Norman Period

With the Norman Conquest in 1066, England became an integral part of medieval Europe. The country was now united under one king, although the church rather than the monarch remained the chief patron of the artist. Architecture in particular was transformed by the energies of the new regime, whose French-born bishops demanded much larger and better-designed cathedrals than had existed before. These cathedrals are the earliest major buildings in England to survive more or less in their original form. While the first examples, such as Saint Albans Abbey (c. 1080), Hertfordshire, closely followed Norman models, within 30 years the Norman style as developed in England the equivalent of continental Romanesque art and architecture had acquired a distinct character of its own.

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This is shown by Durham cathedral (1093-1133), the noblest English building of its period. Durham shares with Romanesque cathedrals everywhere the Latin cross plan (a plan with choir, transepts, and nave in the form of an elongated cross), the use of round arches, and generally massive construction. Durham is unusual, however, in the rich decoration of its interior, in the grandeur of its nave archade, and, above all, in having a stone rib-vault, the first in Europe, over the nave; previously, naves had been roofed in wood.

Mention should also be made of two other building types introduced by the Normans; unfortunately, in both cases most examples are now ruined or at best heavily restored. The first were new kinds of abbeys, which spread throughout England in the 12th century due mainly to the Cistercian, a monastic order founded at Citeaux in central France. The second were castles, which began as simple square keeps, for example, the White Tower at the Tower of London, built by William I in the 1070s. Later they became much larger and more elaborate, amounting to small fortified towns.

English sculpture of the 11th and 12th centuries is relatively unimportant, but manuscript illumination continued to flourish in the south and in the 12th century reached new heights. Magnificent Bibles with brightly coloured initials and busy, expressive figures are characteristic of this phase, for example, the Winchester Bible (mid-12th century; Winchester Cathedral).

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Gothic Period

Gothic architecture, like Norman, reached England from northern France. The first major example is the choir of Canterbury cathedral, started in 1175 and designed by a Frenchman, William of Sens. Quite soon, however, national characteristics once more began to assert themselves. Chiefly, English cathedrals arc broader, longer, and lower than French ones; they retain transepts, which were occasionally dispensed with in France; and whereas French cathedrals have rounded east ends with radiating chapels and flying buttresses, and deeply recessed portals at the west end, English cathedrals (with the exception of Canterbury) have square east ends, giving an opportunity for splendid east windows, and flat west fronts and transept facades. Another typically English feature is the detached or semidetached centrally planned (round or polygonal) chapter house, or meeting hall of the cathedral clergy.

English Gothic architecture is traditionally divided into three phases. The first is Early English Gothic, clear and austere in design but comparatively rich in colour and texture, which lasted from the end of the 12th to the late 13th century; its representative buildings are Lincoln Cathedral (1192-1235) and Salisbury cathedral (begun 1220). The next phase, preceded by another "French" building, Westminster abbey in London (begun 1245), is Decorated Gothic. In keeping with its name, Decorated Gothic is characterised by rich carvings on surfaces, gables, and arches, complicated vaulting patterns, and elaborate window tracery ‑ an innovation introduced at Westminster.

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Decorated Gothic also made extensive use of stained glass. It was the dominant style from about 1280 to the mid-14th century; its typical buildings include the naves of Exeter Cathedral (begun с. 1280) and York Minster (begun с 1290) and the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral (1321-49).

The third phase is Perpendicular Gothic, which lasted until the Reformation. This style, which first appeared in the choir of Gloucester Cathedral (c. 1337-57), was an English invention. Its basis was a grid consisting of repeated vertical strips or bars crossed at wider intervals by horizontals; this was either applied as decoration to a wall or used as a screen to form a vast window. By around 1500 in the most sumptuous buildings — often constructed under royal patronage — this system culminated in a fan vault, a type of vault in which the ribs, joined by finer cross-ribs, spread out from the tops of the wall shafts in the shape of a fan. The most famous example is King's College Chapel, Cambridge, which was begun in 1446 and vaulted between 1508 and 1515. The majority of surviving English parish churches were built in a simplified version of the Perpendicular Gothic style, without the fan vaulting.

By the end of the 14th century the great age of new cathedral building was over, although in many cases towers remained to be added. Besides parish churches and a few royal chapels, the 15th century is notable for the rise of domestic architecture.

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The center-piece of a domestic complex was a large hall of a size appropriate to the building, whether palace, trading center (guild hall), college, or private house; its crowning feature was a wooden roof of complicated design. Private houses were either built of brick, following Flemish practice, or were timber-framed, with tall gables and overhanging upper stories.

English Gothic sculpture is very provincial, and painting, although plentiful, is hardly less so. The best surviving work of sculpture is the array of standing figures on the west front of Wells Cathedral (mid-13th century). Unfortunately, many religious statues were destroyed either during the Reformation or by the 17th-century Puritans. Most of the stained-glass windows depicting figures suffered a similar fate, but the windows of abstract design, such as the Five Sisters Window at York, were spared.

As to painting, by the late 13th century Paris had become the acknowledged center of manuscript illumination, but English work continued to be distinguished by the quality of its line and by the vividness of its naturally observed figures and animals in the page margins, as in the Luttrell Psalter (c. 1340; British Museum, London). Several artists active in this period are known by name, the most famous being Matthew Paris (d. 1259). Wall paintings exist at Chichester and elsewhere, and panel paintings became a feature for the first time. The finest of the latter is the Wilton Diptych (c. 1400; National Gallery, London), a work in the Gothic International style, although it is not quite certain that it is by an English artist.

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During the 15th century, however, England increasingly became an artistic backwater. Just how far this had gone by the early 16th century is shown by the fact that the Gothic fan vault of King's College Chapel is exactly contemporary with Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.