The Architectural Historian Issue 1

The 

ARCHITECTURAL 

HISTORIAN 

Issue 1, June 2015 

ISSN 2056–9181 

IN OUR FIRST ISSUE: A fresh look at Hampton Court Palace | The making of Trerice | 

Collections in Focus | Exhibitions | In Profile | Book Reviews

fl{..rrrECruRAL 

fssue 4June zor5 

Message from 

the Editor... 

EditorialTeam 

Magazine Editor 

Kay Carson 

magazine@sahgb.org.uk 

Book Reviews Editor 

Cat Gray 

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(ompetition rules 

The Mystery Photo Competition closes on 

September 30,2o1s. A National Book Token 

to the value of rzo will be awarded to the 

winner, i.e. the sender of the first correct 

entry drawn at random after the closing date. 

The Editor's decision is final. No 

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entrants. An alternative book token to the 

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Cover imoge Aerial view of Hampton (ourt Palace 

o Historic Royal Palaces 

EiGil 

ffi 

Hello and welcome to the very first issue of The Architectural Historian, the new, 

full-colour magazine from the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. Our 

publication will be with you twice a year and has been designed with all of you in 

mind - the members. Within the pages of The Architectural Historian,you're always 

likely to find a mix of voices from all types of people - students, curators, academics, 

collections managers, writers, archivists, and many more - who have (at least!) one 

thing in common: their interest in the history of architecture. As well as two fantastic 

features, each issue will bring you our new, regular columns such as'A Week in the 

Life ...', which turns its spotlight on one person's day-to-day involvement in the field 

of architectural history, while 'Classic Book Review' revisits a well-known text to 

assess its relevance for today's historian, and 'Collections in Focus'aims to showcase 

the architectural objects held in various collections around the United Kingdom. ln 

addition, there will be reports on graduate student research activities; coverage of 

exhibitions relating to architectural history; and words and pictures from the 

Society's recent study days. Readers of the previous publication, the Neurs/etter, will 

notice two familiar features joining us at The Architectural Historian: our substantial 

Book Reviews section will now appear in full colour, with images from new 

publications featuring alongside reviewers'texq and for our amusement, Nicholas 

Cooper has produced a series of limericks, appropriately entitled 'A few more (faintly 

flickering) Lamps of Architecture' in tribute to their clerihew predecessors the'Well 

Trimmed Lamps'. Are you eagle-eyed when it comes to identifying buildings? Please 

enter our mystery photo competition on Page i2 - you could win a National Book 

Token for ezo. 

I hope you enjoy our first 32 pages. 

Happy reading, 

Ka7 

Kay Carson, Editor 

lhe Alr/ritectutol Histortan wouldlike to thank the following contributors: 

Vanda Baweja 

James Bettley 

Laura Bowie 

Edward Bottoms 

James Campbell 

Katie Carmichael 

Nicholas Cooper 

Elain Harwood 

Gordon Higgott 

Paul Holden 

Daniel Jackson 

Kathryn Morrison 

Malcolm Thurlby 

Emma Wells 

torfurther information about the Society ofArchitectunl Historians ofGreat Britain including details 

on how to become a membel, please visit oul website at www.sahgb.org.uk. More fiom oul new 

magazine can be found at www.thearchiteduralhistorian.org.uk.

COVER STORY 

The Lost Palace: Henry 

VIII’s Hampton Court 

With the 500th anniversary celebrations of 

Hampton Court Palace in full swing, curator 

DANIEL JACKSON explores new, tantalising 

clues to the site’s Tudor history. 

4 The Architectural Historian Issue One / June 2015

Hampton Court Palace is one of the most famous buildings in England and its association 

with Henry VIII has cemented its place in the minds of the public for several 

generations. However, if you go searching for evidence of Henry’s architectural 

patronage at Hampton Court it may help to bring a shovel! 

While the palace is most commonly associated with Henry, it is actually Cardinal Thomas Wolsey 

who was responsible for the majority of the preserved Tudor buildings. Although Henry spent ten 

years building elaborate extensions to the palace, in 1689 William III and Mary II decided that the, 

by then old fashioned, Tudor private apartments should be demolished and replaced with a 

magnificent new baroque palace. Luckily, despite the destruction orchestrated by Christopher 

Wren it is still possible to find glimpses of the lost Tudor palace. 

The Architectural Historian Issue One / June 2015 5

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weeks of their coronation. They found the 

location much to their liking, however they 

thought the palace itself was old fashioned 

and run down. They commissioned 

Christopher Wren to design a new palace 

that could match the modern comforts to 

which they had become accustomed in the 

Netherlands. Though Wren’s initial plans 

called for the almost complete destruction of 

the Tudor palace, save for the Great Hall, 

these were, thankfully for us, revised. Wren’s 

final design however still involved the 

destruction of almost all the private 

apartments built by Henry. The redundant 

sections of the palace were levelled and all 

the material that could not be reused in the 

Whilst the two buildings shared 

a similar language, their style, 

form and massing were 

strikingly different. 

new building 3 was tipped into ditches and 

gravel pits to level the ground. 

William and Mary’s choice to preserve much 

of the Tudor palace and construct their new 

palace up against the old, gave Hampton 

Court a fascinating dual identity. Whilst the 

two buildings shared a similar language, with 

the strong red brickwork and stone detailing, 

their style, form and massing were strikingly 

different. It is a tribute to Wren’s skill as an 

architect, and perhaps Daniel Marot’s as a 

garden designer, that there are few areas 

where this ‘clash’ of styles could be seen 

from the ground. 

With the creation of this new baroque royal 

palace, Christopher Wren had destroyed 

much of Henry’s contribution to Hampton 

Court’s architectural inheritance. The most 

significant losses were the King’s Long 

Gallery, built initially by Wolsey but greatly 

extended 4 by Henry, the extensive Queen’s 

Private Apartments, and the Tudor Privy 

Garden, including the Watergate and a series 

Merged image of the Baroque and Tudor palaces from the east © Historic Royal Palaces 


Foundations of the Queen’s private apartments exposed December 2014. Photograph taken by Claire Collins © Historic Royal Palaces 

of elaborate gothic towers and banqueting 

houses. 

When combined with the loss of the older 

section of the King’s Private Apartments in 

1730, 5 very little of the private space built and 

used by Henry survives. Whilst the Great Hall 

alone would form a remarkable legacy, the 

lost elements of Henry’s Hampton Court are 

a fascinating topic to consider. Luckily, 

despite losing the buildings themselves, 

there are numerous sources of information 

that provide clues to their original form and 

function. The surviving Tudor works 

accounts, a series of images from the late 

sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century and 

an outline plan showing the palace just 

before its destruction provide a solid 

documentary record. There are also 

extensive archaeological remains preserved 

behind panelling and beneath floorboards 

that, when revealed, can shed further light 

on the lost palace. 

Hampton Court’s Tudor history has been the 

focus of much academic study over the past 

century. 6 Whilst we already have a good 

understanding of the design and layout of 

the Tudor private apartments there is still 

much to learn. Even seemingly minor 

maintenance projects can reveal exciting 

new information. 

During maintenance work in December 2014 

previously unseen remains of the Tudor 

Palace were revealed. Apartment 12 sits in 

the north east corner of the baroque palace 

and is now used by the Royal School of 

Needlework. Whilst carpenters were working 

to fix a bowing floor, they disturbed what 

they thought might be an earlier structure. 

Gary Evans, an archaeologist working for 

Oxford Archaeology, orchestrated the careful 

removal of several inches of accumulated 

dust and debris 7 from the site. This work 

revealed a large section of the foundations 

for the Tudor Queen’s Apartments. 

The architectural remains showed a number 

of different phases of building work, the 

destruction wrought by Wren and the later 

insertion of a large service trench. The thick 

red brick foundation running across the 

room marks the eastern elevation of the 

apartments built by Henry for Anne Boleyn, 

his second wife. The construction began 

only a month after Anne was crowned in 

1533, the project having to wait until Henry’s 

marriage to Katherine of Aragon had been 

officially annulled. The building accounts 

show that the foundations alone took ten 

months to measure out, excavate and 

construct. The two new ranges of 

apartments for Anne, when combined with 

the existing King’s Long Gallery to the south 

and a new connecting gallery to the west, 

would have formed a third courtyard 

creating a sense of unity in the eastern half 

of the palace. 

The bay window visible in the photograph 

butts up against the main foundations and it 

may have been a revision to the original 

design as envisaged by Henry and Anne. The 

royal couple regularly visited Hampton Court 

to survey progress and it is not unreasonable 

to suspect the original design was modified 

between the laying of the foundations and 


the completion of the project. The building 

accounts make reference to the construction 

of a number of bay windows in the new 

Queen’s Apartments, though it is difficult to 

identify exact locations for these. Why the 

bay window was not more securely tied into 

the main foundations is difficult to 

understand. 

After the execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536 

Jane Seymour took her place as Henry’s 

Queen. Henry once again expanded his plans 

for the palace. The king ordered a new 

extension to the Queen’s Private Apartments 

to the north, in order to connect them with 

another suite of private apartments he was 

having constructed for his son, the soon to 

be born Prince Edward. Whilst this new 

phase of major construction work was taking 

place, the building accounts suggest 

numerous changes and alterations were 

happening within the apartments designed 

for Anne. It is possible that the bay window 

was added during this later phase of 

construction, though no evidence for this has 

been located within the building accounts. 

The bay window itself shows yet another 

phase of building activity. A thin wall has 

been built up against the original internal 

face of the window. This wall was built on 

top of a demolition deposit that contained a 

clay pipe made by John Rosse of Kingston 

between 1580 and 1610. The deposit also 

contained a significant quantity of ceramic 

floor tile. 8 The purpose of this feature may be 

revealed by considering the location of the 

structure. This entire section of the Queen’s 

Apartments was built out into the eastern 

extent of the Wolseyian moat. It is possible 

that, as the window was not tied into the 

main structure, at least at foundation level, it 

had already begun to show evidence of 

subsidence by the end of the sixteenth 

century and additional strengthening was 

deemed necessary. This could account for 

the addition of the inner wall and the 

presence of the ceramic floor tile in the 

underlying layer, having been broken out to 

allow access at foundation level. 

These findings are still very new and research 

will continue over the coming years as we try 

to fit this new information into the existing 

picture of the lost Tudor palace. Key to this 

will be a comprehensive review of the 

surviving works accounts in light of the 

questions raised by these new structural 

remains. 

The complex architectural and social history 

of Hampton Court Palace continues to 

fascinate scholars and the public. The vast 

quantity of surviving documentary and 

archaeological evidence provides an 

invaluable insight into the extraordinary 

nature of over 500 years of change, 

development and destruction. Whilst many 

sites struggle with a paucity of evidence, 

Hampton Court is instead beset by a paucity 

of time available to consider the staggering 

quantity, and quality, of data. With every 

page of works accounts transcribed and 

archaeological excavation completed, we 

often find the number of new answers is 

equalled by the number of new questions. 

Daniel Jackson works for Historic Royal 

Palaces (HRP) as Curator of Historic Buildings 

at Hampton Court Palace. Trained as an 

archaeologist at the Universities of Bradford 

and Birmingham, he worked as a commercial 

archaeologist in the south-east of England 

before joining HRP in 2012. If you have any 

questions or comments about these new 

discoveries, or Hampton Court generally, feel 

free to get in touch via curators@hrp.org.uk. 

1 Despite efforts by both Daubeney and Wolsey it 

isn’t until 1531, under Henry VIII, that the Knights 

Hospitaller relinquish overall ownership of the site. 

