The 19th-century development of English architecture differed from European patterns in two respects. To begin with, Britain’s ongoing rise in power and international importance meant that there was little cause to nostalgically seek refuge in memories of past greatness. Modernity was, accordingly, whole-heartedly embraced, also in architectural construction. Modern engineering as expressed in bridges, railway stations, and factories, and constructed in materials such as glass and cast-iron, could, here more easily than elsewhere, be adopted into an architectural repertoire seen as prestigiously national. The large-span roofs of major railway stations like King’s Cross (1851-82) were technical achievements and as such a matter of national pride; as were the great glasshouses for the botanical gardens in Kew (1844-48, echoed in the other great cities of the United Kingdom) and Joseph Paxton’s enormous Crystal Palace, constructed to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than their later epigons on the Continent, these new structures were enshrined into what was felt to be a national architecture.
The other point of difference between Britain and continental developments concerned the role of the Gothic. Its 19th-century rediscovery as the national and religious building style par excellence was part, of course, of a Europe-wide vogue; but while in other countries the Gothic was retrieved from centuries of neglect and an overlay of Renaissance, baroque, and classicism, the Gothic had persisted more strongly in the intervening centuries in Britain: the Gothic Survival evolved more seamlessly into a Gothic Revival.
That Revival may be held to start with the fanciful manor constructed for Horace Walpole in Twickenham: Strawberry Hill (1749-76) consciously attempted to bring the past back to life. This medievalist coloration was to become popular in the later decades of the 18th century in many country houses, and to inspire the restoration (or even replica construction) of many a medieval ruin. As early as 1741-48, the “Gothic Temple” at Stowe, one of the many “follies” (non-utilitarian decorative buildings) erected in the grounds of noble estates, celebrated the “Liberties of our ancestors” as enshrined in Magna Charta in a quasi-Gothic design. Given the fabulous wealth of the British land-owning classes, this private Gothicism could take on proportions unmatched elsewhere in Europe (e.g. William Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey). Most importantly, Windsor Castle received a makeover in the Gothic taste between 1824 and 1840.
The national standing of the Gothic style in England (symbolically linked as it was to the idea of the country’s resistance to continental-hegemonic threats from the south) coexisted with the ongoing dominance of classicism, well into the 19th century, in the design of country houses, churches, and public buildings. This Classicism tended to eschew French models in favour of Neo-Palladianism and a Greek Revival.
The religious use of the Gothic revival coincided with a religious revival around the Oxford Movement (1833), in response to the secularizing tendencies of the modern age. The Ecclesiological Society of 1845 (founded in 1839 as the Cambridge Camden Society) expressed its preference for the patina of religious traditions and liturgic ritual also in design terms: as a return to the Gothic. The key architect in this Gothic revival was Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–1852), who, like many of his generation, went as far as converting to Roman Catholicism as a logical consequence of his attachment to a firm, medieval-rooted tradition. In his book Contrasts (1836), Pugin juxtaposed paired illustrations of cities in their religious, communitarian, medieval shape and in their chaotic, industrial modernity. Gothicism clearly provided more than a design repertoire; it was an alternative to the unfeeling utilitarianism of the present. The heavenward symbolism of the Gothic was further expounded by Pugin in his The principles of pointed architecture (1841).
Religious conversions like Pugin’s formed part of a rivalry between the Anglican and the Roman Catholic Church, which had recently, in 1828, been freed from many long-standing civil disabilities (as a result of the “Catholic Emancipation” campaign led by the Irish activist Daniel O’Connell). Both confessions claimed to be the authentic continuation of the pre-Reformation church of the Middle Ages; both expressed this in their rivalling appropriations of medieval church architecture. In addition to these two rivalling camps, there was also a more secular appreciation of the Gothic as an organically grown pragmatic architecture, e.g. by George Edmund Street (who was later to design the Royal Courts of Justice in London) and John Ruskin (The stones of Venice, 1851-53).
