Portal:Architecture of England
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
The architecture of England is the architecture of modern England and in the historic Kingdom of England. It often includes buildings created under English influence or by English architects in other parts of the world, particularly in the English and later British colonies and Empire, which developed into the Commonwealth of Nations.
Apart from Anglo-Saxon architecture, the major forms of non-vernacular architecture employed in England before 1900 originated elsewhere in western Europe, chiefly in France and Italy, while 20th-century Modernist architecture derived from both European and American influences. Each of these foreign modes became assimilated within English architectural culture and gave rise to local variation and innovation, producing distinctive national forms. Among the most characteristic styles originating in England are the Perpendicular Gothic of the late Middle Ages, High Victorian Gothic and the 'Queen Anne' style.
Selected general articles
The architecture of Manchester demonstrates a rich variety of architectural styles. The city is a product of the Industrial Revolution and is known as the first modern, industrial city. Manchester is noted for its warehouses, railway viaducts, cotton mills and canals - remnants of its past when the city produced and traded goods. Manchester has minimal Georgian or medieval architecture to speak of and consequently has a vast array of 19th and early 20th-century architecture styles; examples include Palazzo, Neo-Gothic, Venetian Gothic, Edwardian baroque, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and the Neo-Classical.
Manchester burgeoned as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the Bridgewater Canal and Manchester Liverpool Road station became the first true canal and railway station used to transport goods. The Industrial Revolution made Manchester a wealthy place but much of the wealth was spent on lavish projects that were often at the expense of its population. Engineering developments such as the Manchester Ship Canal symbolised a wealthy and proud Manchester, so too did Mancunian buildings of the Victorian era, the finest examples of which include the neo-gothic town hall and the John Rylands Library. At the height of the Industrial Revolution, the city had nearly 2,000 warehouses. Many of them have now been converted for other uses but their external appearance remains mostly unchanged so the city keeps much of its industrial, brooding character. Read more...
Doorway to Layer Marney Tower, showing the distinctive low Tudor arch and patterns in the brickwork.
The Tudor architectural style is the final development of Medieval architecture in England, during the Tudor period (1485–1603) and even beyond, and also the tentative introduction of Renaissance architecture to England. It is generally not used to refer to the whole period of the Tudor dynasty (1485-1603), but to the style used in buildings of some prestige in the period roughly between 1500 and 1560. It followed the Late Gothic Perpendicular style and was superseded by Elizabethan architecture from about 1560 in domestic building of any pretensions to fashion. In the much more slow-moving styles of vernacular architecture "Tudor" has become a designation for styles like half-timbering that characterize the few buildings surviving from before 1485 and others from the Stuart period. In this form the Tudor style long retained its hold on English taste. Nevertheless, 'Tudor style' is an awkward style-designation, with its implied suggestions of continuity through the period of the Tudor dynasty and the misleading impression that there was a style break at the accession of Stuart James I in 1603.
The low Tudor arch was a defining feature. Some of the most remarkable oriel windows belong to this period. Mouldings are more spread out and the foliage becomes more naturalistic. During the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, many Italian artists arrived in England; their decorative features can be seen at Hampton Court Palace, Layer Marney Tower, Sutton Place, and elsewhere. However, in the following reign of Elizabeth I, the influence of Northern Mannerism, mainly derived from books, was greater. Courtiers and other wealthy Elizabethans competed to build prodigy houses that proclaimed their status. Read more...
The nave of Durham Cathedral.
The term Norman architecture is used to categorise styles of Romanesque architecture developed by the Normans in the various lands under their dominion or influence in the 11th and 12th centuries. In particular the term is traditionally used for English Romanesque architecture. The Normans introduced large numbers of castles and fortifications including Norman keeps, and at the same time monasteries, abbeys, churches and cathedrals, in a style characterised by the usual Romanesque rounded arches (particularly over windows and doorways) and especially massive proportions compared to other regional variations of the style. Read more...
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I, George II, George III, and George IV—who reigned in continuous succession from August 1714 to June 1830. The style was revived in the late 19th century in the United States as Colonial Revival architecture and in the early 20th century in Great Britain as Neo-Georgian architecture; in both it is also called Georgian Revival architecture. In the United States the term "Georgian" is generally used to describe all buildings from the period, regardless of style; in Britain it is generally restricted to buildings that are "architectural in intention", and have stylistic characteristics that are typical of the period, though that covers a wide range.
