English Renaissance

Term describing English architecture of the 17th and early 18th centuries.

For details of English architecture of earlier periods, see Gothic architecture: England and Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean architecture.

The classical architect Inigo Jones produced two masterpieces of English Renaissance architecture with the Queen's House, Greenwich (1616-35), and the Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619-22). Examples of Palladian architecture appeared among the half-timber and turrets of Jacobean London.

Restoration architecture (after the restoration of Charles II in 1660) is dominated by Christopher Wren who was influenced not only by Inigo Jones but by contemporary classicism in France and Holland, and by the developments of the baroque in Italy. With Wren a restrained baroque evolved showing French Renaissance influence, for example St Paul's Cathedral (1675-1710).

Wren's successors, Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanbrugh, developed the baroque aspects of his work to produce a brief flowering of English baroque in churches and country houses such as Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire (1705-20).

For English architecture of later periods see Georgian, English architecture: 19th century, and English architecture.