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130-789: English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century. The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches . Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed arches , rib vaults , buttresses , and extensive use of stained glass . Combined, these features allowed the creation of buildings of unprecedented height and grandeur, filled with light from large stained glass windows. Important examples include Westminster Abbey , Canterbury Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral . The Gothic style endured in England much longer than in Continental Europe . The Gothic style

260-419: A "protection against chaos". The concept of style was foreign to architects until the 18th century. Prior to the era of Enlightenment , the architectural form was mostly considered timeless, either as a divine revelation or an absolute truth derived from the laws of nature, and a great architect was the one who understood this "language". The new interpretation of history declared each historical period to be

390-474: A Norman building which was remodelled with the earliest rib vault known. Besides cathedrals, monasteries, and parish churches , the style was used for many secular buildings, including university buildings, palaces , great houses , and almshouses and guildhalls . Stylistic periodisations of the English Gothic style are The architect and art historian Thomas Rickman 's Attempt to Discriminate

520-553: A Renaissance ornament, was installed in the chapel of King's College Chapel , Cambridge. During the Elizabethan Period (1558–1603), the classical details, including the five orders of classical architecture, were gradually introduced. Carved ornament with Italian Renaissance motifs began to be used in decoration, including on the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey . The pointed arch gradually gave way to

650-565: A Roman settlement for four centuries and had become progressively more crowded inside its defensive city wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into extramural settlements such as Shoreditch , Holborn , Cripplegate , Clerkenwell and Southwark , and the Inns of Court . To the West it reached along Strand to the Royal Palace and Abbey at Westminster . By the late 17th century,

780-541: A bakery in Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September, and spread rapidly. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of removing structures in the fire's path, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor , Sir Thomas Bloodworth . By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned

910-422: A few deaths, enumerating known deaths from hunger and exposure among survivors of the fire, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed. The dramatist James Shirley and his wife are believed to have died in this way. Hanson maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners being beaten to death or lynched were

1040-536: A great effect on the arts and culture, which took a more sober direction. The perpendicular Gothic was the longest of the English Gothic periods; it continued for a century after the style had nearly disappeared from France and the rest of the European continent, where the Renaissance had already begun. Gradually, near the end of the period, Renaissance forms began to appear in the English Gothic. A rood screen ,

1170-515: A grid system, which became prevalent in the American urban landscape. If it had been rebuilt under some of these plans, London may have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence. According to archaeologist John Schofield, Wren's plan "would have probably encouraged the crystallisation of the social classes into separate areas", similar to Haussmann's renovation of Paris in the mid-1800s. Wren's plan

1300-404: A historical epoch ( Renaissance style ), geographical location ( Italian Villa style ), or an earlier architectural style ( Neo-Gothic style ), and are influenced by the corresponding broader artistic style and the "general human condition". Heinrich Wölfflin even declared an analogy between a building and a costume : an "architectural style reflects the attitude and the movement of people in

1430-405: A hose to spray on a fire or fill buckets. Further, the site where the fire started was close to the river: all the lanes from the river up to the bakery and adjoining buildings should have been filled with double chains of firefighters passing buckets of water up to the fire and then back down to the river to be refilled. This did not happen, as inhabitants panicked and fled. The flames crept towards

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1560-522: A larger English fleet led by Thomas Allin . A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorized by the Fire of London Disputes Act 1666 and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670 , was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and

1690-468: A long way, tended to arrive too late, and had limited reach, with spouts but no delivery hoses. On this occasion, an unknown number of fire engines were either wheeled or dragged through the streets. Firefighters tried to manoeuvre the engines to the river to fill their tanks, and several of the engines fell into the Thames. The heat from the flames by then was too great for the remaining engines to get within

1820-522: A number of styles which have acquired other names. Architectural styles often spread to other places, so that the style at its source continues to develop in new ways while other countries follow with their own twist. For instance, Renaissance ideas emerged in Italy around 1425 and spread to all of Europe over the next 200 years, with the French, German, English, and Spanish Renaissances showing recognisably

1950-664: A place in history that is independent of its author. The subject of study no longer was the ideas that Borromini borrowed from Maderno who in turn learned from Michelangelo , instead the questions now were about the continuity and changes observed when the architecture transitioned from Renaissance to Baroque . Semper, Wölfflin, and Frankl, and later Ackerman, had backgrounds in the history of architecture, and like many other terms for period styles, "Romanesque" and "Gothic" were initially coined to describe architectural styles, where major changes between styles can be clearer and more easy to define, not least because style in architecture

2080-490: A proclamation that "all Cities and Towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades". Royal proclamations were issued to forbid people to "disquiet themselves with rumours of tumults", and to institute a national charitable collection to support fire victims. The official account of the fire in the London Gazette concluded that