The Georgian style is highly variable, but marked by symmetry and proportion based on the classical architecture of Greece and Rome, as revived in Renaissance architecture. Ornament is also normally in the classical tradition, but typically restrained, and sometimes almost completely absent on the exterior. The period brought the vocabulary of classical architecture to smaller and more modest buildings than had been the case before, replacing English vernacular architecture (or becoming the new vernacular style) for almost all new middle-class homes and public buildings by the end of the period. Read more...- This is a list of former or once proposed cathedrals in Great Britain.
The term former cathedral in this list includes any Christian church (building) in Great Britain which has been the seat of a bishop, but is not so any longer. The status of a cathedral, for the purpose of this list, does not depend on whether the church concerned is known to have had a formal "throne" (or cathedra) nor whether a formal territory or diocese was attached to the church. Before the development of dioceses, which began earlier in England than in Scotland and Wales, "[s]uch bishops as there were either lived in monasteries or were 'wandering bishops'". This list therefore includes early "bishop's churches" (a "proto-cathedral" is similar). Read more... - Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation in Marseille, France (1952). A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the béton brut megalith is a well-known example of proto-Brutalist architecture.
Brutalist architecture flourished from 1951 to 1975, having descended from the modernist architectural movement of the early 20th century. The term 'Nybrutalism' (New Brutalism) was originally coined by the Swedish architect Hans Asplund in 1950 to describe Villa Göth in Uppsala. Architects Alison and Peter Smithson introduced the term "Brutalism" to the English-speaking world in the early 1950s. It became more widely used after British architectural critic Reyner Banham titled his 1955 essay, The New Brutalism, using the term "Brutalism" to identify both an ethic and aesthetic style. In the same essay, Reynor Banham also associated the term with Art Brut and Le Corbusier's béton brut, meaning raw concrete in French, for the first time. Concrete is now the most commonly recognized building material of Brutalist architecture but other materials such as brick, glass, steel, and rough-hewn stone may also be used.
Brutalism became popular with governmental and institutional clients, with numerous examples in English-speaking countries (the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia), Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy), the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc (Slovakia, Bulgaria), and places as disparate as Japan, India, Brazil, the Philippines, and Israel. Examples are typically massive in character (even when not large), fortress-like, with a predominance of exposed concrete construction, or in the case of the "brick Brutalists", ruggedly combine detailed brickwork and concrete. There is often an emphasis on graphically expressing in the external elevations and in the whole-site architectural plan the main functions and people-flows of the buildings. Brutalism became popular for educational buildings (especially university buildings), but was relatively rare for corporate projects, which largely preferred International Style. Brutalism became favoured for many government projects, rectangle tower blocks (high-rise housing), and shopping centres. Read more...
Bristol Byzantine is a variety of Byzantine Revival architecture that was popular in the city of Bristol from about 1850 to 1880.
Many buildings in the style have been destroyed or demolished, but notable surviving examples include the Colston Hall, the Granary on Welsh Back, the Carriage Works, on Stokes Croft and several of the buildings around Victoria Street. Several of the warehouses around the harbour have survived including the Arnolfini which now houses an art gallery. Clarks Wood Company warehouse and the St Vincent's Works in Silverthorne Lane and the Wool Hall in St Thomas Street are other survivors from the 19th century. Read more...
Windsor Castle, Berkshire
This list of castles in England is not a list of every building and site that has "castle" as part of its name, nor does it list only buildings that conform to a strict definition of a castle as a medieval fortified residence. It is not a list of every castle ever built in England, many of which have vanished without trace, but is primarily a list of buildings and remains that have survived. In almost every case the buildings that survive are either ruined, or have been altered over the centuries. For several reasons, whether a given site is that of a medieval castle has not been taken to be a sufficient criterion for determining whether or not that site should be included in the list.
Castles that have vanished or whose remains are barely visible are not listed, except for some important or well-known buildings and sites. Fortifications from before the medieval period are not listed, nor are architectural follies. In other respects it is difficult to identify clear and consistent boundaries between two sets of buildings, comprising those that indisputably belong in a list of castles and those that do not. The criteria adopted for inclusion in the list include such factors as: how much survives from the medieval period; how strongly fortified the building was; how castle-like the surviving building is; whether the building has been given the title of "castle"; how certain it is that a medieval castle stood on the site, or that the surviving remains are those of a medieval castle; how well-known or interesting the building is; and whether including or excluding a building helps make the list, in some measure, more consistent. Read more...
