
Another feature of post-war urban housing has been a reinterpretation of the once wrongly deplored terrace house, while
rural areas wisely have rarely departed from tradition in character
and building method. The Town and Country Planning Act of
1947 has attempted to avoid the repetition of between- wars
development but it has not effectively checked 'subtopia'.
to
By
the 1950s
modern
genuine contemporary
architecture
was firmly established
style as representative
century as the historic styles were of theirs.

austere functional one epitomized
tecture' of the twenties
been
by the
Its
as the
of the life of this

first phase was an
so-called 'white archi-
and thirties, but its authors have sometimes

and purists, and
criticized since as doctrinaire functionalists
155
II
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
work for lack of warmth and humanity. After the experimentalism of exhibition architecture and the example of some
their
it has become in its maturity more imaginative in its use

of forms (such as sculptural forms), more vigorous, more subtle
and complex, and more enriched by colour and the textures and
masters
evocativeness of natural materials. There
*New
Brutalism' with
its
is still, however, the

emphasis on bare engineering and its
direct use of materials that represents a return to puritan essen-
There is also a good deal of very bad building, designed by

who have taken some characteristics of modern architecture
and turned them into cliches, using them without imagination or
tials.
those
regard for their function or appositeness.

is now mature and accepted not
known. Both architects and industry are at
present deriving much assistance from the work of the government Building Research Station at Gars ton (Herts.), which investigates building materials and building problems such as the
development of new, quicker, and more economical construction
methods. The *jack block' method is a new and revolutionary
construction system in which the floors are gradually raised in
turn by hydraulic jacks and 'system building' is not just prefab-
Though modern
all
architecture
the answers are yet
rication:
it
from these
implies a total industrialized building system. Apart

technical developments there are always
human and
Thus high slabs

forbidding and monotonously
architectural values to be taken into account.
wrongly handled can result in a

inhuman design, but at the same time they provide opportunities,
in the way they are placed, for stimulating perspectives and fresh
relationships. Similarly, curtain- walling employed automatically
makes for characterless and perfunctory facades; yet it can be
introduced with great subtlety, precision and regard for detail.
One of the chief limitations against which the architect contends
today is the demand for that kind of economy which is not a discipline but an inhibiting force, the worst result of which is often
poor finish. Arguments of financial stringency or the idea that a
building should
last for
only a number of years before being
re-
American cities, though not invaUd, should never be

made the excuse for parsimony in so important a matter as the
creation of human environment. As Ruskin says in The Seven
placed, as in
'Lamps of Architecture-. *When

for ever.'
156
we
build, let us think that
we
build
TWENTIETH CENTURY
PRE-1914
The Pastures, North Luffenham, Rutland; Heathcote,

Yorks; Nashdom, Taplow, Bucks; Chorleywood, Herts.
Norwich Union Building; Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly; Selfridges, Oxford
Street; Kodak Building, Kings way; County Hall, Westminster,
Westminster Cathedral, White Chapel Art Gallery, (all London).
Houses:
Ilkley,
Town
Hall, Stockport, Ches.
1920s
Cardiff City Hall
and
Law
Courts.
London
Authority, Trinity Square; Bush House, Kings way;

Liberty's store, Regent Street; Britannic House, Finsbury Circus
Port of
(all
London).
1930s
Lawn Road, Hampstead; Kensall House; Highpoint, Highgate;

Sun House, Hampstead (all London) Guildford Cathedral.
London University, Bloomsbury; Impington Village College, Cambs.;
High School, Richmond, Yorks; Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.
Peter Jones' Store, Sloane Square; Electricity Showrooms, Regent's
Flats in
Street; Boots' Factory, Nottingham.

Finsbury Health Centre; Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond
Street; Simpsons', Piccadilly; Royal Masonic Hospital, Ravenscourt
Park (all London).
Civic Centre, Swansea; City Hall, Norwich; De la Warr Pavilion,
Bexhill,
Arnos
Sussex;
building, Portland Place,
Grove underground station, R.LB.A.

and Waterloo Bridge, London.
POST- 1 94 5
and Primary schools in Herts, and Notts. (C.L.A.S.P.).

Secondary schools: Cranford, Middx.; Hunstanton, Norfolk; County
Modern School, Richmond, Yorks; Prendergast School, Catford;
Rutherford School, Marylebone, London; Cranford, Middx.
Comprehensive schools: Mayfield, Putney; Holland Park School;
Bousfield School, South Kensington (all London).
Infants'
Indian Students' Hostel, Fitzroy Square, London; undergraduates'

lodgings, St. John's College, Oxford; Sidgwick Avenue develop-
ment, Cambridge Universities of Sheffield and Sussex St. Catherine's,

Oxford; Churchill, Cambridge; Exeter and Essex Universities.
Commonwealth Institute, Kensington.
Coventry Cathedral; St. Paul's, Bow Common, Stepney.
T.U.C. Memorial Building; Royal College of Physicians.
;
157
Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon; Royal Festival Hall, South Bank.
Rubber
CIBA
factory,
Brynmawr, Brecon; seed

Duxford, Cambs.
factory,
Witham, Essex;
laboratories,
Nuclear power
station, Berkeley,
Glos;
Marchwood power
station,
Southampton; London Transport Garage, Stockwell.