2 For instance Cardinal John Morton, Bishop of Ely 

1479–86, and William Warham, Archbishop of 

Canterbury and Wolsey’s predecessor as Lord 

Chancellor. 

3 It appears that many of the larger pieces of 

Tudor stonework were reshaped and incorporated 

into the new building. 

4 This extension includes the addition of a timber 

framed third storey on top of the original two. 

5 When William Kent is commissioned to tear 

down the whole east range of Clock Court and 

build a new ‘Neo-Gothic’ range for the Duke of 

Cumberland. 

6 For a comprehensive overview and bibliography 

see Simon Thurley’s Hampton Court: A social and 

architectural history 2003 (currently out of print). 

7 The deposit was particularly deep here due to a 

later culvert that had been excavated through the 

space, with the up-cast partially redeposited within 

the cut and partially spread across the ground 

surface. 

8 Unfortunately we are yet to receive any further 

dating evidence from the floor tile or any of the 

other archaeological finds from within the bay 

window. 

The Baroque South and East Fronts of the palace, as viewed from the Great Fountain Garden. © Historic Royal Palaces 


COLLECTIONS IN FOCUS 

The Otto Koenigsberger 

Papers, AA Archives 

Archivist at AA Archives, Edward Bottoms, explains how a recent bequest has provided an 

engaging insight into post-war and post-colonial planning 

The Architectural Association Archives 

were established in 2009 with the aim 

of making accessible the AA’s wealth 

of historic membership and educational 

records dating back to the 1840s. Whilst 

cataloguing of our holdings has proceeded 

apace, one of the largest discrete collections 

which remains, as yet, uncatalogued is the 

Otto Koenigsberger Archive. Bequeathed to 

the AA Archive in 2012 by Renate 

Koenigsberger, Otto’s widow, the papers 

trace in minute detail Otto’s background and 

remarkable career – from his training and 

early work in 1930s Berlin, through to his 

eventual settling in London, where he was 

instrumental in setting up and leading the 

AA’s highly influential ‘Department of 

Tropical Architecture’. Alongside 

documenting this personal odyssey, the 

papers also provide a unique window on the 

post-war, post-colonial planning scene, with 

extensive materials relating to Otto’s 

international planning advisory work and 

participation in numerous global UN 

missions and programmes. 

The survival of such a comprehensive archive 

is astonishing – even Otto’s student days in 

the 1920s and 30s are documented and 

include not only his ‘Belegbuchblatt’ from 

the Berlin Technische Hochshcule (TU Berlin), 

10 The Architectural Historian Issue One / June 2015 

signed by Hans Poelzeg, Bruno Taut and his 

other tutors, but also the drawings for his 

1931 graduation project for a zoological 

garden (for which he was awarded the TU 

Bronze medal). With the rise of the Nazi Party, 

Koenigsberger left for Egypt, working as an 

archaeologist at the Ludwig-Borchardt 

Institute (now Swiss Institute, Cairo). 

Amongst the extensive sets of surviving 

Otto Koenigsberger, 1931, TU Berlin graduation 

project, ‘Design for Zoological Gardens’. AA Archives 

survey drawings and research notes for 

temple sites along the West bank of Luxor 

can be found a wonderful series of 

photographs of the archaeological digs and 

their environs. 

In 1939 Koenigsberger gained the post of 

Government Architect of Princely State of 

Mysore and was responsible for designing a 

wide range of buildings including the Central 

College for Women, Nagpur (1942) and 

Victory Hall, Bangalore (1947) – drawings for 

which all survive in his archive. He was also 

privately employed by the Tata family, 

undertaking urban planning schemes for 

Mithapur, Bhadravati and drawing up the 

1945 master-plan for Jamshedpur. Over 150 

photographs and drawings for the majority 

of these projects remain within Otto’s papers, 

together with a small series of commissions 

from the Maharaja. Most eye-catching of 

these latter designs are drawings for 

improvements to Mysore Palace, for the 

Maharaja’s private train and for a royal 

pavilion on top of the Krishna Raja Sangara 

Dam! 

Following Indian Independence, Jawaharlal 

Nehru appointed Koenigsberger as Federal 

Director of Housing, with the key task of 

resettling refugees displaced by Partition, a 

role that saw Otto involved in the planning of 

the New Towns of Gandhidham and 

Bhubneshwar – unique studies and drafts for 

which can also be found amongst his papers. 

Central to Koenigsberger’s plans was a 

scheme for a Government Housing Factory in 

Delhi which was to produce mass 

pre-fabricated housing. The acrimonious 

Archaeologists Ludwig Borchardt, Herbert Ricke and others, picnicking at Saqqara, 1933. AA Archives

failure of this project, voluminously detailed 

in the archive, was to lead to Koenigsberger’s 

eventual resignation and departure for 

Britain in 1951. 

In 1953 Otto was one of the key instigators 

and organisers of the landmark ‘Conference 

on Tropical Architecture’ (University College 

London, 1953), from which would 

subsequently emerge the AA’s 

groundbreaking ‘Department of Tropical 

Architecture’. Documentation within the 

Koenigsberger archives and the AA’s core 

collections reveal Otto’s role in setting up the 

department and proposing Maxwell Fry as its 

first head – a position which Koenigsberger 

was to assume just two years later. The 

methodology and influence of this 

pioneering department have never been 

adequately studied, due to a paucity of 

archival material. It is now possible, however, 

to construct a clear idea of the post-graduate 

students attending the course and the 

network of countries from which they were 

drawn. Likewise, Koenigsberger’s lecture 

notes and curriculum planning serve to 

thoroughly document the pedagogy of the 

course. It was whilst running the Department 

that Otto articulated his influential concept 

of ‘action planning’ and developed research 

which would be eventually published in his 

classic textbook ‘Manual of Tropical Housing 

and Building’ (1974). A draft for an 

unpublished second volume to the ‘Manual’ 

has tentatively been identified in the archive, 

alongside substantial documentation of the 

Department’s transferral to University 

College London, as the ‘Development 

Planning Unit’, in 1971. 

The Koenigsberger Archive also serves to 

shed significant light upon the transnational 

network of global experts in planning which 

emerged in the post-war, post-colonial 

world. Koenigsberger was involved in 

numerous UN missions and advisory 

programmes and initiatives, working 

alongside figures such as Charles Abrams 

and Vladimir Bodiansky, as a consultant to 

governments including those of Nigeria, 

Ghana, Singapore, Ceylon, Pakistan, the 

Philippines, Zambia, Brazil and Israel. The 

related correspondence, draft reports and 

research materials constitute a treasure trove 

for scholars of the history of transnational 

planning. 

The AA Archives are currently applying for 

funding to catalogue this remarkable 

collection but it is intended that supervised 

access to the papers, albeit in their unsorted 

state, will be maintained throughout the 

process 

above left Otto 

Koenigsberger, 1942, 

‘Design for Central College 

for Women, Nagpur’. 

AA Archives 

above right 

Government 

Pre-Fabricated Housing 

Factory, New Delhi, 

c. 1951. AA Archives 

left Otto Koenigsberger, 

c. 1950, ‘Plan for 

Gandhidham’. AA Archives 

Otto Koenigsberger, c. 1941, ‘Design for royal pavilion on the top of the Krishna Raja 

Sangara Dam’. AA Archives 

Otto Koenigsberger, 1948, ‘Draft plan for Mithapur’. AA Archives 


First edition of Suffolk (The Buildings of 

England series) was published in 1961 

© Penguin Books Ltd 

CLASSIC BOOK REVIEW 

Hall I have given the owner’s London address 

as I understand that he is at Assington only 

occasionally’), letters were written to the 

owners, and visits arranged (‘Sotterley Hall. 

Written. Col. Barne. OK but as much notice as 

poss. and would like you to go to luncheon.’). 

Pevsner was back in London on 28 August, so 

can have spent only four weeks visiting the 

500 or so places in the county. Then began 

the process of further letters to librarians, 

archivists, architects and others, seeking 

information about what he had seen and 

also, in the case of some architects, about 

buildings which he had not seen and which 

they thought might be worthy of inclusion. 

These mostly appear in the text in brackets, 

such as the secondary modern school at 

Woodbridge included at the suggestion of 

the county architect, E. J. Symcox. A further 

refinement of the text was provided by 

George McHardy who, on leave from the 

Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry 

in the summer of 1959, ‘visited 392 Suffolk 

churches with typescript . . . in hand [and] 

found more errors and omissions than I could 

count or would care to remember.’ 

The volume was finally published early in 

1961, priced at 12/6 in paperback and 17/6 in 

hardback. The reddish brown cover of the 

paperback, designed by Hans Schmoller, 

included a decorative roundel by Berthold 

Wolpe based on a flushwork emblem from 

the porch of Woodbridge church; the jacket 

carried a rather grainy photograph of 

Flaxman’s sculpture ‘The Fury of Athamas’ at 

Ickworth. As always, the foreword invited 

users of the volume to point out omissions 

and mistakes, something the county archivist 

of West Suffolk must have done within days, 

for on 28 February 1961 Pevsner wrote to him: 

‘It is very discouraging indeed to realise that 

whatever trouble you take, the resident 

expert will always be able to find mistakes.’ 

The second edition, revised by Enid Radcliffe, 

appeared in 1975 (although dated 1974), and 

the third edition, in two volumes, is 

published by Yale University Press in 2015. 

But that is no reason why owners of the first 

edition should not continue to treasure it. For 

the bibliophile, there is the sheer pleasure of 

handling a Penguin book of that era. The 

paper and binding, assuming the volume has 

not been too heavily used, is still sound, 

which is remarkable in itself and more than 

can be said for most fifty-year-old 

paperbacks. Visually, the volume remains a 

delight, not just the cover but the text as 

well, also the responsibility of Schmoller – 

much thought went into the typography and 

layout, to help the reader make sense of 

what might otherwise be a daunting block of 

text. Only the reproduction of the black-andwhite 

photographs falls below present-day 

expectations. Photographs were not then, as 

they are now, specially commissioned, and 

much depended on what was available at 

the National Buildings Record (as it then 

was), but even so some of the photographs 

in Suffolk provide a valuable record of what 

can no longer be seen: the interior of Elveden 

Hall, for example, or the painting by William 

Dyce that was sold by Knodishall church in 

1983. It would be almost impossible now to 

take a photograph of Angel Hill, Bury 

St Edmunds, that did not include a single 

motor car. 

Pevsner has a reputation, largely undeserved, 

for dryness. This is partly because he praises 

and criticises rarely, so that when he does, his 

opinion is all the more telling. ‘Rather grim 

from the N’ sums up Mickfield well. On the 

other hand, ‘Long Melford church is one of 

the most moving parish churches of England, 

large, proud, and noble – large certainly with 

its length inside nave and chancel of 153 ft, 

proud certainly with the many 

commemorative inscriptions which 

distinguish it from all others, and noble also 

without question with the aristocratic 

proportions of the exterior of its nave and 

aisles.’ ‘Delightful’ is one of his favourite 

terms of praise, such as the font cover at 

Ufford, ‘a prodigious and delightful piece’, or 

Letheringham Mill, ‘a delightfully 

picturesque group’. His virtuoso (and 

unusually long) description of the roof at 

Needham Market is followed by the ‘bitter 

disappointment’ of the rest of the church, 

especially the S porch ‘with its ridiculous and 

miserly spirelet’ erected by ‘some ignorant 

and insensible architect in 1883’. Ignorance 

he deplored. The church at Stoven, ‘ a 

depressing neo-Norman job of 1849’, was an 

‘ignorant progeny’, and the spires of St John 

the Evangelist, Bury St Edmunds, and 

Westley, both by William Ranger, were 

likewise ‘ignorant’. The clock tower at 

Bildeston (1864) was simply ‘hideous’, as was 

that at Newmarket (1887) – ‘architecturally, 

Newmarket has very little to offer’. The 

interior of the chancel at Stuston was ‘truly 

terrible’, Eye Town Hall (1857) ‘horrible . . . 

with a horrible tower’. 

It is interesting to know the views of 

someone who was soon to be chairman of 

the Victorian Society, who could also dismiss 

the interesting church at Boulge with ‘Early 

C16 brick tower. The rest seems all Victorian.’ 

Then, ‘for the C20 in Suffolk one can be 

almost silent’. Of the ‘undeniably impressive’ 

Royal Hospital School at Holbrook (1925–33) 

he wrote, ‘of originality, of a feeling that a 

completely new style in architecture was 

stirring, there is none’ (but the architects 

were consciously imitating the Royal Hospital 

at Greenwich); of the church at 

Chelmondiston, destroyed in the Second 

World War and rebuilt in 1957, ‘not an inkling 

of any development of architecture in the 

last sixty years’ (but the architect, Basil 

Hatcher, was perfectly capable of designing 

modern churches, and may well have 

thought that in a village setting a traditional 

Suffolk church was what was wanted). For 

Pevsner, the best buildings ‘belong literally 

to the last two or three years’. Time has 

certainly endorsed his enthusiasm for the 

new estate village at Rushbrooke, about half 

complete in 1961. Favourite local architects 

were Tayler & Green of Lowestoft and, 

especially, Johns, Slater & Haward of Ipswich 

– Pevsner includes an enthusiastic 

description of their Fison House in Ipswich, 

1959–60, based entirely on a photograph and 

information supplied by Birkin Haward. 

Later editions undoubtedly provide much 

more information, such as the identity of the 

architects of the Victorian buildings Pevsner 

so much disliked, and the first edition, even 

though it slips so much more easily into the 

coat pocket, is perhaps best kept for perusal 

at home; but it is still full of insight, and 

inspired description, that make it just as 

enjoyable and worth reading as it was in 

1961. 

Book Reviews start on page 24 


FEATURE 

How the ‘King of 

Cornwall’ brought 

history to life 

Paul 

Holden assesses the legacy of Michael Trinick 

and the making of Trerice, near Newquay 1 

In 1953 George Edward Michael Trinick 

(1924–94) (Fig. 1) joined the National 

Trust in Cornwall as Assistant Agent. He 

rose steadily through the ranks becoming 

Area Agent in 1956, Regional Secretary of 

Devon and Cornwall in 1965 and Cornwall’s 

Regional Director between 1978 and 1984. 

Unusually during this time he simultaneously 

acted as Historic Buildings Representative, a 

curatorial role that saw him not only facilitate 

the acquisition of Trerice (Fig. 2), but also 

prepare it as a visitor attraction. 

Merlin Waterson, in his biography of Michael 

Trinick, concluded that he was ‘one of the 

most remarkable people ever to work for the 

National Trust’. 2 For many he was the selfproclaimed 

‘King of Cornwall’. Some thought 

him a ‘swashbuckler’, others a ‘cavalier’. 

James Lees Milne called him ‘a wonder of a 

man’ while Martin Drury described his 

methods as somewhat ‘unconventional’. 3 He 

was undoubtedly a workaholic and obsessive 

collector whose strong principles and 

determined character often rode-roughshod 

over convention. Behind his boisterous, yet 

softy spoken, public persona, his private 

correspondence reveals an intolerant, empire 

builder who glorified in elevated circles, 

counting amongst his friends John Betjeman, 

Daphne du Maurier, William Golding and 

members of the south-west gentry. 4 

His legacy remains one of profuse 

acquisition. Between 1953 and 1984 vast areas 

of coastline and many built properties were 

acquired throughout Devon and Cornwall. To 

encourage informed access he implemented 

Fig. 1 Michael Trinick, OBE (1924–94). © National 

Trust Images/Giles Clotworthy 


Fig. 2 East front of Trerice in c. 1818 by George Shepherd (c. 1782–c. 1830). © National Trust Images/ 

John Hammond 

high standards of interpretation and 

established himself as a widely respected 

historian, writing many of the early house 

and coastal guides. 5 Another major focus was 

the presentation of the sites, his handwritten 

instructions issued on postcards became 

infamous and much feared. 

In a lecture given to the Attingham Trust in 

1993 Trinick explained his involvement in the 

purchase of the Elizabethan manor house 

and 14 acres of land. 

In 1953 there died in Devon a Mrs [Annie] 

Woodward, leaving to the Trust £30,000 … 

Whereas such bequests are normally spent on 

beautiful land the Trust decided, against 

precedent, to buy two houses, one in Devon 

[Dunsland] and one in Cornwall, modest 

enough in size to attract a tenant. [Trerice] 

came to the Trust empty but for the table in the 

hall which was too large to move, and it had to 

be furnished and opened to visitors from 

scratch. We found an excellent tenant, Mr Jack 

Elton, who was extremely generous in paying 

for the major repair of the house, and the 

rebuilding of the north wing . . . for some years 

only the hall and the Drawing room could be 

shown, and very little of the garden, for the 

tenants naturally wanted privacy . . . In the late 

60s we decided to show a greater part of the 

house and to restore the gardens [and 

outbuildings] . . . The house was largely 

unrecorded but, by pegging away at its history 

and development, the story became reasonably 

clear. It was the greatest fun to furnish it, 

gradually bringing together, at first from loans 

and then from gifts and purchases, suitable 

contents, increasingly those with some 

connection to the house. Indeed, I am afraid I 

was merciless in twisting the arms of people 

who I knew had things which had come from 

Trerice or had belonged to the Arundells. There 

still remains in Wiltshire a cache of portraits of 

the Trerice Arundells. It is very rare that the 

Trust is able to start from scratch, for generally 

some furniture, and some portraits at least, are 

in the house when it is acquired. I think we 

more or less got it right for the place is 

outstandingly popular. Being modest in size, 

and with contents which are not grand, visitors 

feel they can relate to it. 6 

Without indigenous contents the story of 

Trerice lay in the buildings and the people 

who shaped them. In his 1954 guidebook 

Trinick considers the plasterwork some of the 

finest in the south-west and using his 

regional knowledge and architectural 

Fig. 3 Great Chamber overmantel, 1573. © National Trust Images/Nadia Mackenzie 

expertise he compared the ornate ceilings, 

the decorative 1572 overmantel in the Great 

Hall and the Fitzalan arms and Arundell 

heraldic overmantel in the Great Chamber 

with other provincial examples. However, as 

a storyteller he recognised that the everyday 

lives of servants was just as engaging as 

those of the elite and so made a feature of 

the Elizabethan plaster craftsman who, it 

would appear, ran out of space when adding 

the date to the Great Chamber overmantel, 

thus a number 3 can be seen on the end of 

the preceding Roman numerals (Fig. 3). 

By modern standards the guidebook was 

short and with hindsight hampered by a lack 

of documentary research. To be fair, when 

the house came to the Trust little was known 

about its early history other than that chapel 

licenses were granted in 1372 and 1413 and 

that the topographer John Norden referred 

fleetingly to the house being L-shaped. This 

earlier building was incorporated into a more 

fashionable east-facing E-shaped house 

between 1562, the year of Sir John Arundell’s 

(c. 1534–80) marriage, and 1572, the date 

inscribed on the Great Hall plasterwork. 

Likewise there was no investigation into the 

two enduring mysteries that surround the 

Elizabethan rebuild. The first is the Dutch 

gables, a unique feature in a county that has 

historically proved slow in adopting new 

architectural fashions. Hence, it is curious 

that an astylar house like Trerice boasts some 

of the earliest Dutch gables in England. Yet, 

there is no doubt that the Arundell family 

was progressive. Its members shunned the 


Fig. 4 East front in c. 1920. The north range was demolished by a storm in the 1860s. ©National Trust 

Images/Trerice collections 

popular use of Cornish granite in favour of 

locally quarried silver grey elvan limestone 

and drew on a contemporary plan that 

perfectly displays the trend for privacy. 

This prompts the second question: why was 

an old-fashioned double-height Great Hall 

with minstrel’s gallery installed when such 

features were being phased out in favour of 

more private and intimate parlours and 

chambers? 

More recently our understanding of Trerice 

has advanced significantly. 7 Recent 

archaeology and building analysis has 

uncovered features such as a bowling green, 

a wilderness, orchard, kitchen Garden, 

ornamental terraces, a viewing mound and 

archery range of which documentary 

evidence tells us that the young ‘Master 

Robert . . . could shoot twelve score, with his 

right hand, and with his left, and from behind 

his head’. It has also been suggested that a 

Gatehouse once stood between the front of 

the house and what was described on a 1825 

estate map as a ‘Lady’s garden’. 

The story of the seventeenth century 

Arundells was one of lunacy, litigation, 

loyalty to the Crown and subsequent 

impoverishment which forced Sir John to 

petition Cromwell for help ‘quite ruinous’ he 

wrote ‘to my poor estate’. Fortunately the 

family was restored to favour at the 

Restoration. In 1698, after the death of the 

2nd Lord Arundell, a 27 room inventory was 

compiled which gives a good account of a 

neatly decorated prestigious house with 

modest furnishings. 8 Curiously the inventory 

describes 11 rooms assigned with a total of 14 

beds (not including seven beds that appear 

to be for servants), some situated in 

unexpected locations such as ‘the Roome 

within the Dining Roome’, ‘the Bowling 

Green Chamber’, three beds in the ‘Room 

within Clowance Chamber’, two in the 

‘Clowance Chamber’ itself and one in the 

kitchen and wash house. The obvious 

conclusion is that the house was not at the 

time the Arundells’ primary residence, 

perhaps just not fashionable enough when 

compared with their other house in St James 

Place in London. 

John Arundell (1701–68), the 4th Baron, did 

some small alterations to the house but had 

greater aspirations to create a new landscape 

park with ornamental walks, pleasure 

buildings, water features, lakes and islands 

said to be in a similar vein to the water 

gardens at Raglan Castle in South Wales. In 

1768 the estate passed through marriage to 

the Wentworth family and then in 1802, after 

several defaults of issue, passed to Sir 

Thomas Dyke Acland who used the house for 

agricultural storage. In 1820 it was said to be 

‘in a rapid state of decay’ the drawing room 

was according to Davies Gilbert ‘in a 

wretched, dilapidated state’ although 

F. W. L. Stockdale more optimistically wrote 

‘although going into decay, [Trerice] still 

displays much of its grandeur’. 

Acland restored the Great Hall and by 1859 

the house was shown to visitors despite the 

Great Chamber still being used as an ‘apple 

room’. 9 In c. 1860 the north range had fallen 

into much disrepair and a severe gale 

eventually tore down the perished fabric (Fig. 

4). He eventually sold up in 1915 and three 

years later Cornwall County Council 

purchased the estate in the name of the 

‘Homes for Heroes’ scheme whereby soldiers 

returning from the Great War were rewarded 

with agricultural land. In 1920 Trerice was 

sold again and after three further decades in 

private ownership, the property was 

acquired by the National Trust for £12,000 

from its then owner the author, politician, 

poet and country house restorer Somerset de 

Chair (Fig. 5). The auction of contents in 

September 1953 raised £4,000 and included a 

full length portrait of King Phillip IV of Spain 

sold for £300, a Naples seascape by Franz 

Catel sold for £125, a seventeenth century 

portrait of John Donne fetched £120, a 

triptych attributed to Johannes Mytens £110 

and a Sheraton commode fetched £250. 

Under the direction of the architect 

Christopher Corfield and financed to the 

tune of £48,000 by the new tenant J. F. Elton, 

who had made fortune out of Malaysian 

rubber, Trerice was restored between 1953 

and 1958. The main focus of this work was the 

rebuilding of the north range using the 

fragments found in the gardens (Fig. 6). The 

house was reopened to visitors in 1964. 

Corfield, a keen pig farmer, encouraged his 

client to put some money into pig rearing 

and the barn was converted for this purpose. 

However, an outbreak of swine ’flu caused 

Elton a large financial loss and he had to 

leave the property. 

Fig. 5 1948 sale particulars from Country Life 

magazine. Author’s collection 


With more of the house available for visitor 

access Trinick's interpretive vision was to 

create a mythical family home appearing as if 

family members had just departed. His 

inspiration was how he imagined or 

remembered a small manor house between 

the wars when such houses were often found 

to be too expensive to maintain by their 

owners and were therefore let without 

contents. 

Of his methods Merlin Waterson wrote 

Today curotoriol eyebrows would be raised, 

partly because the circumstances in which 

Michoel worked would not be fully understood 

. . . Whot separates Michoel's opprooch from 

thot of todoy's curotors is that he sow himself 

as entitled to oct as the owner of o greot house 

might have done, discarding some things, 

ocquiring others, ond interested obove oll in 

what would bring history to life.'" 

For the presentation Trinick relied on 

generous bequests of good seventeenth and 

eighteenth century furniture and an 

exceptiona I collection of clocks and 

paintings, some from the collections of Mrs 

Ronald Greville of Polesden Lacey. To create 

a local interest two paintings by the 

eighteenth century Cornish artist John Opie 

were acquired, two more arriving in 1988 

from a bequest of his great friend the late 

Lady Mander of Wightwick.x His 

'unconsidered trifl es' or auction acquisitions 

were added to the mix,'lt was' he once said 

'like playing with a doll's house on a large 

scale'.': 

The measure of Trerice's success is that it has 

survived. The Trust's acquisition was inspired, 

after all, notwithstanding the Dutch gables, it 

remains quintessentially English. Trinick 

reinvented Trerice, as he did his other 

acquisitions, by capitalising on its regional 

distinctiveness and acknowledging new 

audiences created by the post-war consumer 

and tourist boom and fuelled by the 

popularity of 6os and 7os cultural heritage 

television programmes such as Going for a 

Song, Antiques Roodshow and Upstoirs 

Downstoirs. Some might argue that today its 

rich architectural legacy remains little 

understood beyond its confused arbitrary 

compendium of contents but Trerice's 

fortunes are typical of the way that the 

fortunes of country houses have ebbed and 

flowed over years. The house has survived 

civil war, debt, desperation, agricultural use, 

neglect, partial collapse, two world wars, 

wartime rehabilitation, excessive taxes, death 

duties, prospects of post-war abandonment 

and, during a time where country houses 

were demolished at an alarming rate, 

eventual loss. 

Fig.o'S

EXHIBITIONS 

Celebration of Britain’s 

glorious Georgian age 

CANALETTO’S ARCHITECTURE: 

CELEBRATING GEORGIAN 

BRITAIN 

The Holburne Museum, Bath 

27 June – 4 October 2015 

Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal 

22 October 2015 – 14 February 2016 

Sweeping skies, rippling waterways, and 

proud, elegant buildings ever-soslightly 

softened here and there by 

hazy sunlight: the ingredients of a typical 

work by Giovanni Antonio Canal invariably 

add up in the mind to form an image of 

Venice – but this new exhibition brings 

together for the first time the paintings 

produced by Canaletto in Britain. 

It was the best of British times in this 

Georgian age: trade was buoyant, buildings 

were sprouting along the London skyline, 

confidence was palpable; by contrast, on the 

Continent, the War of the Austrian 

Succession had dissuaded wealthy patrons 

from pursuing their respective Grand Tours, 

so in 1746 an enterprising Canaletto decided 

to come to booming Britain, where he lived 

and painted for nine years, resulting in a 

body of work that, particularly when viewed 

together, records a dynamic period in British 

social and architectural history. 

The touring exhibition, which began at 

Compton Verney in Warwickshire before 

travelling to the Holburne Museum in Bath 

and the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, 

celebrates Britain and British architecture 

through the eyes of Canaletto in 

approximately 30 paintings, including A View 

of Greenwich from the River (c. 1750–52) and 

London: The Thames from Somerset House 

Terrace towards the City (1750–51). 

Although much of his British work depicts 

scenes of London and the River Thames, 

Canaletto also produced views of other sites 


facing page Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) 

1697–1768, A Self-Portrait with St Paul’s in the 

background at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, 

© National Trust Images / Hamilton Kerr Inst/ 

Chris Titmus 

left Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) 1697–1768, A 

View of Greenwich from the River, c. 1750–52, oil paint 

on canvas, © Tate, London 2014 

around the country, including Warwick 

Castle, Eton College, Badminton House and 

Alnwick Castle. It is appropriate, then, that 

the exhibition is to be housed in 

eighteenth-century buildings across England. 

Abbot Hall, for example, was built in the 

Palladian style just three years after 

Canaletto headed back to Italy. “For us, it is 

the perfect opportunity to celebrate our 

building as well as hosting the exhibition,” 

says Abbot Hall curator Beth Hughes. “It 

allows us to shine the light back on the 

building and on our collections. 

“For example, we have an nearcontemporary 

of Canaletto in George 

Romney, whose portrait work is often 

compared to Reynolds, but this gives visitors 

a chance to look at Romney’s work alongside 

another artist of his time.” 

The exhibition offers a satisfying variety of 

scale, from large paintings to more intimate 

pieces. Visitors will also be glad to see 

London: Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh 

(c. 1754) portraying a rococo interior that sits 

in stark contrast to the trademark picture 

postcard vistas. Kay Carson 

below Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) 1697–1768, London: The Thames from Somerset House Terrace towards 

the City, Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014 


Reading between the 

lines of Mackintosh 

design 

MACKINTOSH ARCHITECTURE 

The Architecture Gallery, RIBA, London 

Charles Rennie Mackintosh has been 

described in turn as a proponent of 

art nouveau, symbolism, modernism, 

and much more. I should regard that as not 

so much confusing, but complimentary, to 

this architect, artist and designer that a great 

many movements and periods want to claim 

at least a part of him as their very own. 

Mackintosh Architecture, hosted at the RIBA in 

the spring after a spell in its native Hunterian 

Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow, was 

described as ‘the first substantial exhibition 

to be devoted to his architecture’ and it lived 

up to the brief. With more than 60 original 

drawings and watercolours, interspersed by 

models, the show offered a tasteful and 

considered insight into the developing mind 

and talents of Mackintosh from apprentice 

draughtsman at Honeyman and Keppie, 

through to fully-fledged architect, and 

partner at the practice. There was something 

refreshing about being permitted to examine 

his architectural drawings purely in that 

context – Mackintosh as architect – without 

reference to the iconic motifs endlessly 

recreated, copied, and reproduced in a way 

that for some has risked diluting his legacy, 

in Benjaminian fashion. 

In addition to drawings of his most wellknown 

buildings, such as the Glasgow School 


Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1893) by James Craig 

Annan, © T&R Annan, courtesy 

GlasgowMackintosh.com 

below Artist’s House in the Country by Charles Rennie 

Mackintosh © Hunterian, University of Glasgow 

Design for Scotland Street School (1904) by Charles 

Rennie Mackintosh © Hunterian, University of 

Glasgow 

of Art, the Glasgow Herald building (now The 

Lighthouse), and Scotland Street School, the 

exhibition also revealed details of unbuilt 

works, including two rejected competition 

entries – one for the Glasgow International 

Exhibition of 1901, and an extraordinary 

vision for Liverpool Cathedral that did not 

even make the shortlist in the 1901–03 

cathedral project (eventually won by Giles 

Gilbert Scott). Regardless of whether the 

projects made it into sandstone, or brick, the 

joy of this exhibition was to experience up 

close the original ink designs of an 

architectural giant. 

Mackintosh Architecture was the culmination 

of a four-year AHRC-funded research project 

led by The Hunterian Art Gallery, ‘Mackintosh 

Architecture: Context, Making and Meaning’, 

www.mackintosh-architecture.gla.ac.uk. 

The RIBA exhibition was supported by the 

Monument Trust and RIBA Patrons. 

Kay Carson 

Coming up… 

NATIONAL TASTE: PALLADIO 

AND BRITISH PALLADIANISM 

RIBA, London 

1 September to 31 October, 2015 

Following soon after the SAHGB’s own 

symposium held in May to mark the 

tercentenary of the publication of Vitruvius 

Britannicus, a new exhibition is to open at the 

RIBA in September, designed to celebrate 

and explore the development of British 

classicism in the period 1715 to 1815. 

National Taste: Palladio and British 

Palladianism will feature drawings, models 

and photographs from the collections at 

RIBA and elsewhere to examine the origins 

and key figures behind an enormously 

influential style that can be seen in a wide 

variety of UK buildings and landmarks. 

A report and pictures from the SAHGB’s 

2015 Symposium – ‘The Tercentenary of 

Vitruvius Britannicus: Architectural Books in 

Eighteenth Century Britain’ – is due to be 

published in Issue 2 of The Architectural 

Historian. 


Meeting of minds at 

the Old College 

Forum attendees listening to the Architectural History 

Beyond Academia discussion (top table, from left) Alex 

Bremner, Chris Miele, Olivia Horsfall Turner and 

Kathryn Ferry 

Braving the Edinburgh elements for an architectural 

tour of the city 

The GRSF Organising Committee (from left) Andrew 

Horn, Íñigo Basarrate, Emily Turner and Laura Bowie 

The SAHGB 3rd Annual Graduate 

Student Research Forum was held in 

the inspiring surroundings of the 

Playfair Library at the University of Edinburgh 

on a sunny Saturday in April. The first session 

of student papers began with a discussion of 

the architectural development of Sedilia in 

English churches by James Cameron 

(Courtauld Institute of Art), followed by 

insights into the wider function of early 

modern urban defences beyond the 

defensive by Simon Webb (University of 

York), concluding with Arthur Trieu 

(University of Cambridge) on the significance 

of timber-framed structures in the 

earthquake-prone Italian city of L’Aquila. 

Post-coffee, Julian Holder (University of 

Salford) moderated a discussion on Writing 

about Architecture: Rights and Responsibilities, 

accompanied by Richard Anderson 

(University of Edinburgh), Timothy Brittain- 

Catlin (Kent School of Architecture), and 

Hannah Malone (University of Cambridge). 

Concepts of the role of the architectural 

historian were discussed which highlighted 

the importance of thinking outside of the 

academic arena and more broadly about the 

mechanisms that created a particular 

building or architectural style. The 

selectiveness of the historical canon was also 

addressed as well as the function of the 

university as a tool to show students where 

to find stories rather than to dictate them. 

This was followed by the second session of 

student papers. Sydney Ayers (University of 

Edinburgh) began with insights into the early 

work of Robert Adam and the business of 

architecture; Laura di Zerega (University of 

California) followed with a discussion of 

Schinkel’s influence on the ecclesiastical 

architecture of the Rhineland. Danai 

Konstantinidou (Cyprus Institute) concluded 

the session with a history of the British 

Empire’s role in the development of the 

harbour of Famagusta. 

After lunch, session three started with 

Claudio Leoni (Bartlett School of 

Architecture) and a discussion of Semper’s 

attitude to towards the Crystal Palace as a 

means of addressing both capitalism and 

anthropology. Dimitri de Preux (University 

College London) spoke on the historical 

eclecticism of the Samsung Building in Los 

Angeles and the appropriation of style for 

differing functions. Bente Ass Solbakken 

(University of Oslo) concluded the session 

with an analysis of the relationship between 

the assimilation of architecture from other 

countries and the development of a national 

Norwegian style. 

The second roundtable discussion on 

Alternatives to Academia: Heritage/ 

Conservation/ Curatorship was moderated by 

Alex Bremner (University of Edinburgh) 

accompanied by Chris Miele (Montagu 

Evans), Olivia Horsfall Turner (V&A Museum), 

and Kathryn Ferry (freelance writer and 

scholar). The opportunities in both public 

and private sectors were discussed with the 

importance of cultivating a broad range of 

interests during post-graduate studies 

highlighted as a key way to open up avenues 

that might not otherwise be immediately 

apparent. 

After coffee, the final student papers were 

presented, beginning with Horatio Joyce 

(University of Oxford) and his analysis of the 

architectural importance of clubs in 

late-nineteenth century New York. Tim Fox- 

Godden (University of Kent) then spoke on 

the memorialisation of wartime landscapes 

in the cemeteries of the Western Front; Leah 

Xiao (University of York) concluded the 

student papers with a discussion of 

I. M. Pei’s Museum for Chinese Art and the 

convergence of modernism with traditional 

Chinese motifs. 

The keynote speech was delivered by the 

ever-engaging Professor Iain Boyd Whyte 

(University of Edinburgh) on the subject of 

The Architect as Author. 

The day provided ripe ground for further 

conversations over wine within the 

spectacular architectural setting of Old 

College and was followed by some muchneeded 

sustenance. 

Sunday morning dawned wet and windy for 

an architectural tour of Edinburgh led by 

Margaret Stewart (University of Edinburgh). 

An ensemble of brave attendees made their 

way through the narrow streets and closes of 

the old town before finding themselves in 

the rational spaces of the new town. The sun 

finally made an appearance as the tour 

culminated in the shadow of Calton Hill, the 

symbol of education prowess within the city: 

a fitting end for an intellectually stimulating 

weekend. 

Laura Bowie 

On behalf of the GSRF Organising Committee 

Iñigo Basarrate, Laura Bowie, Andrew Horn, 

Emily Turner 


A week in the life… 

. . . of Dr James Campbell, Fellow in 

Architecture and History of Art at 

Queens’ College Cambridge. His 

books include Brick (Thames 

and Hudson, 2003), Building 

St Paul’s (Thames and Hudson, 

2007), The Library: a World 

History (Thames and Hudson, 

2013) and The Staircase 

(Routledge, 2014). 

Iremember as an architecture student 

writing to Sir Howard Colvin and being 

surprised to be invited to his house in 

Oxford for tea. I went along and sat nervously 

in his living room, in awe of this 

extraordinarily generous and by then rather 

ancient academic. He listened carefully to 

what I had to say, politely correcting things 

here and there, and patiently directing me to 

sources I should look at. It was a master class 

in supervision, and also in academic 

generosity. 

I do not see my students at home (my house 

is not exactly round the corner from college 

as Colvin’s was), but I do serve tea. Sir 

Howard’s copy of the Wren Society, which I 

purchased at auction after his death, now sits 

in the corner of the room. Full of his scribbled 

notes, it is a treasured possession. My college 

room has white bookcases up to dado height 

covering all those spaces not taken up with 

window seats, doors and the fireplace. Above 

the bookcases, the walls are painted deep 

green and covered in engravings. The 

sloping floor and exposed timber framing are 

the few clues that reveal the room’s 

seventeenth-century origin. The windows 

look out over the court towards the walnut 

tree and the President’s Garden. This room is 

where I write and I supervise. I glance 

occasionally across the court at Bodley’s 

glorious Chapel (1886) or Basil Spence’s 

elegant Erasmus building (1959), both of 

which I can see from my chair. 

My day does not start in this room. It begins 

by dropping my son at school and cycling to 

the Faculty from the station. More often than 

not there is then a meeting to attend. The life 

of an academic architectural historian would 

be complete bliss if it involved nothing more 

than teaching, researching and writing. Of 

course it doesn’t: it involves a great deal of 

meetings. I counted a few years ago that I 

was sitting on fifty committees of one sort or 

another. I have done my best to whittle it 

down and I think I have currently reduced it 

to about thirty. Term time is seemingly 

endless committee meetings, followed by 

the tedious administrative tasks that come 

out of them. Of course you cannot attend 

them all, because they clash with each other, 

with lectures and with supervisions, but sadly 

they cannot be avoided altogether. 

I glance occasionally across the 

“ 

court at Bodley’s glorious Chapel 

or Basil Spence’s elegant Erasmus 

building, both of which I can see 

from my chair. 

” 

After meetings come lectures. It is probably 

unfashionable to say so, but I enjoy lecturing. 

My lectures come just before lunch. Slide 

show over, I leave the Faculty, jump on the 

bike and head for college, which is just a 

short cycle ride away, past the Fitzwilliam 

Museum (Basevi/Cockerell, 1848) and the Pitt 

Building (Blore, 1832). My bicycle is leant 

against the front walls of the college beside 

the gate. I used to have a mountain bike, 

which was given to me and I rode for many 

years, but it recently fell apart. Its 

replacement is a heavy black upright Dutch 

bike with a rectangular covered basket on a 

rack on the front. The weight gives me 

exercise, while the basket is invaluable when 

you have books to carry. There are always 

books to carry. 

After dropping my rucksack and coat in my 

college room on the old side of college, I pass 

through the cloister beneath the President’s 

Lodge (a pretty 16th-century architectural 

enigma) and cross over the famous 

mathematical bridge (William Etheridge, 

1749). If it’s raining (and if it is winter it 

probably will be), I run for the cloister under 

Powell and Moya’s Cripps Building (1976). A 

compromised design, this has never been my 

favourite building in Cambridge. I prefer the 

St John’s one, which has had its own share of 

problems, but meets the water so beautifully 

and is so much more castle-like. I have been 

organising a catalogue of the college’s 

drawings and I recently discovered the first 

proposal was similar to the St John’s 

building. Sadly that scheme was rejected 

early on. One thing you cannot fault about 

the one that was built is the quality of the 

materials: the panelling in the hall is 

beautifully done. Lunch quickly eaten, there 

is time to catch up on college gossip before 

the students start arriving for the first 

supervision at 2 pm. 

Supervisions are done in college. We sit 

around a large mahogany table if it is a group 

of 2–3, or in armchairs in front of the fire if it is 

a 1:1. They last an hour each and I serve tea 

and biscuits to keep us all going. I hope 

Howard would have approved. Supervisions 

start at 2 pm and finish at 6 pm when I go to 

the college cafeteria and wolf down supper 

before grabbing the bicycle and heading 

back to the station. Terms are short and 

intense, leaving little time for research 

between the meetings, lectures and 

supervisions. Once the students disappear 

and the reports are written up, there is finally 

time to get down to those tasks that have 

lain dormant for 8 weeks. Picking up the 

threads again is always difficult, and there is 

never enough time to spend in the libraries 

or archives as one would wish, but in some 

ways that makes you value it more when you 

do. Even in a place where most people think 

time stands still, there never seems to be 

enough of it 


BOOK REVIEWS 

ERIC FERNIE: Romanesque Architecture: The First Style of 

the European Age (Yale University Press, 2014, 300 pp., 

388 col. and b&w illus. plus two maps, £55.00, ISBN: 

9780300293547) 

This is an old-fashioned book and that is 

most welcome. The text is divided into four 

sections. Part I: Definitions, presents past and 

current definitions of the Romanesque style, 

the political and cultural contexts, and the 

Romanesque style in context. Part II: History, 

deals with the early phase of the style 

c. 800–1000; the middle phase c. 1000–c. 1150, 

arranged in eight geographical regions of 

Europe; and the late phase c. 1150–1300, 

which investigates Romanesque versus 

Gothic and the boundaries of the 

Romanesque style. Part III: Themes, examines 

patronage, design and construction, the 

function and iconography of church 

buildings, and monastic and secular 

buildings. Part IV presents Research Methods. 

There is a good select bibliography, and a 

glossary of essential terms that is especially 

useful for the non-specialist and new 

students. 

There is an informative discussion of the 

label ‘Romanesque’, and a bold statement in 

praise of style in the study of Romanesque 

and more generally in the discipline of art 

and architectural history. While notions of 

style have not been fashionable of late, we 

should do well to remember that William of 

Malmesbury, writing in the 1120s, observed 

that Edward the Confessor’s Westminster 

Abbey introduced a new (Norman) manner 

of building that could now be seen 

throughout England. Similarly, Gervase of 

Canterbury provided us with a wonderful 

comparative analysis of the new (Gothic) 

versus the old (Romanesque) work at Christ 

Church, Canterbury. And, even without a 

contemporary commentary, the demolition 

of the Anglo-Saxon Canterbury Cathedral 

and its replacement with a Norman building 

of the same size is quite simply an exercise in 

the imposition of Norman style over Anglo- 

Saxon. 

Organisation follows the political divisions of 

Europe at the time period under discussion 

rather than present divisions – thus Lund is in 

Denmark, Kirkwall and other churches on 

Orkney are Norwegian, and so on. This is 

especially evident in France where the 

tradition ‘schools’ established by Robert de 

Lasteyrie and others, like ‘Auvergne’ etc., are 

abandoned. The approach makes good sense 

and I find it to be especially useful for Alsace. 

Within each region we are presented with an 

historical introduction, documentation and 

description of individual buildings with a 

state of the question, and a list of likely 

sources for aspects of the design of the 

building. For the most part the illustrations 

are excellent and the maps are most 

informative, although it is strange that maps 

occasionally occupy just a quarter of an 

otherwise blank page, and some plans are 

reproduced on a tiny scale which makes 

them difficult to read. Conant’s plans of what 

he called the Pilgrimage group – Santiago 

group for Fernie – are more easily read. 

Eighteen maps show contemporary divisions 

that are supplemented with two maps of 

present locations. 

There is a careful survey of opinions 

regarding the end of Antiquity and the 

beginning of a new period. Fernie 

persuasively argues for a change in the 

eighth century with the Carolingian era. He 

provides a survey of Roman continuity from 

the fourth to eighth centuries, with buildings 

in the east and west ranging from major 

features like the cross transept through the 

alternation of columns and piers in the nave 

of S. Demetrius, Salonika. It is in the 

Carolingian era that we find the major 

changes that set the stage for subsequent 

forms, such as transepts and the westblock. 

The selection of buildings is remarkably well 

balanced and, in addition to all the 

‘favourites’ in western Europe, we are treated 

to less well-known works in central Europe, 

Scandinavia, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. 

And such balance is also witnessed in the 

inclusion of much secular architecture. 

There is likely to be ongoing debate of the 

question of dating buildings on the basis of 

style versus documentation. There is the 

famous case of the great tower at Loches 

where dendrochronology supports the 

documentation of Fulk Nerra, Count of 

Anjou, 987–1040, as patron, which has 

resulted in revised dates for many churches 

with associated ashlar masonry and halfshaft 

articulation. The 

documentation-versus-style question applies 

to many Spanish churches and to Saint-Foi at 

Conques. Tournai Cathedral has a 

documented start in 1110 but is usually 

placed between 1130 and 1160. In all cases, 

Fernie is even-handed in the presentation of 

the evidence and the historiography. One 

further example for consideration is the 

abbey church of St Vigor at Cerisy-la-Forêt, 

founded in 1032 but usually dated 1070–90 

on architectural historical evidence. 

Fernie presents the debate around 

fortification and great towers. Allied to this 

matter it is worth adding an unlikely 

candidate, the chapel of St James, Postlip 

(Gloucestershire), which was built by William 

de Solers to provide refuge for his tenants 

from robbers, malignants and the terrible 

ravages in the wars of Stephen. 

A few examples illustrate how Fernie’s 

discussion of specific buildings presents 

important methodological principles. On the 

construction of Abbot Hugh’s Cluny III, 

commenced 1088, Fernie concurs with 

Willbald Sauerländer and Dethard von 

Winterfeld that the building is not a propapal 

response to Emperor Henry IV’s 

remodeling of Speyer Cathedral. However, 

he adds that Cluny would not have been 

constructed without knowledge of Speyer 

and other major buildings projects of the late 

eleventh century. This principle is of 

paramount importance and may be applied 

to the works of all ambitious patrons from 

Durham Cathedral to small buildings like 

Cormac’s Chapel, Cashel, where the key 

reference is the work of Bishop Roger of 

Salisbury at Sarum Cathedral, and Penmon 

Priory, Anglesey, where there are imperial 

associations with Speyer Cathedral. 

Construction of Sant’ Abbondio at Como is 

associated with a gift of 1063. The 1095 

consecration by the Pope probably has no 

bearing on the date of the building, 

something that highlights the problem of 

interpreting consecration dates in terms of 


Trier Hall in Romanesque Architecture: The First Style of the European Age by Eric Fermie (Yale University Press, 2014) 

absolute chronology. And, although the 

richer articulation of the east arm of the 

church has led to the suggestion that the 

nave was built first, Fernie suggests that the 

richer decoration reflects the greater 

importance of the eastern arm and thus has 

no bearing on the sequence of building. He 

observes that the high groin vault in the 

sanctuary ‘may be among the earliest over a 

main span in Lombardy, and the ribs in the 

apse are similarly precocious’. Yet, if 

considered iconographically, there are barrel 

vaults in this position at Agliate and Lomello, 

groin vaults before the apsidal terminations 

to the side chapels at Agliate, and a groin 

vault at San Vitale, Ravenna. For the apse ribs 

there is a precedent in the early eleventhcentury 

ciborium at Sant’ Ambrogio, Milan. 

For the latter church, Fernie dates the ribs of 

the nave high vault to late eleventh century 

rather than to the 1120s in association with 

the canons’ tower the latter at the end of the 

build. The angle-set bases, shafts and capitals 

for the high vaults indicate that the ribs were 

intended at the outset of the building 

programme. They conform to this 

arrangement in San Nazaro, Milan, 1075–93, 

and may be associated with the transept 

vaults at Speyer Cathedral, and the nave high 

vault at St Mary’s, Utrecht. 

The iconographic reading of the decoration 

of the east arm of Sant’ Abbondio, Como, is 

also applied to the supports of the nave 

arcades at Parma Cathedral where the 

compound pier next to the western crossing 

piers does not conform to the alternation of 

piers and columns in the nave. Fernie points 

out that the difference may mark a building 

break but, given the large number of ‘odd’ 

supports in this position elsewhere in 

Europe, such as Alpirsbach, it makes sense to 

see the ‘break’ as an iconographic marker. 

Indeed it would be difficult to overemphasise 

the importance of the integrated 

reading of a building or what Fernie calls 

architectural synthesis, the application of 

which may be applied to buildings other 

than Romanesque. Surprisingly, Fernie does 

not apply this principle to the construction of 

the eastern arm of Archbishop Roger’s work 

at York Minster where he separates the 

‘Romanesque’ crypt of the 1150s and 1160s, 

from the ‘Gothic’ choir of the 1170s. An 

iconographic reading of old and new, as in 

Suger’s eastern arm at Saint-Denis, with a 

design carried out soon after Roger’s arrival 

at York in 1154 seems more plausible. 

For St Philibert, Tournus, the various types of 

vaults are discussed, to which we might add 

the idiosyncratic arrangement of the vault 

webs and what must be the original tie 

beams in the high barrel vault in the upper 

storey of the westblock. It should also be 

mentioned that the crypt at St Philibert has 

some of the best evidence for the form of 

wooden centreing for vault construction. 

Perhaps not surprisingly there is no detailed 

discussion of Romanesque painting and 

sculpture but it is pleasing to see the 

illustration of painted fictive ashlar on the 

exterior of York Minster, a precious survival 

of what must have been a common 

Romanesque practice. 

Fernie addresses the problem of amassing 

the photographs for a volume that covers 

such a wide geographical area. This is 

indeed a daunting task that begs the 

question about the inclusion of the 

photography of buildings in architectural 

history programmes. I do not know of any 

such programme, and that should be 

rectified. 

References are not as comprehensive as this 

reviewer would like. Perhaps this was under 

the direction of the publisher? Many 

buildings are presented as if they are 

household names, which may well be the 

case in Europe. Yet this is not so for most 

teachers in North America or elsewhere 

outside Europe, and for the general reader. A 

more comprehensive approach as in Richard 

Krautheimer and Slobodan Ćurčić, Early 

Christian and Byzantine Architecture in the 

same Pelican History of Art Series would have 

been useful. 


Cardona, Sant Vincenc in 

Romanesque Architecture: 

The First Style of the 

European Age by Eric Fermie 

(Yale University Press, 2014) 

Fernie presents an interesting discussion of 

Romanesque versus Gothic that should 

stimulate lively discussion in the seminar 

room. On flying buttresses in Gothic he 

observes that the flyers added to the nave of 

Cluny are not dated – perhaps immediately 

after the documented collapse of a nave 

vault in 1126 is most likely. Yet flyers are used 

at San Lorenzo, Milan, between the inner 

angles of the corner towers and the upper 

storey of the nave, probably after a fire of 

1123 or 1124. In England the Temple Church, 

London, is included as an early example of 

Gothic architecture in the country even 

though the round-headed west doorway is 

‘Romanesque’. Yet the deeply undercut 

foliage voussoirs of the doorways are 

remarkably close to those of the circular 

window on the west front of Saint Denis, 

while the wheel window above the west 

doorway at the Temple Church probably 

reflects the original spokes design of Saint 

Denis. The start of Wells Cathedral c. 1186 

follows John Bilson, ‘Notes on the Early 

Architectural History of Wells Cathedral’, 

Archaeological Journal, 85 (1928), rather than 

the date of around a decade earlier proposed 

by Colchester and Harvey, ‘Wells Cathedral’, 

Archaeological Journal, 131 (1974) and 

subsequently adopted by most 

commentators. 

Doubtless there will be further quibbling 

about the dates and other aspects of specific 

buildings in the book but to emphasise such 

minutiae would be a gross injustice. Fernie 

distils his encyclopaedic knowledge of 

Romanesque architecture in a way that is 

accessible to all readers. What is to be so 

greatly admired is the clarity of organisation, 

the ability to present complex problems 

succinctly, both historiographically and with 

the buildings themselves, and to pose 

pertinent questions which so frequently 

open avenues for future research. Eric Fernie 

is no armchair architectural historian but one 

who revels in looking closely at buildings. His 

book provides a brilliant foundation for 

university courses on Romanesque 

architecture and I hope that it will stimulate a 

revival in the area. It is by far the best survey 

of Romanesque architecture for both the 

specialist and the general reader. 

Malcolm Thurlby 

DEBORAH CHERRY (ed): The Afterlives of Monuments 

(Routledge, 2014, 174 pp., 96 b&w and 7 col. Illus., 

£90.00, ISBN: 9780415739399) 

The Afterlives of Monuments is an anthology 

of essays on modern South-Asian history that 

examines the multiple forms and practices of 

monument-making from the colonial period 

to the present. Edited by Deborah Cherry, the 

essays in this volume address the vast sweep 

of material, cultural, visual, archival, historic, 

archeological, curatorial and mnemonic 

practices that constitute the discourses on 

monuments. The essays examine how South- 

Asian monuments are entangled within 

colonial histories, nation-building, and the 

current phase of globalisation in which 

heritage has opened up for worldwide 

consumption through the world-heritage 

discourse. 

The machinations of sacred spaces in the 

living temples in colonial Orissa, as they 

came within the fold of colonial 

archeological practices, constitutes Sraman 

Mukherjee’s essay titled ‘Configuring Sacred 

Spaces: Archaeology, Temples, and 

Monument-Making in Colonial Orissa’. This 

essay highlights the encounter between the 

coloniser and colonised through the 

archeological efforts to render the temples as 

secular heritage and temple committees’ 

efforts to guard the sacred realm. Similarly, 

Hilal Ahmed’s essay, ‘Mosque as Monument: 

The Afterlives of Jama Masjid and the 

Political Memories of a Royal Muslim Past’, 

explores the role of a sacred space in the 

secular capital of New Delhi in its role in the 

making of an Indian heritage. The 

negotiation between the sacred and secular 

is carried to its full rigor in the essay on 

Sanchi Stupa. 

Tapati Guha-Thakurta writes a broad history 

of Sanchi Stupa from its location in the 


nineteenth-century histories of globalisation 

as a colonial archeological discovery to its 

current status as an international Buddhist 

icon within histories of contemporary 

globalisation. The essay'Production and 

Reproduction of a Monument: The Many 

Lives of the Sanchi Stupo', chronicles how the 

monument became a site of contestation 

between the devotional and archeological 

regimes of regulation in its transformation 

from a colonialto a national monument and, 

eventually, as a global icon outside the scope 

of the nation-state. The essay questions the 

discourses around monument-making 

through the examination of the Sfupa as an 

architectural object that crosses material, 

cultural and ideological boundaries with ease 

in its many incarnations as a photographic 

image, a reproducible object, and an icon of 

architectural style. 

Tracy Anderson's essay, The Lives and 

Afterlives of Charlotte, Lady Canning 

(1817-1861): Gender, Commemoration, and 

Narratives of Loss', explores how memory 

and history intersect in the making of 

permanent and ephemeral memorial objects 

in the memory of Lady Canning. The essay 

highlights the tension between gender and 

colonial ideology in the practice of 

memorialising. 

Clare Harris's essay,'The Potala Palace: 

Remembering to Forget in Contemporary 

Tibet', examines the role of forgetting in the 

making of monuments. The essay chronicles 

thetransformation of the Potala Palace in 

Lhasa from being the former residence of the 

Dalai Lama into an empty space, a memory 

void, which is regulated by the People's 

Republic of China. Harris argues that this 

memory void has generated Tibetan 

practices of monumentalisation that are 

ideologically focused on forgetting. 

(zoo8), as a temporal object that disrupts 

teleological narratives of modernity. 

Finally, Partha Mitter's essay,'Monuments 

and Memory for Our Times', is a critical 

historiographic essay that probes the 

complex relationship between histories of 

monuments, collective memory and 

nationalism. Mitter deliberates over the 

shocking omission of public memorials to the 

genocide of the lndia-Pakistan Partition in 

1947 to argue that the practice of 

memorialising navigates the societal 

machinations of forgetting based on 

dominant ideologies. 

This book is valuable to readers in the fields 

of history of architecture, art history, material 

culture studies, and history of photography. 

This edited volume is a great addition to 

texts such as Maria A. Pelizzari's Troces of 

lndio: Photography, Architecture, ond the 

Politics of Representotion, 18so-lgoo 

(Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montr6al, 

zoo3); Tapati Guha-Thakurt a's Monuments, 

Objects, Histories: lnstitutions of Art in Coloniol 

and Postcoloniol lndia (Columbia University 

Press, NewYork,zooq), and Rebecca Brown's 

Gondhi's Spinning Wheel and the Moking of 

/ndia (Routledge, London, zoro). 

Vandana Baweja 

York: An Artist's View 

HUBERT PRAGT{ELLzYo*: An Artis*View, An 

Archituturol Guide (Nofthern Afts Publications 

Ueremy Mills Publishingl, zor4, r48 pp., approx. 

89 col. illus., rzo.oo, l58N: 978r9og8yzzs) 

ln his introduction, Hubert Pragnell opens 

with a question most readers will also be 

asking:'why another book on York?'And 

while this is an appropriate question, his 

answer is that the majority of us walk 

** ,l'*. 

The representation of Gandhi as a critique of 

modernity in visual culture in colonial and 

postcolonial histories constitutes the subject 

of Gayatri Sinha's essay titled The Afterlives 

of lmages: The Contested Legacies of Gandhi 

in Art and Popular Culture'. Raminder Kaur's 

essay, The Many Lives of Nuclear 

Monuments in lndia', and Sudeep Dasgupta's 

essay,'Permanent Transiency, Tele-visual 

Spectacle, and the Slum as Postcolonial 

Monument', dwell on unconventional 

notions of monuments as appraisals of 

modernity. The former investigates nuclear 

monuments as vestiges of modernity at the 

intersection of environmental histories with 

cultural histories of nationalism. The latter 

scrutinises the representation and 

consumption of the slum in popular visual 

culture, through the film Slumdog Millionaire 

Treasure/s House'inYork: An AfiisftView, An Architectural Guideby Hubert Pragnell (Northern Arts Publications 

Ueremy Mills Publishingl, zor+) 

The ArchitecturalHistorian lssue One/June 2o15 27 

,T. 

)a,

through the city with our'tinted spectacles' 

delicately perched on the bridge of our noses 

while our minds are otherwise engaged. As a 

result, we are often oblivious to the hidden 

gems that make York an epitome of English 

culture and history, from the Roman era to 

the present day. 

Architectural history and illustration have 

often been studied as two separate 

disciplines as, unfortunately, the very recent 

trend for interdisciplinary scholarship 

welcomed in some fields is still shunned in 

others. Previous attempts have thus 

somewhat failed to integrate the two 

effectively but, with an accessible text and 

perfect accompaniment of as watercolour 

and pen-and-ink illustrations, Pragnell makes 

a solid attempt at rectifying this. The result is 

a beautifully illustrated and produced 

multidisciplinary volume, which combines 

the premise of Brown's Views of Yorkwith 

that of Buttery'sVonished Buildings of 

Englond and yet with an architectural 

dialogue nearing Nikolaus Pevsner. 

Nonetheless, as this book is so lavishly 

illustrated, it is appropriate to focus on how 

far the images enhance our understanding of 

the past. The quality of Pragnell's artwork 

provides a clear answer as it excels as the 

true victor of the publication while the 

accompanying text - divided into eight 

chapters covering various areas of the city - 

tells an unravelling narrative of York's history 

through a somewhat fresh approach to 

what could be described as well-trodden 

ground. 

Although it lacks scholarly reference, 

Pragnell's own academic credentials ensure 

the reader is in good hands. However, a 

weakness is the narrow approach taken to 

the subject matter. ln today's academic 

world, the discipline of architectural history 

makes it a priority to go further than taking 

buildings on'fabric-value'; interest lies much 

more in how construction and development 

illustrates and reflects society's deeper 

character. Essentially, a city's evolution is a 

product of the people who occupied it, and 

so the frustration is that Pragnell recognises 

this yet does not delve much deeper than 

patinas. As such, one could argue, this 

volume is a little late to the party. But 

perhaps it is unfair to make such points, 

which should be aimed at a rather different 

book. This one is not intended as a scholarly 

tome but acts as an illustrated guidebook an 

aid to York's architectural heritage as one 

meanders its picturesque streets and, 

regardless of these limitations, is an 

invaluable addition to the York enthusiast or 

even the simple architecture-lover. 

Pragnell has created a perfect snapshot of 

the city today, choosing to include its 

modern features with the caveat that the 

'perfect townscape' does not exist. This 

publication, however, makes one believe that 

York comes very close. 

tmmaJ.Wells 

PAUL DOBRASZ(ZYK:. lron, 0monent oml Architecture in 

Vidofian Britoin. Myth llodemity, flrce.rsond 

Enchantnent(Ashgate, ror4, 3ro pp., t+l b&w and 

r6 col. illus., r7o.oo, lSBl{:9z8uz4r898r) 

This book is concerned primarily with the 

cultural and social meaning of ornamental, 

structural ironwork produced in Britain 

during the Victorian era. Dobraszczyk's focus 

is the public realm. Hidden or private 

buildings (notably industrial and domestic) 

are deliberately excluded. This suits the 

author's interest in the contemporary 

reception of cast iron, especially ornamental 

forms of cast-iron construction. Critics 

obsessed with'truth' in architecture and 

dismissive of man-made ornament, such as 

Pugin and Ruskin, regarded it as a deceptive 

sham. Cast-iron ornament - often repetitive 

and florid - was thus tainted with 

accusations of vulgarity. lt is interesting to 

learn that major manufacturers ('actively 

working to counter Ruskin's claims that 

machine-based ironwork could never have 

aesthetic value') commissioned work from 

established architects, sculptors and 

designers. Thus, in the 185os and 186os, 

Walter Macfarlane & Co. of Glasgow turned 

to Alexander'Greek'Thompson, while in the 

r87os Coalbrookdale employed Christopher 

Dresser. 

Dobraszczyk's five chapters deal with: the 

manufacture and marketing of ironwork 

('Marketing Ornament'); street furniture 

('Social Ornament'); seaside architecture 

('Demotic Ornament'); retail architecture 

('Civic Ornament'), and railway structures 

('Meta-Ornament'). A short postscript 

considers'Ornament in Ruins'. 

'Marketing Ornament' surveys illustrated 

trade catalogues, international exhibitions 

and public displays of buildings for export. 

Keen rivalry existed between manufacturers 

and, despite the measures taken to protect 

designs through registration and by 

incorporating trademarks into castings, 

plagiarism was rife (as illustrated by figs t.9a 

and r.gb). Amongst the most fascinating 

marketing tools deployed by manufacturers 

were their own foundries, as well as their 

showrooms, which were conceived as 

extraordinary exemplars of their wares. 

'Social Ornament' concentrates on lamps, 

urinals, fountains and gates. The popularity 

of lslamic designs for urinals can be 

explained in practical terms, since screens 

perforated with tight geometric patterns 

provided the requisite light, ventilation and 

privacy. George Smith & Co.'s Sun Foundry 

produced panels called'anti-scribbling 

plates', with a rough texture designed to 

discourage obscene graffiti which, 

apparently, emerged as a problem in urinals 

in the r88os. lf urinals, despite their practical 

ornamentation, were regarded as indecent 

intrusions into the public domain, drinking 

fountains were symbols of purity. 

Repfinted by permission of the publishets '(olout 

Plate rz Frank Matcham (ounty Arcade leeds 

l$g&-tgoo', in I rcn, 0rnament ond Archikcture in 

Victorian Britainby Paul Dobraszayk (famham: 

Ashgate, zor+). (opyright @ rott Paul Dobraszczyk 

28 The Architectural Historian lssue One/June zot5

Nevertheless, they were also frequently 

based on ‘Alhambresque’ models, sometimes 

with the addition of an improving Biblical 

verse (substituted with the Queen’s head on 

1897 Jubilee fountains). 

‘Demotic Ornament’ concentrates on the 

seaside promenade. It is Dobraszczyk’s 

contention that the choice of certain designs 

for benches, railings, shelters and verandas 

helped to create distinctive identities for 

resorts. ‘Civic Ornament’ argues for civic 

intent in the market halls and arcades of 

northern England. In ‘Meta-Ornament’ the 

author is tempted to look beyond ornament 

and to ruminate at length on the symbolism 

of the train-shed and the railway track. 

Examining the ornamental variety found in 

the brackets of railway structures – for 

example, diminishing circles and corporate 

monograms – he identifies the influence of 

Ruskin, that harsh critic of cast iron, in the 

‘arborescent’ designs favoured by Charles 

Driver. Ruskin also, we learn in the 

‘Postscript’, appreciated rust. Indeed, the 

book ends with the poignant notion that the 

encrustation and patina of decaying 

ironwork might retain historical memory. 

Structural decay can prompt profound 

musings on the past, and is probably 

responsible, at least in part, for attracting 

many architectural historians (this reviewer 

included) to their chosen profession. 

Having read this book one is struck by 

several observations: the extraordinary 

dominance of Walter Macfarlane & Co. 

(whose diamond-shaped stamp is probably 

familiar to us all, possibly on our own 

guttering and downpipes), the pervasive 

influence of orientalism, and the recurrence 

of dragons and wyverns entangled in foliage. 

Perhaps, as the author suggests, the 

popularity of these creatures harks back to 

ancient myths. Dragons might provide 

symbolic protection for a building in a 

manner analogous to the grotesque corbels 

that ringed medieval churches. Or might 

they simply be reminders of the fire from 

which the metal was forged? 

The book adopts Ashgate’s usual sturdy 

format and is well illustrated, thanks to a 

grant from the Paul Mellon Centre. The 

images are reasonably well reproduced 

although, regrettably, most of the modern 

photographs are reproduced in black and 

white. A handful of colour images is gathered 

in the middle of the book rather than being 

placed with the relevant text. More colour, 

distributed throughout, would have suited 

the subject matter to perfection and helped 

to justify the cover price. 

Kathryn A. Morrison 

SHUNDANA YUSAF: Broadcasting Buildings, Architecture 

on the Wireless 1927–1945 (MIT Press, 2014, 331 pp., 

77 b&w illus., £20.95, ISBN: 9780262026741) 

STEPHEN GAMES (ed.): Pevsner, The Complete Broadcast 

Talks, Architecture and Art on Radio and Television 

1945–1977 (Ashgate, 2014, 578 pp., no illus., £81.00, 

ISBN: 9781409461975) 

How many living members of the SAHGB 

have given a 20 minute talk on the radio? 

Good broadcasters can convey a sense of 

place, but how many describe a building’s 

details or construct an architectural 

argument? Between 1927 and 1945, an era 

when people travelled less widely and had 

less access to images, the British 

Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired over 

600 programmes on architecture. Then, 

between 1945 and 1977, Nikolaus Pevsner 

gave 113 talks, mostly for the BBC but also in 

Berlin and New Zealand. These related books 

only hint at the history of broadcasting, but 

show something of the development of 

architectural history. 

The BBC took seriously the educational and 

cultural role that was part of its brief when it 

was established by royal charter in 1927. Its 

arts programming was led by academics and 

educators epitomised by Hilda Matheson, its 

first director of talks, and Richard Lambert, 

formerly of the Workers Educational 

Association (WEA) and editor of The Listener 

from 1929 to 1940. Transmissions do not 

survive, so Yusaf has based her survey on the 

transcripts published in The Listener, one of 

the greatest sources of good British 

architectural writing in the mid-twentieth 

century. There could be no extemporising; 

even debates had to be written out and 

approved in advance. 

