The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in Englan. In the early nineteenth century, increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms, in contrast to the classical styles which were then prevalent. The movement has had significant influence throughout the United Kingdom as well as on the continent of Europe, in Australia and the Americas, and perhaps the number of Gothic Revival structures built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries exceeds the number of authentic Gothic structures that had been built previously.