Living in the United Kingdom and being extremely interested in Medieval history, I often look at monuments such as churches or castles dotted all over the country with great interest. Whenever something like this piques my interest, I tend to look it up on the internet to see if I can find out some more information on a given fortification or place of worship.
It seems that, in general, it is extremely common to find monuments such as churches or castles built specifically in the 13th century - from what I can see usually the latter half. I was wondering why this specific period appears, at least at a glance, to be over represented by these buildings. Was there some sort of a big construction drive in that time period? Is it just survivorship bias because many constructions from earlier periods were made out of wood as opposed to stone? Is it the spread of masonry as a method of architecture?
The late 13th Century is a particular high point for English Gothic architecture. We haven't yet reached the dizzying heights of mid-14th Century English Perpendicular, but we're solidly in the Decorated Gothic style. The closing decades of the 13th century in particular see the emergence of Curvilinear Decorated out of the Geometric Decorated which had begun in the mid-13th century.
Gothic architecture had begun to appear in England in the mid-12th century, but the wave of Romanesque construction brought about by the Conquest of 1066 was in most cases less than a century old. By the late 13th century, however, these earlier constructions are deemed insufficient and obsolete. The development of Decorated Gothic replaces the thick walls, heavy archways and bulk of Romanesque architecture with tall, thin walls, elegant pillars and, perhaps most importantly, 'lancet' arches. These give Gothic its distinctive 'pointy' shape, and are far more efficient than a simple semicircular Romanesque arch in distributing weight. These allowed architechts a great deal more freedom in the proportion of their buildings; it allowed for much taller, stronger, but thinner walls, much bigger, taller and more regularly spaced windows, and for elaborately vaulted ceilings. In short, buildings, particularly churches, could be built much bigger, much more stable, and much more light and airy.
Why do many of these designs crop up in the late 13th century? Much of the mid-13th century had been a period of great political upheaval in England, with the latter reign of Henry III dogged by unpopularity and open revolt as a result of a series of expensive foreign policy failures and heavy taxation, much of which was used to fund what was considered a frankly outlandish level of piety. The Second Baron's War began in 1264 and, although the monarchy was eventually victorious, the economy was badly affected and English society shaken by a number of massacres and brutal battles. The accession of Edward I in 1272 brought, at least initially, a much-needed period of stability and a wide-ranging series of reforms which encouraged regeneration. Edward expanded English control aggressively in both Wales and along the Scottish border, which led to the expansion of existing castles and the construction of new ones.
Many of these buildings survive today frankly because they're simply good design, and not least because building a new cathedral is an incredibly long and expensive process to carry out simply when fashions change. There certainly are baroque and rococo churches in the UK, but these tend to be in private estates, where the nobility could indulge their tastes.
Gothic castles on the other hand tend to survive because fashions change. Particularly from the 16th century onwards, the increasing stability and prosperity which followed the Wars of the Roses meant that nobles turned increasingly away from the necessity of fortification to more comfortable manor houses. While a great number of Tudor manor houses were later remodelled in the 18th century into unrecognisable neo-Classical palaces, the castles which were still occuped largely avoided that fate due to the inherent limitations of their design.