Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1

Only half of the following Lectures were delivered by me, as the _Professor of Architecture_, at the Royal Academy. The first seven were delivered while Professor Cockerell held...

Introduction--Art follows the course of civilisation--Three _primâ facie_ claims Gothic Architecture has upon Study--Additional claim, that it is Christian Architecture--Objecti...

I am, however, only urging this as a claim which our old architecture has upon our own study. If we investigate the architecture of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Persia, we find that...

During a genuine and natural state of art, every one learned it from, and developed it upon, the works of his immediate predecessors. This natural course having been broken up,...

About the same time the development of a distinctive style was promoted in the North by an apparently adverse cause. The Northmen, under Rollo, having ravaged and possessed them...

It is impossible to lay too much stress upon its importance, for it _changed the entire geometrical system_. Up to that time the construction of groining was wholly governed by...

The English--though it would appear likely, from their adherence to open timber roofs, that they would have felt the want of the pointed arch less than the Germans, who more usu...

I now come to an example of peculiar interest to ourselves;--that cathedral which it is customary to suppose to be the parent of our own Pointed architecture; and which, though...

London is exactly contemporary with Canterbury, having been consecrated in 1185, the year when that work was completed. It is somewhat less advanced in style, possibly from a pr...

“From the commencement of the thirteenth century architecture developed itself after a method completely new, in which all the parts deduced themselves--the one from the other--...

Towards the end of the Romanesque period very great attention began to be paid to the sections of base mouldings, and in transitional works they are often more beautiful than at...

In almost all other parts the English cathedrals of this age are often richer than the French, as in the clustering of the columns, the richness of the arch mouldings, the beaut...

The massive brick front, with its flanking towers, would have formed an excellent nucleus for his work; but his ardent spirit would not submit to such an expedient, and he at on...

Nor was it to architecture alone that the arts of the period were devoted: we find the same art expended on stained glass, on metal-work of all sorts, on enamels of the most mag...

The two great defects in the _rationale_ of their architecture were--first, that, as the conquerors of the world, the resources at their command were so unlimited that economy o...

Having secured the first object--an arch of reduced pressure--the second, viz., the abutment of an increased resistance, was attained by the systematic development of the buttre...

Now, nothing could be more rational than this development. The mode of glazing in use was most conveniently applicable to spaces of moderate width. It is true that by the more e...

One of the most striking ways in which this principle of common sense is displayed is in the absolute freedom exercised in planning, or, more correctly speaking, the absolute su...

In thick walls and rich work there is often another order of through-arch within the tracery order, or rather the outer order re-appears within. The rere-arch is occasionally cu...

In all this course of study you will be much facilitated by the remembrance of your practical office work. You will remember puzzling questions which have occurred to you while...

The first country to visit is unquestionably France. A question may occur whether it is best to begin with the old royal domain--the great central province of the Pointed style,...

The classic styles are the parents of the Mediæval styles, and without a good knowledge of them the Gothic architect is unable to understand his own architecture. More than this...

I think that our experience of the last few years has suggested to us: first, the expediency of returning in some modified degree to the rule from which we had departed, of adop...

[1] I fancy Mr. Freeman, who has perhaps more right than any living author to a dogmatic opinion on this question, would think that I have gone too far in this statement; and th...