The Seven Periods of English Architecture Defined and Illustrated — Reading Notes

Challenging Rickman's Legacy

Sharpe's preface reveals a careful rhetorical strategy. He credits Rickman's system as 'best evidenced by the fact that, although the attempts to supersede them have been both numerous and persevering, they have remained for nearly half a century the principal guide.' Yet he argues that earlier critics only proposed 'a change of name' without altering the underlying four-part division. Sharpe's innovation is to preserve Rickman's framework while subdividing it: his 'Lancet Period' and 'Geometrical Period,' for instance, correspond to phases within what Rickman called Early English and Decorated styles. The author insists that his new nomenclature is justified by 'reasons of a cogent and satisfactory nature,' grounded in observable architectural details rather than mere terminology.

Anatomy of a Period: The Lancet Style

Sharpe's description of the Lancet Period exemplifies his method. He dissects a church into exterior and interior compartments, listing characteristic features with precision. Buttresses are 'plain, with one set-off only,' while the triforium 'generally exhibits a row of light shafts on the face of a solid pier, carrying arch-mouldings of three orders.' He notes that vaulting is 'generally simple, and acute, and usually of the quadripartite or sexpartite form.' The accompanying list of 'Principal Buildings'—including Lincoln Cathedral Choir, Fountains Abbey Choir, and Salisbury Cathedral Choir—grounds his categories in specific monuments. Sharpe's approach is taxonomic: each period is defined by a constellation of traits that appear consistently across multiple buildings, allowing the student to recognize the style by its 'principal characteristic.'

From Lancet to Geometrical: Tracing Change

The transition from the Lancet to the Geometrical Period is marked by the emergence of tracery. Sharpe identifies the 'principal characteristic' of the Geometrical Period as 'simple geometrical tracery in the heads of the windows, in panels and in arcades.' He notes that earlier windows 'exhibit tracery which consists almost exclusively of plain foliated circles,' while later examples 'other simple geometrical forms were employed.' Buttresses evolve from plain forms to those with 'set-offs, and canopies attached to their faces, carrying often a series of Crockets.' Sharpe observes that towards the end of the period, buttresses 'became very bulky and massive, and carried little or no ornaments.' Capitals, too, change: foliage is 'disposed much more freely and gracefully than in the preceding Period, and frequently of exquisite design.' These incremental shifts in ornament and structure form the basis for Sharpe's finer chronological divisions.

Sharpe's seven-period system offers a more granular tool for dating and analyzing English church architecture than Rickman's four-style model. Readers should approach this work as a technical manual rather than a general history: its value lies in the detailed checklists of features for each period, from buttress profiles to tracery patterns. The lists of principal buildings at the end of each chapter provide a practical guide for fieldwork, allowing the student to test Sharpe's categories against surviving structures.

I found myself lingering over Sharpe's careful distinctions—buttress, pier, tracery—each a small argument for patience, for noticing what changes slowly. That same measured attention, the pleasure of precise observation, resurfaced when I later opened Art in England: Notes and Studies — Text and Context. Both books feel less like conclusions than like someone thinking aloud, holding a stone up to the light, letting time pass quietly between sentences.