Once described by the great Venetian art historian Giuseppe Fiocco as a colossal suq, the city of Venice has always conveyed a distinctly oriental atmosphere to the western european visitor. Mystified by its labyrinth of dark, narrow, often dead-end streets, twisting at right-angles through densely built-up, separately demarcated parishes, glimpsing fragrant gardens hidden behind high, crenellated walls, sniffing the pungent odours of exotic oriental spices in the bustling, crowded markets, the traveller might well have imagined himself transported, as if on a magic carpet, to one of the great mercantile centres of the Middle East — to Baghdad, Cairo or Damascus — to the world of Marco Polo’s travels or the Arabian Nights.

'Architecture', observed Wren, 'has its political Use'. According to him, 'publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country', architecture 'establishes a Nation' by making 'the People love their native Country, which Passion' was, he maintained, 'the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth'. To support his argument he cited the examples of foreign history: the cities of ancient Greece and the Low Countries, Rome, and Jerusalem.x But, had he chosen, he could have drawn examples from nearer home: from his part in rebuilding the City of London, or from his post as Surveyor- General to Charles and James II. He knew well what was expected of him and his art by the restored monarchy.

The English language is noted for the richness of its vocabulary, but it has failed to generate an adequate technical terminology for the discussion of plasterwork. This probably accounts for the importation into English of the Italian term ‘stucco’, to refer to one of the materials used by plasterers; and of the Italian ‘stucchi’, in its anglicized form ‘stuccoes’, to describe the decorative plasterwork executed in ‘stucco’. But the ways in which these terms have been used and their meanings shifted over time, appear to have produced greater confusion rather than clarification, and it is the purpose of this article to examine the process whereby this situation has arisen.

It is not only in English that the use of the term ‘stucco’ now fails to convey any clear meaning to an audience, as was made apparent in a recent summary of the situation in France:

It is now almost forty years since W. A. Pantin wrote that ‘the origin and history of the medieval English shop is … a subject which badly needs investigation.’ Since then, although the study of vernacular buildings has become respectable, shops seldom appeared as a subject in textbook indices or, until recently, as a separate topic in bibliographies. Part of the reason, understandably, is that much of the architectural evidence has been obliterated. Few original shopfronts remain; internal features have long since been removed. However, buildings which can be shown to have contained shops — either workshops or retail spaces — in medieval times (taken as broadly the period from 1100 to 1500) can be found in many towns and cities in England. They range from simple one-room lock-ups to substantial multi-storey jettied buildings, from a room in a merchant’s house to whole rows of workshops associated with basic living accommodation. While it is dangerous to draw quantitative conclusions from the evidence of such survivals, they can, with the help of documentary sources, shed some light on how spaces were used. The purpose of this paper is to offer an interpretation of the medieval shop as a place where goods and money were exchanged, as a contribution to the better understanding of surviving structures.

A comprehensive glossary of medieval mouldings has never been published, a surprising fact which alone justifies the appearance of this article. The foundations for such a study were laid, of course, by the antiquarians and architectural writers of the nineteenth century. Willis (1844) analysed the medieval nomenclature of mouldings. Sharpe published surveys of full-size profiles of an unsurpassed quality, and many other splendid profile drawings are to be found in the various nineteenth-century ‘sketchbook’ publications. Paley (1847) wrote his famous manual, and the number of terms in my glossary which derive from this source is testimony to the lasting significance of his contribution. At the same time Viollet-le-Duc compiled his Dictionnaire, which incorporates invaluable information about French mouldings, albeit scattered through nine volumes. But none of these constitutes a glossary.

Blickling Hall in Norfolk is one of the best-known Jacobean mansions. Its south (entrance) and east façades (Figs 3 and 4) are outstanding pieces of architecture of the period and the rich emblematic plasterwork of the long gallery ceiling is justly celebrated. The date of its commencement, 1619, is carved in a prominent place in the entrance courtyard, and even the name of its architect, Robert Lyming, has long been known, for in the parish registers of Blickling his death in 1628 is recorded with the words ‘architect and builder of Blickling Hall’.

During the Decorated period, the variety of designs for window mullions was greatly increased, producing valuable regional differences and dating criteria. Mullions have the advantage that they are generally easy to observe close-up, though one must add the caution that their vulnerable position and delicate proportions leave them more liable to restoration than some other features. This section is concerned primarily with the appearance of profiles which subsequently became common in the Perpendicular period, and these may be grouped for convenience into two families, as below. It should be noted that certain mullion types dealt with in Part I will not be reconsidered in this section.

The heating and ventilation of the two debating chambers in the British Houses of Parliament occupied the minds of various Select Committees and some of the country’s most renowned scientists and engineers during the nineteenth century. Indeed, since the seventeenth century the chambers had been major sites for technical experimentation in the field of ventilation, which, according to the Victorian physician Neil Arnott, reflected the technological and scientific advances made during this period. Nineteenth-century writers chronicled the design and testing of the numerous heating and ventilation systems that had been deployed. However, the strategies implemented during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were not entirely successful in generating a pleasant internal environment. The destruction of the ancient Palace of Westminster by fire on 16 October 1834 therefore provided an important opportunity to design completely new debating chambers from first principles.

