Cragside is an example of Shaw's Tudor revival style; the Pevsner Architectural Guide for Northumberland called it "the most dramatic Victorian mansion in the North of England". The entrance front was described by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel as "one of the most dramatic compositions in all architecture", and the architectural historian James Stevens Curl regarded the house as "an extraordinarily accomplished Picturesque composition". Criticism focuses on the building's lack of overall coherence; in "The National Trust Book of the English House," Aslet and Powers describe the house as "large and meandering", and the architectural critics Dixon and Muthesius write that "the plan rambles along the hillside". Saint is even more dismissive: for him, "the plan of Cragside is little better than a straggle". The half-timbering above the entrance has also been criticised as unfaithful to the vernacular tradition of the North-East. Shaw would have been unconcerned; desiring it for "romantic effect, he reached out for it like an artist reaching out for a tube of colour".