Architecture Flashcards by Jose Serrano

Descriptive of two figures placed front to front

Affronted

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Aisle around the sanctuary of a church.

Ambulatory

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Outwork defending the entrance to a castle

Barbican

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The italian Renaissance architecture of the 16th century; also used for its 19th-century revival.

Cinquecento

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Walling material of clay mixed with straw

Cob or pis

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Continuous layer of stones, bricks etc. in a wall

Course

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A stained-glass techinque invented in the mid-20th century,setting large, thick pieces of cast glass into a frame of reinforced concrete or epoxy resin

Dalle-de-verre (lit. glass slab)

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Rooms in a formal series, usually with all the doorways on axis

Enfilade

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A church with nave and aisles of approximately equal height

Hall-church

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Bricks, tiles, stones or (sometimes) timbers laid diagonally, usually in superimposed alternate courses

Herringbone work

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A girder with braced framework

Lattice girder

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A monolithic slab laid flat over a grave or tomb

Ledger slab

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The setting of a brass or other inlaid material

Matrix

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A style used from c. 1860, in which tile-hanging, tall chimneys, half timbering and other details of the gabled vernacular architecture of south-east England are picturesquely combined

Old English

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In a church, a gallery in which the organ is placed

Organ loft

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Wide convex moulding

Ovolo

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Long straight braces in a timber roof, passing across other members of the truss

Passing braces

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Open-ended ground-level passage through a building

Pend (Scots)

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On a classical building, a colonnade all round the exterior or an interior space, e.g. a courtyard

Peristyle

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Ornamental or pictorial inlay by means of thin slabs of stone

Pietra dura

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Mortar joints formed with a trowel so that they stand out

Ribbon pointing

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Screen that was placed below a representation of the Crucifixion

Rood screen

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A stair in a circular well with a central supporting newel

Spiral stair, vice or turnpike stair (Scots)

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Underside of an arch, lintel, etc.

Soffit (lit. ceiling)

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Roof truss incorporated in a spere

Spere truss

Sculpted or painted group of arms or armour

Trophy

Bricks or tiles fired to a darkened glassy surface

Vitrified

Wedge-shaped stones forming an arch

Voussoirs

Term for the type of large tripartite sash window with narrower side lights and a segmental arch above, made popular by a family of architects in the late 18th century

Wyatt window

Abbotsford House (aka Carley Hole) Galashiels (Scotland) Mayor renovation 1817-1825 Residence of Walter Scott Pioneer in the popularisation of the Scottish Baronial style

In a timber roof, purlins or horizontal longitudinal timbers which rest on queenposts or are carried in the angle between principals and collar.

Clasped purlins

Large irregular polygonal stones, smooth and finely jointed

Cyclopean masonry

Of masonry, carved in the form of icicles

Glaciated masonry of frost-work

Wooden or metal bars separating and supporting window panes

Glazing bars

In a hammerbeam roof, vertical timbers between the hammerbeams (horizontal brackets projecting at wall plate level) and the purlins (horizontal longitudinal timbers); braced to a collar-beam above

Hammerposts

An arch framing an opening in a wall, e.g. a window or door

Overarch

Painting or relief above an internal door

Overdoor or sopraporta

Pier composed of grouped shafts, or a solid core surrounded by shafts

Compound pier

Groove cut in masonry, especially to receive the edge of a roof-covering

Raggle

Asymmetrical arrangements of unworked rocks, or its imitation in other materials, associated especially with the Rococo style

Rocaille or rockwork

A square dome or vault of one continuous curve with the same diameter as the diagonal of the square, so that it rises from pendentives between arches.

Sail dome or sail vault

Horizontal longitudnal timbers in a roof structure which are trenched into the backs of the principals

Trenched purlins

Brickwork pattern comprising pairs of sailors laid side-by-side, capped with a shiner, alternating with pairs of sailors laid side-by-side sat atop a shiner

Single Basket Weave bond

Ornament in the Early English period of Gothic, consisting of a series of small pyramids formed by four stylized canine teeth meeting at a point

Dogtooth

Stone that is cut, or can be cut, in all directions

Freestone

Semicircular window or blind panel

Lunette

Long terraced strip of soil on the downward side of prehistoric and medieval fields, accumulated because of continual ploughing along the contours

Lynchet

Wooden lining to interior walls, made up of vertical members (muntins) and horizontals (rails) framing panels

Panelling or wainscot

The Scottish term for a hipped roof, i.e. with sloping rather than gabled ends

Piended roof

Ragged (in heraldry). Also applied to funerary sculpture

Raguly

Covering of overlapping slates on a wall

Slate-hanging (hence slate-hung wall)

A buttress set at 90 degrees at the angle of a building.

Angle buttress

Small stones set in a mortar course

Galleting

In a roof structure, a vertical timber set centrally on a tie-beam, rising to the apex of the roof to support a ridge-piece

Kingpost

Sloped or pitched

Raked

Brickwork with only the long sides of the bricks showing

Stretcher bond

Revival of Regency as a fashionable style in the 1920-50s

Vogue Regency

A bay window which rests on corbels or brackets and starts above ground level

Oriel

An arch spanning a main axis (e.g. of a vaulted space)

Transverse arch (Diaphragm arch?)

Circular window with tracery radiating from the centre

Rose window

One of the orders of classical architecture in which the capital of the column combines the volutes of the Ionic order with the foliage of the Corinthian (image: bottom right)

Composite

A curved or angle-ended stage at the bottom of a bridge pier

Cutwater, starling or sterling

A fixed structure screening the lower end of the great hall from the screens passage

Spere

Inner curve or underside of an arch (image: number 5)

Intrados

An arch inserted in an opening to resist inward pressure

Strainer arch

Of a roof: with the spaces between the timbers filled, to form an internal partition or partitions

Closed truss

(Presbyterianism) A room or separate building for meetings of the elders who form a kirk session, or a shelter by the entrance to a church or churchyard for an elder collecting for poor relief; built at the expense of a kirk session

Session house (Scots)

Series of convex mouldings, the reverse of fluting

Reeding

One of the main elements of a rib-vault, crossing diagonally and marking the main divisions (called cells)

Diagonal rib

Containing a column of water to regulate pressure in water mains

Standpipe tower, also called a monometer tower

In a roof structure, a vertical timber placed centrally on a tie-beam, not directly supporting longitudinal timbers

King-strut (compare queen-strut)

Masonry laid on the diagonal, often alternately with opposing courses

Pitched masonry

Subsidiary member of a structural frame or roof, often arranged in decorative patterns in timber-framed buildings

Brace

Central stair to a doorway, usually of double-curved plan

Perron

Inclined lateral timbers supporting the roof covering

Rafters

The style of the Middle Ages from the later 12th century to the Renaissance, with which it co-existed in certain forms into the 17th century. Characterized in its full development by the pointed arch, the rib-vault and an often skeletal masonry structure for churches, combined with large glazed windows

Gothic

A spire starting from a square base, then carried into an octagonal section by means of triangular faces

Broach spire

Projecting moulding above an arch or lintel to throw off water

Hoodmould. When horizontal often called a label

Series of arches supported by piers or columns when applied to a wall.

Blind arcade or arcading

Monumental building or chamber usually intended for the burial of members of one family

Mausoleum

Decorative fixed arch between two gatepiers or above a gate, often of iron

Overthrow

A rough-textured roach with small cavities and fossil shells

Portland roach

Not to be confused with the actual architecture of this queen's reign, this usually refers to a later Victorian style that sought to revive the domestic classical manner of the mid 17th century. It favoured red brick or terracotta, usually combined with white-painted woodwork. It is particularly associated with the architect Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912) and with the turn away from the Gothic Revival

Queen Anne

Ornament in the form of drapery suspended from both ends

Swag

A chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary

Lady chapel

In classical architecture, collective name for the three horizontal members (architrave, frieze and cornice) carried by a wall

Entablature

One in which the structure is carried by a framework -e.g. of steel, reinforced concrete or timber- instead of by load-bearing walls

Framed building

Forecourts to groups of houses shared by vehicles and pedestrians

Mixer-courts

Stone screen in a major church dividing choir from nave

Pulpitum

Top of the solid platform on which a classical colonnade (crepidoma) stands

Stylobate

Row of rooms

Pile (the most common use of the term is in "double pile", describing a building, especially a house, that is two rooms deep

A form of mosaic using simple geometrical patterns and coloured stones, developed in Italy in the 12th and 13th centuries

Cosmati work

The architecture of the British Isles in the reigns of George I, II, III and IV, i.e. 1714-1830, in which the classical style and classical proportions became the norm for both major and minor buildings

Georgian

A screen separating a chapel from the rest of the church

Parclose screen

Water wheel with water feeding it on the top but falling backwards

Pitchback water wheel or Backshot water wheel

A roof with sloped ends instead of gables

Hipped roof

Decoration scratched, often in plaster, to reveal a pattern in another colour beneath

Sgraffito

Projecting points formed by curves within the arches or tracery of Gothic architecture

Cusps

The earliest form of tracery, introduced c. 1200, in which shapes are cut through solid masonry

Plate tracery

Horizontal longitudinal timber in a roof structure(image: grey parts)

Purlin

A bridge with arches rising above the roadway which is suspended from them

Bowstring bridge or tied-arch bridge

Projecting housing for a hoist pulley on an upper storey of warehouses, mills, etc., for raising goods to the loading doors

Lucam

Ornamental lookout tower or raised summerhouse

Gazebo (jocular lating "I shall gaze")

Girder of hollow-box section

Box girder

Projection of the tread of a step

Nosing

A hipped roof which turns to a gablet at the ridge

Gambrel roof

Very slight convex deviation from a straight line, used for aesthetic purposes

Entasis

An opening embellished with alternating or intermittent blocks, seen particularly in the work of James Gibbs (1682-1754)

Gibbs surround

A flat board with shaped sides, especially a baluster

Splat

Neolithic burial mound with a stone-built chamber and entrance passage covered by an earthen barrow or stone cairn

Chambered tomb

With multiple lobes (foils) formed by the cusping of a circular or other shape in a tracery

Multifoil

Uppermost storey of a church, pierced by windows. also high-level windows in secular buildings

Clerestory or clearstorey

A defensive ditch

Fosse or moat

Relief desings in metalwork, formed by beating it from the back

Repoussé

Calcined lime or clay

Cement

The place of assembly for the members of a monastery or cathedral, usually located off the east side of the cloister

Chapter house

A chamfer applied to each of two recessed arches

Double chamfer

In heraldry, a complete display of armorial bearings.