2210-450: A safe refuge, with its thick stone walls and natural firebreak in the form of a wide empty surrounding plaza. It had been crammed full of rescued goods and its crypt filled with the tightly packed stocks of the printers and booksellers in adjoining Paternoster Row . However, the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, undergoing piecemeal restoration by Christopher Wren . The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Within half an hour,

2340-609: A ship in the North Sea, and had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started. A committee was established to investigate the cause of the Great Fire, chaired by Sir Robert Brooke . It received many submissions alleging a conspiracy of foreigners and Catholics to destroy London. The committee's report was presented to Parliament on 22 January 1667. Versions of the report that appeared in print concluded that Hubert

2470-462: A single day. The perception of a need to get beyond the walls took root only late on the Monday, and then there were near-panic scenes at the gates as distraught refugees tried to get out with their bundles, carts, horses, and wagons. The crucial factor which frustrated firefighting efforts was the narrowness of the streets. Even under normal circumstances, the mix of carts, wagons, and pedestrians in

2600-414: A stage of growth for the humanity (cf. Johann Gottfried Herder 's Volksgeist that much later developed into Zeitgeist ). This approach allowed to classify architecture of each age as an equally valid approach, "style" (the use of the word in this sense became established by the mid-18th century). Style has been subject of an extensive debate since at least the 19th century. Many architects argue that

2730-432: A useful distance. A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner 's bakery in Pudding Lane a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. The family was trapped upstairs but managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened to try, thus becoming the first victim. The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour, the parish constables arrived and judged that

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2860-480: A verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was necessary if London was to recover. Radical rebuilding schemes poured in for the gutted City and were encouraged by Charles. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke , Valentine Knight , and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans. All were based on

2990-405: Is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture" ( Nikolaus Pevsner , 1943). Nonetheless, the traditional and popular approach to the architectural history is through chronology of styles, with changes reflecting the evolution of materials, economics, fashions, and beliefs. Works of architecture are unlikely to be preserved for their aesthetic value alone; with practical re-purposing,

3120-465: Is a depressing affair indeed". According to James Elkins "In the later 20th century criticisms of style were aimed at further reducing the Hegelian elements of the concept while retaining it in a form that could be more easily controlled". In the middle of the 19th century, multiple aesthetic and social factors forced architects to design the new buildings using a selection of styles patterned after

3250-456: Is an accepted version of this page The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall , while also extending past the wall to the west. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief. The fire started in

3380-414: Is easier to replicate by following a set of rules than style in figurative art such as painting. Terms originated to describe architectural periods were often subsequently applied to other areas of the visual arts, and then more widely still to music, literature and the general culture. In architecture stylistic change often follows, and is made possible by, the discovery of new techniques or materials, from

3510-643: Is found at Ely Cathedral ; the architect Thomas Witney built the central tower from 1315 to 1322 in Decorated style. Soon afterwards another architect, William Joy, added curving arches to strengthen the structure, and made further extensions to join the Lady Chapel to the Choir. In 1329–45, he created an extraordinary double arch in the decorated style. The buttress became more common in this period, as at Lichfield Cathedral . These were stone columns outside

3640-550: Is generally termed Decorated Gothic , because the amount of ornament and decoration increased dramatically. It corresponded roughly with the Rayonnant period in France, which influenced it. It was a period of growing prosperity in England, and this was expressed in the decoration of Gothic buildings. Almost every feature of the interiors and facades was decorated. Historians sometimes subdivide this style into two periods, based on

3770-561: Is revived, it is different. The Spanish mission style was revived 100 years later as the Mission Revival , and that soon evolved into the Spanish Colonial Revival . Early writing on the subjects of architectural history, since the works of Vitruvius in the 1st century B.C. , treated architecture as a patrimony that was passed on to the next generation of architects by their forefathers. Giorgio Vasari in

3900-488: Is the chapter house of Old St Paul's Cathedral , built by the royal architect William de Ramsey in 1332. The early style was also practised by another royal architect, John Sponlee , and fully developed in the works of Henry Yevele and William Wynford . Walls were built much higher than in earlier periods, and stained glass windows became very large, so that the space around them was reduced to simple piers. Horizontal transoms sometimes had to be introduced to strengthen

4030-403: Is typified by lancet windows , tall narrow lights topped by a pointed arch. They were grouped together side by side under a single arch and decorated with mullions in tracery patterns, such as cusps , or spear-points. Lancet windows were combined similarly pointed arches and the ribs of the vaults overhead, giving a harmonious and unified style. The second style of English Gothic architecture

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4160-724: The English Renaissance , the stylistic language of the ancient classical orders and the Renaissance architecture of southern Europe began to supplant Gothic architecture in Continental Europe, but the British Isles continued to favour Gothic building styles, with traditional Perpendicular Gothic building projects undertaken into the 17th century in England and both Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture incorporating Gothic features, particularly for churches. Classical-inspired architecture predominated after

