Gothic churches of the 1880s bear little resemblance to those of the 1850s. Within less than a generation, a style based on an aesthetic of sublimity, proclaiming an ideal of ‘muscularity’ and eclectic in its sources, had been replaced by a picturesque mode which upheld ‘refinement’ as an ideal and preferred exclusively English models. This change can be traced back to the revisions G. F. Bodley made at the end of 1862 to his designs for All Saints, Jesus Lane, Cambridge. His abrupt abandonment of the style of the 1850s now known as ‘High Victorian’ was early, decisive, and astonishingly influential. However, though All Saints is well known and well documented, the only attempt to explain its architect’s apparently surprising change of direction is the assumption of unsympathetic historians that it represents a failure of nerve. Was it no more than a retreat from the provocative stylistic innovations of the High Victorian years into the safe arms of irreproachable historicism?

Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington (1694–1753), was a Yorkshireman, and his role in the north of England was significant, both as a designer and as an authoritative arbiter of taste. His position as Lord Lieutenant of both East and West Ridings of Yorkshire paralleled his land holdings at Londesborough near Beverley, the location of his family seat, and at Bolton Abbey, in Wharfedale. Significantly, his acceptance of a commission to supply the Corporation of the City of York, the social capital of the north, with a design for the new Assembly Rooms resulted in one of his most radical works. Burlington’s authorship of the Assembly Rooms is established, but less well known is how he also worked collaboratively in the county, alongside a group of craftsmen and gentlemen amateurs. One of these collaborators, James Moyser, can now be shown to have been responsible for the execution of Wandesford Hospital in York (Fig. 1).

Balusters, in general, are defined as the distinctive supports of balustrades (Pl. 1a). Renaissance balusters, unlike the extravagant varieties developed during the Baroque period, are simple in form, usually consisting of a double bulb, although single bulb variants known as ‘dropped’ balusters because of their low centre of gravity are not uncommon (Pl. 1b).

Balustrades can be found as parapets — fronting balconies or flanking staircases — and also as the decorative crowning features of façades. While they are physically sturdy, they are not blind architectural barriers, so that they are well suited in cases where through-vision is necessary but direct access undesirable. The balustrade, however, was only one of several possibilities for Renaissance architects. The traditional medieval railing, with colonnettes rather than balusters, was still in common use up to the end of the fifteenth century, while metal-work grilles and the open lattice or solid parapet wall provided further alternatives (Pl. 3j).

The twelve letters published here are the majority of the only known original letters from Thomas Coke (1697–1759), the builder of Holkham Hall, Baron Lovell of Minster Lovell and later first Earl of Leicester, to Matthew Brettingham senior (1699–1769), his executive architect, draughtsman and clerk of works. They were written between 1734 and 1741, as work on Holkham Hall began with the building of the first wing, the south-west Family Wing.

The letters were found in the Holkham Archives in 1996, as the process of sorting and cataloguing reached a tin deed box of miscellaneous unsorted papers. They were in a flat packet, labelled in pencil ‘Lovel (Ld.) of Minster Lovel, 18 Autograph Letters’. (There are, in fact, twenty letters or part letters.) Wrapped with them were several short notes from a Birmingham antiquarian book dealer in 1900, admitting that he was not sure whether they were of any great importance but offering to send them for inspection; a couple of copy replies, indecipherable owing to the action of ink on flimsy copy paper; and notes from Wenman Coke (younger son of the elderly second Earl) and the estate agent, Wood, which show that Coke (Viscount Coke, the future third Earl) refused to read them but was eventually persuaded to buy them for 42s., the dealer having reduced his asking price of 50s.

