The Victorian Era

What Defines Queen Anne Style Architecture?

Article · Architecture & Design · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Queen Anne style was the dominant architectural style of the late Victorian period in the United Kingdom, and it shaped the architecture of the country, the British Empire, and the wider world from the 1870s to the early 1900s. The Queen Anne house, with its red brick, its white-painted woodwork, its tile-hung gables, its sash windows, its asymmetrical plan, its prominent chimney stacks, and its picturesque, domestic air, was the dominant house type of the period, and it remains one of the most recognisable architectural styles of the era. The history of the style is examined in Victorian Architectural Styles, and the broader context is set out in Victorian Architecture and Interior Design.

The Origins of the Queen Anne Style

The Queen Anne style had its origins in the late seventeenth-century English architecture of the reign of Queen Anne (1702–1714), but the Victorian version of the style was a free interpretation of the period, drawing on a wide range of late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century English models rather than a strict archaeological copy. The leading architects of the revival were Richard Norman Shaw (1831–1912), Ernest George (1839–1922), Philip Webb (1831–1915), and J. J. Stevenson (1831–1908), all four of whom trained in the office of George Gilbert Scott or in related offices, and all four of whom came to maturity in the 1860s and 1870s.

The first buildings of the new style were the houses of the 1870s, in the garden suburbs of Bedford Park in Chiswick (begun 1875), in the artists’ colony of Holland Park, in the cathedral closes of Oxford and Cambridge, and in the vicarages and country houses of the home counties. The first book of the new style was J. J. Stevenson’s House Architecture of 1880, which set out the principles of the revival in a series of plates and an accompanying text. The first public building of the new style was the New Scotland Yard of 1887–90, designed by Shaw and built on the Thames Embankment in a manner that owed more to Dutch gabled houses than to late seventeenth-century English models.

The Characteristics of the Queen Anne House

The Queen Anne house has a number of distinctive features, useful for identifying the style. The principal features are the red brick, generally in a warm London or Suffolk tone; the white-painted woodwork, including the window frames, the door frames, the eaves brackets, and the porch; the tile-hung gables, hung with plain or shaped clay tiles; the sash windows, generally painted white; the asymmetrical plan, with the rooms and the windows arranged on the elevation without formal symmetry; the prominent chimney stacks, often of decorative brickwork; the dormer windows; and the corner turrets, bay windows, and oriel windows. The roofs are generally gabled, hipped, half-hipped, or gambrel, and they are covered in slate or in clay tile.

The Queen Anne house also has a number of distinctive small features. The door is generally a vertical-boarded door, with a small glazed panel and a brass letterbox, knocker, and door furniture. The porch is generally a small gabled or hipped structure, with brackets, a segmental or round-headed arch, and a balustraded or moulded parapet. The windows are generally sash windows, with a single horizontal bar dividing each sash into two panes, and they are set in moulded painted frames, often with a small projecting sill. The eaves are generally finished with a small projecting cornice of painted wood, with a few decorative brackets.

The Queen Anne Terrace

The Queen Anne terrace was a common form of the style in the suburbs, towns, and cities of the period. It was generally a row of two-storey or three-storey houses, with red brick, white-painted woodwork, tile-hung gables, sash windows, asymmetrical plans, prominent chimney stacks, and dormer windows. The terrace was generally built in groups of four to twelve houses, with a uniform façade and a uniform treatment of the windows, doors, and porches, and a series of varied details — the gable shape, the tile-hung pattern, the porch design, the dormer design — that gave each house its own character.

Terraces of this kind were built in great numbers in the expanding suburbs of London, in the cathedral cities of the home counties, and in the seaside towns of the south and east coast in the 1880s and 1890s, and they remain a familiar feature of the Victorian and Edwardian suburb. The most ambitious examples, such as the Cadogan Estate in Chelsea, the Bedford Park estate in Chiswick, and the artists’ houses of Holland Park, are among the most characteristic domestic architecture of the late Victorian period.

The Queen Anne Cottage

The Queen Anne cottage was a common form of the style in the suburbs, towns, and villages of the period. It was generally a small, detached, asymmetrical, picturesque house, with red brick, white-painted woodwork, tile-hung gables, sash windows, an asymmetrical plan, prominent chimney stacks, dormer windows, corner turrets, and bay windows. The cottage was generally two storeys high, with a steeply pitched gable roof, and it was set in its own small garden, often behind a low brick wall and a small wooden gate.

The Queen Anne cottage was a popular form of the artistic interior: it was small, picturesque, and easy to furnish in the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts manner, with Morris wallpapers, Liberty textiles, and the new range of honest, simple, well-made furniture. The cottage was the model for the late Victorian suburb, and it was the model, in turn, for the Edwardian, the American Foursquare, the Australian Queen Anne, the Canadian Queen Anne, the South African Queen Anne, and a number of other national and regional styles.

The Queen Anne Public Building

The Queen Anne style was used for a number of important public buildings of the period, although it never displaced the Gothic for churches, the Classical for banks, or the Romanesque for museums. The most important examples are the New Scotland Yard (1887–90) by Richard Norman Shaw, the British Museum Library (now the British Library, 1894–97) by Shaw, the Royal College of Music (1890–94) by Shaw, the Chelsea Town Hall (1885–87) by J. J. Stevenson, the Rochdale Town Hall (1866–71) by William Henry Crossland, the Horniman Museum (1897–1901) by Charles Harrison Townsend, and the Lady Margaret Hall Settlement (1894) by Townsend, all in the manner of the late period. The history of these architects is examined in Famous Victorian Buildings and Landmarks.

The Legacy

The legacy of the Queen Anne style is substantial. The style was the dominant house type of the late Victorian period, and it was the model for the suburban houses, the town houses, the country houses, the seaside houses, the spa houses, the hotel houses, the commercial houses, the institutional houses, and the public houses of the period. The style was also a major influence on the Edwardian, the American Foursquare, the American Queen Anne, the Australian Queen Anne, the Canadian Queen Anne, the South African Queen Anne, the Indian Queen Anne, and other national and regional styles, and it remains a popular style for new houses in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The history of these houses is examined in Victorian Architecture and Interior Design.