4290-591: The Great Fire of London The rebuilding of the City of London was so extensive that the numbers of workers employed broke the monopoly of the medieval livery company of stonemasons and the Worshipful Company of Masons and the role of master-mason was displaced by that of the early modern architect. The new St Paul's Cathedral designed by Christopher Wren and his Wren churches mostly dispensed with

4420-819: The Royal Exchange , the Custom House , St Paul's Cathedral, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the General Letter Office , and the three western city gates— Ludgate , Newgate , and Aldersgate . The monetary value of the loss was estimated at around 9–10 million pounds (equivalent to £2.13 billion in 2023). François Colsoni says that the lost books alone were valued at £150,000. Evelyn believed that he saw as many as "200,000 people of all ranks and stations dispersed, and lying along their heaps of what they could save" in

4550-517: The four-centred arch . The Perpendicular style was less often used in the Gothic Revival than the Decorated style, but major examples include the rebuilt Palace of Westminster (i.e. the Houses of Parliament), Bristol University 's Wills Memorial Building (1915–25), and St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney . Architectural style Architectural styles are frequently associated with

4680-453: The lead roof was melting, and the books and papers in the crypt were burning. The cathedral was quickly a ruin. The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and the firebreaks created by the garrison finally began to take effect on Wednesday, 5 September. Pepys climbed the steeple of Barking Church , from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw". There were many separate fires still burning, but

4810-629: The 16th century shifted the narrative to biographies of the great artists in his " Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects ". Constructing schemes of the period styles of historic art and architecture was a major concern of 19th century scholars in the new and initially mostly German-speaking field of art history . Important writers on the broad theory of style including Carl Friedrich von Rumohr , Gottfried Semper , and Alois Riegl in his Stilfragen of 1893, with Heinrich Wölfflin and Paul Frankl continued

4940-558: The City proper—the area bounded by the city wall and the River Thames —was only a part of London, covering some 700 acres (2.8 km ; 1.1 sq mi), and home to about 80,000 people, or one quarter of London's inhabitants. The City was surrounded by a ring of inner suburbs where most Londoners lived. The City was then, as now, the commercial heart of the capital, and was the largest market and busiest port in England, dominated by

5070-473: The City, and so he did not see the early stages of the disaster. He went by coach to Southwark on Monday, joining many other upper-class people, to see the view which Pepys had seen the day before of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to

5200-485: The City, they refused the offers that Charles made of soldiers and other resources. Even in such an emergency, the idea of having the unpopular royal troops ordered into the City was political dynamite. By the time that Charles took over command from the ineffectual Lord Mayor, the fire was already out of control. The city was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys. It had experienced several major fires before 1666,

5330-526: The Fire in its early stages... there was little [he] could have done" given the state of firefighting expertise and the sociopolitical implications of antifire action at that time. Samuel Pepys ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from the battlements. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down an estimated 300 houses and reached

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5460-484: The Fleet and outflanked them, driven by the unabated easterly gale, forcing them to run for it. By mid-morning the fire had breached the wide affluent luxury shopping street of Cheapside . James's firefighters created a large firebreak to the north of the conflagration, although it was breached at multiple points. Through the day, the flames began to move eastward from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against

5590-470: The Gothic rib vault to modern metal and reinforced concrete construction. A major area of debate in both art history and archaeology has been the extent to which stylistic change in other fields like painting or pottery is also a response to new technical possibilities, or has its own impetus to develop (the kunstwollen of Riegl), or changes in response to social and economic factors affecting patronage and

5720-413: The Gothic idiom in favour of classical work. Outside London however, new ecclesiastical buildings and repairs to older churches were still carried out in Gothic style, particularly near the ancient university towns of Oxford and Cambridge , where the university colleges were important patrons of 17th-century Gothic construction. By the 18th century, architects occasionally worked in Gothic style, but

5850-481: The Gothic style was Wells Cathedral , begun in 1175. Other features were imported from the Ile-de-France , where the first French Gothic cathedral, Sens Cathedral , had been built (1135–64). After a fire destroyed the choir of Canterbury Cathedral in 1174, the French architect William of Sens rebuilt the choir in the new Gothic style between 1175 and 1180. The transition can also be seen at Durham Cathedral ,

5980-611: The Great Fire was over. It took some time until the last traces were put out: coal was still burning in cellars two months later. In Moorfields , a large public park immediately north of the City, there was a great encampment of homeless refugees. Evelyn was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board ... reduced to extremest misery and poverty." Most refugees camped in any nearby available unburned area to see if they could salvage anything from their homes. The mood

6110-546: The King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way." Charles' brother James, Duke of York , offered the use of the Royal Life Guards to help fight the fire. The fire spread quickly in the high wind and, by mid-morning on Sunday, people abandoned attempts at extinguishing it and fled. The moving human mass and their bundles and carts made

6240-408: The King put his brother James, Duke of York, in charge of operations. James set up command posts on the perimeter of the fire. Three courtiers were put in charge of each post, with authority from Charles himself to order demolitions. James and his life guards rode up and down the streets all Monday, "rescuing foreigners from the mob" and attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of

