The English Millennium: a short history of Architecture

Aims of the course

This online course aims to provide a summary understanding of the essential movements in English architecture (1066-Present). This understanding will be both visually and historically informed.

Participants will be introduced to the discipline and terminology of architectural history.

Course content overview

As an introduction to the subject, it follows that the materials are presented within a loose historical narrative. Care is taken to present these stylistic developments in a way that is both visually aware, and historically credible. The course is systematically interested in the relationship between architectural creativity, social ideology (religious or otherwise), and political power structures.

The course does not rush to problematise contentious historical movements, reasoning that participants will need to understand the canonical framework in order to eventually decolonise, or queer it. Participants will be encouraged to reflect critically on the socio-political consequences of each artistic movement: whether associated with feudalism, civil conflict, religious violence or colonial activity.

Welcome week (Week 0)

Purpose:

• personal introductions
• introducing the course
• useful reading
• personal objectives

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have: 

• become familiar with navigating around the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and from VLE to links and back
• test your ability to access files and the web conferencing software and sort out any problems with the help of the Technology Enhanced Learning team
• learn how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
• contribute to a discussion forum to introduce yourself to other students and discuss why you are interested in the course and what you hope to get out of your studies 

Teaching Week 1: Medieval (1066-1485) From Hastings to Bosworth Field: A Survey of Medieval English Architecture

Purpose:

The first teaching week surveys the main stylistic movements between the Norman Conquest and the accession of the Tudors. Unlike the succeeding units, which cover roughly a century each, this module straddles nearly 420 years. As well as building a basic architectural vocabulary and sense of chronology, this week provides participants with valuable context for all that follows. The architectural forms that first emerge in this period will surface and resurface throughout the course. We begin with the Romanesque architecture imported by William the Conqueror, drawing on both ecclesiastical and domestic examples. We interpret these examples in light of the Saxon buildings extant at the Conquest, before charting the gradual emergence of Gothic architecture. The heart of the lecture will be an ‘attempt to discriminate’ between the successive phases of Gothic architecture: the early English style, the decorated style, and the perpendicular Gothic.

Learning outcomes:

• to provide an introductory understanding of architectural terminology
• to provide a summary understanding of the main stylistic progressions in medieval Britain, to be applied in future weeks

Teaching Week 2: Early Modern (1485-1660) From Building to Page in Early-Modern England

Purpose:

The first of our ‘long centuries’, this session will take us from the accession of the Tudors to the Restoration. We will see the increasing incursion of Renaissance detailing into essentially Gothic buildings, a trend that culminates in the mercantile exuberance of the Elizabethan prodigy house. We will consider how architectural innovation travelled in the period, focusing on the outsized influence of print. We will also note the gradual appearance and growing professionalisation of the first English architects, beginning with Robert Smythson. This week will trace the early evolution of English classical architecture – beginning with decorative borrowings at the Elizabethan court, and growing into the fully-fledged Palladianism of Inigo Jones. Interrupted by the civil violence of the 1640s and 50s, the period ends with the Restoration, and the baroque classicism that emerged alongside it.

Learning outcomes:

• to provide an understanding of relevant chronology and technical vocabulary
• to provide an understanding of the social and political problems of the English seventeenth-century, and their consequences for the built environment, and for the reception of architectural style
• to provide an understanding of the role of the printed page, in an age where fewer people had travelled

Teaching Week 3: Georgian, or the Long 18th Century (1660-1815) English Classicism: from Wren to Nash

Purpose:

Although delayed by the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and slowed by the constitutional crisis of 1688, this century sees the eventual hegemony of classical architecture. At the outset, we see the emergence of the English baroque – a disputed term. Largely the production of Restoration courtiers, this style – or manner – was rapidly pressed into service after the destruction of London in 1666. The rebuilt city is compelling for the visible triumph of political constraint over artistic desire. The recently restored monarchy did not enjoy enough centralised power to enforce the land confiscation necessary for a classically planned city. Constitutional compromise, writ large in the eventual form of St Paul’s Cathedral, re-emerges throughout this period. We will chart the emergence of Palladian and neo-classical forms, and the political and courtly factions that sought to own them. The period ends with the Napoleonic Wars, and the changing currents of English cultural interest. Here, we encounter the cheerful eclecticism of the early nineteenth century, abundantly present in the mixed Gothic and Italianate practice of John Nash.

