English Architecture: A view from the continent
Rūstis Kamuntavičius shares his thoughts on the development of architecture in England over the last two thousand years.
The first time I lived in London for a longer period of time was in 2015. I stayed in the Lithuanian Embassy apartment in the west of the city. The views through the window were striking: unplastered red brick tower blocks, white windows divided into small squares, flats below street level, whole complexes of buildings following a single architectural template, rustic facades and roofs, and, most obviously, a dearth of buildings that are older than the 19th century.
Although I returned to London several more times over the years, it wasn't until 2023 that I was able to live and travel more widely in other parts of England. This article is about how English architecture appears from a continental perspective. The general time periods are the same as in Europe: Prehistory, Antiquity, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and variations of 19th and 20th century modern architecture. However, due to Britain’s physical isolation as an island, the English rationality that pervades everyday life, the consumerism that has pervaded since the 18th century, and the relatively weak tradition of fine art up to the modern period, England has a distinctive landscape and a specific logic of urban architecture.
Stonehenge sits at the centre of a complex prehistoric landscape
Let's start with the prehistory and that famous icon - Stonehenge. It should be noted, that the number of circles made of stones or wood in England is very large: there are tens or even hundreds of them. Stonehenge is special because the stones are particularly large and have been transported from quite a distance. In fact, it is not just an English phenomenon. At the end of the Stone Age, in many places, there is a common-sense stretching placement of stones that cannot be rationally explained. Savage people, ignorant of writing and the comforts of civilization, broke and transported huge blocks of stone for reasons only they could understand. These reasons were apparently very important, because the stones were really big and heavy. We can find complexes of stone structures of uncertain purpose in Corsica, Provence, Bosnia and many other places, not to mention the famous Egyptian pyramids of a similar period.
The passion for breaking and pushing large stones eventually faded, and the next wave of long-lasting structures that stood the test of time did not arrive until thousands of years later, during the Roman Empire. The conquest of Britain began in 43 BC. The Roman period, which lasted around five hundred years, left its mark, but nowhere near as pronounced as in France, Italy, Spain or Greece. But, as in these Mediterranean coastal lands, England saw the building of aqueducts, coliseums, theatres and roads. In the south-western English town of Bath, a preserved Roman bath complex has been converted into a modern museum with spatial animations, storytelling and interactive experiences. I have never seen such a comprehensive and immersive reconstruction of Roman baths anywhere else in Europe.
As far as I can make out, for about seven hundred years after the fall of the Roman Empire, nothing significant happened in England. Of course, there was King Arthur, his fellow knights of the round table and their legendary capital Camelot. It is not clear how much of this was legend and how much reality, but however great the stories, the real battles or the real characters, very little of the tangible material heritage of those times has reached our days.
The real explosion of architecture and art in England took place after 1000 AD. It was accompanied by fundamental changes at the political and civil level. Firstly, in 1066 the Normans conquered Britain and began modern political history. Secondly, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the creation of Oxford and Cambridge universities - which became the foundation of scientific and cultural development. With the Norman invasion came the building of castles. Constantly altered and rebuilt, castles have been a feature of the English landscape for the last thousand years.
In the late Middle Ages, from about the 13th to the 15th century, England was dotted with enormous Gothic cathedrals. Many of these survive today, including Canterbury, Wells, Salisbury, Winchester, Westminster and dozens more. In many places, disproportionately large cathedrals still dominate the context of much smaller dwellings, so that one can still experience the feeling that medieval man sought - to experience the immeasurable power of God. True, the English were far from original. The Gothic period began in France in the 12th century: the first Gothic church is said to have been built in what is now the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. In the Middle Ages, the English were heavily influenced by French culture, to the extent that the upper classes used French in their formal and informal everyday life for several hundred years.
In terms of art and architecture, the Gothic period was the most mature and the one that left the biggest imprint on England: never before had anything more grand, subtle and mature been created on this island. So great was the power of this art, even four hundred years later, that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Gothic revived with renewed vigour. Churches, palaces and castles were again built and rebuilt in imitation of the old Gothic style. Similar processes of Gothic and neo-Gothic architecture spread in central Europe, especially in the German lands. It should be noted that the English were again not the pioneers. It was in Germany that the neo-Gothic tradition originated: the first neo-Gothic church is thought to have been built in Berlin in 1822 (Friedrichswerdersche Kirche). Gothic and neo-Gothic have become an integral part of the landscape and urban architecture. In this respect, England and Germany (especially the northern, Protestant part of the country) are very similar.