In northern China, heating is represented by kang. The kang is a living and sleeping platform, a heated bed. It is constructed of brick, adobe or stone and consists of three parts: a fireplace, a kang proper and a chimney. Beneath the flat surface of the kang are flues, which conduct hot air from the fireplace through to the room. The kang allows energy to be conserved; its surface temperature of about 40 degrees C can largely be maintained overnight. It is used as a bed at night; bedding is laid out for sleeping but is put away in the morning. During the day it provides a large warm platform upon which people undertake many household activities. The kang usually occupies from one-third to one-half of the area of a room; but the entire floor of a room can be constructed and heated in this manner, in which case it is called dikang, literally a heated floor (di meaning floor). The heated bed and the heated floor are technically similar, but each developed in conjunction with a distinctive way of life, either sitting on the floor or sitting on furniture.

Salisbury House is but one example from a significant corpus of architectural patronage carried out by a single family. In two generations, the Cecils created three great ‘prodigy houses’ among a range of notable country houses including Cranborne Manor in Dorset, Pymmes in Hertfordshire, Wothorpe Lodge near Burghley House in Northamptonshire, and Snape Castle in Yorkshire. It was William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520/21-98), who from the early 1560s initiated this prolific campaign of building with Burghley House in Northamptonshire, Theobalds in Hertfordshire, and Burghley House in London. Both Thomas Cecil (1542-1623) and Robert Cecil (1563-1612) inherited their father’s passion for architecture. Even when Burghley House in the Strand was nearing completion, Thomas continued work on his remarkable Italianate villa in Wimbledon (begun 1588, demolished c. 1720), one of the most innovative houses of the period, with a three-sided plan, built on a steeply sloping hillside that prompted the composition of elaborate terraces. Like the family’s other properties, Wimbledon House was able to offer hospitality to Elizabeth I, while Hatfield House, built by Robert Cecil between 1607 and 1612, was specifically designed to entertain James I and his Queen, Anne of Denmark. In London, Robert Cecil’s architectural patronage started in about 1596 with the improvement and remodelling of Beaufort House in Chelsea, apparently in order to extend his influence into that area, although the scheme was quickly abandoned. Three years later, Robert began Salisbury House in the Strand, while in 1609 he built the first commercial centre in the West End, known as the ‘New Exchange’. From 1612, he also developed a strip of land along the west side of St Martin’s Lane as a new residential area, but did not live to see it completed.

The concentration of military architecture in north Wales from Flint in the east to Anglesey in the west is unsurpassed anywhere in Great Britain. Some of the castles are attributable to the wars fought between the princes of Wales and Edward I of England in 1277, 1282 and 1294/5. Others were built several decades earlier, by both the Welsh and the English. Of these, some were slighted and left in disrepair after Edward’s conquest, but the English took over and modified some others, notably Castell-y-Bere, Criccieth and Dolwyddelan. This article is primarily concerned not with them, but with the castles built de novo around Snowdonia by Edward after his various campaigns: Flint and Rhuddlan founded from 1277, Conway, Caernarfon and Harlech from 1283, and Beaumaris from 1295. Their location reflects the outcome of the wars, with Flint and Rhuddlan founded in the east after Llywelyn ap Gruffudd had retreated into Snowdonia; Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech closer to Snowdon after Llywelyn’s defeat and death; and Beaumaris on Anglesey after the Welsh uprising of 1294/5. These castles are judged to be the apogee of military architecture in the late thirteenth century. Imposing and stylish, they represent all that was required in a fortified castle at that time: a visible, formidable presence that dominated its surroundings; defensive strength in walls, mural towers, and gatehouses equipped with multiple portcullises and murder holes; and domestic apartments suited to the administrative and judicial duties that the constable would dispense in peacetime.

This essay seeks to explore the relationship between Jewish and British identity in the architecture of Anglo-Jewry by reference to a small selection of architecturally important or representative synagogues in this country that are still standing and that have been recorded for the Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage. The Survey was set up in 1997 under the auspices of the Jewish Memorial Council with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and the RIBA to record and research the vanishing architectural heritage of the Jewish communities of Britain and Ireland. In the process it aims to promote protection and preservation and public access to historic Jewish buildings and sites nationwide.

In a note in the Archaeological Journal for 1959 Nikolaus Pevsner paid tribute to the remarkable work of Robert Willis, whose observations and judgements remain valid after more than a century, and continue to form the basis for all work on the buildings that he discussed. An analagous position will surely be held by Pevsner himself, whose observations and judgements have been applied to a far greater range of buildings. Therefore it can only be described as temerity to embark on the discussion of a building that has received the attention of both these scholars as well as others hardly less distinguished. The reason for reopening the discussion is that too little regard has been paid to the importance of the retrochoir of Winchester Cathedral and its significance in relation to other eastern extensions of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The emphasis has been on problems relating to the building history and not enough consideration has been given to the function of the building. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss this latter aspect, but first it is necessary to consider some of the problems concerning the design, the date and the sequence of construction, as the solutions offered hitherto are not wholly convincing.

