The Victorian Era

What Is Gothic Revival Architecture?

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

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Gothic Revival architecture, also known as Victorian Gothic, Neo-Gothic, or Puginian Gothic, was the most influential of the Victorian architectural styles, and it shaped the architecture of the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the wider world from the early 1840s to the early 1880s. The Gothic Revival was based on the medieval Gothic architecture of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and it was promoted by architects including A. W. N. Pugin, George Gilbert Scott, William Butterfield, G. E. Street, and William Burges, all five of whom were knighted or honoured for their services to architecture. 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 Gothic Revival

The Gothic Revival had its origins in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and it was a reaction against the prevailing Palladian and Neoclassical taste of the period. The early Gothic Revival of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was largely a matter of garden buildings, country houses, ornamental buildings, and picturesque ruins, and it was associated with architects including Sir John Vanbrugh, Nicholas Hawksmoor, William Kent, Sanderson Miller, and Horace Walpole, the author of The Castle of Otranto (1764), the first Gothic novel. Walpole’s Strawberry Hill in Twickenham (1749–76) is the most famous example of the early revival.

The Gothic Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was more thorough than the early phase, and it was associated with architects including James Wyatt, the architect of the restoration of Salisbury, Hereford, and Lichfield cathedrals; Samuel Pepys Cockerell, the architect of Sezincote House in Gloucestershire (1805–10), the first important Indian-influenced house in England; John Nash, the architect of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (1815–22); and A. C. Pugin, the father of A. W. N. Pugin. The great public event of the period was the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament, designed by Charles Barry and A. W. N. Pugin in a Perpendicular Gothic style and constructed between 1840 and 1870.

The Three Phases of the Gothic Revival

The Gothic Revival of the Victorian period can be divided into three distinct phases. The first, sometimes called Early Gothic or Puginian Gothic, ran from about 1840 to 1860 and was dominated by Pugin’s own work and by the Ecclesiological movement. Pugin’s churches of St Giles, Cheadle (1841–46), St Chad, Shrewsbury (1839–42), and St Augustine, Ramsgate (1846–51) are the defining buildings of the phase, and they were characterised by correct, archaeologically detailed Gothic, often built in coloured brick and decorated with rich polychromy.

The second, High Victorian Gothic, ran from about 1860 to 1875 and was the age of polychromy, structural polychromy, and the muscular, structurally honest buildings of Butterfield, Street, and Burges. Butterfield’s All Saints Margaret Street in London (1849–59) and Keble College, Oxford (1868–86) are the defining buildings of the phase, and they were characterised by sharp contrasts of light and dark, by structural polychromy in brick and stone, and by the deliberate, often shocking, honesty of their construction. The third, Late Gothic or Aesthetic Gothic, ran from about 1875 to the early 1880s and was the phase of J. D. Sedding, G. F. Bodley, and the generation that reconciled Gothic with Renaissance planning, in a more refined, more classical manner.

The Characteristics of the Gothic Revival

The Gothic Revival of the Victorian period was based on the medieval Gothic architecture of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and it incorporated many of the elements of the medieval style. The principal elements were the pointed arch, the lancet window, the rose window, the wheel window, the plate tracery, the bar tracery, the flowing tracery, the reticulated tracery, the curvilinear tracery, and the perpendicular tracery; the ribbed vault, the fan vault, the tierceron vault, and the lierne vault; the parapet, the battlement, the merlon, the crenel, the pinnacle, the finial, and the crocketed gable; the buttress, the pier, the clustered column, the compound pier, the respond, the shaft, the capital, the base, the plinth, the cornice, the string course, the boss, the corbel, and the bracket; and the carved ornament of the label mould, the dripstone, the hood mould, the ball flower, the dog-tooth, the quatrefoil, the cinquefoil, the trefoil, the vesica, and the ogee.

The buildings of the revival ranged from the great churches of the period to the small parish church, the school, the college, the town hall, the museum, the workhouse, the hospital, the railway station, the country house, the vicarage, the rectory, the rectory, the gatehouse, and the warehouse. The greatest church of the period, and the most ambitious Gothic building in England, was the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Chad, Shrewsbury (1839–42), designed by A. W. N. Pugin; the greatest public building of the period was the Houses of Parliament; and the greatest country house of the period was Cardiff Castle, rebuilt for the 3rd Marquess of Bute by William Burges between 1866 and 1881 in a spectacular High Victorian Gothic.

The Architects of the Gothic Revival

The Gothic Revival of the Victorian period was promoted by a generation of brilliant architects. A. W. N. Pugin (1812–1852) was the great pioneer of the movement, and his writings, particularly Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), laid the theoretical foundations of the movement. Pugin’s buildings include the interior of the Houses of Parliament, the clock tower (Big Ben), the church of St Giles, Cheadle, the church of St Chad, Shrewsbury, the church of St Augustine, Ramsgate, and the almshouses at Albury. George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878) was the great populariser of the movement; his output included the Albert Memorial, the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Martyr’s Memorial at Oxford, and St Mary Abbots, Kensington.

William Butterfield (1814–1900) was the great controversialist; the buildings for which he was responsible include All Saints Margaret Street, Keble College Oxford, Rugby School Chapel, and the church of St Alban, Holborn. G. E. Street (1824–1881) was the great classicist of the movement, whose principal designs were the Royal Courts of Justice, Christ Church Cathedral Dublin, and the church of SS Philip and James, Oxford. William Burges (1827–1881) was the great romantic, and his most characteristic works include Cardiff Castle, Cork Cathedral, the Tower House, and Knightshayes Court. The history of these architects is examined in Famous Victorian Buildings and Landmarks.

The Decline of the Gothic Revival

The Gothic Revival began to decline in the 1880s, and it was gradually replaced by the Queen Anne, the Arts and Crafts, the Romanesque Revival, the Renaissance Revival, and the new Art Nouveau. The decline was due to a number of factors: the increasing criticism of the style, the increasing cost of the style, the increasing difficulty of the style, the increasing labour intensity of the style, the increasing skill requirements of the style, and the increasing dissatisfaction with the style. The new Queen Anne offered a more flexible, more domestic, more picturesque alternative; the new Arts and Crafts offered a more honest, more craftsmanly, more modern alternative; and the new Art Nouveau offered a more decorative, more fashionable, more international alternative.

The Gothic Revival did not disappear entirely. It continued in use in the late Victorian period, in the Edwardian period, in the early twentieth century, in the inter-war period, and even in the post-war period. It was particularly popular for churches, schools, colleges, universities, public buildings, and ecclesiastical buildings, and it remains a popular style for these building types to the present day. The legacy of the Gothic Revival is examined in Victorian Architecture and Interior Design.