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TUDOR ARCHITECTURE:
The Tudor architectural style is the final development of Medieval architecture in England, during
the Tudor period(1485–1603).

- the style used in buildings of some prestige in the period roughly between 1500 and 1560.

- The low Tudor arch was a defining feature.

-The most remarkable oriel windows belong to this period.

During the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, many Italian artists arrived in England; their
decorative features can be seen at Hampton Court Palace, Layer Marney Tower, Sutton Place, and
elsewhere. 

Brick was something of an exotic and expensive rarity at the beginning of the period, but during it
became very widely used in many parts of England, even for modest buildings, gradually restricting
traditional methods such as wood framed daub and wattle and half-timbering to the lower classes by
the end of the period.

 Henry VIII, a man of a very different character of his father, who spent enormous amounts on
building many palaces, most now vanished, as well as other expensive forms of display. In a
courtyard of Hampton Court Palace he installed a fountain that for celebrations flowed with wine.
[12]
He also built military installations all along the southern coast of England and the border with
Scotland, then a separate nation.
Henry VIII's most ambitious palace was Nonsuch Palace, south of London and now disappeared, an
attempt to rival the spectacular French royal palaces of the age and, like them, using imported Italian
artists, though the architecture is northern European in inspiration. Much of the Tudor palace
survives at Hampton Court Palace, which Henry took over from his disgraced minister Cardinal
Wolsey and expanded, and this is now the surviving Tudor royal palace that best shows the style.
Buildings constructed by the wealthy had these common characteristics:

 An 'E' or 'H' shaped floor plan

 Brick and stone masonry, sometimes with half timbers on upper floors in grand houses
earlier in the period
 Recycling of older medieval stone, especially after Henry VIII's Dissolution of the
Monasteries. Some reuse of monetary buildings as houses.
 Curvilinear gables, an influence taken from Dutch designs, from the mid-century
 Large displays of glass in very large windows several feet long; glass was expensive so only
the rich could afford numerous large windows
 Depressed arches in clerical and aristocratic design, especially in the early-middle portion of
the period
 Hammerbeam roofs still in use for great halls from Medieval period under Henry VII until
1603; were built more decoratively, often with geometric-patterned beams and corbels carved
into beasts
 Most windows, except large ones, are rectangular, and drip moulds common above them.
 Classical accents such as round-headed arches over doors and alcoves, plus
prominent balustrades from time of Henry VIIIto Elizabeth I
 Large brick chimneys, often topped with narrow decorative chimney pots in the homes of the
upper middle class and higher. Ordinary medieval village houses were often made much more
pleasant to live in by the addition of brick fireplaces and chimneys, replacing an open hearth.
 Wide, enormous stone fireplaces with very large hearths meant to accommodate larger scale
entertaining; in aristocratic homes the formal rooms may have large chimneypieces in stone,
sometimes with the family's heraldry.
 Enormous ironwork for spit roasting located inside cooking fireplaces. In the homes of the
upper class and nobility it was fashionable to show off wealth by being able to roast all manner
of beasts weighing less than 500 grams on up to a full grown bull; in the case of royalty it would
be seen as dishonor if the monarch's table could not provide equal to that of the Continental
powers of France and Spain. Managing the flames would be the job of either a spit boy (Henry
VII's reign) or later on a new invention where a turnspit dog ran on a treadmill (Elizabeth I's
reign.)
 Long galleries
 Tapestries serving a triple purpose of keeping out chill, decorating the interior, and displaying
wealth. In the wealthiest homes these may contain gold or silver thread.
 Gilt detailing inside and outside the home
 Geometric landscaping in the back of the home: large gardens and
enclosed courtyards were a feature of the very wealthy. Fountains begin to appear in the reign
of Henry VIII.

Commoner classes[edit]

Anne Hathaway's Cottage, a timber-framed farmhouse

The houses and buildings of ordinary people were typically timber framed. Timber framing on the
upper floors of a house started appearing after 1400 CE in Europe and originally it was a method
used to keep water from going back into the walls, instead being redirected back to the soil.[17] [18]The
frame was usually filled with wattle and daub but occasionally with brick.[2] These houses were also
slower to adopt the latest trends, and the great hall continued to prevail.[16]
Smaller Tudor-style houses display the following characteristics:

 Simpler square or rectangular floor plans in market towns or cities

 Farmhouses retain a small fat 'H' shape and traces of late Medieval architecture;
modification was less expensive than entirely rebuilding.
 Steeply pitched roof, with thatching or tiles of slate or more rarely clay (London did not ban
thatched roofs within the city until the 1660s)
 Cruck framing in use throughout the period
 Hammerbeam roofs retained for sake of utility (remained common in barns)
 Prominent cross gables
 Tall, narrow doors and windows
 Small diamond-shaped window panes, typically with lead casings to hold them together
 Dormer windows, late in the period
 Flagstone or dirt floors rather than all stone and wood
 Half-timbers made of oak, with wattle and daub walls painted white
 Brickwork in homes of gentry, especially Elizabethan. As with upper classes, conformed to a
set size of 210–250 mm (8.3–9.8 in) × 100–120 mm (3.9–4.7 in) × 40–50 mm (1.6–2.0 in),
bonded by mortar with a high lime content
 Jettied top floor to increase interior space;[19] This was very common in market town high
streets and larger cities like London.
 Extremely narrow to nonexistent space between buildings in towns
 Inglenook fireplaces. Open floor fireplaces were a feature during the time of Henry VII but
had declined in use by the 1560s for all but the poor as the growing middle classes were
becoming more able to build them into their homes. Fireplace would be approximately 138 cm
(4.5 ft) wide × 91 cm (3 ft) tall × at least 100 cm (3.3 ft) deep. The largest fireplace – in the
kitchen – had a hook nailed into the wall for hanging a cooking cauldron rather than the tripod of
an open plan. Many chimneys were coated with lime or plaster inside to the misfortune of the
owner: when heated these would decompose and thus the very first fire codes were
implemented during the reign of Elizabeth I, as many lost their homes because of faulty
installation.
 Oven not separated from apparatus used in fireplace, especially after the reign of Edward VI;
middle-class homes had no use for such enormous ovens nor money to build them.
 More emphasis on wooden staircases in homes of the middle class and gentry
 Outhouses in the back of the home, especially beyond cities in market towns, often referred
to as "the jakes in documents that survive." Flushable toilets were centuries away for the middle
classes and in some less common cases they would not move indoors completely until the
second half of the 20th century.
 Little landscaping behind the home, but rather small herb gardens. Occasionally bee skeps
would be kept in this area as a means of getting wax for candles and also, when in
season,honey.
 The poorest classes lived in hovels, a building with a slightly different definition than today: it
was a one-room wattle-and-daub hut. Most did not have the copyhold on the land they occupied
and were tenants on another man's land; amenities were very basic in that there was a place to
sleep, a place to eat, and a place to cook.

It was a transitional style, mixing elements of Renaissance architecture with a Gothic style found
mostly in England called Perpendicular Gothic because it emphasized vertical lines.