Many hundreds of church buildings had sprung up since the 1818 Church Building Act. After an initially dominant neoclassicist style (leading to what became known as “Commissioners’ Churches”), a marked turn towards the Neo-Gothic occurred in the 1830s, the most productive architect being George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878). His chapels for some Oxford and Cambridge colleges also helped to preserve and consolidate the medieval “feel” of those university towns.
Pugin’s adoption of the distinction between Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular styles manifested itself in a preference for the second (the first, in its simplicity, being used only for modest country churches, the third being considered overly ornate). The Gothic cathedrals of northern France would serve as models for Scott’s design for the cathedrals of Truro (1880-1910), Edinburgh (1874-1917), and Cork (1863-79). For secular buildings such as city halls, Scott harked back to Flemish examples. North Italian Gothic and the use of polychrome brickwork were advocated by Ruskin and applied by William Butterfield (1814–1900).
Neo-Gothicism was advocated by its adepts for secular use as well, including private dwellings like Pugin’s own (indeed, a Neo-Gothic design for many mass-produced domestic implements and fixtures spread on an industrial scale after first being showcased in the Great Exhibition of 1851). Large public buildings ranged from the commercial (most notably Scott’s St Pancras Hotel, London, 1868-74) to the academic (demand being created by growing student numbers and the establishment of new “redbrick” universities alongside the established ones; cf. Scott’s new building for Glasgow; Lanyon’s design for Queen’s University Belfast). Prime among all these was, of course, the new parliament building. When a new parliamentary Palace of Westminster needed to be constructed, the terms of the 1835 design competition stipulated that either Gothic or Elizabethan were to be the design styles. Of the 97 entries (91 of which were in the Gothic style), the choice went to Charles Barry (1795–1860), who had been assisted in the design by Pugin.
By the end of the century, the Neo-Gothic lost its dominance, at least in secular architecture. Private dwellings favoured a picturesque vernacular style known as “Old English”, or a simplified baroque known as “Queen Anne”. Country houses often used the gables, turrets, and mullioned windows characteristic of Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture, albeit on a grander scale (an eclectic compound had become known as “Jacobethan”, e.g. Harlaxton Manor, 1835-37, by Anthony Salvin). Thus, various historical periods competed and coexisted as models. (Additionally, the stylistic palette also included models from abroad: Loire châteaux for country houses, Florentine palazzi for offices and clubs.) The imperially-minded decades of the later 19th century saw a trend towards the grandeur of neo-baroque: Leeds Town Hall (1853-58), Belfast City Hall (1898-1906), and London’s Whitehall (1898-1912; the stylistic controversies during its planning stage are known as the “Battle of Styles”, mainly between Gothic and classicism). A microcosm of all these accumulated historicist layers is offered by Kensington’s museum area, the so-called Albertopolis: the Albert Memorial is in the Gothic style, the Royal Albert Hall is in Renaissance style, the Natural History Museum Romanesque, the Imperial Institute baroque; the most ostentatious of them all, the Victoria and Albert Museum, offers an eclectic mix of all of the above.
This “official” architecture dominated the entire United Kingdom, including Ireland, without much regional distinction, although in Scotland the “Scottish baronial” examples formed a marked regional inflection. In the English countryside, particularly in the Home Counties, a nostalgic, rustic English style became popular, derived from labourer’s cottages. Originally simple thatched-roof dwellings for menial tenants, they became increasingly popular for middle-class occupancy in the later part of the century, connoting idyllic and traditional country life in the village communities around large estates. Half-timber, thatch, and small mullioned windows were also to remain the traditionalist features of inns and hostelries evoking traditional, comfortable “Englishness”; this architectural vogue existed in symbiosis with the literary evocations of village life and rustic inns in the countryside novels of the later Victorian period (George Eliot’s Silas Marner, 1861). A Magic-Realistic aura of idyllic Englishness suffuses the “home in the country“ of Howards End, in E.M. Forster’s novel of that name (1910); even modern fantasy writing uses the national codification of architectural features to evoke a sense of Englishness, from the “Green Dragon” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Shire” to J.K. Rowling’s Neo-Gothic “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”.