A cruck or crook frame is a curved timber, one of a pair, which supports the roof of a building, used particularly in England. This type of timber framing consists of long, generally naturally curved, timber members that lean inwards and form the ridge of the roof. These posts are then generally secured by a horizontal beam which then forms an "A" shape. Several of these "crooks" are constructed on the ground and then lifted into position. They are then joined together by either solid walls or cross beams which aid in preventing racking (the action of each individual frame going out of square with the rest of the frame, and thus risking collapse). Read more...
This is a list of lighthouses in England. It includes lighthouses which are no longer in use as a light but are still standing. It also includes some of the harbour and pier-head lights around the country.
Details of several lighthouses and lightvessels in current use in England, together with Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar can be found on the website of Trinity House. Locations of major lighthouses are shown on the adjacent map. Read more...
The buildings and architecture of Bath, a city in Somerset in the south west of England, reveal significant examples of the architecture of England, from the Roman Baths (including their significant Celtic presence), to the present day. The city became a World Heritage Site in 1987, largely because of its architectural history and the way in which the city landscape draws together public and private buildings and spaces. The many examples of Palladian architecture are purposefully integrated with the urban spaces to provide "picturesque aestheticism". It is the only entire city in Britain to achieve World Heritage status, and is a popular tourist destination.
Important buildings include the Roman Baths; neoclassical architect Robert Adam's Pulteney Bridge, based on an unused design for the Rialto Bridge in Venice; and Bath Abbey in the city centre, founded in 1499 on the site of an 8th-century church. Of equal importance are the residential buildings designed and built into boulevards and crescents by the Georgian architects John Wood, the Elder and his son John Wood, the Younger – well-known examples being the Royal Crescent, built around 1770, and The Circus, built around 1760, where each of the three curved segments faces one of the entrances, ensuring that there is always a classical facade facing the entering visitor. Read more...
Arms of Sir Guy Ferre (d.1323) in flushwork at Butley Priory, Suffolk
In architecture, flushwork is the decorative combination on the same flat plane of flint and ashlar stone. If the stone projects from a flat flint wall then the term is proudwork, as the stone stands "proud" rather than being "flush" with the wall.
Flushworked buildings belong to the Perpendicular style of English Gothic architecture. It is characteristic of the external walls of medieval buildings – most of the survivors being churches – in parts of Southern England and especially East Anglia. Flushwork begins in the early 14th century, but the peak period was during the wool boom between about 1450 and the English Reformation of the 1520s, when church building virtually ceased and brick construction became more fashionable. The technique continued in occasional use, and saw a major revival in the 19th century, and is still sometimes used in a modern style today, as well as for the restoration or extension of older buildings. Read more...
Latimer House in Buckinghamshire; an English country house
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country. However, the term also encompasses houses that were, and often still are, the full-time residence for the landed gentry that ruled rural Britain until the Reform Act 1832. Frequently, the formal business of the counties was transacted in these country houses.
With large numbers of indoor and outdoor staff, country houses were important as places of employment for many rural communities. In turn, until the agricultural depressions of the 1870s, the estates, of which country houses were the hub, provided their owners with incomes. However, the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the swansong of the traditional English country house lifestyle. Increased taxation and the effects of World War I led to the demolition of hundreds of houses; those that remained had to adapt to survive. Read more...- The Yeoman's House, Bignor, Sussex, a three-bay Wealden hall house.
The hall house is a type of vernacular house traditional in many parts of England, Wales, Ireland and lowland Scotland, as well as northern Europe, during the Middle Ages, centring on a hall. Usually timber-framed, some high status examples were built in stone.
Unaltered hall houses are almost unknown. Where they have survived, they have almost always been significantly changed and extended by successive owners over the generations. Read more...
Fan vaulting over the nave at Bath Abbey, Bath, England. Made from local Bath stone, this is a Victorian restoration (in the 1860s) of the original roof of 1608.
A fan vault is a form of vault used in the Gothic style, in which the ribs are all of the same curve and spaced equidistantly, in a manner resembling a fan. The initiation and propagation of this design element is strongly associated with England.
The earliest example, dating from about the year 1351, may be seen in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral. The largest fan vault in the world can be found in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. Read more...- The "enchanting oriental humour of the Royal Pavilion" influenced subsequent architecture in Brighton and other seaside resorts.
Brighton and Hove, a city on the English Channel coast in southeast England, has a large and diverse stock of buildings "unrivalled architecturally" among the country's seaside resorts. The urban area, designated a city in 2000, is made up of the formerly separate towns of Brighton and Hove, nearby villages such as Portslade, Patcham and Rottingdean, and 20th-century estates such as Moulsecoomb and Mile Oak. The conurbation was first united in 1997 as a unitary authority and has a population of about 253,000. About half of the 20,430-acre (8,270 ha) geographical area is classed as built up.
