Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter I – Romanesque

Saxon: Houses. Churches. Quality of work. Belfries. Quoins. Doors and windows. Columns. Arches. Vaults. Patterns in stone on walls. Methods of construction.
Norman: Great amount of building done. Construction. Walls, wall-arcades, corbel-tables. Buttresses. Doors. Windows. Columns, capitals. Arches. Vaults. Mouldings, enrichments. Sculpture. Roofs.
Transition: Character. Change from round arches to pointed. Effect of the change on vaulting.

Chapter II – Gothic

Early English: King Henry III. Contrast with Norman. Quality of masonry. Windows. Doors. Buttresses. Columns. Capitals, foliage. Bases. Annulets. Arches. Mouldings. Vaulting. Roofs.
Decorated: The development of tracery, geometrical, flowing. Foliage. Columns. Mouldings. Ogee-arches. Vaults. Roofs.
Perpendicular: Reduction of wall surface. Windows. Doorways. Buttresses. Columns. Arches, mouldings. Foliage. Enrichments. Panelling in stonework. Vaulting. Roofs.

Chapter III – Renaissance

Tudor: Condition of Gothic. Henry VIII.: Gothic with Italian details. Elizabeth: The Germans and Flemings. Gothic traditions, gables, chimneys, etc. Doors and windows. Roofs and ceilings. Tapestry and panelling. Mouldings. Timber buildings. Character of Tudor work.
Stuart: Inigo Jones, Whitehall. The Orders, Greek and Roman, subdivisions of an Order. Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan and Composite. Use by the Italians. Arches. Vaulting. Windows and doorways. Mouldings. Ceilings. Roofs. Panelling. Continuance of Gothic and revival under Laud. Wren, the Fire, St. Paul's, City churches, character of Wren's work.
Hanoverian: Wren's successors. The amateurs, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. Gibbs. The Country House. Campbell, Ripley, Kent, and others. The brothers Adam. Paine and others. Chambers, Gandon, and Dance.

Chapter IV – Churches

Origin of English church plan. Basilican plan, origin, earliest buildings, Romano-British church. St. Augustine's mission, orientation, early Saxon churches, the cross-plan. Celtic plan, Irish church. Union of Celtic and Basilican plans.
Norman Conquest, Norman plans for great churches, modifications by the English. Size of Norman churches and influence on subsequent work. The apse, the enlarged presbytery, the choir and pulpitum.
The parish church. The Norman building. Later history illustrating social history. Growth of the building. Description of the parish church previous to the Reformation.
Changes made at the Reformation. Laud. The Commonwealth. Subsequent history. Parish Registers. Goods kept in churches.

Chapter V – Monasteries

The Benedictines: church, cloister, chapter-house, dormitory, frater, guest-house, infirmary.
Cluniacs. Cistercians. Carthusians. Augustinian Canons. Gilbertines. Friars. Templars. Hospitals.

Chapter VI – Houses

Norman houses. Thirteenth century. Edward I.: typical plan, growth of house, courtyards, gradual improvement.
Shops, Tudor houses, changes in plan. Inns, play-acting. Inigo Jones. Eighteenth century.

Chapter VII – Conclusion

French and English, apse, proportions. Summary of history. Local varieties of style and workmanship.

Appendix I

Chronological list of Buildings and Architects

Appendix II

The Periods of English Architecture

Appendix III

Religious Orders in England at the time of Henry VIII.

Glossary

List of Illustrations

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Introduction (part)

     The subject of English Architecture is so large that it will be necessary to confine the following sketch strictly within the limits – both geographical and chronological – imposed by the term. It will be impossible to attempt a review of Scottish architecture, with its strong national character and piquant French flavour, or of the art of Ireland, which in early days passed through a phase so interesting and far-reaching in its effects. So too with the work of our own country previous to Saxon times. The mighty structures of the Britons, still shrouded in mystery, and the elaborate buildings of the Romans about which we are now learning so much, are connected by so slight a thread with all that followed that the break may, for our present purpose, be considered as absolute.
     It has been common to divide English medieval architecture into several distinct styles. But this is in many respects unfortunate, and, indeed, the very use of the word style, except as applied to the great periods, such as Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance, is apt to be misleading. The terms Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular are now too well established to be disregarded, but their use, if it does not actually convey an idea of definite breaks in the continuity of the art, at least suggests very rapid change from one style to another through short periods of transition. This, however, was not so. Medieval architecture was always in a period of transition. It was an unwritten law based solely upon precedent, a purely traditional art learned only at the bench, and as such it was continually advancing.
     With the Renaissance the case is somewhat different. That period was not, as regards architecture, one of growth and development of at all the same kind as were the Middle Ages, neither was the art in its earlier phases vernacular in the same sense that medieval art had been. Though Renaissance architecture gave as great opportunities for variety of treatment and for originality of the highest order, its progress and development were modified by the fact that the forms in which it was expressed had become in a great degree stereotyped. New combinations and new themes were always open to the artist, but the language in which he expressed himself was scarcely so flexible as the medieval tongue; for our Renaissance architecture was based on that of the Italian masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who took as their models the architecture of ancient Rome, which in its turn had been derived from that of Athens. That is as far as the pedigree has been traced with certainty. Greek architecture as we know it – the architecture of the great period of Greek art – was perhaps itself a renaissance, a revival of types which had had their period of struggle and growth in some still buried past. When we first meet Greek architecture it is full blown. Further refinements of extraordinary subtlety were yet to be made, but the types or orders are fixed, and are deliberately adopted. The style, eclectic and perhaps exotic, is quite developed, and requires only that perfecting for which the genius of the Greek was so eminently fitted. From the types which he perfected no serious departure has ever been made.
     Besides this contrast between the rapid growth of the Western style and the unvarying types of the East, there is the great change in the conditions under which English architecture was produced after the coming of Inigo Jones. In a work of the Middle Ages much was left to the initiative and traditional methods of the craftsmen.