Achievement

Medieval carved flower or leaf ornament, often rectilinear

Fleuron

A rounded bartizan or turret, usually roofless.

Round (Scots)

Originally a Roman country house or farm. The term was revived in England in the 18th century under the influence of Palladio and used for smaller, compact country houses. In the later 19th century it was debased to describe any suburban house

Villa

A slopped member of a staircase covering the ends of the treads and risers, with a continuous upper edge.

Closed string

Screen that separates a chapel from the rest of the church

Parclose screen

String with a continuous upper edge that covers the ends of the treads and risers

Closed string

Dining hall of a monastery, college or similar establishment

Refectory, frater, frater-house or fratery

A hollow classical moulding, especially on a column base. Concave with a lower edge projecting beyond the top and so used at the base of columns as a transition between two torus moldings with different diameters

Scotia

Ceiling with a pronounced cove joining the walls to a flat central panel smaller than the whole area of the ceiling

Coved ceiling

Shape chiselled out of a stone to receive a monumental brass

Indent

A raised platform at one end of a medieval hall, where the lord or head of the household dined; also found in college or school halls, etc.

Dais

Pilaster without base or capital

Pilaster strip or lesene

Memorial slab raised on free-standing legs

Table tomb

Series of arches supported by piers or columns.

Arcade

Of concrete, textured with hammers after casting

Hammer-dressed

Slight rise or upward curve in place of a horizontal line or plane

Camber

Of a temple: with a colonnade all round the exterior

Peripteral

Masonry with courses broken by smaller stones

Snecked

In a rib-vault, an extra decorative rib springing from the corner of a bay

Tierceron (hence tierceron vault) or lierne

The joining of two stones to prevent them slipping, by a notch in one and a projection in the other

Joggle

Medieval ornament with a chain of tiny triangles placed obliquely

Nutmeg

Interval between columns

Intercolumniation

The surface between arches that meet at an angle, formed as part of hemisphere and supporting a drum, dome or vault (image: shown in yellow)

Pendentive

Principal floor of a classical building, above a ground floor or basement and with a lesser storey

Piano nobile

Tomb-chest with effiegies beneath a flat canopy (tester), either free-standing (tester with four or more columns) , or attached to a wall (half-tester) with columns on one side only )

Tester tomb

An arch spanning responds not diametrically opposed

Skew arch or oblique arch

An artfully rustic small house associated with the Picturesque movement

Cottage orné

Horizontal projection supported at one end only

Cantilever

With battlements. Also a kind of I shaped beam

Castellated

In a church or chapel, rails used to enclose an area around the altar or communion table

Communion rails or altar rails

Of an architrave, with side projections at the top

Eared or lugged

A vertical timber in a roof structure, set centrally on a tie-beam and supporting a collar purlin, with longitudinal braces to it. In an open truss, additional braces may rise laterally to the collar-beam; in a closed truss the may descend to the tie-beam

Crown-post

Small oval window, set horizontally

Bullseye window or oeil de boeuf

Balustrade applied to the wall surface

Blind balustrade

Pattern of brickwork with two courses of headers (half off-set by alternately stretching and heading three-quarter bats at the quoins) followed by two courses of stretchers (quarter off-set, also by alternately stretching and heading three-quarter bats at the quoins)

Double English Cross bond

A five-lobed opening

Cinquefoil

Moulding along the top of the dado (image: middle horizontal element)

Dado rail

A form of bar tracery used in the early 14th century, with net-like patterns of ogee- (double-curved) ended lozenges

Reticulated tracery

Purlins tenoned into either side of the principals

Butt purlins or tenoned purlins

Chamber or stage in a tower where the bells are hung

Belfry

20th-century term for pillars or stilts that support a building above an open ground floor

Pilotis

A joint in which the stones or bricks do not overlap

Butt-joint

A brick cut to complete a bond

Closer

Roofed gateway entrance to a churchyard for the reception of a coffin

Lychgate (lit. corpse-gate)

A tower containing a column of water to regulate pressure in water mains

Manometer tower or standpipe tower

The moulded frame of a door or window with horizontal and vertical projections at the top angles

Shouldered architrave

Brickwork pattern made by placing a sailor to one side of a shiner making an ‘L’ shape, then repeatedly nesting further such combinations. It can be rotated by 45º

Herringbone bond

Circular or polygonal stage suporting a dome or cupola. Also one of the stones forming the shaft of a column

Drum or tholobate

The self-conscious and often scrupulously accurate use of Gothic architecture for its historical or religious associations. It began in the 17th century and reached its peak in the 19th

Gothic Revival

The medieval type of altar with taller framed hangings on three sides, as revived in the late 19th century

English altar

Polished composition covering giving the effect of (usually coloured) marble, used especially on columns from the mid-18th to early 19th century

Scagliola

Exaggerated treatment of masonry to give an effect of strength. The joints are usually recessed.

Rustication de: Rustizierung fr: Bugnato

A portico whose columns are on the same plane as the front of the building

Portico in antis

A pediment with its apex omitted

Broken pediment

A style of architecture with its origins in the sixteenth century, drawing on the features of Medieval castles, tower houses and the French Renaissance châteaux. Pioneered by figures including Sir Walter Scott, in the nineteenth century it was revived as part of the Gothic Revival and remained popular until World War I, with extensive use in Scotland and examples in Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand. The distinguishing features are vertical rather than horizontal proportions, small windows, steep roofs, small turrets or tourelles, and a sparing use of Renaissance ornament.

Scottish or Scotch Baronial

Decorated with leaves

Foliate

Sill displaying a pronounced convex upper edge

Bull-nosed sill

A pediment with the centre of the base omitted

Open pediment

Column that partly merges into a wall or pier

Engaged or attached column

The revival of the British and Irish architecture of the 18th and early 19th centuries. It often depends for its effects on sash windows, symmetry and carefully calculated proportions rather than on displays of columns and grand formal features. At its peak in the 1920s, it can be traced back to the late 19th century and is still current as a style

Neo-Georgian

In an abbey or monastery, a room for talking to visitors in; in a medieval house, the semi-private living room below the solar or upper chamber

Parlour

Of a stair-rail, dado, etc: with a steep concave curve just short of the newel, or in line with it

Ramped

Of a porch or portico: with six columns across the front

Hexastile

Principal tower of a castle

Keep

Lobe formed by the cusping of a circular or other shape in tracery.

Foil (trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil, sexfoil or multifoil depending on the numbers of lobes)

Wall decoration adopted from Roman examples in the Renaissance. Its foliage scrolls incorporate figurative elements. Also used for a figure or head with distorted or unnatural features in medieval art and architecture

Grotesque

Simplest kind of vault, in the form of a continuous semicircular or pointed arch

Barrel vault or tunnel vault

Small rectangular trap in the ceiling of an entrance passage in a castle or tower house

Murder hole

Painted and/or sculpted screen behind and above an altar

Reredos

Stone-lined or slab-built grave

Cist

Brick or masonry courses built out beyond one another to support a chimneystack, window, etc

Corbelling

The upper part of an arch or vault

Crown

Horizontal timber laid in parallel to support the floor of a building

Joists

In timber construction, one of the paired inclined timbers making up a cruck

Blade

Ritual earthwork

Henge

An arch shaped like a chain suspended from two level points, but inverted

Parabolic arch

Platform, doorstep or landing

Platt (Scots)

Circular opening

Oculus

On a Greek Doric column, an ovolo or wide convex moulding below the abacus or top part of the capital

Echinus

A concealed door, made flush with the wall surface and treated to resemble it

Gib door or jib door

A pair of volutes, turned outwards to meet at the corner of a capital

Angle volute

Rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze, in which this element alternates with triglyphs. They often had painted or sculptural decoration; the most famous example is the frieze of the Parthenon marbles depicting the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapiths.

Metope

Form of pointing that has joints formed with a trowel so that they stand out

Ribbon pointing

Late Iron Age stone dwelling, round with partition walls like wheel spokes

Wheel house (Scots)

Diagonal projection at the base of a moulding, column, or buttress

Spur

(Canals): Beam projecting horizontally for opening and closing lock gates.

Balance beam

Dense bricks, originally used mostly for railway viaducts, etc

Engineering bricks

Opening for a firearm

Gunloop

A broken pediment with double curved sides

Swan-neck pediment

A distinctive phase of English Gothic which developed at the end of the 13th century and continued into the later 14th. Named from its elaborate window tracery, which abandoned the simple circular forms of Geometric in favour of more varied patterns based on segments of circles

Decorated

Arch or series of arches thrown across an interior angle of a square or rectangular structure to support a circular or polygonal superstructure, especially a dome or spire

Squinch

Column decorated with carved prows of ships to celebrate a naval victory

Columna rostrata

A pew enclosed by a high wooden back and ends, the latter having doors

Box pew

In a church or chapel, a recess or cupboard to hold sacred vessels for the Mass.

Aumbry

Stone construction without mortar

Dry-stone

Covering for the front of an altar

Frontal

Extra thickness of the lower part of a wall, e.g. to carry a floor

Scarcement

Of a hill-fort: defended by two concentric banks and ditches

Bivallate

Simple geometrical patterns cut into a surface

Chip-carving

A tower above a crossing

Crossing tower

A type of bar tracery used c. 1300, formed by interlocking mullions each branching out in two curved bars of the same raius but different centres

Intersecting tracery

Classical ornament of leafy scrolls branching alternately to left and right

Rinceau

A cross with four arms of equal length

Greek cross

Rotating ladder for access to nesting boxes in a doocot (dovecote)

Potence (Scots)

On a railway, an L-section rail for plain unflanged wheels

Plate rail

Roughly triangular spaces between an arch and its containing rectangle, or between adjacent arches. Also non-structural panels under the windows, especially on a curtain-walled building

Spandrels

Scottish Baronial style: Distinguishing features

Vertical rather than horizontal proportions Small windows Steep roofs Small turrets or tourelles Sparing use of Renaissance ornament.

A semicircular glazed opening, usually above a door, typical of Georgian architecture; sometimes used by extension for a rectangular glazed opening over a door

Fanlight

An ornamental projection or boss at the end of a label or hoodmould

Label stop

Exposed mortar jointing of masonry or brickwork with a narrow central channel filled with finer, whiter mortar

Tuck pointing

Hard and brittle iron, cast in a mould to the required shape rather than forged

Cast iron

A small balcony or window-guard attached to an individual window.