Brighton's transformation from medieval fishing village into spa town and pleasure resort, patronised by royalty and fashionable high society, coincided with the development of Regency architecture and the careers of three architects whose work came to characterise the 4-mile (6.4 km) seafront. The previously separate village of Hove developed as a comfortable middle-class residential area "under a heavy veneer of [Victorian] suburban respectability": large houses spread rapidly across the surrounding fields during the late 19th century, although the high-class and successful Brunswick estate was a product of the Regency era. Old villages such as Portslade, Rottingdean, Ovingdean and Patcham, with ancient churches, farms and small flint cottages, became suburbanised as the two towns grew and merged, and the creation of "Greater Brighton" in 1928 brought into the urban area swathes of open land which were then used for housing and industrial estates. Many buildings were lost in the 1960s and 1970s, when Brighton's increasing regional importance encouraged redevelopment, but conservation movements were influential in saving other buildings. Read more... - Monastic houses in England include abbeys, priories and friaries, among other monastic religious houses.
This article provides a gazetteer for the whole of England. Additionally, each county below provides links to the specific list for that county. Read more...
Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries consist of beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building stone throughout the British Isles, notably in major public buildings in London such as St Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. Portland stone is also exported to many countries—being used for example in the United Nations headquarters building in New York City. Read more...
A hammerbeam roof is a decorative, open timber roof truss typical of English Gothic architecture and has been called "...the most spectacular endeavour of the English Medieval carpenter." They are traditionally timber framed, using short beams projecting from the wall on which the rafters land, essentially a tie beam which has the middle cut out. These short beams are called hammer-beams and give this truss its name. A hammerbeam roof can have a single, double or false hammerbeam truss. Read more...
This is an as yet incomplete list of listed buildings in England, which are the majority of the listed buildings of the United Kingdom.
The organisation of the lists in this series is on the same basis as the statutory register. County names are those used in the register, broadly based on the ceremonial counties and not always matching the current administrative areas. Read more...- The architecture of Liverpool is rooted in the city's development into a major port of the British Empire. It encompasses a variety of architectural styles of the past 300 years, while next to nothing remains of its medieval structures which would have dated back as far as the 13th century. Erected 1716-18, Bluecoat Chambers is supposed to be the oldest surviving building in central Liverpool.
There are over 2,500 listed buildings in Liverpool of which 27 are Grade I and 85 Grade II* listed. It has been described by English Heritage as England's finest Victorian city. However, due to neglect, some of Liverpool's finest listed buildings are on English Heritage's Heritage at Risk register. Read more...
Jacobethan is the style designation coined in 1933 by John Betjeman to describe the mixed national Renaissance revival style that was made popular in England from the late 1820s, which derived most of its inspiration and its repertory from the English Renaissance (1550–1625), with elements of Elizabethan and Jacobean. The "Jacobethan" architectural style is also called "Jacobean Revival". Betjeman's original definition of the style is as follows:The style in which the Gothic predominates may be called, inaccurately enough, Elizabethan, and the style in which the classical predominates over the Gothic, equally inaccurately, may be called Jacobean. To save the time of those who do not wish to distinguish between these periods of architectural uncertainty, I will henceforward use the term "Jacobethan".
The term caught on with art historians. Timothy Mowl asserts in The Elizabethan and Jacobean Style (2001) that the 'Jacobethan' style represents the last outpouring of an authentically native genius that was stifled by slavish adherence to European baroque taste. Read more...- Museums in England is a link page for any museum in England by ceremonial county. In 2011 there were around 1,600 museums in England. The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is the national development agency for museums in England, and is a sponsored body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Read more...
Durham Cathedral, above the River Wear.
The medieval cathedrals of England, which date from between approximately 1040 and 1540, are a group of twenty-six buildings that constitute a major aspect of the country’s artistic heritage and are among the most significant material symbols of Christianity. Though diversified in style, they are united by a common function. As cathedrals, each of these buildings serves as central church for an administrative region (or diocese) and houses the throne of a bishop (Late Latin ecclēsia cathedrālis, from the Greek, καθέδρα). Each cathedral also serves as a regional centre and a focus of regional pride and affection.
