Elizabethan architecture refers to buildings in a local style of Renaissance architecture built during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England from 1558 to 1603.[1] The style is very largely confined to secular buildings, especially the large prodigy houses built for the newly-rised nobility close to the court. Many ordinary buildings continued vernacular styles with little decoration. New religious building had ended abruptly at the Dissolution of the Monasteries from c. 1536. English architecture was late in adopting Renaissance standards compared to the rest of Europe, and in the Elizabethan style northern Europe rather than Italy was the main influence. After Elizabeth a new court culture of pan-European artistic ambition under James I (1603–1625) saw the style morph into Jacobean architecture. Stylistically, Elizabethan architecture is notably pluralistic. It came at the end of insular late Gothic traditions in design and construction called the Perpendicular style in church building, the fenestration, vaulting techniques, and open truss designs of which often affected the detail of larger domestic buildings. In the late part of the 16th century, illustrated continental pattern-books introduced a wide range of architectural exemplars, fueled by the archaeology of Ancient Rome.
As church building turned to the construction of great houses for courtiers and merchants, these novelties accompanied a nostalgia for native history as well as huge divisions in religious identity, plus the influence of continental mercantile and civic buildings. Insular traditions of construction, detail and materials never entirely disappeared. These varied influences on patrons who could favor conservatism or great originality confound attempts to neatly classify Elizabethan architecture. This era of cultural upheaval and fusions corresponds to what is often termed Mannerism and Late Cinquecento in Italy, French Renaissance architecture in France, and the Plateresque style in Spain.[1]
In contrast to her father Henry VIII, Elizabeth commissioned no new royal palaces, and very few new churches were built, but there was a great boom in building domestic houses for the well-off, largely due to the redistribution of ecclesiastical lands after the Dissolution. The most characteristic type, for the very well-off, is the showy prodigy house, using styles and decoration derived from Northern Mannerism, but with elements retaining signifies of medieval castles, such as the normally busy roof-line.