Romanesque Revival architecture in the United Kingdom

The development of the Norman revival style or Neo-Norman took place over a long time in the British Isles starting with Inigo Jones‘s re-fenestration of the White Tower of the Tower of London in 1637–38 and work at Windsor Castle by Hugh May for Charles II, but this was little more than restoration work.

More surprising is the west door of Kenilworth Church, inserted in the tower in 1570 probably at the time of a visit of Queen Elizabeth.

This appears to have been historic arch, sourced possibly from an unknown monastic building,[2] Another early example of Romanesque revival is the south porch of North Scarle Church in Lincolnshire.

The church which contained much notable Romanesque decoration and an elaborate chancel arch appears to have been close to collapse.

Cockerell encased the chancel, keeping the arch in position but the outer walls were completely re-built and the exterior ornamentation of arcades and round headed windows were replaced in new stonework.

The arches and decorative features to the gatehouse and summerhouse were in Pulhamite, a form of Cast stone that was manufactured by James Pulham and Son.

It was Thomas Penson, a Welsh architect, who would have been familiar with Hopper’s work at Penrhyn, who developed Romanesque Revival church architecture.

Losh is known to have read Thomas Hope's Historical Study of Architecture (1815), which uses the term Lombardic for the style brought into Italy from the early Christian churches of Constantinople, and she described St Mary's as being an unpolished mode of building that most approximates to early Saxon or modified Lombard[14] This statement suggests that at the time of its design Losh was not aware of Thomas Rickman’s re-classification of Saxon and Norman architecture.

While the appearance and layout of the church may be considered as Romanesque, her free interpretation of the decoration on the woodwork and the arched stone windows and doors is anticipating the styles of the Arts and Crafts movement, while the arcading of the apse certainly has a Byzantine feel to it.

[13] The early years of the 1840s saw a considerable upsurge of interest in the developing Romanesque revival style by some of the leading architects of the period.

Another architect who popularised the Romanesque revival style was Edmund Sharpe, who set up his practice at Lancaster in 1835.

At Cambridge he had been a great friend of William Whewell and presumably of the polymath and architectural historian Professor Robert Willis.

He was awarded a travelling scholarship to study the early architecture of Germany and Southern France and supplied Thomas Rickman with information.

[16][17] However, Sharpe despite being an architectural historian of some note, built churches that were much freer interpretations of the Romanesque and German Brick Gothic and might be considered less archaeologically correct.

Sharpe's final essay in the Romanesque Revival style St Paul's Church, Scotforth, was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as a strange building and an anachronism, almost beyond belief.

[23] The work of Benjamin Ferrey can be considered to be similar to that of Thomas Penson, based on the English and French Romanesque traditions.

Central crossing tower and arcaded windows on the west frontis approached through a stone Romanesque Lych gate.

The unusual arched gate is acceptably Sicilian in inspiration and is similar to the portico at the cathedral at Monreale, but the rest of the composition has much more in common with French and Belgian Romanesque.

This architecture is an adapted and debased form of Italianate Romanesque as seen at the Potter's Bar Old Baptist Church in Hertfordshire in 1859.

St Conan’s Kirk Lochawe, Agyll and Bute is an extraordinary early 20th century church on the shore of Loch Awe, built by Walter Douglas Campbell, brother of the 1st Lord Blythswood, was started in 1881, but not completed until 1930.

Interest in Romanesque Revival Architecture was renewed by Sir Alfred Waterhouse's Natural History Museum in Kensington, which was built between 1873 and 1881.

Waterhouse tended to mix the architectural styles, often using decorative Romanesque arches to provide impressive entrances for his buildings, and popularised the deep red terracotta produced by manufacturer's in the Wrexham and Ruabon area of North-East Wales.

The design was won by competition in 1889 and the church was built between 1891 and 1894 by the Newcastle architects RJ Johnson and A Crawford Hick.

The style is a hybrid of Italian, French and German Romanesque and the Corbel table or moulded stringcourse below the eaves was based on that of Lund Cathedral in Sweden.