Balconette or balconet

English version of late Gothic, developed from the 1320s., which continued into the early 16 century. Characterised by large windows with a grid pattern of mullions and transoms, with the mullions continuing to the head to the arch, which is often of flattened or four-centred form. This motif of panel tracery is used also for wall decoration, and on the fan vaults that were used for the most prestigious buildings

Perpendicular

A series of pilasters or flat representation of classical columns, equivalent to a colonnade

Pilastrade

Tall pyramidal or conical feature crowning a tower or turret

Spire

Brickwork pattern comprising pairs of shiners laid atop one another, alternating with pairs of sailors laid side-by-side

Double Basket Weave bond

Male figures supporting an entablature.

Atlantes

Trimmed (knapped) flint used with dressed stone to form patterns

Flushwork

Large convex moulding usually used on a classical column base

Torus (pl. tori)

Stair wiht parallel flights rising alternately in opposite directions, without an open well

Dog-leg stair or scale and platt stair

Shallow segmental vault springing from beams, used for fireproof floors, bridge decks, etc

Jack arch

Medieval roll moulding on a soffit

Soffit roll

Exterior plaster decoration, either moulded in relief or incised

Pargeting (lit. plastering)

Non-figurative surface decoration consisting of flowing lines, foliage scrolls etc., based on geometrical patterns

Arabesque

An arch spanning piers at a crossing

Crossing arch

The dormitory of an abbey or monastery, traditionally placed in the east range off the cloister

Dorter

A chamfer with a concave surface

Hollow chamfer

An arch with four arcs, the lower two curving inward more than the upper, with a blunt central point; typical of late medieval English architecture

Four-centred arch

Brickwork pattern with three to nine couses of stretchers for every course of headers

American bond or common bond

Flat-topped ledge with moulded underside, projecting along the top of a building or feature, especially as the highest member of the classical entablature. Also the decorative moulding in the angle between wall and ceiling

Cornice

Lintel carved with the initials of the owner and his wife and the date of building work

Marriage lintel (only coincidentally of their marriage)

A style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, based on the works of the English Baroque architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) and his contemporaries

Edwardian Baroque, Neo-Wren or Wrenaissance

Of a hill-fort: defended by three concentric banks and ditches

Trivallate

A portico with six columns

Hexastyle portico

Chest-shaped tomb, usually of stone

Tomb-chest

Rustication with only the horizontal joints emphasized

Banded rustication

A small spike- or turret-like termination of a buttress, parapet, etc., especially in Gothic architecture

Pinnacle

A defensive feature on a parapet, so called from the regular openings in it; the whole forming battlements

Crenellation

Two-dimensional painting or decoration in which objects are represented three-dimensionally

Trompe l'oeil

In a church or chapel, a free-standing basin for washing Mass vessels

Pillar piscina

Horizontal member at the bottom of a window or door frame. Also the horizontal member at the base of a timber-framed wall, into which the posts and studs are tenoned

Sill or cill

A circular window with radiationg shafts like spokes

Wheel window (compare rose window)

The first phase of English Gothic architecture, predominant in the period c-1180-1250, and making use of the pointed arch for openings and vaulting. Frequent use of single narrow windows, that can be grouped together to form plate tracery. Larger arches frequently have narrow multiple mouldings, heavily undercut. Stiff-leaf ornament in high relief, and compound piers (i-e- with groups of shafts), often making use of Purbeck marble, are also characteristic of the period

Early English or Lancet style

A late-19th-century approach to design, seen at its strongest in interiors and furniture, which rejected the moral fervour behind the Gothic Revival in favour of ‘art for art’s sake’. The results were often eclectic, drawing typically on Renaissance, Oriental and ancient Greek sources. It overlapped with the early Arts and Crafts movement and the Queen Anne style.

Aesthetic Movement

Usually describes the vaulted room(s) beneath the main room(s) of a medieval house

Undercroft (compare crypt)

Mezzanine floor subdividing what is structurally a single storey, e.g. a vault

Entresol

A gallery or room with regular openings along one main side, sometimes free-standing

Loggia

Exposed mortar jointing of masonry or brickwork. It can be flush or recessed

Pointing

Framed construction in which the loads are taken by cross-walls of concrete or brick

Cross-wall construction

Corbelled turret, square or round, frequently at an angle

Bartizan or guerite

Carved figure attached to a medieval column or shaft, usually flanking a doorway

Column figure

Round or oval classical ornament in shallow relief

Patera (lit. plate)

An (internal?) dome of flattened profile

Saucer dome

Buddhist shrine, circular in plan

Stupa

A continuous raised platform supporting a building; or a large block of two or three storeys beneath a multi-storey block of smaller area

Podium

Vertical member of round or polygonal section, including the main part of a classical column, and by extension also of a pilaster

Shaft

Frieze of bold convex profile. Also a horizontal band of ornament

Pulvinated frieze

Lines of tiny stones used decoratively in the mortar joints

Pins or pinning

A girder of I-section, made from iron or steel plates

Plate girder

A semicircular window with two mullions, as used in the Baths of Diocletian, Rome

Thermal window or Diocletian window

Small square block used in series in classical cornices.

Dentil

One of a series of recessed archers and jambs forming a splayed medieval opening, e.g. a doorway or arcade arch. Also, an upright structural member used in series, especially in classical architecture

Order

A curved dagger-shaped motif in tracery, popular especially in the 14th century

Mouchette

Classical tablet with ornate frame

Cartouche

Window of one or more storeys projecting from the face of a buiding.

Bay window

A narrow flat band running down a medieval shaft or along a roll moulding. It separates larger curved mouldings in classical cornices, fluting or bases

Fillet

An arched stone roof, sometimes imitated in timber, plaster, etc.

Vault

Curved paired braces forming an arch, connecting wall or post below with tie-beam or collar beam above.

Arched braces

Horizontal beam or stone bridging an opening

Lintel

A corridor crypt surrounding the apse of an early medieval church, often associated with chambers for relics

Ring crypt

Decorative mosaic-like facing

Opus sectile (compare tessellated mosaic)

The area enclosed by a cloister

Cloister garth

In a timber roof, horizontal brackets projecting at wall-plate level like an interrupted tie-beam; the inner ends carry hammerposts, vertical timbers which support a purlin (horizontal longitudinal timber) and are braced to a collar-beam above

Hammerbeans

The solid uprights of a battlement

Merlons

A corbelled turret or bartizan, square or round, frequently at an angle

Pepperpot turret

Stylized drops below the triglyphs of the frieze in the Doric order of classical architecture

Guttae

An arch with arcs in each corner and a flat centre or lintel

Shouldered arch

A type of classical ornament used on convex (ovolo) mouldings, based on alternate eggs and arrowheads

Egg-and-dart

The middle member of the classical entablature, sometimes ornamented

Frieze

Small gabled opening in a roof or spire

Lucarne

Of a porch or portico: with eight columns across the front

Octostyle

A gable with curved sides

Shaped gable

Raised panel below a window or wall monument or tablet (image: below upper windows)

Apron

On a railway, a rail on which flanged wheels can run

Edge rail

Pedestal or pilaster tapering downward, usually with the upper part of a human figure growing out of it; sometimes called a terminal figure

Term

Overhanging edge of a roof

Eaves

A porch with the roof and frequently a pediment supported by a row of columns. They are described by the number of columns (distyle, tetrastyle...)

Portico

Stones (quoins) at the angle or corner of a buiding placed with the long side alternately upright and horizontal, especially in Anglo-Saxon structures

Long-and-short work

Continuous course of projecting stones or bricks serving as support

Corbel course

The space within the portico of a classical temple

Pronaos

The finishing (often with panelling) of the lower part of a wall, usually in a classical interior; in origin a formalized continuous pedestal

Dado

Pilaster set at the end of a colonnade, arcade etc. to balance visually the column which it faces

Pilaster respond

Horizontal longitudinal timbers in a roof structure which are tenoned into either side of the principals

Tenoned purlins or butt purlins

Sloping or shaped stones finishing a gable upstanding from the roof

Skew (Scots)

Low storey between two higher ones

Mezzanine

Shelved, niched structure to house multiple burials

Columbarium

The Italian Renaissance architecture of the 15th century; also used for its 19th-century revival

Quattrocento

A multi-storey block with flats fanning out from a central core of lifts, staircases etc.

Point block

Painting on wet plaster

Al fresco

Upright structural member, of iron, steel or reinforced concrete. Also a framework consisting of two or more vertical bars, used to secure cattle in a stall or at a feed trough

Stanchion

A window with one mullion and one transom, forming a cross-shape

Cross window

An order whose height is that of two or more storeys of the building to which it is applied

Giant or colossal order

Roof opening, often protected by a raised timber structure, to allow the smoke from a central hearth to escape; also one of a series of horizontal boards or slats set at angle to prevent rain entering an opening

Louvre

Small brackets or consoles along the underside of a Corinthian or Composite cornice. Often also used on an eaves cornice

Modillions

A vault with two pairs of diagonal ribs dividing each bay into four triangular compartments or cells

Quadripartite rib-vault

In Orthodox churches, the screen that divides off the sanctuary, usually decorated with sacred images (icons)

Iconostasis

The body of a church west of the crossing or chancel, often flanked by aisles

Nave

A type of timber construction in which the main supports or blades are formed from more than one timber; the lower member may act as a wall-post; it is usually elbowed at wallplate level and jointed just above

Jointed cruck

Pairs of longitudinal timbers placed some way up the slope of the roof, which carry common rafters

Side purlins

System of manufactured units assembled on site

Pre-engineered building, system building or industrial building

The arrangement of windows in a façade

Fenestration

Brickwork infilling of a timber-framed wall

Nogging

A vault with a masonry framework of intersecting arches (ribs) supporting cells, used in Gothic and late Norman architecture

Rib-vault

A brick laid with its long side outermost

Stretcher

A term used for the architecture of Ancient Greece and rome, revived at the Renaissance and subsequently imitated around the Western world. It uses a range of conventional forms, the roots of which are the orders, or types of column each with its fixed proportions and ornaments.