Only sixteen of these buildings had been cathedrals at the time of the Reformation: eight that were served by secular canons, and eight that were monastic. A further five cathedrals are former abbey churches which were reconstituted with secular canons as cathedrals of new dioceses by Henry VIII following the dissolution of the monasteries and which comprise, together with the former monastic cathedrals, the "Cathedrals of the New Foundation". Two further pre-Reformation monastic churches, which had survived as ordinary parish churches for 350 years, became cathedrals in the 19th and 20th centuries, as did the three medieval collegiate churches that retained their foundations for choral worship. Read more...
The Somerset towers are a collection of distinctive, mostly spireless Gothic church towers in the county of Somerset in south west England. Read more...
The Dartmoor longhouse is a type of traditional stone-built home, typically found on the high ground of Dartmoor, in Devon, England and belonging to a wider tradition of combining human residences with those of livestock (cattle or sheep) under a single roof specific to western Britain; Wales, Cornwall and Devon, where they are more usually referred to simply as 'longhouses' and in general housebarns. The earliest are thought to have been built in the 13th century, and they continued to be constructed throughout the mediaeval period and into the Early Modern, using local granite or other stone. One particular longhouse near Carreg Cennen Castle in Wales is dated to the 11th century. Many longhouses are still inhabited today (although adapted over the centuries), while others have been converted into farm buildings. Forms of longhouses identical to those on Dartmoor are found in Cornwall, particularly on Bodmin Moor and in Wales where they are commonly called tyddyn meaning 'homestead', or specifically Ty Hir meaning 'long-house' in the Welsh language. A near identical type called the (Maison) Longère can also be found in northwestern (Brittany, Normandy) and central France.
Higher Uppacott, one of very few remaining longhouses to retain its original unaltered shippon and medieval thatch, is a Grade I listed building, and is now owned by the Dartmoor National Park Authority. Read more...- This is a list of National Trust properties in England, including any stately home, historic house, castle, abbey, museum or other property in the care of the National Trust in England. Read more...
- The Old Punch Bowl, Crawley, West Sussex. With parts of the lower wall on the right completely replaced with bricks and the jettied upper floor only visible on the left end.
The Wealden hall house is a type of vernacular medieval timber-framed hall house traditional in the south east of England. Typically built for a yeoman, it is most common in Kent (hence "Wealden" for the once densely forested Weald) and the east of Sussex but has also been built elsewhere. Kent has one of the highest concentrations of such surviving medieval timber framed buildings in Europe.
The original plan usually had four bays with the two central ones forming the main hall open to the roof with the hearth in the middle and two doors to the outside at one end forming a cross passage. The open hearth was later moved towards the cross passage and became a fireplace with chimney, sometimes the chimney pile even blocking the cross passage, which had soon been screened off the main hall. Beyond the cross passage the outer bay at the "screens end" or "lower end" of the hall, usually contained two rooms commonly called buttery and pantry, while the rooms in the bay at the other end, the "upper end", were called parlours. The end bays each had an upper floor containing solars, which did not communicate with each other, as the hall rose to the rafters between them. The upper stories on both ends typically extended beyond the lower outer wall being jettied on at least one side of the building. As the main hall had no upper floor the outer wall ran straight up without jettying, and thus the central bays appeared recessed.
The early buildings had thatched roofs and walls of wattle and daub often whitewashed. Later buildings would have a brick infilling between timbers, sometimes leading to a complete replacement of the outer walls of the basement with solid stone walls. Read more...
The round tower of St Andrew's, Bedingham, is of Saxo-Norman design
In the years before the Conquest, various Saxo-Norman features emerged in English architecture, including "long and short" stonework, "half-roll" features on arches and double-splay windows. After the Conquest, Saxo-Norman architecture was typically applied to smaller buildings, and small parts of larger projects. Major ecclesiastical projects, such as cathedrals and abbey churches, were executed in a predominantly Norman style. At Exeter Castle, for example, Anglo-Saxon "long and short" stonework was used in the gatehouse, alongside arches common to both Norman and Anglo-Saxon styles, and some features borrowed from the Holy Roman Empire. One of the reasons for this would have been the limited number of Norman craftsmen available for projects, and the continuity of local Anglo-Saxon preferences in many locations.
Some Anglo-Saxon architectural features were never used under the Normans, and, as time went by, some Saxo-Norman features began to fade. Old Anglo-Saxon features such as brick arches in stone buildings were simply eliminated from new designs, and "long and short" stonework, "half-roll" features slowly disappeared from use. By the 12th century, parish churches were typically being built in a Norman, rather than Saxo-Norman style. The fusion of surviving Anglo-Saxon elements into the Norman style eventually produced the English Romanesque style of architecture. Read more...
