A Text-Book of the History of Architecture Seventh Edition, revised — Context and Discussion

Structural Conservatism and Its Consequences

Hamlin repeatedly emphasizes that English Gothic design avoided “temerity or venturesomeness.” Naves were kept moderate in height and width, supports were never extremely slender, and flying-buttresses were often hidden under aisle roofs. This caution, he argues, produced long, low cathedrals that depended on projecting transepts, square central towers, and the grouping of chapter-houses and Lady-chapels for effect. The trade-off was a loss of impressiveness but a gain in freedom of exterior composition. The author’s language—words like “studious avoidance” and “moderate bounds”—frames English builders as deliberate and risk-averse, a characterization that colors his entire analysis of the period.

Windows as Walls of Glass

In the Perpendicular Period, windows grew to enormous size, especially at the east end of the choir and the west front. Hamlin notes that the East Window of Gloucester reached 38 by 72 feet, and that the two ends of the church were “as nearly as possible converted into walls of glass.” This observation ties directly to his earlier point about reduced wall surfaces and emphasized vertical lines. He traces the development from flowing tracery (a “transitional phase”) to the rigid Perpendicular system, where mullions ran straight to the arch top and were intersected by horizontal transoms. The result, he says, was a “very rigid and mechanically correct system of stone framing” that sacrificed decorative charm for structural clarity.

The Uneven Success of English Façades

Hamlin is notably critical of English west fronts, which he finds inferior to French examples. He calls the portals “almost ridiculously small” and describes the front of York as “the most notable… for its size and elaborate decoration,” yet he finds the façades of Lincoln and Peterborough more interesting for their “picturesqueness and singularity.” Peterborough’s west front is a “mask or screen” of three colossal recessed arches that dwarf the actual entrances. Salisbury’s façade is “curiously illogical and ineffective,” while Lichfield and Wells earn praise for their twin spires and figure-sculpture. These judgments reveal Hamlin’s criteria: logical composition, appropriate scale, and integration of structural and decorative elements.

Readers should note that Hamlin’s textbook is a product of its time—its confident evaluations and comparative judgments reflect late-nineteenth-century architectural taste. The excerpts show a writer who values structural honesty and proportional balance, and who is not shy about declaring some designs failures. For those studying Gothic architecture, this volume offers a clear, opinionated framework, but one that should be weighed against more recent scholarship. The detailed descriptions of tracery, vaulting, and cathedral layouts remain useful as a starting point for further investigation.

This careful old textbook’s patient diagrams of fan-vaulting made me recall a rainy afternoon in my grandfather’s study, turning pages of The History of Modern Painting, Volume 1 (of 4) Revised edition continued by the author to the end of the XIX century — Reading Companion, whose quiet reproductions of muted landscapes had that same unhurried reverence for craft—not a rush to finish, just a slow weighing of each stone or brushstroke.