Classical

Bracket of curved outline

Console

Brickwork pattern with five courses of stretchers between every course of headers

Scottish bond

Late 16th and early 17th-century decoration, like interlaced leather straps

Strapwork

Flat representation of a classical column in shallow relief

Pilaster

Carved ornament of leaves and flowers as a termination or finial on top of a bench end or stall

Poppyhead

Brickwork pattern made of four bricks surrounding a square half-brick, repeated in a square grid

Pinwheel bond

Topmost ornamental feature, e.g. above a spire, gable or cupola

Finial

In a medieval house or college, a room off the screens passage, used for storing provisions

Pantry (compare buttery)

Splayed opening in a wall or battlement

Embrasure

A development of (especially) British Modernist architecture from the late 1960s, marked by the celebratory display of construction and services, a preference for lightweight materials and sheer surfaces, and a readiness to adopt new techniques from engineering and other technologies

High tech

Path along the inner face of a rampart

Rampart walk

Site of the chief shrine of a church, behind the high altar

Feretory

Horizontal longitudinal timbers in a roof structure which are trenched into the backs of the principals

Trenched purlins

Male head or bust on a pedestal

Herm (lit. the god Hermes)

Used for any compact and ornate building like a large Italian town house, usually classical in style

Palazzo

Shaped ornamental strip of continuous section, e.g. the classical cavetto, cyma or ovolo

Moulding

An ogee or double-curved pointed arch that also projects forward at the top

Nodding ogee

A sloping member of a staircase covering the ends of the treads and risers and cut into their shape

Open string (hence open-string staircase)

Defensive outer wall of stone or earth

Rampart

Small supporting piece of stone, etc., to carry a projecting horizontal member

Bracket

A ring around a circular pier or a shaft attached to a pier, typical of the 12th and 13th centuries

Annulet or shaft-ring

A roof continuing down in one plane over a lower projection

Catslide

Vertical supports of bellied or any other form, for a handrail or coping.

Baluster

Window projecting from the slope of a roof

Dormer

Peaked external wall at the end of a double-pitch roof (image: highlighted in yellow)

Gable

Formal entrance court before a house, usually with flanking wings and a screen wall or gates

Cour d'honneur

One of the orders of classical architecture, a simpler variant of Roman Doric

Tuscan

The European imitation of Chinese motifs in the mid-18th century, seen most commonly in the decorative arts, but also used for interiors and for the occasional complete building

Chinoiserie

A monument attached to the wall. They are smaller than a wall monument, with the inscription as the major element

Tablet or wall tablet

Chancel with a surrounding aisle (ambulatory) and radiating chapels

Chevet

Type of medieval timber-framed house common in Kent and Sussex, with a central open hall flanked by bays of two storeys, roofed in line; the end bays are jettied to the front, but the eaves are continuous

Wealden house

On a castle, a series of openings between the corbels that support a projecting parapet through which missiles can be dropped. Used decoratively on post-medieval buildings

Machicolations (lit. mashing devices)

Holes in a wall to receive the horizontal timbers which support scaffolding boards; sometimes not filled after construction is complete

Putlog holes, putlock holes or putholes

Fixed seat in the choir or chancel of a church for the clergy or choir. Usually with armrests, and often framed together

Stall or choir stall

Vertical member between window lights

Mullion

Shield for a coat of arms or other heraldic display

Escutcheon

Of concrete, the impression of boards left by the temporary timber framing (formwork) used for casting

Board-marked

Of a column: one that partly merges into a wall or pier.

Attached

Rafters which also act as principals, i.e. the paired inclined lateral timbers of a truss

Principal rafters

Projecting courses at the foot of a wall or column, generally cut back (chamfered) or moulded at the top

Plinth

Corridor crypt surronding the apse of an early medieval church, often associated with chambers for relics

Ring crypt

A cheaper substitute for stucco, usually with a grainy texture

Cement

Subsidiary street or lane, often running into a main street

Wynd (Scots)

In Gothic architecture, leafy hooks or knobs decorating the edges of pinnacles, canopies, etc

Crockets

An ornamented or painted feature above a fireplace

Overmantel

An especially tall or elaborate pew for use by the churchwarden, usually placed at the west end of a church

Churchwarden's pew

A buttress set diagonally to the angle

Diagonal buttress or French buttress

Outer curved face of an arch or vault

Extrados

Refers to buildings using local materials in traditional ways, designed without the intervention of architects

Vernacular (compare Neo-vernacular)

Rectangular section cut out of a masonry edge to receive a shutter, door, window, etc.

Rebate

Reuse of a surface. Of a brass: where a metal plate has been reused by turning over and engraving on the back. Of a wall painting: where one overlaps and partly obscures an earlier one

Palimpsest

Roman public hall; hence an aisled building, especially a church, with a clerestory (windows in the walls rising over the aisles)

Basilica

A pediment with a segmental (part-circular) top

Segmental pediment or arch pediment

The latest phase of French Gothic architecture, with flowing tracery

Flamboyant

A feature in garden design in which three radiating avenues focus on a single point; derived from French Baroque layouts

Patte d'oie

A small temple-like buildinig, usually round and domed

Tempietto

Female fertility figure, usually with legs apart

Sheila-na-gig

Classical running ornament of curly waves

Vitruvian scroll

A dark limestone from this peninsula in Dorset, which can be polished; used especially in the first two centuries of English Gothic architecture

Purbeck

Lead strips joining pieces of window glass (image: dark-coloured C and H pieces)

Cames

Course of stones, or equivalent, on top of a cornice and crowning the wall

Blocking course

Monochrome painting, especially on walls or glass

Grisaille

Columns with twisted spiral shafts

Salomonic or barley-sugar columns

Sharp groove to one side of a convex medieval moulding

Quirk

Enclosed vestibule or covered porch at the main entrance to a church

Narthex

Fence or wall made from wooden stakes or tree trunks and used as a defensive structure.

Palisade or stakewall

In churches, a shelf within or beside a piscina, or a table for the sacramental elements and vessels

Credence

Regular openings in a parapet that fulfil a defensive function

Crenels

Squared stones set like steps, e.g. on a gable.

Crowsteps or Corbiesteps (Scotland)

Flat slab forming the top of a capital on a column or pilaster.

Abacus

A timber roof with close-set braces of polygonal or curved profile, often ceiled between the timbers

Wagon roof or cradle roof

Large-paned glazing with minimal framing, developed in the 20th century

Patent glazing

Loosely, seating for the laity outside the chancel; strictly, an enclosed seat

Pew

Two-cylinder steam engine

Compound

An unglazed slit window

Loophole (compare arrow loop)

Masonry whose stones are wholly or partly in a rough state

Rubble

Underground or half-underground area, usually below the east end of a church

Crypt

Brickwork pattern similar to the Flemish bond but consisting of rowlocks and shiners instead of headers and stretchers. This gives a wall with an internal cavity bridged by the rowlocks

Rat-trap bond

Cornice overhanging the edge of a roof

Eaves cornice

A brick laid with its short end exposed

Header

In a church, the central space at the junction of the nave, chancel and transepts

Crossing

A pyramidal roof set diagonally on a tower, so that it meets the walls by means of gables

Helm roof or Rhenish helm

A pattern of chequered squares made with contrasting materials

Chequerwork

Inscription on a tomb or monument

Epitaph

Oval with pointed ends

Vesica

The poorer kind of bricks, used on internal or concealed construction

Place bricks

Three-cylinder steam engine

Triple expansion

Divided into apartments

Flatted

Horizontal longitudinal timber at the apex of a roof, supporting the ends of the rafters

Ridge or ridge-piece

Formal urban open space surrounded by buildings

Piazza

Variation of the broach spire, in which the four cardinal faces are splayed out near their bases, to cover the corners, while oblique (or intermediate) faces taper away to a point

Splayed-foot spire

Projecting string-course on a doocot (dovecote) to deter rats

Ratcourse (Scots)

Post-Roman and Norman defence consisting of an earthen mound topped by a wooden tower within an enclosure defended by a ditch and palisade, and also, sometimes, by an internal bank

Motte-and-bailey (motte=earthen mound, bailey=enclosure defended by a ditch and palisade)

Of five or more storeys

Multi-storey

Paired vertical or near-vertical timbers place symmetrically on a tie-beam of a roof to support purlins (horizontal longitudinal timbers)

Queenposts

A mound or bank of earth, used especially as a barrier or to provide insulation.Also the flat space between the edge of a ditch and the base of a fortification.

Berm

Pairs of inclined timbers (blades), usually curved, set at bay-length intervals in a building; they support the roof timbers and, in timber buildings, also support the walls

Crucks

Drainage stone designed to carry kitchen waste through the thickness of a wall

Slop stone (Irish)

Compact fortified house with the main hall raised above the ground and at least one more storey above it. The type continued well into the 17th century in its modified froms: L-plan, with a jamb or wing at one coner; Z-plan, with a jamb or wing at each diagonally oppostie corner

Tower house (Scots and Irish)

Timber-framed construction in which vertical and horizontal members support the roof. Also concrete construction in which the loads are taken on cross-walls

Box frame or cross-wall construction

Raised and enclosed platform for the preaching of sermons

Pulpit

One of the orders of classical architecture, distinguished in particular by downward- and inward-curling spirals (called volutes) on the capital of the column

Ionic

Projecting end stones for bonding with an adjoining wall

Tusking stones (Scots)

Of panelling, with the central area of the panel raised up. Also used for stonework treated with sunk or raised panels

Raised and fielded

Braced framework, spanning between supports

Truss

Subsidiary vertical timbers of a timber-framed wall or partition (image: number 5)

Studs

Wall for protection at any sudden drop, e.g. on a bridge, or at the wall-head of a castle where it protects the parapet walk or wall-walk. Also used to conceal a roof

Parapet

A gable with curved sides crowned by a pediment

Flemish or Dutch gable

Vane or indicator casting a shadow onto a sundial

Gnomon

A style of 18-th century decoraton characterized by asymmetrical ornament, often in C- or S-shapes usually derived from foliage or shells. It began in France, flourishing most fully there and in Germany and Central Europe. It is sometimes associated with the imitation Chinese manner known as Chinoiserie, and, in the British Isles, with the phase of the Gothic Revival known as Gothick

Rococo

Short decorative ribs in the upper part of a vault, not linked to any springing point

Liernes (hence Lierne vault)

Decoration in relief simulating woven or entwined stems or bands

Interlace

Transverse portion of a church

Transept

Medieval moulding of semicircular or more than semi-circular section

Roll moulding

A trench or open drain; a street gutter

Sheugh (Scots)

The better kind of bricks, used for outward facing. Also the yellowish kind of bricks much used in and around London

(London) Stock bricks

In a roof, a short timber placed on the back and at the foot of a rafter to form projecting eaves

Sprocket or coyau

A chimneystack

Stack

In tracery, an elongated ogee-ended lozenge shape

Dagger

Wheel with water fed on to it over the top

Overshot water wheel

Brickwork with only the short ends of the brick exposed

Header bond

A gallery in a church reserved for a special group

Trades loft (compare laird's loft)

Level space in a garden laid out with low, formal beds of plants

Parterre

A building from which alms are delivered to the poor.

