INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

Summary

Cambridge can show to a remarkable extent the continuity of the architecture of England from later Saxon times to the present day. We could never expect the buildings of a single town to be quite comprehensive, but possibly no other English centre is so completely equipped: Oxford, which is more representative in some respects, notably for Norman work, has no outstanding example of either Saxon or Early Gothic; and Cambridge is also more representative because Oxford has stone buildings only; but brick was an important building material in England from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards, and in some centres—Cambridge being one of them—it was in use from the later part of the fifteenth century. The very limitations of its constructive and decorative possibilities gave the brick building a value of its own.

STYLES IN ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE

There is no more common form of question put to the historian of architecture than ‘How are we to know that a building belongs to a particular style or period?’ We must begin with construction, as in any consideration of architectural styles we cannot ignore the limitations of particular materials; and what we call a ‘style’ was something which was made by a gradual process, controlled, more or less strictly, by local methods of handling materials. The vertical projecting strips, for example, that we often find in Saxon towers, may have had a remote origin far removed from England, but the constructive method of building these strips in Saxon walls is peculiarly native; and we could find similar explanations for many distinctive forms in other countries.