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Glossary

Baluster, balustrade
Pillar or pedestal of bellied form. Balusters: vertical supports of this or any other form, for a handrail or coping, the whole being called a balustrade. Blind balustrade: the same applied to the wall surface. A splat baluster is flat and has shaped sides.
Banded rustication
London
Rustication (the exaggerated treatment of masonry to give an effect of strength), with only the horizontal joints emphasized.
Baptistery
Division of a church designed to house the font; also a separate building for the same purpose.
Barbican
Outwork defending the entrance to a castle.
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.