A royal anomaly

Given HM The Queen’s remarkable 70-year reign, it is extraordinary, and rather sad, that the second Elizabethan era is without a defining architectural style, says Rupert Bates

AS the second Elizabethan age ends and we look back at 70 glorious years, there is an anomaly; a pause in the footprints of history and achievement during the remarkable reign of HM The Queen – and that is architecture. There have been some striking one-off buildings and projects of ingenious engineering and vaulting ambition in that period, but when it comes to the residential property sector, there is no recognised style that defines the epoch. We have had the Tudor era with gables and half-timber, the symmetry and high ceilings of Georgian architecture, the steeply pitched roofs of the Victorian period – even Edwardian, a mix of revivalist influences, gets its own architecture despite its tender years from the turn of the 20th century.

Estate agents in these pages will invariably mention the age of a property, its royal lineage and distinguishing features. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, no matter the monarch on the throne, but it does seem extraordinary, and rather sad, that we are unable to point to anything built in the past 70 years and recognise it as an explicit example of Elizabethan (the second) architecture, whether admired or admonished.

And that absence is not because we’ve had a rich and varied tapestry of modern styles to confuse the picture. The past 70 years have seen a lot of homogenous designs when it comes to new housing developments. Meanwhile, any new country house will invariably scream pastiche. There have been plenty of individual monuments to architects’ vanity too – some admirable in imagination and execution, but again nothing that reflects an era.

An irony as we enter another Carolean period is that HM The King is passionate about architecture and the built environment, and the creation of sustainable communities. As Prince of Wales he was outspoken, criticising the excesses of modernism and championing classicism. As King, he knows he can no longer speak out, but perhaps housebuilders and architects will step up and help ensure that history can look back on the Carolean era as the time affordable, accessible housing was delivered for all, mixing the palate and the palette to please both aesthetes and pragmatists.

Of course, the chronic need to meet the housing shortage while mitigating climate change with the most energy efficient construction methods mean we could be entering the modular age, rather than carrying a royal moniker. But modular is always going to suggest uniformity and a dullness of spirit. The best modern housebuilders, moving away from cookie-cutter developments, seek the poetic as well as the prosaic. But ironically, over the past half a century, the most popular marketing names for new homes’ house types have been the Balmoral, the Buckingham, the Windsor and the Sandringham. That tells you all you need to know about architectural invention and the sales sanctuary of heritage and tradition.

As Prince of Wales, King Charles advocated traditional urbanism, local materials and time-honoured craftsmanship. He will no longer shatter the glass and rattle the steel of modernist architecture through speech, but rest assured The King will be watching.