When the English nation rose out of the ruins of the Roman Province of Britannia, people remained obsessed with their Roman past. Seismic social and political change in 1066 barely upset the vision of patrons and architects and Rome remained England's cultural capital driving the imagination of its architects.
When the English nation rose out of the ruins of the Roman Province of Britannia, people remained obsessed with their Roman past. Seismic social and political change in 1066 barely upset the vision of patrons and architects and Rome remained England's cultural capital driving the imagination of its architects.
During the thirteenth century Jerusalem surplanted Rome as the inspiration for English architecture. Huge national wealth led to an outburst of building of great creativity and individuality. The new gothic style which emerged by the 1220s was a national style for England creating some of the most remarkable buildings in European history.
England's economic success peaked in 1300 amidst a riot of architectural excess and was followed by a series of disasters which lasted much of the fourteenth century. Yet against a catastrophic background English architectural individualism flourished and out of radically changed social structures an architectural consensus emerged.
Against a background of political instability architectural initiative was captured by a new class of patrons who built in a style that expressed confidence in their worldly position and fear of the afterlife. On the very eve of the Reformation English architecture had reached a perfection that was to be destroyed by Henry VIII and new world order.