Arts & Crafts architecture is the domestic and public architecture associated with the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain from about the 1860s to the 1920s. It rejected showy historical revival in favour of simple, honest building that drew on local vernacular traditions, natural materials and skilled hand craftsmanship.
Philip Webb's Red House, built for William Morris in Bexleyheath, is often seen as the starting point. Architects such as Richard Norman Shaw, C. F. A. Voysey, Edwin Lutyens, M. H. Baillie Scott, W. R. Lethaby and Ernest Gimson developed the style, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh created a distinctive Scottish version. Typical features include steep roofs, tall chimneys, roughcast or local stone walls, leaded casement windows, inglenook fireplaces and asymmetrical plans designed around the needs of the household. Interiors were conceived as a whole, with built-in furniture, simple panelling, metalwork and tiles. The influence spread to garden cities, suburban housing and the American Craftsman movement. Original features in such houses, including hardware, fireplaces and glass, are now valued and often sought out by owners restoring them.
