The English Millennium: a short history of Architecture

From the Romanesque architecture imported by William the Conqueror to the gradual emergence of Gothic architecture. The successive phases of gothic architecture: the early English style, the decorated style, and the perpendicular gothic.

From the accession of the Tudors to the Restoration. The increasing incursion of renaissance detailing into essentially gothic buildings, a trend that culminates in the mercantile exuberance of the Elizabethan prodigy house. Architectural innovation, the gradual appearance and growing professionalisation of the first English architects, beginning with Robert Smythson. The early evolution of English classical architecture – beginning with decorative borrowings at the Elizabethan court, and growing into the fully-fledged Palladianism of Inigo Jones.

The eventual hegemony of classical architecture. The emergence of the English baroque – a disputed term. Largely the production of Restoration courtiers, this style – or manner – was rapidly pressed into service after the destruction of London in 1666. The changing currents of English cultural interest that resulted in the cheerful eclecticism of the early nineteenth century, abundantly present in the mixed Gothic and Italianate practice of John Nash.

The comfortable solidity of Victorian building belies a politically unstable continent and a bitterly divided intellectual landscape. That renewed interest in domestic sources was the catalyst for a series of national revivals. Chief among them, the revival of Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture. This mounting ostentation of Edwardian architecture, which only grew – perhaps compensatorily – as imperial Britain entered terminal decline.