Almonry

Three-centred and depressed arch, or one with a flat centre

Basket arch or anse de panier

Residence of Buddhist monks or nuns

Sangha

In an altarpiece, the horizontal strip below the main representation, often used for subsidiary representations

Predella

Coffin of stone or other durable material

Sarcophagus (lit. flesh-consuming)

A tall block carrying a classical column, statue, vase, etc.

Pedestal

Vehicle and pedestrian segregation in rsidential developments, based on that used at this city in New Jersey, USA, by Wright and Stein in 1928-30

Radburn system

Hinged part of a lifting bridge

Bascule

Influential type of Roman Imperial monument, free.standing, with a square attic or top section and broad sections to either side of the main opening, often with lesser openings or columns

Triumphal arch

Shaft leading up to the spring or springing of a vault

Vaulting shaft

A broad tapering leaf shape that turns over at the top, used especially on late 12th-century capitals and some classical mouldings

Waterleaf (hence waterleaf capital)

Repetitive surface decoration of lozenges or squares flat or in relief. Achieved in brickwork with bricks of two colours

Diaper

Arch joining a church tower to the nave

Tower arch

A type of timber construction in which curving paired members (blades) rise from ground level to the apex of the roof, serving as the main elements of a roof truss

Full cruck

Two-dimensional representation of a building, moulding etc., revealed by cutting across it

Section

Of a hillfort: defended by three or more concentric banks and ditches

Multivallate

A three-dimensional framework in which all the members are interconnected, designed to cover very large areas

Space frame

In 20th-century and later architecture, a visually distinct topmost storey or storeys

Hamper

Central stone upright supporting the tympanum of a wide doorway, especially of a medieval church

Trumeau

Form of pointing that is flush at the edges and gently recessed in the middle

Bag-rubbed pointing

Type of thorough purlin which rests on queenposts or is carried in the angle between principals and collar

Clasped purlins

Architectural surround, consisting usually of two columns or pilasters supporting a pediment.

Aedicule

A symbolic figure in the form of a three-cornered knot of interlaced arcs, common in Celtic art

Triquetra

Porch large enough to admit wheeled vehicles

Porte cochère

Inclined, projecting surface to keep water away from the wall below.

Set-off or weathering

Horizontal moulding at the springing of an arch (image: number 2)

Impost

House of a minister of religion

Manse

A form of capital shaped like an upturned bell, common in early medieval architecture

Bell capital

Table used in Protestant churches for the celebration of Holy Communion

Communion table

Horizontal part of a step

Tread

A brick laid with its short end exposed and burnt to a darker shade, usually producing a patterned effect

Flared header

Of masonry, hacked or picked as a key for rendering; used as a surface finish in the 19th century

Stugged (Scots)

A reveal, i.e. the plane of a jamb between the wall and the frame of a door or window

Scuntion (Scots)

Side-hinged window

Casement

Projecting horizontal moulding above an arch or lintel to throw off water

Label or hoodmould

Horizontal transverse roof-timber connecting a pair of rafters or cruck blades, set between the apex and the wall-plate

Collar or collar-beam

Brickwork with one course of headers (short ends) for every three or more couses of stretchers (long sides)

English garden wall bond

Bay window that rests on corbels or brackets and starts above ground level; also the bay window at the upper or dais end of a medieval great hall

Oriel

Squared stones, usually of granite, used for paving or flooring

Setts

Painted or carved panel standing on or at the back of an altar, usually attached to it

Retable

Synthetic resin reinforced with glass fibre

Fibreglass, glass-reinforced polyester (GRP) or glass-reinforced concrete (GRC)

The carved decoration of certain classical mouldings

Enrichments

Paired vertical or near-vertical timbers placed symmetrically on a tie-beam of a roo f to support the rafters, and not directly attached to the longitudinal timbers

Queen-struts

The main body or enclosure of a classical temple, as distinct from the portico

Cella or naos

An isolated section of entablature above a column or pilaster

Dosseret

A upper room or floor, especially within a roof space; also, a gallery in a church

Loft

Plain horizontal band, e.g. in an architrave, or on a shopfront (image: metallic silver vertically oriented surface with two "lines")

Fascia

Moulding used form the late 12th century, in section like the keel of a ship

Keel moulding

A stair rising in one flight and returning at right angles in two

Imperial stair

Protective course of masonry or brickwork capping a wall

Coping

A tomb-chest with effigies beneath a flat canopy (tester) attached to a wall, with columns on one side only

Half-tester

Manner introduced to Britain by Inigo Jones in the early 17th century, and revived by Lord Burlington and others in the 18th century, in both cases a counter to the less strict or pure styles of the day. Its influence continued well into the 19th century

Palladian

Brickwork pattern separating courses of alternately laid stretchers and headers, with a number of courses of stretchers alone

Flemish stretcher bond

The English version of the Romanesque style, which predominated in Western Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. It is associated especially with the expansion of monasticism and the building of large stone churches, and is characterized by massive masonry, round-headed arches and vaulting inspired by ancient Roman precedent, and by the use of stylized ornament

Norman

Wall cladding of overlapping horizontal boards

Clapboarding or weatherboarding

Gable with kneelers

Kneelered gable

Sharp edge at the meeting of two compartments (cells) of a groin-vault

Groin

Used for the area around the main altar of a church

Sanctuary

Chimney rising from a wallhead

Wallhead chimney

A terminal to a hoodmould or label (projecting moulding above an arch or lintel) carved wiht a head

Headstop

An engaged column half of whose circumference projects from the wall

Demi- or half-column

Chapel or vestibule usually at the west end of a church and enclosing the main entrances

Galilee

The front features of a portico applied to a wall

Blind portico

Defensive parapet, composed of merlons (solid) and crenels or crenelles (embrasures or openings) through which archers could shoot

Battlement or crenellation

Used to describe a compound feature, e.g. an entablature, with some elements omitted or combined

Elided

A row of rooms two deep

Double pile

The conscious revival of Greek classical architecture, as distinct from its later, Roman forms. At its peak in the early 19th century, its origins can be traced to the middle of the century before

Greek revival

A tendency within classical architecture, at its peak in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which aimed at a purer imitation of the buildings of the Greeks and Romans, or at a more logical and rigorous use of the elements of the classical style

Neo-Classicism

Pattern of brickwork with three stretchers between every header and the headers centred above the midpoint of three stretchers in the course below

Sussex bond

In a timber-framed building, a beam set diagonally at the corner to carry the joists where two jetties or projecting storeys meet

Dragon beam

A projecting window of curved plan

Bow window

Subsidiary space alongside the body of a building, separated from it by columns, piers or posts

Aisle

Bay window with a straight front and angled sides

Canted bay window

Steam engine with a large pivoted beam moving in an oscillating fahion by the flywheel. It may drive a flywheel or be non-rotative

Beam engine

A part-spherical structure of lightweight rods, joined in an even three-dimensional frame ((called a space-frame) developed by the American engineer R. Buckminster Fuller

Geodesic dome

An enclosed quadrangle in a monastery of by a church, surrounded by covered passages; by extension, any space so enclosed.

Cloister

Low wall between the choir and nave of a church

Septum

Garden wall undulating in a series of serpentine curves

Crinkle-crankle wall

Sunk chamber with access from above through a hatch

Pit prison (Scots)

Classical ornament like a symmetrical palm shoot

Palmette

A stair with one or more flights unsupported by a wall on either side

Flying stair

Dripstone over an opening

Hoodmould or hood mould

In classical architecture, a large semicircular or polygonal recess

Exedra or apse

Cusping in which the sides of the cusps have smaller cusps in turn

Sub-cusping

Bar tracery with uninterrupted flowing curves, typical of the 14th century

Flowing tracery (flamboyant tracery?) or curvilinear tracery

Pew enclosed by a high wooden back and ends, the latter having doors

Box pew

Roof truss incorporated in the spere

Spere truss

In a roof, a pair of inclined lateral timbers or rafters of a truss. Usually the support horizontal side timbers called purlins, and mark the main bay divisions

Principals

One of a series of defensive semicircular or polygonal projections from the main wall of a fortress or city

Bastion

Ornament in the form of long trailing ribbons, common in Elizabethan and Jacobean times

Ribbonwork

Thin pieces of wood like overlapping tiles, used externally

Shingles

Home farm on an estate

Mains (Scots)

Soft brick sawn roughly, then rubbed to a precise (gauged) surface. Mostly used for door or window openings

Rubbed brickwork or gauged brickwork

Under-surface of an arch, or a moulded band following its contour.

Archivolt

The simplest and plainest of the three main classical orders, featuring a frieze with triglyphs and metopes.

Doric

Vaulted chamber, with embrasures for defence, within a castle wall or projecting from it

Casemate

An arch with arcs in each corner joining straight lines to the central point

Tudor arch (depressed arch, four-centred arch?)

A generic term for any very high multi-storey building

Tower block

Big horizontal beam supporting the wall above, especially a jetty or projecting storey

Bressummer (or bresummer?)

A broad concave moulding, e.g. to mask the eaves of a roof

Cove

A style which originated at the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire, in the 5th century. It developed the round arches, vaults and domes of Roman architecture but eschewed formalized classical detail in favour of lavish decoration and ornament of emblematic and symbolic significance. Introduced to late 19th- and early 20th- century Britain as an alternative to Gothic, usually for church architecture

Byzantine

Of concrete: incorporating steel rods to take the tensile force

Reinforced

Funerary monument which is not a burying place

Cenotaph (lit. empty tomb)

English Gothic architecture c. 1240-1290. During this period the French invention of bar tracery allowed for larger windows subdivided by stone mullions and tracery, in place of the single lancets of the Early English style. This is the earliest kind of bar tracery, i.e. with patterns formed by intersectiong moulded ribwork continuing upwards from the mullions, using simple forms, especially circles, chiefly foiled

Geometrical tracery

A sloping member holding the ends of the treads and risers of a staircase

String, stringer or stringer board

Sharp edge where two surfaces meet at an angle.