English Renaissance: Hardwick Hall (1590–1597), a classic prodigy house. The numerous and large mullioned windows are typically English Renaissance, while the loggia is Italian.
Elizabethan architecture refers to buildings of aesthetic ambition constructed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland from 1558-1603. Historically, the era sits between the long era of dominant architectural patronage of ecclesiastical buildings by the Catholic Church which ended abruptly at the Dissolution of the Monasteries from c.1536, and the advent of a court culture of pan-European artistic ambition under James I (1603-25). Stylistically, Elizabethan architecture is notably pluralistic. It came at the end of insular traditions in design and construction called the Perpendicular style in church building, the fenestration, vaulting techniques and open truss designs of which often affected the detail of larger domestic buildings. However, English design had become open to the influence of early printed architectural texts (namely Vitruvius and Alberti) imported to England by ecclesiasts as early as the 1480s. Into the sixteenth century, illustrated continental pattern-books introduced a wide range of architectural examplars, fuelled by the archaeology of classical Rome which inspired myriad printed designs of increasing elaboration and abstraction. As church building turned to the construction of great houses for courtiers and merchants, these novelties accompanied a nostalgia for native history as well as huge divisions in religious identity, plus the influence of continental mercantile and civic buildings. Insular traditions of construction, detail and materials never entirely disappeared. These varied influences on patrons who could favour conservatism or great originality confound attempts to neatly classify Elizabethan architecture. This era of cultural upheaval and fusions corresponds to what is often termed Mannerism and Late Cinquecento in Italy, French Renaissance architecture in France, and the Plateresque style in Spain.
In contrast to her father Henry VIII, Elizabeth commissioned no new royal palaces, and very few new churches were built, but there was a great boom in building domestic houses for the well-off, largely due to the redistribution of eccleciastical lands after the Dissolution. The most characteristic type, for the very well-off, is the showy prodigy house, using styles and decoration derived from Northern Mannerism, but with elements retaining signifiers of medieval castles, such as the normally busy roofline. Read more...
Detail from a document connected with the foundation of Henry VII's chantry and almshouses at Westminster. The King sits in the Star Chamber and receives the Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham, Richard Fox, the Bishop of Westminster and clerics associated with Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral as well as the Lord Mayor of London
An almshouse (also known as a poorhouse) is charitable housing provided to people in a particular community. They are often targeted at the poor of a locality, at those from certain forms of previous employment, or their widows, and at elderly people who can no longer pay rent, and are generally maintained by a charity or the trustees of a bequest. Almshouses were originally formed as extensions of the church system and were later adapted by local officials and authorities. Read more...- This is a list of sports stadiums in England, ranked in descending order of capacity. All stadiums in England with a capacity of 10,000 or more are included.
Only stadiums within the territory of England are included; thus the home stadiums of the six Welsh football clubs playing in the English football league system are not listed here. Read more...
Although Birmingham in England has existed as a settlement for over a thousand years, today's city is overwhelmingly a product of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, with little surviving from its early history. As it has expanded, it has acquired a variety of architectural styles. Buildings of most modern architectural styles in the United Kingdom are located in Birmingham. In recent years, Birmingham was one of the first cities to exhibit the blobitecture style with the construction of the Selfridges store at the Bullring Shopping Centre.
Birmingham is a young city, having grown rapidly as a result of the Industrial Revolution starting in the 18th century. There are very few buildings remaining in Birmingham prior to this. Further loss has been demonstrated through the effects of war and redevelopment, especially following World War II. Industrialisation and planning policies have also led to Victorian buildings being demolished but the prosperity brought with it led to some of the city's grandest buildings being constructed, although in turn many of these are being or have been demolished. Industrialisation and the growth of the city led to its boundaries expanding and the city acquired other forms of architecture. As of April 2006, there are 1,946 listed buildings in Birmingham, thirteen scheduled ancient monuments and 27 conservation areas. Read more...
English Baroque is a term sometimes used to refer to the developments in English architecture that were parallel to the evolution of Baroque architecture in continental Europe between the Great Fire of London (1666) and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).
Baroque aesthetics, whose influence was so potent in mid-17th century France, made little impact in England during the Protectorate and the first Restoration years.[citation needed] Read more...