Shops: Peter Robinson, Strand; Sanderson's, Berners Street.
Offices: Thorn House, St. Martin's Lane; Castrol House, Marylebone;
Eastbourne Terrace, Paddington; State House, Holborn; New
Zealand House, Hay market; 45-46 Albemarle Street; Economist development, St. James's; Vicker's Building, Millbank (all London).
Gatwick Airport (terminal building), Surrey; St. James's Place Flats.
Leofric Hotel, Coventry. Halton Bridge on M6. London Airport,
Heathrow; Nottingham Playhouse.
Salvation Army Citadel, Hendon; Elephant & Rhinoceros Ho., the Zoo,
PLANNED HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Saltaire, Shipley, Yorks; Tudhoe Grange.
Spennymoor, Durham; Bedford Park, Chiswick; Port Sunlight,
Birkenhead; Bournville, Birmingham; Millbank Gardens, Westminster; Wythenshawe, Manchester; Huyton, Liverpool; Quarry
Hill, Leeds; Letchworth, Hampstead and Welwyn Garden Cities.
Post World War II: Rosebery Avenue, Finsbury; Hallfield Estate,
Paddington; Lansbury Estate, Poplar; Ackroyden and Fit2hugh
Estates, Wandsworth; Aegis Grove, Battersea; Churchill Gardens,
Pimlico; Golden Lane, Barbican; Alton Estate, Roehampton;
Regent's Park Development on site of Clarence Sc Munster Squares,
Regent's Park Redevelopment, Bethnal Green cluster blocks,
Loughborough Estate, Brixton; Holford Square, Priory Green and
Spa Green, Finsbury; SPAN Developments, London; Tile Hill
Estate, Coventry; Kirkby, Liverpool; Park Hill, Sheffield.
Milton Abbas, Dorset;
STUDENTS' HOSTEL
DQ nnoaanaoD
OQQnsQnniiBiBin
^
158
TWENTIETH CENTURY
New Towns
1946): Harlow, Hatfield
(after
and Newton
Peterlee
and Stevenage, Herts.;
Durham; Crawley,
AyclifFe,
Sussex, Corby,
Northants.
reconstruction
Large-scale
schemes:
Barbican,
City
Lansbury Estate, Poplar; Elephant and Castle;

Coventry and Plymouth; Bull Ring, Birmingham.
of London;
centres of
city
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Banham, R. Guide to Modern Architecture (Architectural Press 1962).
Banham, R. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Architectural
:
Press i960).
Briggs,
M.
S.
Building Today (O.U.P. 1944).
Bruckmann, M.
and Lewis, D. L.
S.
New
Housing
in
Great Britain
(Tiranti i960).
Conder, N.
An
Introduction to
Modern Architecture (Art and Technics
1949).
Dannatt, T.
Fry,
Modern Architecture
Maxwell Fine
:
Giedion,
S.
Giedion,
S.:
Giedion,
S.
in Britain
Building (Faber
Architecture,
&
(Batsford 1959).
Faber
944).
You and Me {p.\].V.
1958).
(Architectural Press 1954).
Space, Time and Architecture (O.U.F. 1954).
Gr<?/)///j-
Joedicke, J.: History of Modern Architecture (Architectural Press 1959).

Lambert, S.: New Architecture of "London since 19^0 (B.T.H.A.
Architectural Association 1963).
&
Le Corbusier: Towards a New Architecture (Architectural Press 1947).

Le Corbusier: My IFory^ (Architectural Press i960).
McCallum, L Modern Buildings in London (Architectural Press 195 1).
:
D.
Pevsner, N.
Mills, E.
Price, B.
The Modern Factory (Architectural Press 195

Pioneers of the
Technical Colleges (B2itsotd 1959).

S. E. Experiencing Architecture (Ch^pmîn
Rasmussen,
Richards,
J.
M.
1).
Modern Movement (Penguin, i960).
&
Hall i960).
An Introduction to Modern Architecture (Penguin
1956),
Smith, G. E. Kidder: The New Architecture of Europe (Penguin 1962).

Stephenson, H. and L.: Exterior Design (Studio Books 1963).
Stillman, C.
G. and Cleary, R. C.
The Modern School (Architectural
Press 1949).
Wright, F. L. An Autobiography {p2ibQ.t 1945).
Yorke, F. R. S. The Modern House in England (AtchitectuTal Press 1957).
Yorke, F. R. S. and Gibberd, F.: The Modern F/^/ (Architectural Press
:
1958) and
Yorke, F. R.
A Key
S.
Press 1953).
to Modern Architecture (Blackie 1939).

and Whiting, P. The New Small House (Architectural
:
CHAPTER TEN
The Aesthetics of Architecture

'Architecture in general
ling
is
frozen music' Friedrich
von
Schel-
Philosophie der Kunst.
Aesthetics
architecture
is
is
the philosophy of
art,
and the element of
'art'
primarily a matter of formal relationships.
in
from the first century Roman

architect, Vitruvius, and offered by Sir Henry Wotton in his
Elements of Architecture (1624), is 'well building', and the three
conditions for this are 'Commoditie, Firmenes and Delight'. The
definition of architecture deriving
first
of these relates to
fitness for
purpose, the second to the con-
and the third to that aesthetic quality which

distinguishes architecture from mere building. These conditions
may still be accepted as the three fundamental requirements of
structional aspect,
architecture.
building
may be
defined as a structure which encloses space
for the exercise of some
human activity.
It is
of course the builder's
which fulfil practically the purposes for

which they are intended. But if his work is to be more than
utilitarian and become architecture it must also possess that
abstract, aesthetic quality which resides in a work of art. A
task to design structures
functionally perfect building will not necessarily possess this,

it may do so incidentally, as can be seen from the number
of bridges, barns, mills and warehouses which succeed aesthetically
as well as functionally. Similarly, not everything that is built with
though
an aesthetic purpose achieves it.

