Regency style (1800-1840)
The end of the 18th century, following the French Revolution, was a period of significant social, industrial and aesthetic change in Ireland, Britain and across much of Europe. In architecture, this was manifested in the adoption of a much wider range of architectural styles – ‘a battle of styles’ in effect, with a new-found interest in the picturesque qualities of Gothic architecture as well as a continuing taste for classical architecture. In the classical tradition, neoclassical forms and patterns continued to be used, but in an increasingly chaste manner with unnecessary ornament pared back. Classical styles, influenced by ancient Greek architecture, became increasingly popular, giving rise to what is known as the Greek Revival. This was characterised by the use of shallower pediments, weighty Greek Doric columns and the refined Greek Ionic classical orders. In the case of most houses, the use of classical columns and orders tended to be reserved for doorcases. Only the grandest mansions and public buildings were provided with great stone porticos modelled on ancient Greek temples such as the Parthenon.
Instead, the majority of Regency houses lack formal classical features and display an elegance and sense of informality characteristic of the age of Jane Austen. With a new interest in gardening and landscape, windows were often made larger. Wyatt windows were particularly popular together with bays and bows, while French doors leading on to a lawn or veranda were the height of fashion. The availability of large Welsh slates made it possible to lower roofs which often had deep, overhanging eaves, and walls were given smooth, ‘stucco’ renders. Side by side with a taste for classicism was one for Gothic architecture. This arose in part from the rage for novels – commonly chivalric romances – set in theatres of crumbling abbeys and castles.
At the same time, the Napoleonic wars raging across Europe prevented travel to the continent and this caused students of architecture, as well as their patrons, to look to the old abbeys, monasteries and castles of Britain and Ireland for opportunities for learning and exploration. Gothic architecture was now seen as a national architecture and it quickly became fashionable to build elaborate mansions in the Gothic or castle style and later, the Tudor style. More modest houses could also be made Gothic by the use of pointed arch windows and doors, intricate window tracery, hood or label mouldings over windows and battlemented parapets and porches.
By the 1820s, there was a taste for building houses in the ‘olde English cottage’ style, with gabled roofs, tall chimneys, carved bargeboards, porches and verandas draped with creepers and windows with mullions and small, leaded panes of glass. Classical forms also continued to be fashionable. A new ‘Italianate’ style emerged which used classical motifs in a free-handed manner with pediments over windows, balustered parapets and brackets below the eaves of roofs.
Rare architectural setpiece of the Regency period, Harcourt Terrace, Dublin 2
