English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century.[1][2] The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches. Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed arches, rib vaults, buttresses, and extensive use of stained glass. Combined, these features allowed the creation of buildings of unprecedented height and grandeur, filled with light from large stained glass windows. Important examples include Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral. The Gothic style endured in England much longer than in Continental Europe.
Top: Lincoln Cathedral | |
| Years active | c. 1175–1640 |
|---|---|
| Country | Kingdom of England |
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 Abbey of Saint-Denis north of Paris, completed in 1144.[3] The earliest large-scale applications of Gothic architecture in England were Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Many features of Gothic architecture had evolved naturally from Romanesque architecture (often known in England as Norman architecture). The first cathedral in England to be both planned and built entirely in the Gothic style was Wells Cathedral, begun in 1175.[4] Other features were imported from the Ile-de-France, where the first French Gothic cathedral, Sens Cathedral, had been built (1135–64).[5] After a fire destroyed the choir of Canterbury Cathedral in 1174, the French architect William of Sens rebuilt the choir in the new Gothic style between 1175 and 1180. The transition can also be seen at Durham Cathedral, a Norman building which was remodelled with the earliest rib vault known. Besides cathedrals, monasteries, and parish churches, the style was used for many secular buildings, including university buildings, palaces, great houses, and almshouses and guildhalls.
Stylistic periodisations of the English Gothic style are
- Early English or First Pointed (late 12th–late 13th centuries)
- Decorated Gothic or Second Pointed (late 13th–late 14th centuries)
- Perpendicular Gothic or Third Pointed (14th–17th centuries)[6][7]
The architect and art historian Thomas Rickman's Attempt to Discriminate the Style of Architecture in England, first published in 1812, divided Gothic architecture in the British Isles into three stylistic periods.[8] Rickman identified the period of architecture as follows:
- William the Conqueror (r. 1066–87) to Henry II (r. 1154–89) as Norman
- Richard the Lionheart (r. 1189–99) to Edward I (r. 1272–1307) as Early English
- reigns of Edward II (r. 1307–27) and Edward III (r. 1327–77) as Decorated
- from Richard II (r. 1377–99) to Henry VIII (r. 1509–47) as Perpendicular[8]
From the 15th century, under the House of Tudor, the prevailing Gothic style is commonly known as Tudor architecture. This style is ultimately succeeded by Elizabethan architecture and Renaissance architecture under Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603).[9] Rickman excluded from his scheme most new buildings after Henry VIII's reign, calling the style of "additions and rebuilding" in the later 16th and earlier 17th centuries "often much debased".[8]
Architect and art historian Edmund Sharpe, in The Seven Periods of English Architecture (1851), identified a pre-Gothic Transitional Period (1145–90), following the Norman period, in which pointed arches and round arches were employed together.[10] Focusing on the windows, Sharpe dubbed Rickman's Gothic styles as follows:
- Rickman's first Gothic style as the Lancet Period (1190–1245)
- Rickman's second Gothic style divided into the Geometrical period (1245–1315) and then the Curvilinear period (1315–1360)
- Rickman's third style as the Rectilinear period (1360–1550).[10] Unlike the Early English and Decorated styles, this third style, employed over three centuries was unique to England
In the English Renaissance, the stylistic language of the ancient classical orders and the Renaissance architecture of southern Europe began to supplant Gothic architecture in Continental Europe, but the British Isles continued to favour Gothic building styles, with traditional Perpendicular Gothic building projects undertaken into the 17th century in England and both Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture incorporating Gothic features, particularly for churches.[11]
Classical-inspired architecture predominated after the Great Fire of London The rebuilding of the City of London was so extensive that the numbers of workers employed broke the monopoly of the medieval livery company of stonemasons and the Worshipful Company of Masons and the role of master-mason was displaced by that of the early modern architect.[11] The new St Paul's Cathedral designed by Christopher Wren and his Wren churches mostly dispensed with the Gothic idiom in favour of classical work.[11] Outside London however, new ecclesiastical buildings and repairs to older churches were still carried out in Gothic style, particularly near the ancient university towns of Oxford and Cambridge, where the university colleges were important patrons of 17th-century Gothic construction.[11]
By the 18th century, architects occasionally worked in Gothic style, but the living tradition of Gothic workmanship had faded and their designs rarely resembled medieval Gothic buildings. Only when the Gothic Revival movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries began, was the architectural language of medieval Gothic relearned through the scholarly efforts of early 19th-century art historians like Rickman and Matthew Bloxam, whose Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture first appeared in 1829.[12][11]
Alongside the new Gothic building work of the 19th century, many of England's existing Gothic buildings were extensively repaired, restored, remodelled, and rebuilt by architects seeking to improve the buildings according to the Romantic, high church aesthetic of the Oxford Movement and to replace many of the medieval features lost in the iconoclastic phases of the Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. In the process of this Victorian "restoration", much of the original Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages was lost or altered beyond recognition. However, medieval works left unfinished were often completed or restored to their "original" designs. According to James Stevens Curl, the revival of Gothic architecture was "arguably, the most influential artistic phenomenon ever to spring from England".[11]
The various English Gothic styles are seen at their most fully developed in cathedrals, monasteries, and collegiate churches. With the exception of Salisbury Cathedral, English cathedrals–having building dates that typically range over 400 years–show great stylistic diversity.
