Gothic Revival — also called neo-Gothic — is the style that from the late eighteenth century, and above all through the nineteenth, took up the formal language of medieval Gothic once again. Pointed-arch windows, rib vaults, buttresses, flying buttresses and pinnacles return — not as copies, but applied to nineteenth-century building types and built with nineteenth-century means: machine-made brick and cast iron.
Background
The style grows out of Romanticism and a rising interest in the Middle Ages. It begins earliest in Britain, where A. W. N. Pugin argued that Gothic was the only proper Christian architecture, and where the rebuilt Palace of Westminster gave the movement its most visible monument. On the continent, church building supplied the impetus, and the completion of Cologne Cathedral from 1842 became both its symbol and a training ground for a generation of masons.
Characteristics
- Pointed arches over windows, doors and arcades
- Buttresses against the outer walls, sometimes with flying buttresses
- Verticality — tall narrow windows, towers and pinnacles drawing the eye upward
- Brick as the main material, often with bands and arch springings in dressed stone
- Tracery in the windows, in moulded brick or stone
- Rib vaults inside, in masonry or imitated in plaster
- Richly decorated interiors, stained glass and polychrome fittings
Telling it from real Gothic
- Revival work is almost always machine-made brick with regular bonding and narrow joints
- Dimensional accuracy and crispness of detail exceed medieval work
- Iron or steel usually appears in the structure, in tie rods and roof trusses
- The building stands in a nineteenth-century suburb or town extension, not in a medieval churchyard
Maintenance points
- Pointing. Revival masonry is generally built in lime-based mortar. Hard cement repointing damages the brick; use a soft, lime-bound mortar
- Stone. Bands and tracery are often soft sandstone, vulnerable to acid rain and to aggressive cleaning
- Metal. Rusting iron cramps, dowels and window ferramenta are a leading cause of damage to tracery
- Consent. Many revival churches and schools are listed; even maintenance can require permission
Related terms
- Gothic architecture
- Classicism
- Vault rib
- Keystone
- Lierne
- Listed building
- Renaissance Revival
Want to know more about building terms? Visit our knowledge base at fredsdiyplans.com.