Trail:

Glossary

Bargeboards
(corruption of ‘vergeboards’): Boards, often carved or pierced (called fretted), fixed beneath the eaves of a gable to cover and protect the rafters.
Barley-sugar columns
Columns with twisted spiral shafts. Also called Salomonic or Solomonic columns, after columns in Rome supposed to have come from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.
Barmkin
(Scots): Wall enclosing courtyard attached to a tower house.
Baroque
Oxfordshire
The term, originally derogatory, for a style at its peak in 17th- and early 18th-century Europe, which developed the classical architecture of the Renaissance towards greater extravagance and drama. Its innovations included greater freedom from the conventions of the orders, much interplay of concave and convex forms, and a preference for the single visual sweep. The revival of the style in early 20th-century Britain, often termed Edwardian Baroque or Neo-Baroque, drew more on English prototypes than on the more expansive variants of the Continent.
Barrel vault
The simplest kind of vault, in the form of a continuous semicircular or pointed arch; also called a tunnel vault.
Barrow
Burial mound.
Bartizan
Corbelled turret, square or round, frequently at an angle.
Bar tracery
A form of tracery introduced c. 1250, in which patterns are formed by intersecting moulded ribwork continuing upwards from the mullions. It was especially elaborate during the Decorated period of English Gothic, i.e. c. 1290-c. 1400.
Bascule
Hinged part of a lifting (or bascule) bridge.
Base
Moulded foot of a column or pilaster. An Attic base is the form used on an Ionic column, with two large convex rings joined by a spreading convex moulding.