Arris

Pulpit with reading desk below

Two-decker pulpit

A term adopted from painting and sculpture for a tendency within Modernist architecture from the 1980s onwards towards simple forms and volumens, typified by the all-white interior

Minimalism

Painting on dry plaster

Fresco secco, a fresco or fresco finto

Of concrete, textured with steel bushes or brushes after casting

Brushed or bush-hammered

Vertical strips of brickwork, often in a contrasting colour, linking openings on different floors

Laced brickwork

Ogival arch that curves forward from the wall face at the top

Nodding ogee

The part of the cathedral, monastic church or collegiate church where services are sung

Choir

Farm building or buildings, most often the principal group of agricultural buildings on a farm

Steading (Scots)

A bridge carrying a towing path from one bank to the other

Roving bridge

Method of construction in which the structural frame is buildt of interlocking timbers

Timber framing

A stair in a rectangular compartment with a central supporting newel

Winder stair

The lower courses of a vault or arch which are laid horizontally (image: arch C)

Tas-de-charge

Classical orders on successive levels, customarily in the upward sequence of Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite

Superimposed orders

A window with a glazed section or section that opens by sliding in grooves

Sash window

Of a hill-fort: defended by one concentric bank and ditch

Univallate

A version of the simplest and plainest of the three main classical orders, featuring a frieze with tryglyphs and metopes. The columns in this style have a thin spreading convex capital and no base to the column

Greek Doric

A bracket at the bottom end of a skew

Skewputt (Scots)

Massive stone-built Neolithic burial chamber covered by an earth or stone mound

Megalithic tomb

Of a porch or portico: with four columns across the front

Tetrastyle es: Tetrástilo fr: Tétrastyle nl: Tetrastyl

A stair that ascends roound a central supporting newel

Newel stair or turnpike stair

In an older house or college, a screened-off entrance passage between great hall and service rooms

Screens passage

A flat circular ornament in the shape of a flower

Rosette

In a church, an arch dividing chancel from nave or crossing

Chancel arch

The junction between a chamfer and a straight edge

Chamferstop

Structural frame in which the main uprights (posts) and horizontals (rails) form large square or near-square compartments

Square panel

A garland or festoon of stylized nutshells

Husk garland

A portico with eight columns

Octostyle portico

Manufacture of buildings or components off-site for assembly on-site

Prefabrication

Enriched area of roof above a rood or altar

Celure or ceilure

The style of early 17-century England, called after the king who reigned between 1603-25, but common into the middle decades. Not always distinguishable form the preceding Elizabethan manner, with which it shares a fondness for densely applied classical ornament and symmetrical gabled façades

Jacobean (after James I)

A predetermined standard size for co-ordinating the dimensions of components of a building. In classical architecture, it is usually a multiple or fraction of the width of the order or type of column used

Module

Ox skull used decoratively in friezes on classical buildings, especially those of the Doric order

Bucranium (pl: bucrania)

Paired braces crossing diagonally between pairs of rafters or principals

Scissor braces

Roof tile of curved S-shaped section

Pantile

Composition flooring of Roman origin

Opus signinum

Masonry cleft to produce a natural, rugged appearance

Rock-faced

In classical architecture and decoration, a band of geometrical ornament composed of straight and vertical lines

Key pattern, Greek fret of Greek key

Turret corbelled out from the wall

Tourelle

Early railway using plate rails, i.e. rails of L-section

Plateway

Capital with concave lower part, usually scalloped, in use in the later 12th century

Trumpet capital

Safe cupboard in a side wall of the chancel of a church and not directly associated with an altar, for reservation of the sacrament

Sacrament house

A buttress placed slightly back from the angle of a building

Set-back buttress

The main building(s) as distinct from the wings or pavilions

Corps-de-logis

Archaic term for timber framing. Sometimes used for non-structural decorative timberwork

Half-timbering

An early phase of the Gothic Revival, at its peak c. 1730-80, marked by thin, delicate forms used without much concern for archaeological accuracy or structural logic

Gothick

Thin, self-supporting roofing membrane of timber or concrete

Shell

A broken pediment with double-curved sides

Swan-neck pediment

A container at the top of a downpipe, usually of lead, into which rainwater runs from the gutters

Rainwater-head

The most slender and ornate of the three main classical orders. It has a basket-shaped capital ornamented with acanthus foliage

Corinthian

A long avenue defined by two parallel earthen banks with ditches outside

Cursus

A pier composed of grouped shafts, or a solid core surrounded by shafts

Compound pier or cluster pier

A wide segmental truss built as a lattice-beam, originally using short cuts of timber left over from shipbuiding

Belfast truss

Hammer-dressed stonework with a pocked appearance, characteristic of Irish masonry from the 14th to the 16th centuries

Pocked tooling

Dressed stones at the edges of an opening

Margins or rybats (chiefly Scots)

A medieval toilet; usually built into the thickness of an external wall

Garderobe

Free-standing upright member of any section, not conforming to one of the classical orders

Pillar

Tower together with a spire, lantern, or belfry

Steeple

A small column or shaft, usually medieval

Colonnette

A form of wall covering in which pebbles or gravel are thrown at the wet plaster for a textured effect

Pebbledash or roughcast

A form of rustication with a stylized texture like worm-casts

Vermiculation

Of a roof: with longitudinal members such as purlins above the springing of the rafters

Double-framed

Used generally for the late Georgian architecture of 1800-30, which favoured thiinner or more summary classical detail than the 18th-century norm

Regency

Dressed or otherwise emphasized stones at the angles of a building, or their imitation in brick or other materials

Quoins

A tendency within Modernist architecture of the later 1950s to 1970s marked by the display of rough or unfinished concrete, large massive forms, and abrupt juxtapositions

Brutalism

Small defensible tower or tower-house of stone, especiallly near the Scottish-English border

Peel tower or pele tower

Square blocks attached to the underside of a Doric cornice, in line with the triglyphs

Mutules

A painting or carving above or behind an altar.

Altarpiece

Balmoral Castle Aberdeenshire (UK) 1856 William Smith, directed by Prince Albert Scottish Baronial style

Screen that was placed below a representation of the Crucifixion

Rood screen

In timber-framed construction, the non-structural material that fills the compartments ,e.g. wattle and daub, lath and plaster, brickwork (known as nogging) etc

Infill

(lit. corner-break) Surface formed by cutting off a square edge or corner

Chamfer

Brickwork pattern with two stretchers between every header with the headers centred over the perpend between the two stretchers in the course below in the bond’s most symmetric form

Monk bond

Bar tracery with even upright divisions made by a horizontal transom or transoms

Panel tracery

Open inner court of a house, especially a Roman house; in a multi-storey building, a toplit covered through all storeys.

Atrium (plural: atria)

In a timber-roof, paired braces crossing diagonally between pairs of rafters or principals

Scissor-braces

An exchange or market house

Tholsel (Irish), tolsey

An arch incorporated in a wall to relieve superimposed weight

Relieving arch or discharging arch

Decorative building terminating a vista

Eyecatcher

Low bank on the downhill or outer side of a hillfort ditch

Counterscarp bank

With liernes (short decorative ribs not linked to any springing point) in star formation

Star-vault or stellar vault

Half-pier or half-colummn bonded into a wall and carrying one end of an arch. It usually terminates an arcade

Respond

Rigid frame spanning a space or opening

Truss

Recess for a hearth with provision for seating

Inglenook

Small gateway at the back of a building, especially a castle or gatehouse, or to the side of a larger entrance door or gate

Postern

Churchyard cross with lantern-shaped top

Lantern cross

Lofty pillar of square section, tapering at the top and ending pyramidically

Obelisk

Stage in a tower where the bell ringers stand

Ringing chamber

With parallel flights rising alternately in opposite directions without an open well

Dog-leg stair or scale-and-platt stair (Scots, lit. stair and landing)

Brickwork pattern with alternating stretching and heading courses. However, whilst the heading courses are identical with those found in the standard English bond, the stretching courses alternate between a course composed entirely of stretchers from quoin to quoin with no off-set, and a course composed of stretchers half off-set relative to the stretchers two courses above or below, by virtue of a header placed just before the quoins at either end

English Cross bond

Plain or decorated terminal to mouldings or chamfers at the end of hoodmoulds and labels or stringcourses

Stop

A chapel, often attached to or within a church, endowed for the celebration of masses principally for the soul of the founder(s)

Chantry chapel

Artificial cavern

Grotto

Of classical columns, set between pilasters or square columns of equal height, often within a portico

In antis

Of a roof: without purlins or other longitudinal members above the springing of the rafters

Single-framed

Flat plain horizontal course or moulding between storeys

Platband

Seats for the priests (usually three) in the wall on the south side of the chancel of a church or chapel

Sedilia (singular: sedile)

Burial mound

Barrow or tumulus

Ornamental garland, shown as if suspended from both ends

Festoon (compare swag)

Roman heating system in which hot air was circulated under the floors

Hypocaust (lit. underburning)

Stair with flights round a square open well framed by newel posts

Well stair

A form of rustication treated like icicles or stalactites

Frost-work or glaciation

Chapels projecting radially from an ambyuatory or apse, usually at the east end of a large church

Radiating chapels

A stair cantilevered from the walls of the stairwell, without newels

Geometrical stair

Horizontal course or moulding projecting from the surface or a wall

String course

Private upper chamber in a medieval house, accessible from the high or dais end of the great hall

Solar

A multi-storey block with flats approached from corridors or galleries from service cores at intervals or towers at the ends (plan also used for offices, hotels etc.)