The principal aim of this book has been to give a brief historical
account, and for this purpose both buildings and architecture are
of equal value. Both record the technical capacity of an age and
provide first-hand evidence of its social life and values. But since
the best work of all ages can be called architecture, it might be
helpful to conclude by considering briefly the aesthetics of our
subject. In any case, the student is then in a better position to
160
TWO SAINTS school:

and
Interesting relationships, varied surfaces
tent-like roof shape, in a design
both rational and imaginative
ALTON ESTATE, roehampton: The
acquisition of a large site
by a housing authority makes possible a planned environment

for a whole community. Point blocks as part of a 'mixed
development' appeared
first
in
Sweden
cwuuiMO rmMB
ip^Pii
?/^;L^^l^^-ji
;utti4
THE AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTURE

evaluate the intrinsic architectural merit of
all
buildings, past and
present.
The
art
of the architect
is
to build aesthetically.
Over and above
the objective requirements (to produce a sound and efficient

structure which is an expression of the needs of its users), he
must endeavour to satisfy the aesthetic sense by introducing those
abstract qualities of design already referred to. This he does by
using his sensibility to make a selection from the range of
elements available to him and combine them in a way that best
expresses his ideas and feelings about his theme. There is invariably a choice between alternatives - arrangements, forms,
materials - and it is here that the architect is free to exercise his
art.
All artists, whatever their media, express their intellectual and

emotional responses to their subjects by shaping their material
into an image of some kind. They take the raw material of their
experience, select from it, and organize these separate elements
until they have imposed upon them an expressive *order' or
'harmony'. In this sense every genuine work of art is an original
creation. Though historically, in techniques and materials for
example, there is progress, aesthetically there is no such concept only different kinds of achievement. This we must always remember and be careful therefore always to judge each attempt
in the light of its own intention.
Works of art are not made to comply with any pre-conceived
'rules of design', but if what are unequivocally acknowledged to
be such by the concensus of informed opinion are scrutinized,
they are seen to possess certain abstract qualities which may then
be characterized as 'principles of design'. These in architecture
give rise to specifically 'architectural values'.
As we have seen, harmony is nearly a synonym for design, and
the elements of any composition are ordered by imposing a
'pattern' upon them. To be aesthetically satisfying this pattern
must be endowed with 'unity', i.e. it must contain a dominant
theme or centre of interest (focus or climax) and all parts must be
related to the whole.
The architect does not consider the aesthetic problem as merely
a question of applying ornament to a finished scheme, but begins
at once by arranging his basic elements of plan and mass (not only
in size, but in colour, tone, texture, strength and vigour of design)
i6i
THORN house: A
reinforced concrete frame structure.
1
into a balanced composition, since 'balance'
is
a part of order. It
need not be asymmetrical composition about an axial line, but

should be free of 'duality' and have a well placed centre of
gravity somewhere in the central area. In addition to its dominant
focus the composition will probably have secondary climaxes,
and accentuations or emphases.
It has been observed how the artist creates a pattern out
of the materials of his composition. Pattern implies the repetition
of shapes, forms, lines, or combinations of these, which may be
called 'rhythm'. In architecture rhythm occurs in three-dimensional
forms such as the exterior grouping of blocks, roofs, domes,
towers and chimneys, in the projections and recessions of the eleva-
and
tions,
in the interior spaces. It also occurs in the alternation
of solids and voids and in two-dimensional surface patterning

(of a fenestration system, for example).
nize
rhythm to which we
pleasure - always providing
Whenever we recog-
instinctively respond,
it is
it
gives
us
not monotonous.
Monotony
is one of the principal faults which can occur in

avoided by introducing into the general harmony
a certain variety and relief through the quality of 'contrast', both
in the major dispositions and in the details. The major forms,
however, should be decisive, and despite contrasting elements
there should be no hesitation about them. Thus a building should
be either predominantly horizontal or vertical in its tendency and
not hover indefinitely and irritatingly betwxen the two.
In design, the relations between a part and the whole, or part
and part, are called 'proportion'. Certain relationships or ratios
are aesthetically satisfying for reasons which are not fully understood. Others, on the contrary, are distinctly uncomfortable.
Attempts were made by the Ancients and by Renaissance theorists
to find a mathematical basis for good proportion, but it does not
seem to be susceptible to a purely logical approach. What is
design. It
is
form is required in large masses, for a

obviously neither a square nor a rectangle is
disturbing to the spectator. On the other hand this kind of
definition must be handled carefully in details, since it can create
apparent
is
that decision of
shape which
more
is
centres of interest than are deliberately aimed at for the

purpose of accentuation.
'Scale' is used to refer to the size of a building and its relationship to man, the unchanging unit. Thus a large-scale building
i6z

should be
who
'in scale'
(and not 'out of
The term
scale') to
the
human
beings
sometimes to describe the

relationship between the parts and the whole in a special way, so
that a building which is a small one may yet be described as having
will use
it.
is
also used
much scale' if it is pretentiously designed, or vice versa.

Some kind of ornament to give interest to a surface or form
appears to be a psychological necessity. In architecture it may take
'too
the form of applied, non-structural, decorative motifs
or a pat-
of functional features like windows; or the enlivening

and shadow. If decorative
tern
attributes of texture, tone, colour
motifs are used they should not be naturalistic for their purpose
is
not illustrative. To harmonize with the abstract composition they

should be stylized or geometrical. They should not be too intricate or over-profuse and they should be applied to forms in
such a way as to emphasize them and not detract from their
essential character.
One cannot
consider architecture for long without coming
against the related terms of 'taste' and 'fashion'.
The
first
up
implies
Both are variable,

change from time to time by a series of reactions and are disseminated by means of the imitative instinct. But though changeable, taste should not be regarded as merely frivolous for it
provides a healthy impulse of renewal and checks stagnation. It
is both a useful index of the values of an age and of the sensibility
of an individual.
In general we may expect an architectural design to give us a
sense of stability and integrity and also to convince us of reasonable economy of means in expression. But in modern buildings
with regard to the first of these requirements, we must make due
allowance for new techniques of construction where solid walls
are replaced by relatively few points of support. In demanding
integrity we need not insist, as some extremists have done, on
discrimination, the second prevailing preferences.
absolute truthfulness in expressing the inner construction externally, since
conform
much good
to this standard.
able reason
why
it
Classical architecture does not always
(But a building should offer some accept-
should not so express
itself.)
The same
to whether the elevation should express the plan
(it is
applies
often ass-
erted that the important plan elements should be thus articulated),
or whether a building should express
design.
Economy
of means
is,
its
purpose in
of course, an attribute of
all
its
good
style.
163
ARCHITECTURE
when
Finally,
all
IN
ENGLAND
these principles have been considered in
problem remains of relating

and to its environment, whether natural or manmade in the form of other buildings. The dominant requirement
is a harmonious composition and the same basic principles apply.
respect of the individual building, the
it
^1
to
its
site
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL
Arf and
Briggs,
the Nature of Architecture (Pitman 1952).

