The Tudor architectural style is the term for English architecture in the Tudor period (1485–1603). This was a time of architectural transition, as the Gothic Perpendicular style was gradually replaced by a Renaissance aesthetic derived from Italy via France and the Low Countries. Coupled with the change from Gothic to Renaissance forms was a shift from religious to secular architecture, due to the impact of the English Reformation. A subtype of Tudor architecture is Elizabethan architecture, from about 1560 to 1600, which has continuity with the subsequent Jacobean architecture in the early Stuart period.
The low pointed Tudor arch was another defining feature. Some of the most remarkable oriel windows belong to this period. Mouldings are more spread out and the foliage becomes more naturalistic. During the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, many Italian artists arrived in England; their decorative features can be seen at Hampton Court Palace, Layer Marney Tower, Sutton Place, and elsewhere. However, in the following reign of Elizabeth I, the influence of Northern Mannerism, mainly derived from pattern books, was greater. Courtiers and other wealthy Elizabethans competed to build prodigy houses that proclaimed their status and would be able to host the queen on her annual progresses around the country.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries redistributed large amounts of land to the wealthy, resulting in a secular building boom, as well as a source of stone. The building of churches had already slowed somewhat before the English Reformation, after a great boom in the previous century, but was brought to a near-complete stop by the Reformation. Civic and university buildings became steadily more numerous in the period. Brick was something of an exotic and expensive rarity at the beginning of the period, but during it became very widely used in many parts of England, gradually restricting traditional methods such as timber framing to vernacular architecture.
Location
Although Tudor architecture is an English style, it can be found in areas which are not now part of England. Wales had been conquered by Edward I in 1277–83, and was legally unified with England by Henry VIII with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. As such, its architectural history was one with that of England in the Tudor period, and Tudor churches and houses of all scales can be found, such as Wrexham St Giles', Raglan Castle and Plas Mawr, Conwy. Tudor architecture can also be found in overseas areas then under English control, namely Ireland and the English exclave of Calais (until it was reconquered by the French in 1558). Calais was virtually destroyed by bombing in World War Two, but buildings such as the Staple Inn (where Anne Boleyn and her ladies danced before the English and French courts in 1532) are known two have combined four-centred arches with Flemish features. Ormonde Castle (1565) is a notable example of Irish Tudor architecture. As England was frequently at war with Scotland, Scottish patrons unsurprisingly looked elsewhere for inspiration, and Scottish Renaissance architecture owes a great deal to France and nothing to England. Though English forces frequently occupied large parts of southern Scotland (for example during the Rough Wooing of 1544), they did not settle and so did not influence the local architecture.
Development
Henry VII (1485–1509)
The residences of the king and nobility, while they had not been seriously defensible for centuries, still evoked the idea of the castle, with moats, gatehouses, machicolations and crenellations. Brick, having been popularised in 15th century buildings like Tattershall Castle and Herstmonceaux Castle, was now in general use as a secular building material across eastern England. The ascendancy of the Tudors caused no direct change in architectural style, with buildings such as Hadleigh Deanery (Suffolk, 1470s) and Giffords Hall (also Suffolk, 1510s) looking much alike.
In the early part of his reign, Henry Tudor favoured two palaces on the Thames: Greenwich (also known as Placentia) and Richmond. Although today the Old Royal Naval College sits on the site of Greenwich, evidence suggests that, shortly after ascending the throne, Henry spent a very large amount of money on enlarging it and finishing off a watchtower built prior to his reign; his Queen, Elizabeth, gave birth to Henry VIII and his brother Edmund in this palace. Henry Tudor's palace facing the Thames Estuary had a brick courtyard that faced the River Thames. Excavation has also revealed that it had a chapel with black-and-white tiles, and 'bee boles' in which bees could hibernate. As well as Greenwich, Henry VII rebuilt Richmond Palace, after its timber predecessor of Sheen burnt to the ground at Christmas 1497. This has been described as the first prodigy house, a term for the ostentatious mansions of Elizabeth's courtiers and others, and was influential on other great houses for decades to come as well as a seat of royal power and pageantry.
Henry VIII and the early Renaissance (1509–1558)
Henry VII was succeeded by his second son, Henry VIII, who spent enormous amounts of money on building many palaces, as well as other expensive forms of display. In a courtyard of Hampton Court Palace he installed a fountain that for celebrations flowed with wine. He also built military installations all along the southern coast of England and the border with Scotland.