Slab block

The surface between a lintel and the arch above it, or within a pediment

Tympanum

Stair from the dormitory into the transept of an abbey or monastery church, used for entry to celebrate night services

Night stair

A single-storey frame used from the 20th century, comprising two uprights rigidly connected to a beam or pair of rafters, particularly to support a roof

Portal frame

The covering of outside walls with a uniform surface or skin for protection from the weather

Rendering

A monument attached to the wall and often standing on the floor

Wall monument (compare tablet or wall tablets)

Temporary framing of timber or metal used for casting concrete

Shuttering or formwork

Structure protecting an entrance

Fore-building

A symbolic figure in the form of a three-cornered knot of interlaced arcs, common in Celtic art

Triquetra (compare terquetra)

In a monument, an effigy depicted as a corpse

Gisant or cadaver (compare transi)

Gate constructed to rise and fall in vertical grooves at the entry to a castle

Portcullis

Compartment of a window defined by the uprights or mullions

Light

Of concrete, cast in position on the building

In situ

The upright part of a pedestal, i.e. between base and cornice

Die

Shaft set in the angle of a wall or opening

Nook-shaft

The stronger modern equivalent of wrought iron

Mild steel

Mourning figures in niches along the sides of some medieval tombs

Weepers

Conical roof of a turret

Candle-snuffer roof

Classical ornament of interlaced bands

Guilloche

A roof with a small gable at the top of a hip roof

Gablet

A three-lobed opening

Trefoil

A rib set against the wall in a rib-vault

Wall-rib

A portico with two columns

Distyle portico

A six-lobed opening

Sexfoil

Mosaic flooring, particularly Roman, made of small cubes of glass, stone or brick

Tessellated pavement

A simplified style developed in early 19th-century Germany, drawing on Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque and early Renaissance precedents

Rundbogenstil

A mortar bed for verge slates laid over the gable skew

Tifting

A segmental or shallow triangular gable treated as a pediment, i.e. with classical mouldings along the top

Pedimental gable

A portico with free-standing columns

Prostyle portico

Archway in medieval architecture formed across the wide inner opening of a window

Rere-arch

A side window set lower than the others in the chancel of a church, usually towards its west end

Lowside window

Of a timber-framed wall: with closely set studs or vertical timbers of equal size

Close studding

A bridge with the roadway suspended from cables or chains slung between towers or pylons

Suspension bridge

Series of corbels to carry a parapet or a wall-plate or wall-post

Corbel table

Of an opening: wider on one face of the wall than the other

Splayed

Of joists on a ceiling divided by beams into compartments, when placed in opposite directions in alternate squares

Counterchanging

Glass fiber reinforced concrete

GRC or GFRC es: Concreto reforzado con vidrio fr: Composite ciment verre (CCV)

Tomb-chest used for Easter ceremonial, within or against the north wall of a chancel of a church or chapel

Easter sculpture

A step on a curved or turning section of a stair

Winder

Ductile iron that is strong in tension, forged into decorative patterns or forged and rolled into e.g. bars, joists, boiler plates

Wrought iron

In classical architecture, a window with an arched central light flanked by two lower straight-headed ones; the motif is also used for other openings

Palladian window, serlian window, serlian motif, serliana or venetian window

Pulpit with reading desk below and clerk's desk below that

Three-decker pulpit

A tendency within (especially) 20th-century architecture, at its strongest since the 1970s, which seeks to evoke local traditions of building, usually in pursuit of a friendly, domestic image

Neo-Vernacular

An open area used for jousting (image: below, right)

Tiltyard

The central flat area within panelling, often slightly projecting

Field

A passage, especially a screens passage, i.e. a screened-off entrance passage between great hall and service rooms in an older house or college

Transe

Market

Mercat (Scots)

A rib spanning between two walls to divide a rib-vault into bays

Transverse rib

Earthenwave tiles fired with a pattern and glaze

Encaustic tiles (the validity of this term is disputed)

Device to secure corpses: either in an iron frame over a grave or a building where bodies were kept during decomposition

Mort-safe (Scots)

String cut into the shape of the treads and risers

Open string

Projecting water spout often carved into human or animal shape

Gargoyle

A cross with arms set diagonally

Saltire cross

A bridge with one long stone forming the roadway

Clapper bridge

The single most important new style or philosophy of desing of the 20th century, associated with the elimination of ornament, a strictly rational use of (often new) materials and an openness to structural innovation, and an analytical approach to the function of buildings

Modernism

A non-load-bearing external wall applied to a framed structure, in architecture of the 20th century onwards. Also a connecting wall between the towers of a castle

Curtain wall

Metal window grid to which glazing, especially stained glass, is secured

Ferramenta

A chapel in the position of a transept and opening to the nave through a single arch, but without a full central crossing

Transeptal chapel

Close or walled garden

Pleasance (Scots)

An early type of keep or principal tower in a castle, of rectangular plan, containing the great hall and chief bedchamber

Hall-keep

A hard, durable white limestone from the isle of the same name in Dorset

Portland stone

Room in an abbey or monastery where a fire burned for comfort

Warming room or calefactory

In a medieval church, usually set at the entry to the chancel

Screen

Horizontal projecting stone at the base of each sde of a gable to support the inclined coping stones.

Kneeler

Horizontal longitudinal timbers in a roof structure which pass through or past the principals

Through purlins

One of the vertical sides of an opening

Jamb

Gable above a dormer, often formed as a pediment

Dormer head

A walk along the wall-head of a castle, protected by a parapet

Chemin de ronde, wall-walk or parapet walk

Moulded foot of a column or pilaster

Base

The style of the first Christian churches of the 4th and 5th centuries. As revived in 20th-century churches, it favours simplified arcades and round-arched openings, plain surfaces and tiled roofs

Early Christian

A gabled roof with a sloped end to the upper part only

Half-hipped roof

Brickwork pattern consistinig entirely of stretchers, but with the bricks in every other course staggering in some pattern other than the standard

Vertical or oblique timber between two members of a truss, not directly supporting longitudinal timbers

Strut

The plane of a jamb, between the wall and the frame of a door or window

Reveal

Lock-up booth or shop

Luckenbooth (Scots)

A fixed canopy over an altar, usually vaulted and supported on four columns. Also a canopied shrine for the reserved sacrament.

Ciborium or baldachinno

Central stone in an arch or vault

Keystone

A double curve, bending first one way and then the other

Ogee

A church endowed for the support of a college of priests

Collegiate church

Generally used for the period c.1175-1200, between Norman and the first (Early English) period of Gothic, in which details of the later style are often used on the general forms of the earlier

Transitional

Dependent structurally on the arch principle.

Arcuated

A geometrical ornament composed of a repeating pattern of horizontal and vertical lines or strips

Fret or meander

A large beam

Girder

Flat baluster with shaped sides

Splat baluster

Division of a church designed to house the font; also a separate building for the same purpose

Baptistery

Farm owned and run by a religious order

Grange

Female figures supporting an entablature

Caryatids

A heraldic pun, e.g. a fiery cock for Cockburn

Rebus or canting arms

Accurate detailed use of a revived style.

Archaeological

Brick or stone joints without pointing (exposed mortar), or deeply recessed to show the outline of each stone

Hungry joints

Level at which an arch or vault rises from its supports

Spring or springing

Arrangement of sunken panels, square or polygonal, decorating a ceiling, vault or arch

Coffering

Pattern of brickwork with one stretcher between headers, and each header centred over the stretchers in the course below

Flemish bond

Descriptive of two figures placed back to back.

Addorsed

Tax office containing burgh council chamber and prison

Tolbooth (Scots; lit tax booth)

Horizontal reinforcement in timber or brick to walls of flint, cobble, etc

Lacing course

Large masonry or brick support, often for an arch

Pier

Vertical face of a step

Riser

Bond that comprises a complex pattern of stretcher courses alternating with courses of one or two stretchers between headers, at various offsets such that over ten courses a diamond-shaped pattern appears

Flemish Diagonal bond (form of diapering)

In medieval churches, a blind arcade forming a dado below windows

Wall arcade

Rustication with the faces treated like shallow pyramids

Diamond-faced rustication

Central roof-timber which carries collar-beams and is supported by crown-posts

Collar purlin or crown-plate

In a greater medieval church, a covered way or passage leading east from the cloisters between transept and chapter house

Slype

Architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall.They are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (sideways) forces arising out of the roof structures that lack adequate bracing.

Buttress (fr: contrefort/ d: Strebewerk/ n: steunbeer)

IN 16th- and 17-century buildings, the central feature of doorway and windows above linked in one composition

Frontispiece

A single sloping roof built against a vertical wall; also applied to the part of the building beneath

Lean-to

A thin spire rising from the centre of a tower roof, well inside the parapet

Needle spire

Cusp with a v-shaped opening set within the apex

Kentish or split cusp

Term used more often for late Gothic secular buildings especially of the first half of the 16th century. These use a simplified version of Perpendicular, characterised by straight-headed mullioned windows with arched lights, and by rooflines with steep gables and tall chimneys, often asymmetrically placed

Tudor

In an abbey or monastery, a washing place adjacent to the refectory or dining hall

Lavatorium

A deeply recessed surface, formed by cutting into a square edge or corner

Sunk chamfer

A much-debated cultural label, used in the architectural world since the 1970s to denote the reuse of motifs from historical stules, in contexts where a Modernist approach would have omitted them

Postmodernism

A chamber with gates at each end allowing boats to float from one level to another. Successor to the flash lock

Pound lock

The lowest stones of an arch or vaulting rib

Springers

Tracery applied to a solid wall

Blind tracery

Latrines in a monastery or abbey, usually placed east of the cloister

Reredorter (lit. behind the dormitory)

A circular painting or relief

Tondo

1. A strip of wood or metal separating and holding panes of glass in a window. 2. A vertical framing member set between two rails in a door or in paneling

Muntin

Central or corner post of a staircase

Newel

New Stone Age (c.3500 B.C-c.2000 B.C)

Neolithic

A series of arches supported by piers or columns, applied to the wall surface

Blind arcade

Longitudinal member of a timber-framed building, set square to the ground (image: numbers 3 and 6)

Plate

Flat canopy over a pultpit

Sounding-board or tester

Ornamental building for occasional use in a garden, park, etc.; or a projecting subdivision of a larger building, often at an angle or terminating a wing

Pavilion

Used for V-shapes in series or (later) double series on a moulding in Norman architecture, especially when on a single plane

Zigzag or chevron

Regularly spaced unifom rafters placed along the length of the roof, or between principals

Common rafter or coupled rafter

Wall covering of a thin layer of lime plaster

Limewashing

Brickwork pattern made of four bricks surrounding a square brick, one-quarter the size of a half-brick

Della Robbia bond

Crucifix flanked by the Virgin and St Johs, usually over the entry into the chancel, set on a beam (rood beam) or painted on the wall

Rood cross

A balustrade applied to the wall surface

Blind balustrade

The English architecture of the later 16th century, marked by a decorative use of Renaissance ornament and a preference for symmetry

Elizabethan

Openwork pattern of masonry or timber in an opening, especially the upper part of an opening; most common in Gothic architecture

Tracery

The use of large stones, singly or together

Megalithic

A pitched roof used on a tower

Saddleback roof

The part of a church lying east of the choir where the main altar is placed. Also a priest's residence

Presbytery

A lozenge-shaped panel painted with armorial bearings, used in funeral ceremonies and often afterwards displayed in a church

Hatchment

A formalized gable derived from that of a classical temple; also used over doors, windows, etc

Pediment

An aperture in a wall or through a pier in a church or chapel, usually to allow a view of an altar

Hagioscope or squint

Square (or diamond) panes of glass supported by lead strips (cames), Also square floor slabs or tiles

Quarries

Slender spire on the ridge of a roof

Spirelet or fleche

In joinery, the meeting of two members of identical section at a diagonal

Mitre joint (UK) or miter joint (USA)

Multi-storey flats with the individual flats arranged around a service core

Cluster block.