6370-831: The Monasteries , and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms . In the process of this Victorian "restoration" , much of the original Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages was lost or altered beyond recognition. However, medieval works left unfinished were often completed or restored to their "original" designs. According to James Stevens Curl , the revival of Gothic architecture was "arguably, the most influential artistic phenomenon ever to spring from England". The various English Gothic styles are seen at their most fully developed in cathedrals, monasteries, and collegiate churches. With

6500-535: The Roman rounded arch, brick began to replace masonry, the roof construction was concealed, and the Gothic finally gave way to an imitation of Roman and Greek styles. The pitched Gothic timber roof was a distinctive feature of the style, both in religious and domestic architecture. It had to be able to resist rain, snow and high winds of the English climate, and to preserve the integrity of the structure. A pitched roof

6630-658: The Style of Architecture in England , first published in 1812, divided Gothic architecture in the British Isles into three stylistic periods. Rickman identified the period of architecture as follows: From the 15th century, under the House of Tudor , the prevailing Gothic style is commonly known as Tudor architecture . This style is ultimately succeeded by Elizabethan architecture and Renaissance architecture under Elizabeth I ( r.  1558–1603 ). Rickman excluded from his scheme most new buildings after Henry VIII's reign, calling

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6760-501: The Three Cranes, were now consumed". In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh,

6890-627: The Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The light turned out to be a flareup east of Inner Temple, large sections of which burned despite an effort to halt the fire by blowing up Paper House. Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and deaths are traditionally believed to have been few. Porter gives the figure as eight and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation , refugees also perished in

7020-416: The adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned to give his permission. When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. The more experienced firemen were clamouring for demolition, but Bloodworth refused on

7150-425: The air current, such as the constricted space between jettied buildings , and this left a vacuum at ground level. The resulting strong inward winds fueled the flames. The fire pushed towards the city's centre "in a broad, bow-shaped arc". By Sunday evening it "was already the most damaging fire to strike London in living memory", having travelled 500 metres (1,600 ft) west along the river. Throughout Monday,

7280-429: The area of London came to share in these opportunities, the carts jostling at the narrow gates with the panicked inhabitants trying to get out. The chaos at the gates was such that the magistrates briefly ordered the gates shut, in the hope of turning the inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to fighting the fire: "that, no hopes of saving any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured

7410-413: The bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War ; these substantial immigrant groups became victims of street violence. On Tuesday,

7540-402: The builder. The concept of architectural style is studied in the architectural history as one of the approaches ("style and period") that are used to organize the history of architecture (Leach lists five other approaches as "biography, geography and culture, type, technique, theme and analogy"). Style provides an additional relationship between otherwise disparate buildings, thus serving as

7670-482: The conditions of the artist, as current thinking tends to emphasize, using less rigid versions of Marxist art history. Although style was well-established as a central component of art historical analysis, seeing it as the over-riding factor in art history had fallen out of fashion by World War II, as other ways of looking at art were developing, and a reaction against the emphasis on style developing; for Svetlana Alpers , "the normal invocation of style in art history

7800-584: The days of the English Civil War. Five to six hundred tons of powder was stored in the Tower of London . The high Roman wall enclosing the city impeded escape from the inferno, restricting exit to eight narrow gates. During the first couple of days, few people had any notion of fleeing the burning city altogether. They would remove what they could carry of their belongings to a safer area; some moved their belongings and themselves "four and five times" in

7930-483: The debate into the 20th century. Paul Jacobsthal and Josef Strzygowski are among the art historians who followed Riegl in proposing grand schemes tracing the transmission of elements of styles across great ranges in time and space. This type of art history is also known as formalism , or the study of forms or shapes in art. Wölfflin declared the goal of formalism as German : Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe , "art history without names", where an architect's work has

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8060-399: The disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan, which still exists today. By the 1660s, London

8190-572: The ends of benches; and elaborate multicoloured decoration, usually in floral patterns, on panels or cornices called brattishing . The sinuous lines of the tracery in the Decorated style were replaced by more geometric forms and perpendicular lines. The style was also affected by the tragic history of the period, particularly the Black Death , which killed an estimated third of England's population in 18 months between June 1348 and December 1349 and returned in 1361–62 to kill another fifth. This had

8320-601: The entire country, burned down early on Monday morning. The London Gazette just managed to put out its Monday issue before the printer's premises went up in flames. Suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on Monday, and both the Trained Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on fire fighting and more on rounding up foreigners and anyone else appearing suspicious, arresting them, rescuing them from mobs, or both. The inhabitants, especially

8450-467: The exception of Salisbury Cathedral , English cathedrals–having building dates that typically range over 400 years–show great stylistic diversity. Early English Gothic predominated from the late 12th century until midway to late in the 13th century, It succeeded Norman Architecture , which had introduced early great cathedrals, built of stone instead of timber, and saw the construction of remarkable abbeys throughout England. The Normans had introduced

