Can you tell the difference between a trefoil and an embrasure? A pictorial guide to medieval architecture

Familiar yet exotic, reassuring yet challenging, medieval architecture is fascinating.

For proof, just ask Ken Follett: his book about the building of a medieval cathedral, The Pillars of the Earth, has sold 27 million copies, and still sells hundreds of thousands each year, 37 years after it was published. And then there's John D. Rockefeller, the American billionaire philanthropist, who was so enamoured of medieval buildings that he had a 15th-century cloister shipped stone-by-stone from France and reassembled in New York back in the 1930s.

Obviously we don't need to tell Country Life readers this, since we already know how popular our articles on medieval architecture are. This recent example on Arundel Castle is a particularly good place to start, while our pieces on medieval homes for sale are always well loved: recent examples include as this one near Glastonbury, this with a front door that's 1,000 years old, and a 700-year-old home that is, amusingly, called 'New Place Manor'.

What can be confusing is the terminology for the various architectural elements of the buildings we write about — something which regular Country Life illustrator Matthew Rice tackled for us a few years ago in the beautiful art on this page. Study it for a few minutes and you'll soon be able to tell your trefoils and finials from your cruciform embrasures and battlemented parapets. The difference between and oriel and a buttery will become clear, as will the distinction between romanesque and ogee arches.

And on top of that, once you've committed all these terms to memory you're certain to improve your scores at Scrabble.