Tudor style architecture

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Kings College Chapel outside view

The Tudor style in English architecture is the final development of medieval architecture during the Tudor period (1485–1603) and even beyond, for conservative college patrons. It followed the Perpendicular style and, although superseded by the English Renaissance in domestic building of any pretensions to fashion, the Tudor style still retained its hold on English taste, portions of the additions to the various colleges of Oxford and Cambridge being still carried out in the Tudor style which overlaps with the first stirrings of the Gothic Revival.

The four-centred arch was a defining feature; some of the most remarkable oriel windows belong to this period; the mouldings are more spread out and the foliage becomes more naturalistic. Nevertheless, "Tudor style" is an awkward style-designation, with its implied suggestions of continuity through the period of the Tudor dynasty and the misleading impression that there was a style break at the accession of Stuart James I in 1603. In the domestic architecture one would find the walls made of wattle and daub.

In church architecture the principal examples are:

Henry VIIs Chapel at Westminster (1503)
Kings College Chapel, Cambridge
St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
the old schools at Oxford.

In domestic building:

In the 19th century a free mix of these late Gothic elements and Elizabethan were combined for hotels and railway stations, in revival styles known as Jacobethan and Tudorbethan.

Tudor style buildings have six distinctive features -

Decorative half-timbering
Steeply pitched roof
Prominent cross gables
Tall, narrow windows
Small window panes
Large chimneys, often topped with decorative chimney pots

[edit] As a modern term

As a modern residential style, what is usually referred to as Tudor (or sometimes Mock Tudor) is more akin to the rustic Tudorbethan architecture.