8580-480: The fields towards Islington and Highgate . The fire destroyed approximately 15 percent of the city's housing. The Court of Aldermen sought to quickly begin clearing debris and re-establish food supplies. By the Saturday after the fire "the markets were operating well enough to supply the people" at Moorfields. Charles II encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing

8710-593: The fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert , who claimed that he was a member of a gang that had started the Great Fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead , and hanged at Tyburn on 29 October 1666. After his death, it became apparent that he had been on board

8840-558: The fire spread over nearly the whole city, destroying St Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II 's court at Whitehall . Coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously getting underway. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward. The social and economic problems created by

8970-426: The fire spread to the west and north. The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. London Bridge, the only physical connection between the City and the south side of the river Thames, had been noted as a deathtrap in the fire of 1633. However, Southwark

9100-451: The fire was an accident: "it stressed the role of God in starting the flames and of the king in helping to stem them". Despite this, residents were inclined to put the blame for the fire on foreigners, particularly Catholics, the French, and the Dutch. Trained bands were put on guard and foreigners arrested in locations throughout England. An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for

9230-464: The fire-fighting efforts and near to collapse, "like a fainting woman", crying out plaintively in response to the King's message that he was pulling down houses: "But the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." Holding on to his "dignity and civic authority", he refused James's offer of more soldiers and then went home to bed. King Charles II sailed down from Whitehall in the Royal barge to inspect

9360-480: The full weight of the roof still came down directly onto the walls. Gothic architects did not like the roof truss systems, because the numerous horizontal beams crossing the nave obstructed the view of the soaring height. They came up with an ingenious solution, the Hammerbeam roof . In this system, the point of the roof is supported by the collar and trusses, but from the collar curved beams reach well downward on

9490-515: The grounds that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found. Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man , rather than by possessing requisite capabilities for the job. He panicked when faced with a sudden emergency and, when pressed, made the oft-quoted remark, "A woman might piss it out", and left. Jacob Field notes that although Bloodworth "is frequently held culpable by contemporaries (as well as some later historians) for not stopping

9620-600: The historical ones (working "in every style or none"), and style definition became a practical matter. The choice of an appropriate style was subject of elaborate discussions; for example, the Cambridge Camden Society had argued that the churches in the new British colonies should be built in the Norman style , so that the local architects and builders can go through the paces repeating the architectural history of England. Great Fire of London This

9750-414: The impromptu camps. Field argues that the number "may have been higher than the traditional figure of six, but it is likely it did not run into the hundreds": he notes that the London Gazette "did not record a single fatality" and that had there been a significant death toll it would have been reflected in polemical accounts and petitions for charity. Hanson takes issue with the idea that there were only

9880-465: The lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange —combined bourse and shopping centre —and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside . The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and was a "smoking shell" within a few hours. John Evelyn , courtier and diarist, wrote: The conflagration was so universal, and

10010-409: The lanes impassable for firemen and carriages. Pepys took a coach back into the city from Whitehall, but reached only St Paul's Cathedral before he had to get out and walk. Pedestrians with handcarts and goods were still on the move away from the fire, heavily weighed down. They deposited their valuables in parish churches away from the direct threat of fire. Pepys found Bloodworth trying to coordinate

10140-452: The living tradition of Gothic workmanship had faded and their designs rarely resembled medieval Gothic buildings. Only when the Gothic Revival movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries began, was the architectural language of medieval Gothic relearned through the scholarly efforts of early 19th-century art historians like Rickman and Matthew Bloxam , whose Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture first appeared in 1829. Alongside

10270-434: The miserable and calamitous spectacle!" Suspicion soon arose in the threatened city that the fire was no accident. The swirling winds carried sparks and burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters , causing seemingly unrelated house fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose. Foreigners were immediately suspected because of

10400-406: The most recent in 1633. Building with wood and roofing with thatch had been prohibited for centuries, but these cheap materials continued to be used. The only major area built with brick or stone was the wealthy centre of the city, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on spacious lots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes, in which all available building space

10530-456: The necessary orders. The use of water to extinguish the fire was frustrated. In principle, water was available from a system of elm pipes which supplied 30,000 houses via a high water tower at Cornhill , filled from the river at high tide, and also via a reservoir of Hertfordshire spring water in Islington . It was often possible to open a pipe near a burning building and connect it to

10660-637: The new Gothic building work of the 19th century, many of England's existing Gothic buildings were extensively repaired, restored, remodelled, and rebuilt by architects seeking to improve the buildings according to the Romantic , high church aesthetic of the Oxford Movement and to replace many of the medieval features lost in the iconoclastic phases of the Reformation , the Dissolution of

10790-407: The north and west ranges of the front quadrangle, dated to 1431; notably in the medieval hall on the west side, (now the "new library") and the "old library" on the first floor, north side. The architecture at Balliol was often derived from castle architecture, with battlements, rather than from church models. King's College Chapel, Cambridge also used another distinctive Perpendicular Gothic feature,