General History of Architecture (Pitman 1962).
S.: Architecture {0. 15. V. 1947).
Briggs,
S.: Concise Encyclopaedia of Architecture
Allsop, B.:
Allsop, B.
M.
M.
Briggs, M.
S.
The Architect
in History
(Dent 1959).
(O.U.P, 1927).
Davey, N. Building in Britain (Evans 1964)

Davey, N. History of Building Materials (Phoenix 1961).
Dutton, R. The English Garden (B2Ltsford 1950).
Button, R. The English Interior (B2itsotd 1949).
Edwards, A. T. Style and Composition in Architecture (Tiranti 1945).
Fleming, J., Honour, H., & Pevsner, N. The Penguin Dictionary of
Architecture (Penguin 1966).
Fletcher, B. History of Architecture (Athlone Press 1961) (revised by
R. A. Cordingly).
Gardner, A. H. An Outline of English Architecture (Batsford 1949).
Gibberd, F. The Architecture of England {Atchito-ctutdl Press 1953).
Gloag, J.: English Furniture {A. &c C. Black 1952).
Gloag, J.: English Tradition in Architecture (A. & C. Black 1963).
Godfrey, W. H. The Story of Architecture in England, 2 vols. (Batsford
:
1928-31).
Hamlin, T. Architecture an Art for All Men (O.U.P. 1947).

Hoskins, W. G. The Making of the English Landscape (Hodder &
Stoughton 1955).
Illustrated Regional Guides of the Ministry of Works.
Jenkins, F. Architect and Patron (Durham University Publications:
O.U.P. 1961).
rchitecture (Harrap 1962).
History of English
Kidson P. & Murrary P.
Korn, A.: History Builds a Town (Lund Humphries 1953).
Le Corbusier: Towards New Architecture (Rodker 1927).
Le Corbusier: The City of Tomorrow and its Planning (Rodker 1929).
Lethaby, W. R. Architecture: An Introduction to the History and Theory
of the Art of Building (O.U.P. 3rd edition 1955) and Torm in Civilisation (O.U.P 1958).
Mumford, L. The City in History (Penguin 1966).
:
164

Muschenheim, W.
The 'Elements of the Art of Architecture (Thomas
Hudson 1956).
Patrick, M. and Tree, M.
Pevsner, N.
Career in Architecture
(Museum
&
Press 1961).
of 'England Series (Penguin 195 1, etc.).

Outline of European Architecture (Penguin 7th ed. 1963).
Pevsner, N.
Richardson, A. E. and Corfiato, H. O. The Art of Architecture (E.U.P.
'Buildings
An
1938).
History of Architecture (Batsford 1950).

Statham, H. H.
Tubbs, R. The Englishman builds (Penguin 1945).
Short Dictionary of Architecture (Allen
Ware, O, and Batty, B.
:
&
Unwin
1953).
Waterhouse, P. L.
and Cordingly, R. A.: The Story of Architecture

(Batsford 1950).
Williams-Ellis, C. and A.: The 'Pleasures of Architecture (Cape 1954).
THE ENGLISH HOUSE

Addy,
Barley,
O.
S.
&
The Evolution of the English House (Allen

Unwin 1933).
English Farmhouse and Cottage (Routledge
Kegan
&
M. W. The
:
Paul
961).
M. W.: The House and the Home (Vista Books 1963).

W. C. Public Authority Housing (fi2itsiotdi 1958).
Boumphrey, G. Your House and Mine (Allen & Unwin 1938).
Barley,
Barr, A.
Braun, H. The Story of the English House (Batsford 1940).

Button, R. The English Country House (Batsford 1949).
Gloag, J.: The Englishman's Castle {^ytt & Spottiswoode 1949).
Gotch, J. A.: The Growth of the English House (Batsford 1928).
Hole, C. English Home Eife (Batsford 1947).
Hussey, C. English Country Houses ly 1^-1840^ 3 vols. (Country Life
:
1955-7)Jones, S. R. English Village Ho/^^j (Batsford 1948).

Lloyd, N.
History of the English House (Architectural Press 193 1).
Pidgeon, M. and Crosby, T. An Antholog)j <?/ Ho/zj-^j (Batsford i960).
:
Turnor, R.
The Smaller English House ij 00-19 ^9 (Batsford 1952).
TOWN PLANNING
Briggs,
M.
Cullen, G.
Town and Country Planning {KW.tn
S.:
:
To;^;/j-f^^^
&
Unwin
1948).
(Architectural Press 1962).
Gibberd, F. Town D^j/g/? (Architectural Press 1953).

Hiorns, F. R. Town Building in History (Harrap i960).
:
Howard, E. Garden
:
Jellicoe,
Cities of
G. A.: Motopia
Tomorrow (Faber 1946).
{Studiio 1961).
Nairn, Ian: O/z/r^^^ (Architectural Press 1955).

Nairn, Ian: Counter Attack (Architectural Press 1957).
Sharp, T. Anatomy of the Village (Penguin 1946).
Sharp, T.: English Panorama (Architectural Press 1950).
:
165
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND
THE HISTORICAL STYLES OF

ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE
-
43
45- 450
450-1066
1066-1190
1190-1290
1290-1375
1375-1485
1485-1558
1558-1603
1603-1625
1625-1702
1695-1725
I 720-1 760
1760-1800
1810-1837
1837-1901
1901-1910
Prehistoric
Roman
Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Norman
Romanesque 450-1190
Early English
Decorated
Perpendicular
Gothic
190-1485
Tudor
Elizabethan
Jacobean
Renaissance
15
58-1702
Stuart
Baroque
Palladian
Adam
Georgian 1702-183 7
Regency
Victorian
Edwardian
These dates give a convenient classification though to some extent the styles
overlap the periods. The term 'Palladian' is also applied to the
work of
Inigo
Jones in the seventeenth century. 'Queen Anne'' strictly describes the domestic
architecture of Queen
to include
work of the
Anne's
to signify 'ecrrly Georgian*.
166
reign,
1702-14; but
it
can be used more loosely
last fifteen years of the seventeenth century, or alternatively
MAINLY PRE
DISTRIBUTION
19th
CENT.
MAP OF
GEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
HAS C0NTRI3UTED TO A
LOCAL
VARIETY OF LOCAL STYLES
BUILDING
MATERIALS
CAEN STONE
FRr>^^ woRM*.NDy
[WfTE R TRAN S POB.T
r^rn
tl
V4AeJ> AJÎENT ROCKS

