This period encompasses several iconic styles and architectural movements. While it is in the great state and municipal buildings that these shifts in design, taste and approach can be most immediately discerned, they are also clearly evident in domestic architecture…

Regency classicism kept its hold at the start of the period before the Italianate Style moved in and held sway until the Gothic Revival gained dominance. The Queen Anne Revival of the 1860s offered a brief and delicate alternative and was around just long enough to influence both William Morris and John Ruskin. They returned to Pugin’s ideas, if not his style, and set out the stall for the Arts & Crafts movement. Meanwhile, Voysey and Lutyens were reinterpreting the Old English Revival style, unknowingly presenting a restrained suggestion of where modernism might take us.

While the building material perhaps most associated with house building during the period is brick, the variety of bricks used is extensive. Yes, London Stock Bricks and Red Rubbers (Soft Reds) are the most prevalent, but there are many others, each requiring a specific, individual approach – including selecting and mixing the right mortar. Similarly, while the three most commonly used pointing styles are Weather Struck, Flush and Tuck, the list is actually far more extensive. As for stone, this period favoured Bath, York and Portland stones along with stucco, but architects and builders cast their net far further.