10920-494: The notion of "style" cannot adequately describe the contemporary architecture, is obsolete and ridden with historicism . In their opinion, by concentrating on the appearance of the building, style classification misses the hidden from view ideas that architects had put into the form. Studying history of architecture without reliance on styles usually relies on a " canon " of important architects and buildings. The lesser objects in this approach do not deserve attention: "A bicycle shed

11050-557: The ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms was far greater than an ordinary house fire, and was enough to consume bodies fully or leave only a few skeletal fragments, producing a death toll not of eight, but of "several hundred and quite possibly several thousand." The material destruction has been computed at 13,200–13,500 houses, 86 or 87 parish churches, 44 Company Halls,

11180-538: The ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War . Fear and suspicion hardened into certainty on Monday, as reports circulated of imminent invasion and of foreign undercover agents seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches. There was a wave of street violence. The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street , through which post passed for

11310-552: The original intent of the original architect, sometimes his very identity, can be forgotten, and the building style becomes "an indispensable historical tool". Styles emerge from the history of a society. At any time several styles may be fashionable, and when a style changes it usually does so gradually, as architects learn and adapt to new ideas. The new style is sometimes only a rebellion against an existing style, such as postmodern architecture (meaning "after modernism"), which in 21st century has found its own language and split into

11440-454: The people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them. Evelyn lived in Deptford , four miles (6 km) outside

11570-431: The people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire," wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September. On Monday evening, hopes were dashed that the massive stone walls of Baynard's Castle , Blackfriars would stay the course of the flames, the western counterpart of the Tower of London . This historic royal palace was completely consumed, burning all night. Tuesday, 4 September

11700-423: The period concerned. The 21st century construction uses a multitude of styles that are sometimes lumped together as a " contemporary architecture " based on the common trait of extreme reliance on computer-aided architectural design (cf. Parametricism ). Folk architecture (also "vernacular architecture") is not a style, but an application of local customs to small-scale construction without clear identity of

11830-540: The plight of Londoners, yet he made no secret that he regarded "the fire of London as a stroke of good fortune for him" as it reduced the risk of French ships crossing the English Channel being taken or sunk by the English fleet. Louis tried to take advantage but an attempt by a Franco-Dutch fleet to combine with a larger Dutch fleet ended in failure on 17 September at the Battle of Dungeness when they encountered

11960-463: The potential to be a threat to Charles II, as had been demonstrated by several republican uprisings in London in the early 1660s. The City magistrates were of the generation that had fought in the Civil War, and could remember how Charles I 's grab for absolute power had led to that national trauma. They were determined to thwart any similar tendencies in his son, and when the Great Fire threatened

12090-522: The predominant motifs of the designs. The first, the Geometric style, lasted from about 1245 or 50 until 1315 or 1360, where ornament tended to be based on straight lines, cubes and circles, followed by the Curvilinear style (from about 1290 or 1315 until 1350 or 1360) which used gracefully curving lines. Additions in the Decorated style were often added to earlier cathedrals. One striking example

12220-402: The prevailing east wind and towards the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores. The garrison at the Tower took matters into their own hands after waiting all day for requested help from James's official firemen, who were busy in the west. They created firebreaks by blowing up houses on a large scale in the vicinity, halting the advance of the fire. Everybody had thought St. Paul's Cathedral

12350-456: The principal rafters are connected with the tie beam by the head of the truss. The King-Point truss has a vertical beam with connects the centre of the rafter to the ridge of the roof, supported by diagonal struts, while a Queen-Post truss has a wooden collar below the pointed arch which united the posts and was supported by struts and cross-braces. A Queen-Post truss could span a width of forty feet. Both of these forms created greater stability, but

12480-400: The quenching of the fire." Monday marked the beginning of organised action, even as order broke down in the streets, especially at the gates, and the fire raged unchecked. Bloodworth was responsible as Lord Mayor for coordinating the firefighting, but he had apparently left the City; his name is not mentioned in any contemporaneous accounts of the Monday's events. In this state of emergency,

12610-468: The riverfront and set alight the water wheels under London Bridge , eliminating the supply of piped water. London possessed advanced fire-fighting technology in the form of fire engines , which had been used in earlier large-scale fires. However, unlike the useful firehooks, these large pumps had rarely proved flexible or functional enough to make much difference. Only some of them had wheels; others were mounted on wheelless sleds. They had to be brought

12740-441: The riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by

12870-666: The same style, but with unique characteristics. An architectural style may also spread through colonialism , either by foreign colonies learning from their home country, or by settlers moving to a new land. One example is the Spanish missions in California , brought by Spanish priests in the late 18th century and built in a unique style . After an architectural style has gone out of fashion, revivals and re-interpretations may occur. For instance, classicism has been revived many times and found new life as neoclassicism . Each time it