The relationship of Modernism in architecture with the symbolic needs of church- building was fraught with the dangers of betrayal: whether the architect indulged in personal spiritual expression, or used traditional forms, he could be accused of stylistic excess; if he applied a reductive functionalism, the result could be faulted as failing the brief. After the Second World War, expression and tradition were gradually admitted into Modernism to expand and enrich its vocabulary, and the limits of functionalism were reassessed. Churches were a field in which architects of the Modern Movement could explore their new concerns with poetic form and monumentality, in contrast to the more prosaic jobs in housing, schools, and so on; but few architects had the chance to work on churches in quite the same volume as the more pressing post-war building tasks. One firm of architects with an exceptional opportunity was Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, responsible for a series of Roman Catholic churches in Scotland, ‘the finest body of post-war church building in Britain’, according to Elain Harwood.1 This work has attracted attention from architectural historians before, particularly for its rich and humane interpretation of sacred architecture.

This study of the surviving models of Sir John Soane's designs was begun as part of a larger field of inquiry, the history of the architectural model in Europe. However, it soon became apparent that the unique character of this collection merited a separate study of its own. As I grew more familiar with the extent and range of these models the idea of a catalogue raisonee took shape. In the first place, a large number of these works were unknown to visitors to the museum, being in storage due to lack of available space for their display. Secondly, many models contained information relating to the development of certain designs not revealed by the drawings concerned. Finally, there were several models separated in various parts of the museum, the significance of which lay in their relationship to one another.

Between 1790 and 1835 more than sixty books illustrating designs for small to moderately large houses were published. All of these, but particularly those devoted entirely or in part to cottage designs, have a particular interest for the historian for the evidence they contain of changing tastes and ideas through this period of social upheaval. While individual designs for such modest buildings are only occasionally remarkable, these books taken as a group give a striking picture of the designer’s intentions, and in some cases a glimpse of his own circumstances as well.

The ‘long gallery’: a name and a room perfectly familiar these days to anyone visiting or reading about English country houses and, indeed, equally familiar since the midnineteenth century to those acquainted with prints and descriptions of country-house interiors. Does the name, however, as we use it today, go back much further than the nineteenth century and what are the problems which the word ‘gallery’ itself can present?

Ancient granite columns have been a pervasive element in the architecture of Rome since the Imperial era. However, in the fifteenth century, just as the effort to revive Antiquity intensified, these ubiquitous and durable ancient columns fell out of use. It was instead the stone travertine that became the columnar material of choice. Yet, just as quickly as this change occurred, within an exceptionally short period of thirty years, beginning with the construction of the Palazzo della Cancelleria courtyard, Rome saw a renascence in their application. While little has been made of this material shift, this article argues that the sudden extensive employment of spoliated granite columns was a crucial component in the recovery of a distinctly local Roman Antiquity. It was through the use and transformation of spolia that builders and patrons attempted to create an architecture that not only recalled Antiquity, but resubstantiated it, literally making it whole again.

The construction from 1386 of Milan Cathedral, the largest Gothic church ever constructed in Italy, was one of the most important episodes in the history of Italian and European architecture. The documentation of the late Trecento and early Quattrocento discussions over how to build the Cathedral is extraordinarily rich and extensive, and permits a consideration of the project from many points of view including the relationship between medieval architectural theory and an actual project. At the same time, any enquiry has to contend with the copious modern literature and the conclusions that have been reached hitherto – often erroneously in our view – about many of the most salient points. We thus re-examine published and unpublished documentation and the existing literature, analysing especially the format of the building's elevation, the proposals by Gabriele Stornaloco and Jean Mignot, and the drawings attributed to Antonio di Vincenzo. We also reconsider the notions of ars and scientia which have previously been misinterpreted in discussions of the cathedral documentation.

The increasing reference to medieval moulding profiles in architectural writings has created new problems. Whereas a background knowledge of other forms of stylistic evidence, such as tracery patterns and ground plans, may be expected from the reader, the same is not true of mouldings; and there is hardly ever space in a specialized publication for the author to provide the necessary context. It is thus difficult to check the validity of the evidence presented.

Such reference works as exist are mainly nineteenth-century, and generally do little to enlighten this situation. Anyone who has wrestled with the best known of these, Paley, will have experienced typical difficulties: examples imprecisely identified, without dates, drawn from only certain geographical areas, and with no sense of a European setting. The examples selected are mainly parochial, whereas modern research needs to know more about the mouldings of major building schemes significant as stylistic trendsetters in their own time. Above all, their value as reference works is reduced by the lack of an analytical index of mouldings arranged by type, rather than the cumbersome arrangement by period adopted by Paley and most of his successors. This is not to underestimate the importance of the pioneering work of the antiquarians, but merely to admit that the needs of architectural history have changed in the last hundred years.