"For in the lond ther was no crafty man
 That geometrye or arsmetrike kan,
 Ne portreyour, ne kervere of ymages,
 That Theseus ne yaf hem mete and wages
 The theatre for to maken and devyse."

But from the beginning of the seventeenth century architecture was a matter for architects.
     These facts become apparent as the narrative proceeds, and involve a different treatment of the subject. In the Middle Ages there is incessant change of form in every detail, but the personal element, or at least any proper name, is almost invariably absent. Since Renaissance times the change in details may be told in a few lines, and history is apt to become a purely critical review with a list of architects and their works.
     The manner of Inigo Jones and of Wren did, however, in course of time become traditional, and many are the seventeenth and eighteenth century houses, the work evidently of the local builder, which we of to-day would fain copy to the best of our ability. Meanwhile the work of the architects deteriorated from various causes till it reached such a pompous dullness combined with inanity of decoration as to make the Gothic Revival inevitable. It is in this connection that the half-prophetic remark of Campbell, in his Vitruvius Britannicus (written in 1715), becomes of interest. Speaking of the state of architecture in Italy, he says: "With him [Palladio] the great manner and exquisite Taste of Building is lost; for the Italians can no more now relish the Antique Simplicity, but are entirely employed in capricious Ornaments, which must at last end in the Gothic. The capricious ornaments which, soon after this was written, began to appear in English architecture, did at last end in the Gothic Revival with all its strange productions.
     One result of this extraordinary movement has been the "restoration" of our medieval buildings. It is impossible to leave this subject without a protest against the mutilation which too often passes under the name.
     There can never be absolute agreement on the treatment of old buildings, any more than on any other question; but the general opinion among those who have given most attention to the subject is becoming more and more in favour of a very strong conservatism, and is slowly, very slowly, leavening the lump of public opinion. We are still living in an age (for indeed hardly a decade has passed) which saw the destruction of great quantities of fifteenth-century work in one of our noblest buildings to make room for modern reproductions of the original Norman and Early English; while in another case it was seriously proposed to pull down a building by Wren in order to replace it by one of modem Gothic. The Jacobean Communion table and the Georgian font, sanctified by the devotion of generations, are even now condemned as unsuitable. This is, of course, restoration in its crudest form, but it is still far from uncommon.

Houses (part)

     Our earliest domestic buildings date from the twelfth century. After the Conquest stone was more commonly used, and consequently several houses of the Norman period have been preserved to us. The stone-built houses in the towns which still remain appear to have belonged in most cases to Jews, the rich men of the period, and a class which must often have found it necessary to have a house that was capable of defence. The best known are those at Lincoln, in which the principal rooms are on the upper floor. It was a common plan, both in private houses and in the secular buildings of monasteries, to reserve the ground floor for offices and storerooms, and to cover it with a stone vault, supported on a row of columns running down the middle of the building; the living-rooms were placed above, and were sometimes reached by an outside staircase only. In some of the larger houses the hall was on the ground floor, and was divided by arches into a nave and aisles like a church. Westminster Hall, built by William II., was thus divided originally. Probably the columns were often of wood, like those in the Bishop's Palace at Hereford.
      Whether the hall was above or below stairs, it occupied the greater part of the house. Hence the application of the word Hall in very early times to the whole house. The only other rooms were a cellar at one end of the hall with a room over it and at the other end of the hall the kitchen offices.