13000-426: The scene. He found that houses were still not being pulled down, in spite of Bloodworth's assurances to Pepys, and daringly overrode the authority of Bloodworth to order wholesale demolitions west of the fire zone. By Sunday afternoon, the fire had become a raging firestorm that created its own weather. A tremendous uprush of hot air above the flames was driven by the chimney effect wherever constrictions narrowed

13130-406: The streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little impact. The riverfront was important in the development of the Great Fire. The Thames offered water for firefighting and the chance of escape by boat, but the poorer districts along the riverfront had stores and cellars of combustibles which increased the fire risk. All along

13260-681: The streets at night watched for fire as one of their duties. Self-reliant community procedures were in place for dealing with fires, and they were usually effective. "Public-spirited citizens" would be alerted to a dangerous house fire by muffled peals on the church bells, and would congregate hastily to fight the fire. The firefighting methods relied on demolition and water. By law, every parish church had to hold equipment for these efforts: long ladders, leather buckets, axes, and "firehooks" for pulling down buildings. Sometimes buildings were levelled quickly and effectively by means of controlled gunpowder explosions. This drastic method of creating firebreaks

13390-509: The style of "additions and rebuilding" in the later 16th and earlier 17th centuries "often much debased". Architect and art historian Edmund Sharpe , in The Seven Periods of English Architecture (1851), identified a pre-Gothic Transitional Period (1145–90), following the Norman period, in which pointed arches and round arches were employed together. Focusing on the windows, Sharpe dubbed Rickman's Gothic styles as follows: In

13520-400: The three classical orders of architecture, and created massive walls for their buildings, with thin pilaster-like buttresses. The transition from Norman to Gothic lasted from about 1145 until 1190. In the reigns of King Stephen and Richard I , the style changed from the more massive severe Norman style to the more delicate and refined Gothic. Early English was particularly influenced by what

13650-607: The trading and manufacturing classes. The City was traffic-clogged, polluted, and unhealthy, especially after it was hit by a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the Plague Year of 1665. The relationship between the City and the Crown was often tense. The City of London had been a stronghold of republicanism during the English Civil War (1642–1651), and the wealthy and economically dynamic capital still had

13780-407: The undersized alleys was subject to frequent gridlock and accidents. Refugees escaping outwards, away from the centre of destruction, were blocked by soldiers trying to keep the streets clear for firefighters, causing further panic. Fires were common in the crowded wood-built city with its open fireplaces, candles, ovens, and stores of combustibles. A thousand watchmen or "bellmen" who patrolled

13910-477: The upper class, were growing desperate to remove their belongings from the City. This provided a source of income for the able-bodied poor, who hired out as porters (sometimes simply making off with the goods), being especially profitable for the owners of carts and boats. Hiring a cart had cost a couple of shillings the week before the fire; on Monday, it rose to as much as £40, a fortune equivalent to roughly £133,000 in 2021. Seemingly every cart and boat owner in

14040-565: The vertical mullions . Many churches were built with magnificent towers including York Minster , Gloucester Cathedral , Worcester Cathedral , and St Botolph's Church, Boston , St Giles' Church, Wrexham , St Mary Magdalene, Taunton . Another outstanding example of Perpendicular is King's College Chapel, Cambridge . The interiors of Perpendicular churches were filled with lavish ornamental woodwork, including misericords (choir stalls with lifting seats), under which were grotesque carvings; stylized "poppy heads", or carved figures in foliage on

14170-496: The walls which supports them, allowing thinner and high walls between the buttresses, and larger windows. The buttresses were often topped by ornamental stone pinnacles to give them greater weight. The Perpendicular Gothic (or simply Perpendicular) is the third and final style of medieval Gothic architecture in England. It is characterised by an emphasis on vertical lines, and is sometimes called rectilinear. The Perpendicular style began to emerge in about 1330. The earliest example

14300-638: The walls, and carry the weight downward and outwards, to the walls and buttresses, without obstructing the view. The oldest existing roof of this kind is found in Winchester Cathedral . The most famous example of the Hammerbeam roof is the roof of Westminster Hall (1395), the largest timber roof of its time, built for royal ceremonies such as the banquets following the coronation of the King. Other notable wooden roofs included those of Christ Church, Oxford , Trinity College, Cambridge , and Crosby Hall, London . A similar system, with arched trusses,

14430-409: The water-side to another." Pepys continued westward on the river to the court at Whitehall , "where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and the word was carried into the King. So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke what I saw, and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and

14560-423: The wharves, the rickety wooden tenements and tar paper shacks of the poor were shoehorned amongst "old paper buildings and the most combustible matter of tarr, pitch, hemp, rosen, and flax which was all layd up thereabouts". London was also full of black powder , especially along the riverfront where ship chandlers filled wooden barrels with their stocks. Much of it was left in the homes of private citizens from

