Gothic Revival

The gatehouse of Lanhydrock House in Cornwall, together with the north wing, are all that survives of the original 17th-century mansion. In the mid-19th century, the leading architect of Victorian Gothic Revival, George Gilbert Scott, was commissioned to modernize the house. Twenty years later Scott's mansion was destroyed by fire. The house has since been rebuilt in a neo-Jacobean style.

A section of the outer wall of the New Court, in St John's College, Cambridge. The college was founded in 1511 but this section, in Gothic style, was built in the 19th century.

The resurgence of interest in Gothic architecture, as displayed in the late 18th and 19th centuries, notably in Britain and the USA. Gothic Revival buildings include Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin's Houses of Parliament (1836–65) and Gilbert Scott's St Pancras Station Hotel (1868–74) in London; the Town Hall, Vienna (1872–83), by Friedrich von Schmidt (1825–1891); and Trinity Church, New York (1846), by Richard Upjohn (1802–1878).

The growth of Romanticism led some writers, artists, and antiquaries to embrace a fascination with Gothic forms that emphasized the supposedly bizarre and grotesque aspects of the Middle Ages. During the Victorian period, however, a far better understanding of Gothic forms was achieved, and this resulted in some impressive neo-Gothic architecture, as well as some desecration of genuine Gothic churches in the name of ‘restoration’.