-^\ JURASSIC UWÊSrOMEo
n OMALK^
!Vi
PORTANTI/
GRANITES HARD SA^NX^STONES
OOUTGS YIELD EXCELUENT
WEATHERS poCR-UV BUT CONTAINS fLINT USED
SOAAE lA/NPOPTANT QJJARR.1E3.
167
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Abutment solid masonry resisting
Acanthus conventionalized leaf in
:
lateral pressure.
Classical decoration.
Aesthetics: philosophy of art; Aesthetic: relation to the perception

of beauty.
Aisle lower division of a church or basilica parallel to the higher nave,
:
from which it is divided by pillars.

Alure passage behind a parapet.
Ambulatory: aisle round an apse or circular building or across the
east end of a church.
choir, or transept,
:
Amorini figures of cupids.

Amphitheatre an oval or elliptical building with an arena surrounded
:
by
tiers
Apse
of
seats.
semicircular or polygonal end of a church or side chapel.
Arcade sequence of arches on columns or pillars.

Architrave bottom member of an entablature.
Attic low storey above a main cornice.
Auditorium part of a building occupied by an audience.
:
Bailey external wall or internal court of a castle.

Balustrade row of balusters supporting a coping.
Barbican: outwork or detached feature protecting the approach to
:
a castle.
Barge-boarding inclined boards, often ornamented,

:
fixed beneath the
eaves of a gable.
arched stone covering running the length of a building

and unbroken by cross-vaults.
Basilica hall or church with aisles and a nave higher than the aisles.
Batter slight inward inclination of a wall from the base upwards.
Bay vertical unit of a wall or fa9ade; also compartment of a nave.
Berm ledge between ditch and parapet base in fortification.
Blind Storey triforium.
Boss keystone at the intersection of vault ribs.
Broach: half-pyramid of masonry used to join an octagonal spire to
Barrel- vault
a square tower.
Burh Anglo-Saxon
:
Buttress
fortified place, a
thrust or stiffening a wall.
masonry
i68
Flying Buttress: an arched prop of
resisting the lateral pressure of a wall.
Calefactory
Canopy:
town.
projecting vertical mass of masonry resisting an outward
warming room
in a monastery.
roof-like projection over a
window
or door.
GLOSSARY
Cantilever: projecting beam held down at the wall end by the superincumbent weight or in some other way.
Capital moulded or carved top of a column.
Carrel small bay or enclosure for study.
Caryatid sculptured figure used as a support.
:
Castellum small Roman

:
Cella
fort of
central portion of a
Chamfer
about
Roman
five acres.
temple.
bevelled edge.
Chancel eastern part of a church reserved for clergy and choir.

Channelling grooving on a surface.
Chapter House: where the governing body of a monastery or
:
cathedral meet.
Choir portion of a church set aside for clergy and choir, divided off
from the rest by a screen.
Cladding thin external wall covering (bearing no load) over a hidden
:
structure of steel or reinforced concrete.
upper part of a nave with windows above the aisle roof.

formed by an apse surrounded
aisle off which chapels open.
Cloister: covered walk in a monastery or college, usually arranged
round the sides of a square grass plot or 'garth'.
Cob mixture of clay and chopped straw formerly used for walling
in Devon and Dorset.
Coffering panels sunk deeply into the surface of a ceiling.
Coping capping on top of a wall.
Corbel: projecting stone bracket. Corbelling: a series of corbels
extending progressively further forward, one above the other.
Cornice: projecting upper portion of an entablature or any projecting
Clerestory
Chevet
by an
eastern termination of a church
top course.
Corps de Logis
principal block at the centre of a great Renaissance

house with spreading symmetrical wings.
Cottage Ome sophisticated Regency cottage deliberately designed to
appear picturesque and quaint.
Cove broad concave moulding between a ceiling and a wall.
Crenellation battlements.
Crocket curved, leaf-like ornament in Gothic architecture.
:
Cruciform cross-shaped.
Crucks (Cricks): curved timbers used
:
in primitive
timber-framed
construction.
Culvert underground channel.

Curtain Wall: wall between two towers or bastions in fortification.
In modern architecture Curtain Walling is another term for
:
'cladding'.
169
GLOSSARY
Cusp
point between the small arcs of trefoil and quatrefoil tracery.

Dais platform at the end of a hall.
Diaper geometrical or floral surface pattern.
Dome: convex roof, approximately hemispherical. A Saucer Dome
:
has a
curve.
flat
Domus Roman town
house.
Donjon: castle keep.

Doorcase wooden framework
into which a door fits.

Dorter sleeping quarters of a monastery.
Dressings blocks of smooth stone used as quoins or frames for doors
or windows.
Dripstone projecting moulding to throw ofl" rainwater from openings.
Drum circular or polygonal structure on which a dome is raised.
Eclectic of a style selecting elements from a variety of sources.
Embrasure open portion of a battlement.
Entablature horizontal top part of a Classical order. It consists of
architrave, frieze, and cornice, and is supported by columns.
Fa9ade face or front of a building.
Fanlight oblong or semicircular light over a door.
Fenestration arrangement of windows in a fagade.
Finial ornamental top part of a spire or pinnacle.
Fluting vertical channelling on the shaft of a column.
Footings projecting courses at the base of a wall.
Forebuilding structure protecting the entrance to a keep.
Forum central open space in a Roman town, surrounded by public
:
buildings.
Fosse
wet or dry ditch or moat, the upcast forming
a rampart.
timber-frame construction; now
construction where loads are carried entirely by stanchions and
girders of steel or reinforced concrete.
Frater refectory of a monastery.
Frieze middle member of an entablature or, in a room, space between
:
Frame Construction:
historically,
top of the panelling and the cornice or ceiling.