Learning outcomes:

• to provide an understanding of relevant chronology and technical vocabulary. This is particularly important with respect to the classical forms of the period
• to develop an understanding of the relationship between political economy and architectural form
• to understand the leading classical source materials, both in print, and in the institutionalised travelling of the period (the Grand Tour)

Teaching Week 4: Victorian, or the Long 19th Century (1815-1914) Building Jerusalem? Architecture and Ideology  in Victorian England

Purpose:

The comfortable solidity of Victorian buildings belies a politically unstable continent and a bitterly divided intellectual landscape. The outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, which closed the last session, had prevented European travel so essential for classical building projects. This practical constraint turned artistic attention inward. That renewed interest in domestic sources was the catalyst for a series of national revivals. Chief among them, the revival of Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture. As the European anciens régimes came violently to an end, the English found comfort in the aesthetics of the Elizabethan political settlement: a benevolent female sovereign whose absolutism was kept in check, not by a glittering European aristocracy, but by a sturdy Protestant gentry. European state violence was, in turn, a spur to political radicalism. With Marx’s Das Kapital (1867) appearing within a decade of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), Victorian England was a spiritually and intellectually divided society. Alongside this – or perhaps because of it – the Anglican church embarked on its largest campaign of church building since the Reformation. Church architecture became an ideological battleground, led by powerful academic and theological movements, as well as by polemicists such as Augustus Pugin (1812–52). This week closes with mounting ostentation of Edwardian architecture, which only grew, perhaps compensatorily, as imperial Britain entered terminal decline.

Learning outcomes:

• to provide an understanding of relevant chronology and technical vocabulary.
• application of Teaching Week 1 (English medieval architectures) to understand the source material for nineteenth-century revivalism
• to provide an understanding of the central political and ideological factors that fuelled key aesthetic debates
• to gain familiarity with the period’s leading theorists, from A.W.N Pugin onwards

Teaching Week 5: Modern and Post Modern (1914-) Brave New World: Reconstructing English Architecture

Purpose:

In the aftermath of the nationalistic violence of the World Wars, it is no surprise that national architectures had lost their sheen. This, spurred by the writings of the Swiss theorist, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (‘Le Corbusier’), gave birth to a radical new style: international modernism. Although Le Corbusier had written his founding manifesto (Vers Une Architecture) in 1923, the period of post-war reconstruction was the natural time for its implementation. Delayed by the stagnant economy and material shortages of the 1950s, this new architecture exploded with the cultural transformation of the 1960s. This was both a physical and cultural reconstruction: civilian bombing raids had created gaping holes in the English cities, much as discredited Victorian social norms left a vacuum in the national culture.

Even as the building projects of modernist Britain began, powerful dissenters appeared. Nostalgia for the old world – embodied by the poetry and activism of Sir John Betjeman (1906–84) – swiftly emerged to challenge a secular international society. These forces found expression in the foundation of modern conservation movements and in a partial return to historically informed architecture. ­We will take these themes up to the present day: in the persistent Gothicism of Stephen Dykes Bower, and in the socially dogmatic New Classicism of Raymond Erith, Quinlan Terry and John Simpson.

Learning outcomes:

• to gain an understanding of relevant chronology and technical vocabulary
• to gain an appreciation of the conflicting cultural forces in post-war architecture, and their relevance today
• to gain an understanding of the basic theoretical principles of international modernism
• to reflect on the application of previous course themes on this unstable period, namely, recurrent historicism, and the political actors on architecture

Week 6 - what next?

• assessment of student learning
• assessment of student satisfaction
• encouragement of further study

This course is open to everyone, and you don’t need any previous knowledge or experience of the subject to attend.  

Our short courses are designed especially for adult learners who want to advance their personal or professional development. They are taught by tutors who are expert in both their subjects and in teaching students of all ages and experiences. 

Please note that all teaching is in English. You should have near-native command of the English language to get the maximum benefit from the course. 

Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours of self-study time, for example, reading materials, although this will vary from person to person. 

While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material). 

Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the VLE so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (using discussion boards etc).

Fees 

The course fee includes access to the course on our VLE, personal feedback on your work from an expert tutor, a certificate of participation (if you complete work and take part in discussions), and access to the class resources for two years after your course finishes. 

Concessions 

For more information, please see our concessions information page. 

Alison Fordham Bursary

University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education is proud to offer the Alison Fordham bursary, which is awarded to students who wish to study on one of our short online courses via our VLE, reducing the fee paid by 50%. The bursary is limited to a single award for each set of online courses. 

Application criteria:  

• applicants should set out their personal learning motivations since priority will be given to those who are returning to learning after an extended break, or have not previously engaged with fully online learning, or are seeking to use the online short course as a bridge towards undergraduate award-bearing study
• applicants who can demonstrate financial need 

For more information, please see our bursaries information page.

A certificate of participation and a digital credential will be awarded to those who contribute constructively to weekly discussions, exercises and assignments for the duration of the course.