Talk:Jacobethan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article covers subjects of relevance to Architecture. To participate, visit the WikiProject Architecture for more information. The current monthly improvement drive is Johannes Itten.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
High This article has been rated as High-importance on the assessment scale.

Is Jacobethan a word? Isn't it Jacobean? -- Zoe

Read the article, it's a cross between Jacobean and Elizabethan :) -- taras

There's block after block of this stuff in Newton, Massachusetts, where I live, and even a bit in Valdosta, Georgia, where I was born. Great to know a name for it, but isn't it also called Tudor Revival? Ortolan88

Both, Jacobethan and Tudorbethan are Revival styles which combine elements of the original Elizabethan and Jacobean in the first, and Elizabethan and Tudor in the second. The point is that they are Revival styles: in the latter part of the 18th cnetury and early part of the 20th cntury for Jacobethan and the 1920s and 1930s, and again during the 70s and 80s for Tudorbethan. Both styles are considered pastiches and not always appreciated by some architects. Dieter Simon

Well, the houses add a lot to the streetscape even if they aren't all that imaginative. But shouldn't there be cross-references between Jacobethan and Tudorbethan and some hints on how to tell them apart? Now I'm not sure whether we have one or both (probably both) and how to tell which is which.Ortolan88

Yes, there should be a way to tell them apart, but it's not easy. The trouble is that few of the examples of either style are as clear-cut as one would like them to be, as a lot of private housing in the 20s and 30s, and again in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century was run up by builders who didn't necessarily have a good idea of either the Tudor, Elizabethan or Jacobean originals.

The thing to bear in mind is first of all, when the Revival houses were built, and secondly what the predominant features within the total ensemble are. If they were built in the 1880s or the 1890s, they are more likely to be Jacobethan. If they were built in the 1920s or 1930s, or again in the 1970s or 1980s they tend to be more Tudorbethan.

As regards to style if houses have a more Tudor/Elizabethan look about them, with (false) timber frame, extremely high ornamental chimneys, jettied (overhang) upper floors possibly with console supports, herring-bone infills and stout stone or timber mullions (the perpendicular part of the frame of the windows) they would be classed as Tudorbethan.

If they, however, show elements that predominated during the periods of the later years of the Elizabethan style, that of James I and Charles I (the Jacobean) - with strapwork (straps, fillets and thongs folded and interlaced) or grotesque ornaments such as in staircases, high gables, pillars, lighter stone trims around windows and doors - they would be classed as Jacobethan.

Remember it is not always clearcut. Dieter Simon

Read also the following which has a small article each on Tudorbethan as well as Jacobethan:

"The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture". by John Stevens Curl, Oxford University Press, 1999.Dieter Simon