In domestic architecture the vogue had already been established. In 1748 Horace Walpole began to ‘gothicize’ his villa at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. By late Victorian times, the fashion for Gothic architecture had moved from the country villa to the town house. But town houses, in the form of the suburbs, were rapidly spreading into the countryside. Typically built during the 1880’s and 1890’s, the Gothic house is asymmetrical, the elements being organised to complement or even contradict one another. This heightens the overall eccentric feel of the building.

Elements of a gothic house can include an asymmetrical façade with an assortment of windows i.e. arched, bayed, and lancet. The main entrance is concealed rather than announced and much attention is paid to decorative details like finials, capitals, battlements and turrets. In the 1880’s terra cotta was commercially manufactured for the first time and then widely used to make buildings fashionably polychromic.

Gothic architecture teases our senses, hinting at what might be hidden. You just know that that turreted house with the hipped roof and the lancet windows has a corpse in the basement, or a skeleton in the cupboard or a spectre in the bedroom. The Gothic was an antidote to the Classicism of the eighteenth century. The eccentric building references connected to the visceral, the well of feeling that is the birthright of us all.

Where in London..?

Pancras Station, Euston Road.

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