14690-527: Was a common feature of all the Gothic periods. During the Norman period, the roofs normally were pitched forty-five degrees, with the apex forming a right angle, which harmonised with the rounded arches of the gables. With the arrival of the pointed rib vault , the roofs became steeper, up to sixty degrees. In the late perpendicular period, the angle declined to twenty degrees or even less. The roofs were usually made of boards overlaid with tiles or sheet-lead, which

14820-530: Was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western world, estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. John Evelyn , contrasting London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris in 1659, called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses". By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl . London had been

14950-484: Was called in English "The French style". The style was imported from Caen in Normandy by French Norman architects, who also imported cut stones from Normandy for their construction. It was also influenced by the architecture of the Ile-de-France , where Sens Cathedral had been constructed, the first Gothic cathedral in France. The chancel of Canterbury Cathedral , one of the first Early English structures in England,

15080-429: Was commonly used on low-pitched roofs. The simpler Gothic roofs were supported by long rafters of light wood, resting on wooden trusses set into the walls. The rafters were supported by more solid beams, called purlins , which were carried at their ends by the roof trusses . The tie-beam is the chief beam of the truss. Later, the roof was supported by structures called a King-point-truss and Queen-post truss, where

15210-498: Was increasingly used towards the end of the Great Fire, and modern historians believe that this in combination with the wind dying down was what finally won the struggle. Demolishing the houses downwind of a dangerous fire was often an effective way of containing the destruction by means of firehooks or explosives. This time, however, demolition was fatally delayed for hours by the Lord Mayor's lack of leadership and failure to give

15340-579: Was introduced from France, where the various elements had first been used together within a single building at the choir of the Abbey of Saint-Denis north of Paris , completed in 1144. The earliest large-scale applications of Gothic architecture in England were Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey . Many features of Gothic architecture had evolved naturally from Romanesque architecture (often known in England as Norman architecture ). The first cathedral in England to be both planned and built entirely in

15470-426: Was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence; Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and markets set up round the perimeter. Fears of foreign terrorists and of a French and Dutch invasion were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims. There

15600-535: Was one of a number of Catholic plotters responsible for starting the fire. Abroad in the Netherlands, the Great Fire of London was seen as a divine retribution for Holmes's Bonfire , the burning by the English of a Dutch town during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In Italy, a pamphlet circulated comparing London "to Lucifer in its proud arrogance and its spectacular fall". In Spain, the fire

15730-401: Was panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill , Moorfields, and Islington: a light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants had risen, and were marching towards Moorfields to murder and pillage. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were pushed back into the fields by

15860-450: Was particularly challenging to implement because of the need to redefine property titles. The Crown and the City authorities attempted to negotiate compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left

15990-503: Was preserved by an open space between buildings on the bridge which acted as a firebreak. The fire's spread to the north reached "the financial heart of the City". The houses of the bankers in Lombard Street began to burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to rescue their stacks of gold coins before they melted. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and

16120-502: Was rebuilt in the new style by a French architect, William of Sens . The Early English style particularly featured more strongly-constructed walls with stone vaulted roofs, to resist fire. The weight of these vaults was carried downwards and outwards by arched ribs. This feature, the early rib vault , was used at Durham Cathedral , the first time it was used this way in Europe. Another important innovation introduced in this early period

16250-649: Was seen as a "parable of Protestant wickedness". On 5 October, Marc Antonio Giustinian, Venetian Ambassador in France, reported to the Doge of Venice and the Senate, that Louis XIV announced that he would not "have any rejoicings about it, being such a deplorable accident involving injury to so many unhappy people". Louis had made an offer to his aunt, the British Queen Henrietta Maria , to send food and whatever goods might be of aid in alleviating

16380-430: Was the buttress , a stone column outside the structure that reinforced the walls against the weight pressing outward and downward from the vaults. This evolved into the flying buttress , which carried the thrust from the wall of the nave over the roof of the aisle. The buttress was given further support by a heavy stone pinnacle. Buttresses were an early feature of the chapter house of Lichfield Cathedral . Early English

16510-519: Was the day of greatest destruction. The Duke of York's command post at Temple Bar , where Strand meets Fleet Street , was supposed to stop the fire's westward advance towards the Palace of Whitehall. He hoped that the River Fleet would form a natural firebreak, making a stand with his firemen from the Fleet Bridge and down to the Thames. However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over

16640-492: Was used in the roof of Wrexham Cathedral. The Gothic style was adopted in the late 13th to 15th centuries in early English university buildings, due in part to the close connection between the universities and the church. The oldest existing example of University Gothic in England is probably the Mob Quad of Merton College, Oxford , constructed between 1288 and 1378. Balliol College, Oxford has examples of Gothic work in

16770-422: Was used to accommodate the rapidly growing population. The human habitations were crowded, and their design increased the fire risk. The typical multistorey timbered London tenement houses had " jetties " (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. The fire hazard

16900-403: Was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys—"as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer. In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government. Charles's next, sharper message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of

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