Why did this distinctive and magnificent architectural style become abruptly dominant in English church building after 1350?
We will investigate how and why the style emerged and track its development over the two hundred years of its medieval pre-eminence - in cathedrals such as Canterbury and York, in Royal Chapels at Windsor and Westminster, in the delicacy of chantries such as those at Winchester, in its presence in the great carved screens and altar pieces, and crucially in its numerous parish churches such as Long Melford in Suffolk.
We will then consider its re-emergence as a part of the nineteenth century Gothic Revival in England – not only in church and university college chapel design but also in extraordinary secular building such as the Palace of Westminster, the work of Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin.