The Gothic revival was a development which emerged in England and whose influence, except in church building, was largely restricted to the English-speaking world. It had begun on a small scale in the 18th century under the stimulus of Romanticism, a trend initiated by Horace Walpole's house Strawberry Hill. However, widespread Gothic construction began only in the 19th century, led by the renewal of church building but spreading to secular construction. Early Gothic revival architecture was whimsical and unsystematic, but in the Victorian era the revival developed an abstract rigour and became a movement driven by cultural, religious and social concerns which extended far beyond architecture, seeing the Gothic style and the medieval way of life as a route to the spiritual regeneration of society. The first great ideologue of this movement was Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, who together with Charles Barry designed the new Houses of Parliament, the grandest work of Victorian Gothic architecture.