An oast, oast house or hop kiln is a building designed for kilning (drying) hops as part of the brewing process. They can be found in most hop-growing (and former hop-growing) areas and are often good examples of vernacular architecture. Many redundant oasts have been converted into houses. The names oast and oast house are used interchangeably in Kent and East Sussex. In Surrey, Hampshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire they are always called hop kilns.
They consist of a rectangular one or two storey building (the "stowage") and one or more kilns in which the hops were spread out to be dried by hot air rising from a wood or charcoal fire below. The drying floors were thin and perforated to permit the heat to pass through and escape through a cowl in the roof which turned with the wind. The freshly picked hops from the fields were raked in to dry and then raked out to cool before being bagged up and sent to the brewery. The Kentish dialect word kell was sometimes used for kilns ("The oast has three kells.") and sometimes to mean the oast itself ("Take this lunchbox to your father, he's working in the kell."). The word oast itself also means "kiln". Read more...
St. Mary Redcliffe from the northwest
Bristol, the largest city in South West England, has an eclectic combination of architectural styles, ranging from the medieval to 20th century brutalism and beyond. During the mid-19th century, Bristol Byzantine, an architectural style unique to the city, was developed, and several examples have survived.
Buildings from most of the architectural periods of the United Kingdom can be seen throughout Bristol. Parts of the fortified city and castle date back to the medieval era, as do some churches dating from the 12th century onwards. Outside the historical city centre there are several large Tudor mansions built for wealthy merchants. Almshouses and public houses of the same period survive, intermingled with areas of more recent development. Several Georgian-era squares were laid out for the enjoyment of the middle class. As the city grew, it merged with its surrounding villages, each with its own character and centre, often clustered around a parish church. Read more...
Winslow Hall in Buckinghamshire, 1700 and probably by Christopher Wren, has most of the typical features of the original English style
The Queen Anne style in Britain refers to either the English Baroque architectural style approximately of the reign of Queen Anne (reigned 1702–1714), or a revived form that was popular in the last quarter of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century (when it is also known as Queen Anne revival). In British architecture the term is mostly used of domestic buildings up to the size of a manor house, and usually designed elegantly but simply by local builders or architects, rather than the grand palaces of noble magnates. Contrary to the American usage of the term, it is characterised by strongly bilateral symmetry with a Italianate or Palladian-derived pediment on the front formal elevation.
The architectural historian Marcus Binney, writing in The Times in 2006, describes Poulton House built in 1706, during the reign of Queen Anne, as "...Queen Anne at its most delightful". Binney lists what he describes as the typical features of the style: Read more...
English Gothic is an architectural style originating in France, before then flourishing in England from about 1180 until about 1520.
As with the Gothic architecture of other parts of Europe, English Gothic is defined by its pointed arches, vaulted roofs, buttresses, large windows, and spires. The Gothic style was introduced from France, where the various elements had first been used together within a single building at the choir of the Basilique Saint-Denis north of Paris, built by the Abbot Suger and dedicated on 11 June 1144. The earliest large-scale applications of Gothic architecture in England are at Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Many features of Gothic architecture had evolved naturally from Romanesque architecture (often known in England as Norman architecture). This evolution can be seen most particularly at the Norman Durham Cathedral, which has the earliest pointed ribbed high vault known. Read more...- The list of windmills in England is split by county: Read more...
Strawberry Hill House—often called simply Strawberry Hill—is the Gothic Revival villa that was built in Twickenham, London by Horace Walpole (1717–1797) from 1749 onward. It is the type example of the "Strawberry Hill Gothic" style of architecture, and it prefigured the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival.
Walpole rebuilt the existing house in stages starting in 1749, 1760, 1772 and 1776. These added Gothic features such as towers and battlements outside and elaborate decoration inside to create "gloomth" to suit Walpole's collection of antiquarian objects, contrasting with the more cheerful or "riant" garden. The interior included a Robert Adam fireplace; parts of the exterior were designed by James Essex. The garden contained a large seat shaped like a Rococo sea shell, which was recreated in the 2012 restoration of the garden, one of the many examples of historic garden conservation in the UK. Read more...- The following is a list of English Renaissance theatres, from the first theatres built in 1567, to their closure at the beginning of the English Civil War in 1642.
