THE
SEVEN PERIODS
OF
English Architecture.

THE
SEVEN PERIODS
OF
English Architecture.

DEFINED AND ILLUSTRATED.

BY

EDMUND SHARPE, M.A.,
ARCHITECT.

TWENTY STEEL ENGRAVINGS AND WOODCUTS.

THIRD EDITION.

E. & F. N. SPON, 125, STRAND, LONDON.
NEW YORK: 12, CORTLANDT STREET.
1888.

PREFACE.

"We have been so long accustomed to speak of our National Architecture in the terms, and according to the classification bequeathed to us by Mr. Rickman, and those terms and that classification are so well understood and have been so universally adopted, that any proposal to supersede the one, or to modify the other, requires somewhat more than a mere apology. To disturb a Nomenclature of long standing, to set aside terms in familiar use, and to set up others in their place which are strange, and therefore at first unintelligible, involves an interruption of that facility with which we are accustomed to communicate with one another on any given subject, that is only to be justified by reasons of a cogent and satisfactory nature.

"The sufficiency of Mr. Rickman's Nomenclature and Divisions, and their suitableness at the time and for the purpose for which they were made, are best evidenced by the fact that, although the attempts to supersede them have been both numerous and persevering, they have remained for nearly half a century the principal guide to the Architectural Student; and Mr. Rickman's 'Attempt to discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England,' is still the Text-book from which the greater part of the popular works of the present day have been compiled.

"In referring, however, to these attempts to supersede Mr. Rickman's system, it is proper to remark that one observation applies to the whole of them;—although they propose to change the Nomenclature of his different styles, or to subdivide them, his main division of English Architecture into four great Periods or Styles, is adopted by all, and still remains undisturbed. No point, therefore, has been hitherto proposed to be gained by these alterations, beyond a change of name; and this may be taken as a sufficient reason why none of these attempts have been successful: men are not willing to unlearn a term with which they are familiar, however inappropriate, in order to learn another, which, after all, means the same thing.

"Although, however, Mr. Rickman's simple division of Church Architecture into four Periods, or Styles, may perhaps have been the one best suited to his time, and to the elementary state of the knowledge of the subject possessed by the best informed Archæologists of his day, it may with propriety be questioned how far such a division is suited to the exigencies of writers of the present day, or to the present advanced tastes of knowledge on the subject.

"Simplicity was doubtless the object Mr. Rickman had in view in his division of English Architecture into four Styles only. This is a recommendation, however, which can hardly be said to hold good at the present day: it behoves us to consider well, perhaps more especially at the present moment, whether Mr. Rickman's system fulfils all the conditions essential to one calculated for popular and universal use; and whether we should therefore seek to confirm and to perpetuate it, or whether the time has not arrived for the adoption of a more detailed and accurate division of the long and noble series of buildings which contain the History of our National Architecture from the Heptarchy to the Reformation."[A]

No one can enter into an inquiry of this kind without eventually coming to the conclusion that there are two large classes of Buildings containing distinctive marks of peculiarity of character, which find no place in Mr. Rickman's system, but which nevertheless, from the number and importance of their examples, are pre-eminently entitled to separate classification. These two classes are those to which the buildings enumerated at pp. 24, and 31, 32 respectively belong, and which cannot, without circumlocution, be described in any of the terms prescribed by Mr. Rickman.

As regards the earlier of these two classes, the extent to which these distinctive peculiarities of detail exist, will perhaps at first scarcely be credited, and proofs of a much more extensive and satisfactory character than are contained in the following pages, or could be looked for in an elementary work of this nature, will probably be required before its title to separate classification will be universally conceded.

As regards the later of these classes, the same difficulty does not exist. Mr. Rickman divided the whole of the buildings of Pointed Architecture into three Styles or Classes, which he denominated "Early English," "Decorated," "Perpendicular." The titles of the two last he professed to derive from the character of their windows, conceiving, no doubt justly, that no part of a Gothic building exhibits peculiarities of Style in so prominent and characteristic a manner as its windows. In strict accordance with this rule, which may be assumed to be a correct and valuable one, it has already been shown,[B] that had Mr. Rickman gone a step further and classed the whole of the buildings of Pointed Architecture according to the forms of their Windows under four heads, instead of three, he would have obtained a classification equally simple, but more intelligible and convenient; he would have obviated much that is confused and indefinite, and therefore perplexing to the Architectural Student, in his description of buildings which belong to the class to which we are now referring, and would have enabled us to compare the buildings of our own Country with those of corresponding character, and nearly contemporaneous date on the Continent, in a manner that would have established an analogy between them, which, according to the present classification, has no apparent existence.

The inability to describe, or speak of any of the buildings belonging to either of these two classes, including some of the finest in the kingdom, otherwise than as examples of an intermediate and anomalous character, exhibiting the peculiarities partly of one style and partly of another, but belonging specifically to neither, must be admitted to be a serious defect in all hitherto recognised systems of Architectural Nomenclature; and there are probably few Architecturalists who have not frequently felt the