Gable vertical, triangular portion of a wall at the end of a ridged
:
roof.
Cablet
little
gable on a buttress.
another name for the tribune.

Garden City: planned settlement combining town and country in
accordance with the ideas of Ebenezer Howard.
Gallery
Garderobe privy in the wall of a castle.

Greek Cross cross with all four arms of equal
Groin edge formed by intersecting vaults.
:
length.
Herm
a
quadrangular
head or bust.
170
pillar
broadening upwards and surmounted by
THE
R.N. BOATSTORE, SHEERNESSi Engineering architecture.
mid-Victorian iron-framed building anticipating the 20th century
LATE 1 9TH-CENTURYMASS housing: Though this

a physical
makes
improvement
in
its
day,
a striking contrast with the
its
harsh
represented
monotony
housing scheme in Plate 17
U.-W
..,^. . , ,:-y-^
.
ip-
jq
^y^
Tzr^
HSEt-c"
NORNEY grange: A
housc of C. F. A. Voysey exempiitying the

and Crafts' style
free traditionalism of his 'Arts
COVENTRY NEW TOWN: Modem

effect is in the
vernacular.
The
English tradition of the Picturesque
'village green'
.;<-*;
GLOSSARY
Hotel large French town house.
Hypocaust: chamber below ground
:
level heated
Roman system of heating a building

Roman tenement-like living block.
furnace.
Insula
Jamb
Jetty
Keep
by hot
air
from
or important room.
vertical part of the masonry of a door or window.

overhanging storey.
inner tower of a casde, usually the principal one.
Label see dripstone.

Lancet tall narrow window with a sharply pointed head.
Lantern: small structure, open or glazed, crowning a dome or
Latin Cross cross with one of the four arms elongated.
:
roof.
Lierne
decorative rib in a Gothic vault wliich does not spring
from
the wâll or touch the central boss.
Light division of
:
Locutorium room
:
window.
in a
monastery where conversation was permitted
for certain purposes.
Loggia covered
:
Loop
gallery
behind an open arcade or colonnade.
'arrow-slit' in fortification.
Louvre
ventilator in a roof or wall, usually slatted.
Machicolations floor openings in a stone parapet.

Maisonette one storey of a small two-storey house accommodating
two families, one above the other.
Mausoleum ma2:nificent tomb.
Megalithic made of large stones.
Merlon soHd portion of a battlement.
Metope panel between triglyphs.
Module: measure of proportion by which the parts of a Classical
:
building are regulated; in
which
modern
practice a convenient unit
the dimensions of a building and
all
its
components
for economy and ease of construction.

Motte mound on which the wooden tower of an
was built.
:
Moulding continuous ornamental

:
lines
early
upon
are based
Norman
castle
of grooving or projections.
Mullion vertical division between lights of a window.

Narthex porch in front of the nave and aisles of a church.
:
Nave
church west of the chancel arch or croswith or without side aisles.

Niche ornamental recess in a wall.
Nogging brickwork in a timber frame.
central division of a
sing,
Obelisk
Offset
tall,
tapering, square shaft.
sloping ledge
on
of a stage.
convex, then concave.
a buttress at the recession
Ogee: arch of double curvature;

Order in Classical architecture,
first
column
(consisting of base, shaft.
171
GLOSSARY
and
capital)
with the entablature it supports. In medieval archian arch.
tecture, a ring of voussoirs in
Oriel:
window
Overdoor
projecting
from
a wall surface
by corbelling.
small pediment over a door.
Pargetting exterior plasterwork, usually patterned.

Pavilion: projection feature at the end of a Classical fagade or ornamental building.
Pediment triangular end of the moderately pitched roof of a Classical
building, above the top of the entablature or cornice. A similar
form used over door or window openings, sometimes segmental.
Pele Tower border keep, usually sixteenth century.
Pent-roofed with a lean-to roof.
Peristyle colonnade round a building or courtyard.
Piano Nobile: principal floor of a large house raised one storey
above ground level.
Piazza: formal open space or square surrounded by buildings in a
town.
Pier soHd support of a pair of arches of an arcade.
Pilaster: rectangular column usually engaged with the wall but
:
projecting from it.

Pinnacle tapering termination of
Pitch inclination of a roof.
:
a vertical form.
Plinth: projecting base of a building or column.

platform on which a building is raised or lowest stage of a
Podium
column
pedestal.
Portcullis
vertically sliding grid designed to obstruct a castle en-
trance.
Portico: roofed space, open on at least one side, and enclosed by a

range of columns supporting the roof.
Porticus north or south porch of a Saxon church.
:
Postern: concealed exit from a castle; a sally-port.

Prefabrication manufacture of components beforehand for assembly
:
on
site.
Presbytery eastern part of the chancel beyond the choir.

Quatrefoil: circular or square opening having four 'foils' separated by
:
'cusps'.
Trefoil has three
foils.
Quoins corner stones at the angle of

Refectory: communal dining-hall.
:
a building.
Reinforced Concrete (ferro-concrete) concrete, the tensile strength

of which has been greatly increased by embedding it in steel rods
and mesh.
Respond half-pillar attached to a wall and supporting an arch.
:
Rib stone arch on

:
the groin or surface of a vault.
GLOSSARY
Roundel
decorative disc or medallion.
Rustication stonework of large freestone blocks (rough or smooth)

with recessed joints.
Solar medieval chamber on an upper floor.
Spandrel triangular space between the curve of an arch and a rect:
angle enclosing
it.
lower stones of an arch or vault.

Spur: projecting stonework at the base of an angle designed to
Springers
protect
it.
Strapwork ornament composed of interlacing bands or straps.