English Renaissance theatres were more commonly known by the term 'playhouses'. They can be divided into indoor playhouses (which were small and performed to high-paying audiences) and outdoor playhouses (large, partly open-air amphitheatres that charged lower prices). Read more... - Palace of Westminster (1840–70) by Charles Barry one of London's most recognised works of architecture
London is the second largest urban area – and largest city (see List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits) – in the European Union area; as the ancient city of Londinium founded in the first century CE and nearly continuously inhabited, it is not characterised by any single predominant architectural style but areas of the city exhibit very strong and influential urban qualities which have deeply influenced urban planning globally. Considered with the administrative capital of the City of Westminster, relatively few structures predate the Great Fire of 1666, with notable exceptions including the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Banqueting House, Queens House, portions of St James's Palace, London Charterhouse, Lambeth Palace and scattered Tudor survivals.
The ancient City of London initially laid out as a planned Roman city in the 60s CE alongside the River Thames contains a wide variety of styles, from Roman and Romanesque archaeological remains to remnants of the medieval Gothic walled city, English Renaissance buildings by Inigo Jones to English Baroque by Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, Neoclassical and Imperial Gothic financial institutions of the 18th and 19th century such as the Royal Exchange, the urban set-piece of Regent Street and Regents Park by John Nash and the Bank of England by John Soane, to the early 20th century Old Bailey (England and Wales' central criminal court) and the Modernist 1960s Royal Festival Hall, Barbican Estate and Royal National Theatre by Denys Lasdun. Read more...
Rotunda at Stowe Garden (1730-38)
The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (French: Jardin à l'anglaise, Italian: Giardino all'inglese, German: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, Portuguese: Jardim inglês, Spanish: Jardín inglés), is a style of "landscape" garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal, symmetrical jardin à la française of the 17th century as the principal gardening style of Europe. The English garden presented an idealized view of nature. It drew inspiration from paintings of landscapes by Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, and, in the Anglo-Chinese garden, from the classic Chinese gardens of the East, which had recently been described by European travellers. The English garden usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. The work of Lancelot "Capability" Brown was particularly influential. By the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk, the gardens of the future Emperor Paul. It also had a major influence on the form of the public parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century. The English landscape garden was centred on the English country house. Read more...
The Jacobean style is the second phase of Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style. It is named after King James I of England, with whose reign (1603–1625 in England) it is associated. At the start of James' reign there was little stylistic break in architecture, as Elizabethan trends continued their development. However his death in 1625 came as a decisive change towards more classical architecture, with Italian influence, was in progress, led by Inigo Jones; the style this began is sometimes called Stuart architecture, or English Baroque (though the latter term may be regarded as starting later).
Courtiers continued to build large prodigy houses, even though James spent less time on summer progresses round his realm than Elizabeth had. The influence of Flemish and German Northern Mannerism increased, now often executed by immigrant craftsmen and artists, rather than obtained from books as in the previous reign. There continued to be very little building of new churches, though a considerable amount of modifications to old ones, but a great deal of secular building. Read more...
A church monument is an architectural or sculptural memorial to a deceased person or persons, located within a Christian church. It can take various forms ranging from a simple commemorative plaque or mural tablet affixed to a wall, to a large and elaborate structure, on the ground or as a mural monument, which may include an effigy of the deceased person and other figures of familial, heraldic or symbolic nature. It is usually placed immediately above or close to the actual burial vault or grave, although very occasionally the tomb is constructed within it. Sometimes the monument is a cenotaph, commemorating a person buried at another location.
Once only the subject of antiquarian curiosity, church monuments are today recognised as works of funerary art. They are also valued by historians as giving a highly detailed record of antique costume and armour, by genealogists as a permanent and contemporary record of familial relationships and dates, and by students of heraldry as providing reliable depictions for heraldic blazons. From the middle of the 15th century, many figurative monuments started to represent genuine portraiture where before had existed only generalised representations. Read more...
Anglo-Saxon architecture was a period in the history of architecture in England, and parts of Wales, from the mid-5th century until the Norman Conquest of 1066. Anglo-Saxon secular buildings in Britain were generally simple, constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. No universally accepted example survives above ground.
There are, however, many remains of Anglo-Saxon church architecture. At least fifty churches are of Anglo-Saxon origin with major Anglo-Saxon architectural features, with many more claiming to be, although in some cases the Anglo-Saxon part is small and much-altered. It is often impossible to reliably distinguish between pre- and post-Conquest 11th century work in buildings where most parts are later additions or alterations. The round-tower church and tower-nave church are distinctive Anglo-Saxon types. All surviving churches, except one timber church, are built of stone or brick, and in some cases show evidence of re-used Roman work. Read more...
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Norwich Castle: round arches are characteristic of the Romanesque style
The Palm House at Kew Gardens, a key example of Victorian glasshouse construction
Montacute House, near Yeovil, Somerset. Built 1598
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