Architectural terms

  • Architrave - Term used to describe a moulded door or window frame.

  • Art Deco - A style fashionable between the two world wars which relies on geometrical patterns and sleek lines.

  • Art Nouveau - A style relying on flowing lines and sinuous forms, often based on nature and the human figure. Popular between 1890 and 1914.

  • Arts and Crafts - Late 19th-century movement which emphasised the value of handicraft and good design as against mass-production.

  • Ashlar - Smooth (dressed) stone blocks.

  • Bar back - Shelving, often ornately treated and incorporating mirrors, at the rear of a servery. Also known as a back-fitment or (Scotland and Northern Ireland) a gantry.

  • Batten board - Small strip of wood used, for example, to cover the joints between vertical siding.

  • Board and batten - Vertical siding where wood strips (battens) hide the seams where other boards are joined.

  • Brewers' Tudor - A style especially popular between the world wars which drew nostalgically on the half-timbered architecture of the Tudor period.

  • Casement window - A window that opens by swinging inward or outward like a door.

  • Casing - The trim bordering the inside or outside of a window or door.

  • Clapboard - Tapered horizontal boards used as siding, thickest on their bottom edge; each overlaps the one below. Also known as weatherboarding.

  • Clerestory window - A window placed in the upper walls of a room, usually at an angle, to provide extra light.

  • Corbelling - Decorative projection along the top of a wall (or any moulded projection of similar form).

  • Counter screen - Glazed screen on a serving counter, usually with a part that can be raised or lowered.

  • Course - Continuous row of building materials, such as shingle, brick or stone.

  • Dado - The lower part of a wall when faced or coloured differently from the upper part.

  • Dado rail - A rail or moulding dividing the dado from the upper part.

  • Dormer - The setting for a vertical window in a roof.

  • Embossed glass - Glass with raised and recessed areas formed by etching and grinding.

  • Faience - Blocks or slabs of earthenware, glazed after an initial firing.

  • Fascia - A horizontal band or board, often used to conceal the ends of rafters.

  • Inglenook - Corner of a large fireplace where the opening is far larger than needed and providing somewhere persons could sit.

  • Jug and bottle - Small section of pub, with a separate entrance from the street, selling drink for consumption off the premises.

  • Loggia - An arcaded space, roofed, but open on at least one side, typically overlooking a garden.

  • Matchboarding - See tongued and grooved boarding.

  • Moderne - Alternative term for Art Deco.

  • Mullion - The vertical member separating window lights.

  • Oriel window - Bay-window supported on a bracket.

  • Pot-shelf - A shelf over a bar counter for housing glasses.

  • Quarry tile - Floor tiles, usually red and black, in square or lozenge patterns.

  • Rusticated stone - Stonework, sometimes roughly finished, distinguished by having the joints deeply sunk.

  • Servery - The area, almost always behind a bar-counter, from which drinks are dispensed.

  • Stillion - A fitting in the middle of a serving area with shelves and storage facilities; sometimes called a wagon.

  • Terracotta - Very hard-wearing, unglazed pottery.

  • Terrazzo - Flooring consisting of small pieces of marble set in concrete, rubbed down and polished.

  • Tongue and groove boarding - Cheap panelling on walls and ceilings, consisting of boards with tongues cut along one edge and grooves on the other so that they overlap when joined.

  • Veneer wall - Covering one wall construction with a second material to enhance its beauty.

  • Wainscotting - Panelling applied to the lower part of a wall.