String-course: projecting horizontal band along a wall.
Stucco plaster applied to a wall or ceiling surface usually moulded
decoratively when used internally or smoothed and painted ex:
ternally.
Swag
festoon of fruit, flowers, and foliage.

Terracotta burnt-clay product harder than brick.
Tessellated of flooring made of mosaic. Tesserae cubes of mosaic.
Tierceron rib of a Gothic vault inserted between the transverse and
diagonal ribs.
Tile Hanging overlapping tiles hung vertically.
Tracery: intersecting bars of moulded stone forming patterns in
Gothic windows.
Transept either arm of the tranverse part of a cruciform church.
Transom horizontal division between the hghts of a window.
Tribune corridor above the aisles with open arches to the nave side.
Triforium space formed between the aisle roof and the aisle vault.
Triglyph vertical grooved member of a Doric frieze.
Tympanum space between the lintel and an arch above.
Undercroft vaulted basement.
:
Vallum:
rampart.
Vault arched covering of stone.

Vernacular Architecture: building in the native provincial idiom
unaffected by fashionable or learned taste.
Villa: Roman country house; recently a detached suburban house.
Volute: scroll.
Voussoir wedge-shaped block forming part of an arch.
Waggon roof: an arched braced roof lined with boarding.
Wainscoting covering of walls with boards of wood.
Wattle and Daub vertical covering of interlacing twigs (or 'wattles')
:
plastered with clay (or *daub').
Weather-boarding:
exterior
covering
of overlapping,
horizontal
boards.
Web
panel of a vault.
173
INDEX
Abingdon Town Hall, 99
Adam, Robert, no, 116, 112,
124,
126
11
St.
Adelphi
terrace, 116
Alberti,
Leone
Castle
Castle
Battista, 71
All Souls College, Oxford, 113

Alton Estate West, Roehampton,
154-5
Barrington Court, 63
Barry, Charles, 127-8
Basevi, George, 127
Bath, 16-17, 86j ii<^
Prior Park, 107, 109
Queen Square, 116
Royal Crescent, 1 1 6-
Hall, 74
Cockerell, Charles, 127
Colchester, 16
Coleshill House, 87-8
Conway
Castle, 46
Thomas, 127
Customs house. King's Lynn, 96
Cubitt,
Diocletian's Palace, Spalato,
Blenheim Palace, 104, 113

BlickHng Hall, 77
Durham
no
Cathedral, 33-4, 45, 61
Earl's Barton church, 29, 30
Bodiam Castle, 49
Bolton Castle, 49
Ely Cathedral, 48
Boothby Pagnall manor house, 39

Bournville, 136
Flint Castle, 47
Folkestone,
Bradford-on-Avon church, 27
Bramante, Donato, 71, 85
villa,
20
Garnier, Tony, 145

Garston, Building Research Sta-
Pavilion, 124
Bristol Cathedral, 57
Brixworth church, 28
tion, 156
Glasgow Art School, 139
'Capability', 109
Brunei, Isambard K., 130-1

Brunelleschi, Filippo, 71
factor}^,
Roman
Fonthill, 113
Brighton, 122
1 5
Burlington, Lord, 107

Butterfield, WiUiam, 128
Cambridge, Caius College, 72

King's College Chapel, 57, 61
Trinity College, 79
Trinity College Library, 88
Camden Society, 128
174
Central Station, Manchester, 131

Chambers, William, no, 113
Cheltenham, 122
Chester, 14, 22
Chollerford, 22
Chysauster, iron age village, 1
130
Berkhamsted Castle, 36
Birmingham Town Hall, 126
Brynmawr, rubber
Burgundy, 43
3 5
Howard, 104-5
Cobham
Behrens, Peter, 145

Belton House, 96
Benedictines, 59-60
Brown, Lancelot
Pancras, 27
Acre Priory,
Cistercians, 59-60
Clifton suspension bridge, Bristol,
Bauhaus, 145
Beaumaris Castle, 46
Campbell, Colen, 107

Canterbury Cathedral, 45, 50
Gloucester Cathedral, 50
Greenstead church, 26
Gropius, Walter, 145
Guildhall, Worcester, 99
Hadrian's Wall, 22-3
Hardwick Hall, 73-4

Harlow, 154
Hatfield House, 77
Hawksmoor, Nicholas,
Herland, Hugh, 56
Hertfordshire schools,
Holkham House, 107
102-3, 113
1 5
2-3
INDEX
Holmwood,
125
Housesteads,
He de France,
Roman
fort, 22
43
Lindsay House, 86
Scotland Yard, 1 3 8
Paddington Station, 131
New
Peter Jones' store, 151
Jones, Inigo, 77, 83-9, 93, 106,
Queen's House, Greenwich,

84, 86
Keble College Chapel, Oxford,

128
Kedelston Hall, 107-8, no

Kent, William, 107, 109
King's College Chapel, Cambridge, 57, 61
King's Lynn, Custom House, 96

Kirby Hall, 74
Knott, Ralph, 143
Reform Club, 127

Regent's Park, 86, 116, 124
Red House, Bexleyheath,
132
St.
Bride's, Fleet Street, 91
St.
John's Chapel,
London,
Tower of
33
Katherine's dock, warehouses, 130
St.
St.
Martin Ludgate, 91
Leamington, 122
St.
Le Corbusier, 145-6
Le Notre, Andre 109
Leoni, Giacomo, 107
Letch worth Garden City, 137-8,
St.
Mary at Hill, 91
Mary le Bow, 91
Mary Woolnoth,
St.
St.
St.
103
Pancras Hotel, 128

Paul's Cathedral, 88-91
Paul's, Covent Garden,

85-6
St. Stephen Walbrook, 92
144
Liverpool, St. George's Hall, 126
Loire valley, 72
St.
London
Selfridge's store, 143, 152

Soane Museum, 125
Banqueting House, Whitehall, 82,
84-5
Bedford Park, Chiswick, 138

Belgravia, 127
Blackheath, 113
British Museum, 126
Buckingham Palace, 124
Chiswick House, 107