     Little building was done in the first half of the thirteenth century, but in the latter part houses improved considerably, and the typical manor-house was then gradually developed. The same general arrangement was followed, but there was an advance in refinement and comfort and in the quality of the workmanship. Fireplaces became more common. Glass windows were still almost unknown, even in the king's own houses. The medieval story of King Arthur tells how "there befell a marvellous adventure, that all the doors and the windows of the palace shut by themselves; but for all that the hall was not greatly darkened, and therewith they were all abashed both one and another." [Sir Thomas Malory] Here to close a shutter is thought of as closing a window.
      It is in the reign of Edward I. that we see the gradual development of the well-known medieval plan, which continued with but little change in its essentials till the time of Elizabeth. The medieval house consisted of a hall going the whole height of the building, with a wing of two storeys at each end. The hall had an open timber roof, and usually a central hearth. It was lighted from both sides, and on each side there was a door at the "lower" end, which was that nearest to the kitchen. The "upper" end of the hall was raised a step to form a dais for the high-table, which stretched across the hall, while the tables for the retainers ran down the sides. To check the draughts from the doors, short screens, called "spurs," were projected from each of the side walls; afterwards a third screen was placed between them, leaving two intervals, which may perhaps have been hung with curtains; then the passage between the doors, which itself came to be called the screens, was ceiled over and thus a gallery was formed; finally the intervals between the three screens were fitted with doors. The bay, or oriel window, as we call it, is another development of later times; it formed a convenient retired comer when houses had so few rooms. For plans see Figs. 94, 156 (palace), 161, 163, 168.
     The ground-floor room at the upper end of the hall was often a sort of storeroom or cellar; over it there was the chamber or "solar," the private sitting-room and bedroom of the family, to which they could retire after supper, leaving the hall to the servants. The room commanded a view of the hall through a small loophole. It had a fireplace with a projecting hood or mantel (whence our term mantelpiece) carried on corbels and sloping back to the wall. The window recesses were continued down nearly to the floor to form seats. [Figs. 160, 161]
      Large houses had a private chapel adjoining or near to the solar. In some cases a gallery extended over part of the chapel for the accommodation of the family, while the retainers sat below. [Fig. 162]

     Returning to the lower end of the hall: the end wall, beyond the screens, contained two doors, one opening into the buttery (the "butlery"), the other into a passage leading to the kitchen and larder; frequently there was a third door to the pantry, where bread, butter, etc., were served out. The larder retained its importance till quite recent times, owing to the necessity of larding down large quantities of meat for the winter, while the beasts were still fat. The rooms over the offices were probably bedrooms for women-servants, the men sleeping, as of old, in the hall.

     The house was gradually enlarged by adding room to room, especially by extending laterally the wings at each end of the hall. In course of time this led to the formation of a courtyard surrounded by buildings, and sometimes of two courts, one on each side of the hall. From these three stages of development – the central hall with a projecting wing at each end, the single court, and the double court – the normal plan of later times was derived. The smaller houses, of course, continued the simple primitive arrangement more or less, according to circumstances. They were almost always of timber, as indeed were most of the larger houses except in districts where stone was the more easily obtainable. The overhanging of the upper storey was, perhaps, an idea borrowed from the towns, where land was valuable, but it is a method of construction very suitable to timber, and also affords protection from the weather to the lower parts of the walls.

     The only other changes made in this plan during the Middle Ages were in matters of detail, tending chiefly to the greater seclusion of the family. The solar becomes more important, and separate bedrooms are provided. The upper rooms at each end of the house, formerly separated by the high central hall, are now sometimes connected by a gallery built out from the side wall of the hall. The staircase remains an insignificant feature. Glass gradually becomes more common, the window is divided by a transom, the lower part having bars and a wood shutter to open, the upper part having glass fixed. Glass was considered to belong to the tenant till the time of Henry VIII.; it was, therefore, sometimes set in a wood frame which was fitted into a rebate in the stonework and could be easily removed. The walls were plastered and painted, the lower part being sometimes boarded or panelled. In the fifteenth century tapestry was much used, but later it gave way to the cheaper "painted cloths" which Falstaff recommended to Mistress Quickly as preferable to "these fly-bitten tapestries."
      The town house was less susceptible of variety in plan than the country house. The lower storey was usually a shop, and there was a somewhat insignificant staircase at the back to the living-rooms above. The architectural treatment of the street front was often elaborate enough, as may be seen in such towns as Shrewsbury. Their overhanging storeys, supported by richly carved posts and brackets, are familiar to all.

     The medieval shop was a place where goods were made as well as sold, and the master, with his family and apprentices, lived in the upper storeys, not in the suburbs. The building was almost invariably of wood till the eighteenth century, and even then very often only a brick skin was put in front of an old building, so that many an old skeleton still remains behind. The shop window was fitted with two hinged shutters; the lower of these was hinged at the bottom, and was let down during the day into a horizontal position to form a table standing out in the street, on which were exhibited objects for sale; the upper shutter was hung by its upper edge, and was raised to form a pot-house roof to shelter the stall. "With your hat pent-house like o'er the shop of your eyes," says Moth, in Love's Labour's Lost. The door was like the stable door of the present day. This sort of shop front was general till the first half of the eighteenth century, when glass windows were gradually introduced.

Glossary (all)