Old English

Old English. Architectural style involving the revival of vernacular elements from Sussex and the Kent Weald, essentially one of the threads of the C19 Domestic Revival, Queen Anne style, and the Arts-and-Crafts movement. It was characterized by tile-hung walls (often in patterns), diaper patterns on brickwork, leaded windows of the casement type, timber-framing (sometimes not real, but merely decorative) of elements (often gables and jetties), barge-boards cut with fretwork, rubbed brick dressings, steep tiled roofs, and tall ornamental chimney-stacks of moulded brick or terracotta. Planning was informal and additive, while composition was Picturesque. In the USA the Colonial Revival had similar trends, and led to the Shingle style.

Bibliography

D&M (1985)

OLD ENGLISH2. The first English settlers in Ireland, dating from the late 12c, and their language; in Irish GAELIC, they were known as Na Sean Ghaill (The Old Foreigners). The term Old English was applied to them by later settlers, from the 16c onward: ‘Howbeit to this day, the dregs of the old auncient Chaucer English are kept as well there [in Wexford]’ (Holinshed's Chronicle, 1586); ‘Their advice was always prefaced by profuse professions of the traditional loyalty of the Old English community to the Crown’ ( R. F. Foster, Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland, 1989, p. 117). See HISTORY OF ENGLISH, IRISH ENGLISH.