The Arts and Crafts movement occupies a pivotal position in the history of the decorative arts. Like so many decorative traditions that preceded it, the movement arose as a youthful reaction to the solemnity, moralising and ecclesiastical tone of the High Victorian era. Clear-visioned and concise, it acted as a fertile ground from which later 20th-century designers developed widely disparate styles.

Pre-eminently it was a style that appealed to the prosperous, educated middle classes and was introduced in England by the architect Richard Norman Shaw and developed by his pupils and friends. These designs were seen to be in the "old English" style, which used vernacular motifs which looked relaxed, unpretentious and comfortable. Unlike their High Victorian contemporaries, they were inspired by the humble anonymous buildings of the countryside rather than the grander architectural prototypes.

These Arts and Crafts houses were asymmetrical, rambling and noticeably horizontal in form; they were half-timbered with mullion and leaded windows and sweeping roofs of shingle, tile or slate. Buildings were intended to be part of their environment, not at odds with it, and as the movement developed, local materials were sourced for their construction.

Gertrude Jeckyll wrote of her new house, Munstead Wood, in Surrey, which had been designed in 1896 by the youthful Edwin Lutyens: "It is designed and built in the thorough and honest spirit of the good work of the old days." She felt that she knew the oaks that held up her roof and approved of its rubble walls which were built of local Bargate stone - "that grows in our hills".

A strong element of romance lay behind this fascination with the vernacular, the rural and the humble. There was a certain inverted snobbery in prosperous bankers and lawyers building suburban houses in the home counties which emulated local cottages, yet had servants' wings and boasted extensive gardens and grounds.

In Glasgow, Charles Rennie Mackintosh developed buildings that were at once recognisably Scottish but also avant-garde, with attenuated linear forms inside decorated with art nouveau stained glass and metalwork.

Generally, Arts and Crafts houses reflected inside the exterior combination of romance and integrity. Unpretentious simplicity was emphasised by low rooms, long horizontal windows, inglenook fireplaces, exposed timber work and built-in furniture. As early as 1859, Philip Webb had designed the Red House, Bexley Heath for the youthful William Morris whose dictum - "simplicity, the very foundation of refinement" - was everywhere evident.

Chaste in its simplicity, the white walls were highlighted by occasional stencilled motifs. Decoration otherwise lay in pale polished timber work and redbrick architectural detail. Morris's passionate love of medieval beauty and his desire to recreate his idyllic childhood with simplistic forms led to his establishment in 1861 of Morris, Marshall and Faulkner. This company was in effect the decorating arm of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Now remembered for its naturalistic papers and textiles, the company originally also produced stained glass, metalwork and sculpture.

Nicola Gordon Bowe has done much to highlight the Irish aspects of the movement. Although there was little of the industrial revolution to react against, it grew out of Irish nationalism and antiquarianism. Under the initial guidance of Lady Aberdeen and other improving sponsors, the RDS exhibitions of the Edwardian period were filled with Irish decorative arts that were generally comparable with their European counterparts. Now much prized, enamel-work, copper-ware, carpets, and stained glass was produced from guilds and craft industries around the country.

While the crafts have a strong Celtic flavour, it was not evident in most Arts and Crafts Irish architecture. A model village, Talbot's Inch in Co Kilkenny, the Pembroke estate cottages in Ballsbridge and the widespread ex-servicemen's cottages, although picturesque, are essentially English.

The outstanding example of Irish Arts and Crafts was the reconstruction of Lambay on Lambay Island off the north Dublin coast by Edwin Lutyens from 1905 for Cecil Baring, Lord Revelstoke. This was a complex repair of a 15th-century castle and the construction of new ranges of low slung rubble-built ranges crowned with elegant pantile roofs. Lambay was extraordinary for its faithfulness to the spirit of the movement which both the Barings and the architect fully embraced.

It is also almost unique in its survival to this day as one of the most unaltered ensembles of the period. Whitewashed rooms, whose bareness is highlighted by grey dressed stone features, exude a monastic simplicity. Everywhere the best materials were used and where possible were left in their natural state. Free of varnish or stain, this gave a wholesome appearance to the scrubbed oak and elm fittings used throughout the house.

Many of the furnishings were early 17th and 18th-century pieces from the vernacular tradition; the remainder are contemporary, made of the stoutest materials which blend seamlessly with the old. The house was surrounded by Gertrude Jeckyll-influenced herbaceous planting which softened the architecture and helped bind it to its rocky surroundings.