After the Middle Ages and with the beginning of the modern era, the English concentrated on economics and intellectual creativity. Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare and Thomas Hobbes are just a few of the well-known names that illustrate the beginning of that period. Unfortunately, they did not design houses, create sculptures or paint pictures. In general, during the Reformation, which took root in the 16th century, the elite were skeptical about investment in mature art and architecture. Religious and cultural specificity led to the dominance of technocracy and consumerism in England. Architecture, art and sculpture served only the man who was too self-absorbed to be bothered by eternal themes: the English threw off the burden of transcendental ideas and beauty became more associated with luxury, durable materials, an abundance of detail and practical function. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries the most famous English painter of all time, William Turner, arrived on the scene, but the fact that England never produced architects and sculptors equal to him only confirms these trends.
The €100 banknote depicts the Baroque style, the most widespread in Europe. Originating in Rome, it spread throughout the Catholic world during the 17th and 18th centuries and even made its way into hardcore Protestant countries such as Holland; which gave birth to Vermeer and Rembrandt. Lithuania is worth remembering here: the world's second Baroque building, after Rome's Il Gesù, was built on the Radvilas’ (Radziwill) estate in Nesvizh, while the second half of the 17th century witnessed the creation of the exceptional Pažaislis Monastery complex in the suburbs, and the Baroque of Vilnius, which flourished on the land of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 18th century, has become one of Europe's most mature examples of Rococo. Dozens of churches in this style still dominate Lithuanian cities and the overall landscape of the country.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, architecture in England wasn‘t driven by the processes leading in continental Europe. Yes, the enormous St Paul's Cathedral in central London was built in the 17th century, and the impressive palaces of Blenheim (near Oxford) and Kensington (in London, near Hyde Park) in the 18th century, but artistically they are far from the maturity of the Italian, or even the French, Baroque. Moreover, the architecture of this period is far from dominant in England, although a number of buildings from this period do catch the eye in the south-west, which began to grow rapidly in the 18th century thanks to wealth gained from colonialism. A continental European, accustomed to Italian and German rococo forms, is unlikely to find anything particularly interesting or original in English architecture of the period.
The last two hundred years have been a time of political, economic and cultural prosperity for England, though this is hard to see in the architecture and art of the day. In the 19th century, London was the most powerful city in the world, and in the 20th century, English language finally displaced French from international diplomacy and became a global lingua franca. Despite such achievements, in the 19th century the English simply copied continental fashions, especially eclecticism (the mixing of all possible styles in order to achieve an imagined grandeur) and the aforementioned neo-Gothic. They had almost no interest in slightly more sophisticated French and German movements, such as Art Nouveau (Secession) or Modernism (Bauhaus). After the Second World War, further transformations happened: old towns were demolished (or not rebuilt after the German bombing) and replaced by huge shopping malls. True, the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries saw some of the more interesting skyscrapers in central London, such as the „Gherkin“ and the Shard, but given the huge economic and cultural potential of the English, we would have expected much more...
However, there is a very interesting side to English architecture that cannot be ignored. The point is that for a thousand and a half years, from the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages, the country's development, and especially its artistic side, has been inextricably linked to the continent. But for the last five centuries, England has proudly ignored the continent's avant-garde currents and offered its own interpretation. It is essentially the same as in France, Italy or anywhere else on the continent, although its execution is more like a protest to show that the English are different: more practical, appreciating what they see here and now; they don't need any philosophical subtleties. They have been good at it, because they have had more resources to do it than the vast majority of other nations.
Rūstis Kamuntavičius is Director of the Institute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; Associate professor, Department of History & Head of Czesław Miłosz Center, Vytautas Magnus University
Main fields of interest: The history, politics, culture and national narratives of Lithuania, Poland and Belarus; historical relations between Lithuania and Western European countries since the Middle ages. Full biography: rustis.lt/biografija