Renaissance forms were most probably introduced to England in the reign of Henry VIII, initially only as minor ornaments to Gothic buildings, such as the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey (1512-18) and the roundels decorating Hampton Court Palace. These first Renaissance works were done by Italians, like Pietro Torrigiani, a Florentine contemporary of Michelangelo, who made Henry VII's tomb. However, royal patronage made the new forms popular among the nobility (including the episcopacy), and English craftsmen soon turned their hands to Renaissance ornament, whether learnt from immigrant artists or from books. One such was John Lee, who designed John Fisher's chantry in St John's College, Cambridge in a Gothic style, but made the tomb (destroyed in 1733 and only known from an illustration) Renaissance. This work was done in 1524, and may be the earliest Renaissance work that can be firmly attributed to an English designer. John Lee continued to combine Gothic and Renaissance features in the West Chantry at Ely Cathedral (c.1520s) - at this time, designers did not see Gothic and Renaissance as fundamentally opposed, but as sources of detail that could be blended to create a rich and exotic architecture.
Henry VIII's most ambitious palace was Nonsuch Palace, south of London and now disappeared, an attempt to rival the spectacular French royal palaces of the age and, like them, using imported Italian artists, though the architecture is northern European in inspiration. Much of the Tudor palace survives at Hampton Court Palace, which Henry took over from his disgraced minister Cardinal Wolsey and expanded, and this is now the surviving Tudor royal palace that best shows the style.
Over time, inward-looking quadrangular house plans were replaced by more open H- or E-shaped plans. The new planning can be seen at Sutton Place (c.1525), where the house is externally symmetrical, so that its internal layout cannot be immediately read like that of a medieval house. More common than innovative planning, however, was the application of Italian-style terracotta decoration to otherwise traditional buildings, such as the gatehouse of Layer Marney Tower (c.1523). Similar 'antik' (i.e. antique) decoration could also be applied to religious buildings (as at the Christ Church Gate of Canterbury Cathedral, c.1519) and tombs (as at Oxborourgh, c.1513). Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner considered Old Somerset House (1547-52) to have been the first building to fully adopt "a sense of Italian Renaissance - or by than rather Franco-Italian Renaissance - composition". By now we have entered the reigns of Edward VI (1547-53) and Mary I (1553-58), neither of whom reigned long enough to have a major influence on architecture.
During this period, wider adoption of fireplaces and chimneys ran in tandem with the decline of the great hall and its open hearth, as houses were increasingly made up of multiple uninterrupted floors of more private rooms. Tudor chimney-pieces were made large and elaborate to draw attention to the owner's adoption of this new technology.
Elizabethan (1558–1603)
The reign of Elizabeth I saw the greater adoption of classical forms, derived from Flemish Northern Mannerism via pattern books. Classical features therefore often appeared more like an illustration than a real classical building, particularly in the 'towers of the orders' seen at Burghley House and Kirby Hall. The most immediately identifiable feature of Elizabethan architecture is the mullioned and transomed window, nearly filling the wall at Burghley and Longleat. This lacks the arched heads seen in the early Tudor period, being a simple grid. As well as adopting new classical forms, the Elizabethans valued the 'antique' associations of Gothic and castle forms. In this way, Burghley House (begun 1577) has great bay windows, Tuscan chimneys and a tower of the orders, but also a great hall (with obligatory hammer-beam roof), a turreted gatehouse and a kitchen with a vault copied from Exeter Cathedral.Goodall 2011, pp 457-458 However, the castle features were increasingly buried beneath a classical veneer, with Longleat (begun 1568) perhaps being the first house to entirely eschew Gothic or castle-derived features in favour of a sleek classical silhouette.Goodall 2011, p. 457Pevsner 1968, p. 307Rather than build her own palaces, the frugal Elizabeth I let her courtiers compete to bankrupt themselves hosting her on her royal 'progresses' around the country. To accommodate the Court, nobles built prodigy houses, with fantastical silhouettes, vast glazed windows and new-fangled classical ornament. The most famous example of such a royal visit was that of Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle in July 1575, expensively remodelled by Robert Dudley in a doomed attempt to woo the queen.Goodall 2011, pp. 441-446 Another extraordinary case, though it never hosted the queen, was Hardwick Hall, where the indomitable Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick) rebuilt the Old Hall with large windows and elaborate plasterwork, before deciding it was inadequate and starting the New Hall from scratch. These prodigy houses were often built by "new men" who had enriched themselves in royal service, like William Cecil, rather than the old nobility who already had great castles and houses.
The names of several significant architects (though they did not use that term) are known from this period, including William Arnold, Robert Smythson and John Thorpe. Architectural drawings also survive in increasing quantity, especially by Thorpe, enabling historians to better understand designers' intentions and the form of since-demolished buildings.
The mid to late 16th century also saw the start of the so-called Great Rebuilding of vernacular houses and farms in southern England, though the dating and extent of this is contested.
Religious architecture