Victorian Gothic House Styles: History and Pictures

By Jackie Craven, About.com Guide

In the mid-1700s, the English author Sir Horace Walpole decided to redo his country home with details inspired by medieval churches and cathedrals. Walpole's house, located at Strawberry Hill near Twickenham, became a model for Gothic Revival architecture.

Gothic Revival architecture has many of these features:

• Pointed windows with decorative tracery
• Grouped chimneys
• Pinnacles
• Battlements and shaped parapets
• Leaded glass
• Quatrefoil and clover-shaped windows
• Oriel windows
• Asymmetrical floor plan

Next: Romantic Gothic Revival >>