In a 16-year period in the middle of the 19th century, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852), the son of a French émigré draughtsman and watercolourist, designed and built six cathedrals, 40 churches and numerous private houses. Through his designs, buildings and writings, he helped to shape the way the Victorians thought about architecture. And his ideas on private houses and domestic design – put into practice most freely in his own family home at The Grange, in Ramsgate – left a permanent mark on the British landscape.

Pugin is best known today for his work on the Houses of Parliament in London. In 1834, the old Palace of Westminster burnt down and Charles Barry was appointed as the architect in charge of constructing its replacement. Barry hired Pugin, who was only 25 at the time, to work on the interior design.

Pugin did that and much more. In addition to designing everything from the dozens of different kinds of wallpaper to the upholstery pins in the furniture, he was also responsible for much of the external detail of the new building. Indeed, many architectural historians today regard the design success of the Palace of Westminster as being more due to Pugin than to Barry.

Pugin didn't get the full credit he deserved during his own lifetime. Yet the Victorian Gothic revival owes much to his passion and propagandising for what he called 'the pointed architecture' of the medieval era. His championing of the importance of great craftsmanship across various trades echoed the fine works and attention to detail of the Middle Ages, and was a forerunner of the arts and crafts movement and the ideas of William Morris. And he eagerly embraced the new methods and materials of the industrial age, bringing them together in a new fusion of the old and the new.

In his short life, Pugin produced a seemingly endless stream of designs for tiles, ceramics, metalwork, wallpaper, furniture, stained glass and much more. As well as the Houses of Parliament, his buildings included St Chad's cathedral in Birmingham, the church of St Giles at Cheadle, in Staffordshire, the nearby Alton Towers – and his family home, The Grange, in Ramsgate, which he built together with the adjacent church of St Augustine.

In The God of Gothic, Time Team followed the restoration of The Grange by the Landmark Trust, and set it in the wider context of Pugin's other work – all of it accomplished in such a short period of time because Pugin died aged just 40.

The Grange in Ramsgate will be open to the public 17–20 May. Visits at other times may be possible by arrangement. More information can be found here: www.landmarktrust.org.uk/visiting/openingtimes.htm#grange.

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