The BBC’s fees were tiny, but it paid travel 

expenses and the audiences were large, 

something equally appreciated by an 

established architect like H. S. Goodhart- 

Rendel, who saw broadcasting as a means of 

promoting the profession, or the young John 

Summerson, then starting out on his career. 

By 1939, 97% of the population had access to 

a radio. Of some 125 speakers on architecture, 

many of these were architects. Yusaf focuses 

the debate between traditional styles, 

championed by Reginald Blomfield, and the 

Modern Movement, where members of the 

Modern Architectural Research (MARS) 

Group called for improved housing and 

planning, adding the radio to the work of the 

Daily Mirror, Picture Post and Allen Lane’s 

Penguin specials in making a case for a 

welfare state. The BBC also organised 

exhibitions, supplied high-quality wireless 

sets to schools, and supported listening 

groups in pubs and clubs organised through 

the WEA. 

For Stanley Casson, the radio was a useful 

medium for teaching the British to use their 

eyes, but the most successful commentators 

were those who could weave history and 

architecture into a story. The design critic 

Geoffrey M. Boumphrey made a series of 

broadcasts while canoeing down the River 

Severn and John Betjeman produced several 

programmes on west-country towns that 

were early calls for conservation. John 

Summerson delved furthest into pure 

architectural history, beginning at Newstead 

Abbey. 

Useful reproductions from The Listener and 

an elegant design help the reader through 

the often turgid prose, though some of the 

illustrations unearthed by an enthusiastic 


John Summerson on Creative Housing in Broadcasting 

Buildings: Architecture on the Wireless 1927–1945 by 

Shundana Yusaf (MIT Press, 2014), p. 54 

picture researcher are barely relevant. This is 

one of those reworkings of a doctoral thesis 

that plunges into its subject with a good 

idea, and digs deep into an archive without 

adequately explaining the background to the 

BBC or understanding the political 

complexity of the 1930s National 

Government. Most curious is Yusaf’s 

misunderstanding of the balance between 

architectural history and modernism at this 

time, exemplified by Summerson. Many of 

the broadcasters, including John Betjeman 

and J. M. Richards, worked for the 

Architectural Review, steered by the editor-inchief 

Hubert de Cronin Hastings as firmly as 

was the BBC by John Reith. Under his 

guidance, British architects and historians 

came to value the picturesque movement as 

a means of interpreting vernacular and 

industrial architecture alongside modernism, 

and of incorporating the latter into the 

English landscape. Contrary to Yusaf’s 

generalisations, this was no regressive step in 

the 1940s, but a way of marrying the threads 

she has set out in her book. 

Yusaf is just starting her career. By contrast 

Stephen Games has devoted many years to a 

love-hate relationship with Nikolaus Pevsner 

that has erred towards self-promotion. In 

2002 he published a collection of Pevsner’s 

radio broadcasts with a provocative 

introduction and in 2004 wrote on his early 

life. Susie Harries, with access to family 

papers, meanwhile produced a nuanced 

BBC, ‘Design in Everyday Things’, in Broadcasting 

Buildings: Architecture on the Wireless 1927–1945 by 

Shundana Yusaf (MIT Press, 2014), p. 97 

account of Pevsner’s background and belief 

in German education and culture, something 

that may explain his studies over several 

decades into the contrasting Englishness of 

English art, the subject of his Reith Lectures 

for the BBC in 1955. Games wrote in 2002 that 

not all Pevsner’s radio and television talks 

were worthy of publication. Now, however, 

he has done just this, including texts in 

German that are published without 

translation, supplying each with an 

introduction and footnoting any changes to 

the text made by Pevsner or his producers. 

Pevsner’s extensive radio career was made 

possible by the advent in 1946 of the Third 

Programme, which spared him the need to 

generalise to a popular audience. 

Confusingly, however, the book has no 

proper overall introduction; we must wait for 

a companion volume that sets out Pevsner’s 

relationships with his producers that has 

been delayed into 2015. 

So what is the value of this collection? Firstly, 

it is a reminder of Pevsner’s great range of 

knowledge and the willingness to turn his 

hand to almost any subject that so suited 

him to writing The Buildings of England, 

including many lectures on paintings. Many 

of the architectural subjects are familiar from 

the Architectural Review such as Robert 

Smythson and Richard Payne Knight, the Arts 

and Crafts Movement and the functionalism 

of Walter Gropius. Most engaging, perhaps, 

are Pevsner’s accounts of his first visits to 

Blomfield on ‘Is Modern Architecture on the Right 

Track?’, in Broadcasting Buildings: Architecture on the 

Wireless 1927–1945 by Shundana Yusaf (MIT Press, 

2014), p. 108 

Washington, Brazil and New Zealand: more 

direct, vivid and just a little anecdotal. The 

writings over 32 years show advances in 

scholarship, as he became more acquainted 

with, for example, Elizabethan architecture, 

always including just enough perceptive 

little observations to make you carry on 

reading, however old-fashioned the style of 

writing or some of the arguments. 

The greatest change in the 32 years covered 

by these scripts was to modern architecture, 

with the arrival of styles Pevsner called 

expressionistic or ‘post modern’ and which 

we today lump together as brutalism. Games 

comments that ‘The Anti-Pioneers’, his frank 

and very personal outpouring against the 

style, was not only his longest talk but that 

he spoke the words exceptionally fast. Here 

Pevsner was not just an architectural 

historian but part of that history, for his 

diatribe provoked a debate in the national 

press and led to the word brutalism entering 

popular culture. For him, Stirling and 

Gowan’s Engineering Building at Leicester 

was a piece of ‘violent self-expression’ when 

university buildings ought to appear calm. 

But why should this be, especially in the ‘cando’ 

1960s? Pevsner’s exposition of the 

development of brutalism from Gaudí 

through German expressionism and Le 

Corbusier’s post-war work shows precisely 

why the style is so engaging. 

Elain Harwood 


KONRAD OTTENHEYM and KRISTA DE JONGE (eds), The 

Low Countries at the Crossroads: Netherlandish 

Architecture as an Export Product in Early Modern 

Europe (1480–1680) (Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 

Belgium, 524 pp, 373 b&w illus., €130, 

ISBN 978-2-503-54333-8) 

This wide-ranging book, the ninth so far in 

the series Architectura Moderna from the 

Belgian academic publisher Brepols, explores 

the mechanisms by which antique-revival 

architecture and sculpture were 

disseminated from the Low Countries across 

Northern Europe by sculptors, architects, 

military and civil engineers, entrepreneurs 

and patrons. Combining specialist 

contributions from sixteen authors with 

overview essays by the co-editors, it 

challenges the paradigm of a one-way 

transfer of architectural theories, patterns 

and models from Italy to the rest of Europe. 

The main focus of the essays – all in good, 

clear English, even though only one 

contributor is native to the language – is not 

who served as the architect of a particular 

building, but how and where Netherlandish 

sources were introduced or adapted. It seeks 

to replace the linear concept of ‘influence’ 

from Italy, with a ‘pluricentric or multi-polar 

view’. Exemplifying this approach are studies 

in the first half of the book that describe the 

dissemination of Netherlandish design and 

building methods from leading workshops 

through the export of the prefabricated parts 

of tombs and larger structures. The 

workshops include those of Cornelis Floris in 

Antwerp (associated here with the exported 

components of Gresham’s Royal Exchange in 

London in 1566–67), and those of the van den 

Blocke and van Steenwinckel families from 

nearby Mechelen. The van den Blockes 

established a dynasty in the Hanseatic 

trading port of Gdańsk in Poland, while the 

van Steenwinckels became the Danish 

court’s leading architects in the late sixteenth 

and early seventeenth centuries. They took 

with them design and stone-cutting skills, 

and access to sought-after red and black 

Belgian marbles. A speciality of Antwerp and 

Mechelen was the ‘imperial manner’, 

evocative of the coloured marble interiors of 

antique Roman palaces described in classical 

texts, and conveying magnificence. 

Above all, these Flemish craftsmen were 

valued for their knowledge of the antique; 

and they promoted themselves accordingly. 

In 1548, a certain Paul van Hof wrote, 

uninvited, to the city council of Lübeck 

offering, ‘to make here some buildings in the 

antique manner since the antique style 

which is now generally regarded as the 

highest art, is rather absent in this town’. 

Sculptor-architects like Hans Fleming from 

Namur (1545–1623), and active in Sweden, 

could readily transfer their models from the 

‘micro-architecture’ of tomb sculpture to fullscale 

architectural features, as in the façade 

of the town hall at Lübeck in Germany 

(1570–72). The loggia at Cologne Town Hall, 

executed in Namur stone by Willem 

Vernukken from Kalkar in 1569–71, after a 

design by Floris, is another example. 

This brings the reviewer to a serious omission 

in the book. It has no index of places, only an 

index of ‘Historical Persons’. This is a major 

shortcoming in a cross-national, multi-author 

study, in which places are as important as 

persons. The previous volume in the series, 

Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe 

(Brepols 2010), has no index at all. One 

wonders what kind of scrutiny this 

distinguished publisher has been giving to 

recent volumes in the series, which began in 

2002 with a fine multi-author (and fully 

indexed) study of Rubens’s Palazzi di Genova; 

and whether, at over £100 for this paperback 

volume, the book can find a market other 

than in university libraries. The reader’s 

difficulties are increased by captions or 

descriptions that give place names without 

the country, or alternative names for the 

same building or place (for example, the 

Danish castle of Kronborg in Helsingør, also 

named as Elsinore, the latter being the most 

usual for English-speaking readers). 

An association with imperial grandeur was 

achieved not only with alabaster and 

coloured marbles, but by adopting what 

Krista de Jonge describes as the most 

successful Netherlandish export product ever 

in the field of architecture, the ‘manner of 

Brabant’. This is characterised externally by 

white stone mouldings underlining the sills, 

transoms, and lintels of the cross windows, 

and fortifying the prominent corner turrets of 

brick-built courtyard ranges, and internally 

by galleries and imposing staircases. All 

evoke palaces like the Escorial and El Pardo in 

Spain, to which the Brabant region had 

dynastic connections through the 

Habsburgs. 

The transfer of architectural models across 

regions and national boundaries – especially 

after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – is a 

defining theme of the book and emerges 

most clearly in Konrad Ottenheym’s excellent 

chapter, ‘Models of Modesty and Dignity in 

the Age of Absolutism’, which highlights 

Tilman van Gameren’s creative fusion of 

Dutch, Italian and French models in his 

country houses and churches in Poland. 

Anthony Wells-Cole expertly pinpoints the 

influence of Dutch decorative and figurative 

prints on English country house interiors, 

although his chapter cannot be understood 

without cross-referring to illustrations in his 

1997 book, Art and Decoration in Elizabethan 

and Jacobean England. Concluding chapters 

by Ottenheym, Pieter Martens, Gabri van 

Tussenbroek, Piet Lombaerde, Nils Ahlberg, 

and Dirk van de Vijver, explore the migration 

of Dutch forms of town planning, 

fortifications and hydraulic engineering, 

across vast tracts of Northern Europe. With a 

bibliography of over sixty pages, the scope of 

the book is breathtaking. Yet perhaps a 

volume with fewer chapters, better 

illustrated, and comprehensively indexed, 

might have served this important subject 

more successfully. 

Gordon Higgott 

Contact the Book Reviews Editor, Cat Gray, 

by emailing reviewseditor@sahgb.org.uk

The Architectural Historian Issue 1

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