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Glossary

Mausoleum
Blickling Park, Norfolk
Monumental building or chamber usually intended for the burial of members of one family.
Megalithic
The use of large stones, singly or together.
Megalithic tomb
Massive stone-built Neolithic burial chamber covered by an earth or stone mound.
Mercat
(Scots): Market. The mercat cross, which is topped more often by a heraldic or other finial rather than a cross, was the focus of market activity and local ceremonial.
Merlons
The solid uprights of a battlement.
Metopes
The spaces between the triglyphs in a Doric frieze, often ornamented with sculpture.
Mezzanine
Low storey between two higher ones.
Middle cruck
A type of timber construction in which the upper supports or blades rise from halfway up the walls to a tie-beam or collar-beam, rather than continuing up to the apex.
Mild steel
The stronger modern equivalent of wrought iron.
Minimalism
Kitchen, Notting Hill
by John Pawson
A term adopted from painting and sculpture for a tendency within Modernist architecture from the 1980s onwards towards simple forms and volumes, typified by the all-white interior.