Christchurch, Spitalfields, 103
County Hall, 143

Covent Garden, 85-6, 115
Somerset House, no
South Bank Exhibition, 154
Traveller's Club, 127
Westminster Abbey, 48, 57

Westminster Hall, 56
London and Wise, 109
Lumley Castle, 49
Lutyens, Edwin, 143
Lyme Hall, 107
Lyminge, Robert, 77
Crystal Palace, 130-1
Eltham Lodge, 93
Euston Arch, 127
Fenton House, Hampstead,
94
Greenwich Hospital, 10
Hampstead garden suburb,
138, 144
Hampton Court
Henry VII's
Palace, 61-2
chapel,
West-
minster, 61
Houses of Parliament, 128
Mackintosh, Charles R., 139
Maiden Castle, hill fort,

Malmesbury Abbey, 3 5
Manchester, Central Station,

March church, 56
1 3
May, Hugh, 93
Mereworth Castle, 107
Michelangelo, 71
Middlesex schools, 152
Menai suspension bridge, 150
Monkwearmouth
church, 27
175
INDEX
Montacute House, 72
Morris, William, 152,
45
Nash, John, 116, 124

Norwich, MunicipalBuildings, 144
Nottinghamshire schools, 1 5 2
Osterley Park,
Oxburgh
no
Hall, 50
Oxford, All Souls College, 1 1

Keble College chapel, 128
Paine, James, 107
Palladio, Andrea, 71, 106-7
Paxton, Joseph, 130-1

Pearson, John L., 128
Penshurst Place, 50
Perrault, Claude, 90
Perret, Auguste, 145
Port SunHght, 136
Pratt, Roger, 87
Pre-Raphaelites, 128
Prince's Street, Lothbury, 125
Prior Park, 107, 109
Pugin, Augustus W., 127-8

Raphael, 85
Red House,
Spalato, Diocletian's Palace,
Stokesay Castle, 48
Stonehenge, 9
Strasbourg Cathedral,
Strawberry Hill, 1 1
Castle, 36
Ruskin, John, 132, 156
Sullivan, Louis, 145
Thomas, 150
Temple Newsam, 78
Thorpe Hall, 87
Telford,
Trinity College, Cambridge, 79

Trinity College Library, Cambridge, 88
Truro Cathedral, 128
Vanbrugh, John, 103-5, 113

Versailles, Palace of, 104, 109
Verulamium (St. Albans),

Vignola, Giacomo, 71
George's Hall, Liverpool, 126

Pancras, Canterbury, 27
St. Peter's,
Rome, 90
Salisbur}^ Cathedral, 57
Saltaire, Shipley, 136
Salvin,
14, 18
Villa Rotonda, 107

Vitruvius, 71, 107, 160
Voysey, Charles F. A., 137, 139,
Walpole, Robert, 1 1
Webb, John, 87, 93
Webb, Phihp, 132
Wells Cathedral, 57
Welwyn Garden
Wilton House,
Windsor
St.
143-4
Rickman, Thomas, 45
R.N. Boatstore, Sheerness, 151
Roche Abbey, 45
St.
no
Bexleyheath, 152
Rhineland, 26, 28
Richmond
Smirke, Robert, 126

Smithson, Robert, 74
Soane, John, 124
Anthony, 129
Scott, Gilbert, 128
Seaton Delaval, 1
Selby Abbey, 48
City, 138, 144

5
Castle, 38
Wollaton Hall, 73-4
Wood, John, 107, 116

Wood, John the Younger, 16-17
1
Worcester, Guildhall, 99
Wotton, Henry, 160
Wren, Christopher, 88-90, 92-3,
101-2, 144
Wright, Frank Lloyd, 145
Wyatt, James, 1 1
Serlio, Sebastiano, 86
Shaw, Norman, 138, 143-4

Sheerness, R.N. boatstore, 151
Silch ester, 14-15, 21
Skara Brae, 9
7.
176
Yeavering, Saxon township, 26

Yevele, Henry, 50
York, 14, 22
York Minster, 49, 57
i^

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nm inii iup Hjs

liifR mil fiiir iiiii iiiii iiiiiiiiit 1

DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR

KERSTING, ERIC DE MARE & OTHEP

a concise survey of architectural

cultural trends of the time.

bibliography covering each

the end of each chapter.

important feature of the book

use of attractive line-drawings,

many of which the reader will be

For this second edition the text has

prehistoric times to the present day.

DOVER castle: The

twelfth-centun^ keep rises above the

bailey walls with their gatehouse

and mural towers

DAVID McKAY COMPANY INC

Jane and Nicholas

First published 1963

DAVID McKAY COMPANY,

Great Britain for the

Limited, London, Reading and Falcenham

to architecture are several, but one of the

aesthetic aspects in an evolutionary study of exceptional interest

been neglected for

at last receiving attention as

and economic history, but it

concern of the historian.

looking for a less traditionally academic approach to history

building subjects. After

where there are craft courses in

socially useful function.

text gives adequate coverage of the essential facts for a

both student and

from the bondage of note-taking so that the often hmited

preceded by a note on the political, economic,

history of the period;

context each chapter

select bibliography {except for chapters three

monuments - chambered barrows -

Anglo-Saxon: timber construction -

Northumbrian churches - Brixworth - Early Saxon carving

Gothic: origins -features

Early English: concentric

analysis of the structural system

Decorated: quadrangular castles -pele towers -fourteenth-century

Gothic Church Plans: evolution ofparish church plans - cathedral

Medieval Building Industry

Timber Framing: crick

- country houses - plans - elevations interiors - ornament

Renaissance: the new Classicism

works - town planning seventeenth-century house - Webb and Pratt

Inigo Jones: chief

- plan for Eondon - English

Queen Anne" house

Adam and the Adam style - 'Gothick^ - the

~ Neo-Renaissance - Gothic revival new

Kevivalism Continues: Edwardian Baroque and Neo-Classic

Domestic Architecture: Vojsej and

Tudor suburbs - Neo-Georgian

Abroad: Sullivan and Wright - Gropius and