A pilaster without base or capital

Lesene or pilaster strip

A form of block capital in which the convex lower faces are carved with broad flutings or half-cones

Scalloped capital

A form of timber-framed wall in which the main uprights (posts) and horizontals (rails) form large square or near-square compartments.

Square panel

Of flint, worked to a flat outer surface

Knapped

A portico with four columns

Tetrastyle portico

External stair, usually unenclosed

Forestair

Longitudinal timber on top of a wall, which receivees the ends of the rafters

Wall-plate (compare purlin)

(Scots) A triangular or wedge-shaped piece of land, or the corner building on such a site

Gushet

Gable rising from a wallhead

Wallhead gable

Canopied structure in a church or chapel to contain the reserved sacrament or a relic. Also an architectural frame for an image or statue

Tabernacle

A private chapel in a church or house. Also a church of the Oratorians (Roman Catholic)

Oratory

Intentional inward inclination of a wall face

Batter

Circular or near-circular enclosure consisting of one or more earthen (or occasionally stone) banks, classified according to the number of surrounding ditches as univallate, bivallate or trivallate. Most date from early Christian times and housed single farms or served as cattle enclosures for farms

Ring fort or rath (Irish)

A suspension bridge supported by diagonal stays from towers or pylons

Stay-suspension bridge or stay-cantilevered bridge

The precinct of a cathedral

Circular or polygonal farm building with a central shaft turned by a horse to drive agricultural machinery

Horsemill

Shelf on a carved bracket placed on the underside of a hinged choir stall seat to support an occupant while standing

Misericord

Painting on plaster

Fresco

Purlins that pass through or past the principal purlin

Through purlins

One of a series of small rooms; also a compartment of a groin-vault or rib-vault

Cell

Room in a church for sacred vessels and vestments

Sacristy

Courses of brickwork laid at right-angles to a slope, e.g. of a gable, forming triangles by tapering into horizontal courses

Tumbling or tumbling-in

Handrail or coping with balusters

Balustrade

Of concrete: cast as components before construction

Pre-cast

In canals, removable weir or similar device through which boats pass on a flush of water. Superseded by the pound lock

Flash lock

Slender single-light, pointed-arched window. Typical of the first phase of English Gothic ("Early English") architecture

Lancet

Covering of overlapping tiles on a wall

Tile-hanging

Soft black marble quarried near Tournai in Belgium

Touch

Vessel for holy water, usually near a door

Stoup or holy water font

Subsidiary room or cell opening from the main body of an Anglo-Saxon church

Porticus (plural: porticus)

The classical manner of the 15th to the 17th centuries, especially that of Italy, as revived in the 19th century and later

Neo-Renaissance

A buttress which encases the angle

Clasping buttress

Girder of I-section, made from iron or steel plates

Plate girder

Arch with a vertical section above the impost, i.e. the horizontal moulding at the springing

Stilted arch

Artificial slope extending out and downwards from the parapet of a fort

Glacis

In a fort, the level surface of a rampart behind a parapet for mounting guns (image: a-b)

Terreplein

Range of columns supporting an entablature, without arches

Colonnade

A horizontal member in panelling or in a timber-framed wall

Rail

A retaining wall sunk into a ditch in a landscape garden or park, used to make a barrier without disrupting the view

Ha-ha

Brickwork with alternate courses of headers (short ends) and stretchers (long sides) exposed

English bond

Of a classical building: with no columns or vertical features.

Astylar

A four-lobbed opening

Quatrefoil

Short, usually curved braces connecting side purlins or ridge piece with principals

Wind-braces

Upright support in a structure

Post

A form of vault used after c. 1350, made up of halved concave masonry cones decorated with blind tracery

Fan-vault

Masonry whose stones are wholly or partly in a rough state and laid in a random pattern

Random rubble

A roof of two pitches, the upper one less steep than the lower

Mansard

Any face of a building or side of a room. In a drawing, the same or any part of it, represented in two dimensions

Elevation

Used for buildings of c. 1900 which eschew the use of any particular historical style, drawing instead on a mixture of (usually) late Gothic, Renaissance and Art Nouveau motifs

Free Style

A style at its peak c. 1920, more common on the Continenet than in Britain, and seen more often in painting and sculpture than in architecture. At its most extreme it uses jagged or distorted forms, often creating a mood of anguish or unease

Expressionism

A structural timber set upright in or against a wall

Wall-post

In a major church, the area behind the high altar and east chapel

Retrochoir, retroquire or back-choir

An ornamental feature suspended from a ceiling or vault

Pendant

In tracery in the Gothic style, a cusp or curved projection which has a v-shaped opening set within the apex

Kentish cusp or split cusp

Lowest, subordinate storey; hence the lowest part of a classical elevation, below the piano nobile or principal store

Basement

A type of timber construction in which curving paired members (blades) are supported on a tie-beam and rise to the apex

Upper cruck

A raised and enclosed platform for the preaching of sermons, with a reading desk below and clerk's desk below that

Three-decker pulpit

Gutter along the eaves for rainwater

Rhone (Scots)

Horizontal member separating window lights

Transom

Masonry whose stones are coursed and present rough faces

Coursed rubble

The predominant style of mid- to late -16th-century Italy, in which classical motifs may be used in deliberate disregard of original conventions or contexts; by extension, a self-consciously formal approach to design in other idioms

Mannerism

Compartment designed for individual work or study

Carrel

Non-structural brick facing, using bricks laid long side outwards and in vertical (i.e. non-overlapping) tiers

Stack bond

A late-19th-century coinage for the revived Elizabethan or Jacobean styles

Jacobethan

To cut and mark timber against an irregular stone or plaster surface (image: right side)

Scribe (Scots)

A type of timber construction in which the upper supports or blades rise from halfway up the walls to a tie-beam or collar-beam, rather than continuing up to the apex

Middle cruck

Moulded and fired glazed terracotta (clay ornament or cladding), when coloured or left white

Faience

Of a porch or portico: having two columns

Distyle

Moulded stone frame round an armorial panel, often placed over the entrance to a tower house

Panel frame

Series of concave grooves (flutes) their common edges sharp (arris) or blunt (fillet). The reverse of reeding.

Fluting

A buttress which transmits the thrust to a heavy support (abutment) by means of an arch or half-arch

Flying buttress

Scratched drawing or writing

Graffito

External covering or skin applied to a structure, especially a framed building

Cladding

A timber-framed building, the projection of an upper storey beyond the storey below, made by the beams and joists of the lower storey oversailing the wall; on their outer ends is placed the sill of the walling for the storey above

Jetty

In a church or chapel, a basin for washing Mass vessels, provided with a drain, usually set in or against the wall to the south of an altar

Piscina

House and byre in the same range with internal access between them

Longhouse

Boards laid on the rafters to support the roof convering

Sarking (Scots)

A common version of the simplest and plainest of the three main classical orders, which features a frieze with triglyphs and metopes. The columns have simple round capitals with a narrow neck band and a plain or fluted shaft

Roman Doric

Wooden support for the building of an arch or vault, removed after completion

Centring

A small dome on a circular or polygonal base crowning a larger dome, roof or turret

Cupola

The eastern part or end of a church, where the altar is placed; usually set apart for the clergy

Chancel

A moulding like twisted strands of a rope

Cable moulding or rope moulding

Ornament in the Early English period of Gothic, consisting of small pyramids regularly repeated

Nailhead

Small gabled or roofed housing for a bell or bells

Bellcote

Single pair of lock gates allowing vessels to pass when the tide makes a level

Tidal gates

Division of an elevation or interior space as defined by regular vertical features such as arches, columns, windows, etc...

Bay

Small naked boy

Putto (pl. putti)

Subsidiary structure with a lean-to roof. Also a separately roofed structure on top of a multi-storey block of the 20th century or later

Penthouse

English type of late 12th- and early 13th- century decoraton in the form of thick uncurling foliage

Stiff-leaf

A screen of projecting fins or slats which deflect direct sunlight from windows

Brise-soleil

The diining hall of an abbey or monastery, traditionally placed in the south range of the cloister

Frater or refectory

Spiral scrolls. They occur on Ionic capitals

Volutes

A style of classical secular architecture at its peak in the early to mid-19th century, derived from the palaces of Renaissance Italy, but often varied by asymmetrical elements

Italianate

An approach to architecture and landscape design first defined by English theorists in the later 18th century. Characterized in architecture by irregular forms and textures, sometimes with the implication of gradual growth or decay, and in planning by a preference for asymmetrical layouts that composed into attractive views. Its influence continued into the 20th century, for instance in the arrangement of some post-war New Towns

Picturesque

A water-pipe; by extension, a public water-source, often architecturally or decoratively treated

Conduit

A form of bar tracery, used c.1300, which branches into a Y-shape

Y-tracery

Hinged openwork gate at a main doorway, made of iron bars alternately penetrating and penetrated

Yett (Scots)

A vault formed of two barrel vaults intersecting at right angles

Groin-vault

Stylized beam-ends in a Doric frieze, with metopes between

Triglyphs

Underground stone-lined passage and chamber

Souterrain

A long room or passage; an upper storey above the aisles of a church, looking through arches to the nave; a balcony or mezzanine overlooking the main interior space of a building

Gallery

Building or room circular in plan

Rotunda

The stone or brickwork worked to a finished face about an angle opening or other feature

Dressings

A rounded bartizan or turret, usually roofles and set at a corner

Angle round (Scots)

A roof truss framed at the bottom by crossed intersecting beams like open scissors

Scissors truss

Part of a wall or moulding that continues at a different angle, usually a right-angle

Return

An upright structural member, especially in the classical styles, of round section and with a shaft, a capital and usually a base

Column

Classical ribbed ornament like inverted fluting that flows into a lobed edge

Gadrooning

A large beam with its top rising in an arch

Bowed girder

Circular or polygonal windowed turret crowning a roof or a dome. Also the windowed stage of a crossing tower lighting a church interior

Lantern

Tudor panelling carved with simulations of folded linen

Linenfold

Artificial cutting away of the ground to form a steep slope

Scarp

A pediment with the centre of its base omitted

Open pediment

Composition of cement (calcined lime and clay), aggregate (small stones and rock chippings) sand and water. It can be poured into formwork or shuttering (temporary framing of timber or metal) on site (in situ) or pre-cast as components before construction.

Concrete

Free-standing bell-tower

Campanile

Transitional Romanesque style combining Anglo-Saxon and Norman features, current c. 1060-1100

Saxo-Norman

Architecture Flashcards

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