ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. The ear liest architecture of England (not including the megalithic remains at Stonehenge, Avebury, etc., whose date and history are still in con troversy and which can hardly be classed as architecture) dates from the Roman occupation, which has left many remains of walls, villa% and baths (Bath, Silchester, etc), but hardly more than the foundations of these. Indeed. there is but 1:ttle left of any architecture pre vious to the Norman Conquest (1066 &a), for the active building of churches and monasteries which followed involved the demolition of most of the earlier Christian or "Saxon' edifices. A few walls, crypts and fragments show that they were without exception rudely built, with little of architectural elegance in design or decora tion. The tower of Earl's Barton is the most noted of these remains.
Following the Conquest, there began under the Norman kings a remarkable activity in building, especially of abbeys and castles. The imported Norman style, itself a provincial phase of the French Romanesque, was modified in English hands, developed into the Anglo Norman, and applied in the building of great monastic churches, many of which surpassed in size those of France or Italy. This style was marked by its great massiveness; the use of the round arch of stepped section; huge piers sometimes round, sometimes clustered; square lantern-towers at the crossing of nave and transept; timber ceilings in preference to vaulting for the high central aisle; and re stricted but bold decoration in which the zig zag is the most frequent motive. Interlaced arches frequently appear as a wall decoration. The original abbey-cathedral of Canterbury, St. Alban's abbey, Romsey abbey, Ely and Peter boro' cathedrals, Winchester, Southwell, Dur ham, Norwich, Gloucester and Hereford cathe drals, the church of Christchurch, Saint Bar tholomew's at London, the Tower of London with its Saint John's chapel, and many feudal castles belong to this style, which lasted from 1070 to 1200. Most of the above churches were in part, Canterbury almost wholly, rebuilt in the following centuries.
The Anglo-Norman style passed away with the introduction from France of the Gothic style (see Gcrrnac ARCHITECTURE) in the re building of the choir of Canterbury, Cathedral destroyed by fire in 1174. The pointed arch had been used occasionally before this date in England, but from about 1190 its use became the general rule, and with it the English adopted the ribbed vault and traceried window and less universally the flying arch and buttress.
The new style they developed on independent lines, retaining more of the early massiveness than did the French, with less display of the structural framework in stone. The English cathedrals of 1190 to 1350 are longer, lower and narrower than the French, less ornate externally, more ornate internally, having often two transepts, square east ends in place of apses and apsidal chapels, and with west fronts often forming a screen of picturesque design instead of a logical expression of the form of that end of the church. As there were many cathedrals which were abbey-churches as well, the practice became general of grouping with them cloisters, chapter-houses, libraries and residences for the clergy. Nearly all the cathe drals have great square towers at the crossing, forming internal lanterns; at Ely this takes the form of a superb octagon as wide as the three aisles together. But one cathedral was built continuously in one style from end to end,— Salisbury (1220-58) ; Lichfield Cathedral and Westminster Abbey present internally a fairly uniform style, although their building covered in both cases a long period; most of the cathe drals were so often rebuilt in one or another part at different periods that they exhibit clearly the changes of style from one century to another. It is customary to distinguish these different phases and periods by names derived from the window designs, e.g., the Lancet (or Early English),
the Decorated (subdivided into '