In the early nineteenth century thousands of Scots emigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada, settling there principally in Pictou and Antigonish Counties. This article considers the transformation of the domestic architecture of emigrants from the Scottish Highlands, from earth and random-rubble-walled ‘black houses’ to Classically ornamented and proportioned timber-framed houses. It demonstrates that, in contrast to the transferable traditions of Lowland Scottish settlers, virtually no element of the Scottish Highland vernacular building tradition was established in Nova Scotia, and that Scottish Highland emigrants adopted a new architecture with near total uniformity. These changes in architectural practice are described here in some detail, and then interpreted as indicators of changed social practice within the immigrant Highland community.

In 1594, a new Chapel Royal was erected at Stirling Castle, for the baptism, on 30 August of that year, of Prince Henry, first-born son and heir to James VI King of Scots and his wife, Queen Anna, sister of Denmark’s Christian IV. James saw the baptism as a major opportunity to emphasize, to an international — and, above all, English — audience, both his own and Henry’s suitability as heirs to England’s childless and elderly Queen Elizabeth. To commemorate the baptism and associated festivities, a detailed written account was produced, entitled A True Reportarie and attributed to William Fowler. It provided a remarkable piece of Stuart propaganda, as testified by many subsequent reprints, including during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. James no doubt had in mind the example of the celebrations at his own baptism in December 1566, which ‘took the form of a triumphant Renaissance festival, the first that Scotland — and indeed Great Britain — had ever seen’. Despite apparently being constructed within a mere seven months, the new chapel achieved its aim of being both impressive and symbolic of the aspirations of the Scottish king (Fig. 1). It can claim to be the earliest Renaissance church in Britain, with its main entrance framed by a triumphal arch, flanked by Italianate windows. However, even more significant is the evidence that the chapel was deliberately modelled on the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

In the 1720s the family of Dundas of Arniston,1 already long distinguished at the Scottish bar, entered on the three generations of their greatest achievement and influence. Their estate of Arniston had been acquired in 1571. Here, in about 1620, their mansion was built by the founder of the family’s law dynasty, James Dundas, who was knighted by King James. In the next six generations their protagonists numbered two knights (Sir James and his son), six MPs for Midlothian, four Lords of Session, two Lords President of the Session and a Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. While not, it was generally felt, particularly remarkable for intellect they were admired for equally important qualities, notably a strict regard for justice — to the extent that the second Sir James, created a Lord of Session in 1662, felt unable to compromise over the Test Act even under the liberal interpretation allowed by Charles II, and his seat was therefore suspended. He lived retired on his estate, dying in 1679.

Among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Library is a document in the hand of John Webb, headed ‘Notes of Practise uppon the Gate at Temple barr. 1638’. It refers to a design commissioned from Inigo Jones in 1636, never built, on which Webb also worked. Several drawings by Jones and Webb survive, and the ‘Notes’ complement them and fill out our knowledge of the commission. A transcript of the document (noticed since the nineteenth century but unpublished) is offered here, with an introductory discussion of Jones’s idea for rebuilding Temple Bar as a triumphal arch (Fig. 1).

A revised and abridged record of the Annual Lecture of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, given at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, on 12 November 2012

Two exceptional events in London in 2012, the queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, provoked questions about the origins and legacy of major public events of the past. This article explores the impact on the fabric of London since the eighteenth century of occasional planned spectacles through discussion of two main types of event, namely the procession along a predetermined route and occasions requiring a large organized space.

George, Elector of Hanover, succeeded to the throne as George I on 1 August 1714. The proclamation of a new monarch took place at a series of traditional sites. The Heralds started at the king’s residence, St James’s Palace, and proceeded to Charing Cross, where the statue of Charles I had replaced the medieval Eleanor cross destroyed in the Civil War. The third site, Temple Bar, marked the boundary of the City Liberties. Within the City the proclamation was repeated at St Mary le Bow and at the Royal Exchange — recent post-Fire buildings, but iconic sites — marking the significance of the Church and the power centre of the City merchants.

Wooden columns surmounted by bracket sets are a key element of the great buildings of Imperial China and have received a tremendous amount of attention from scholars and architectural professionals. This article revisits the question of their symbolic function during the Han dynasty (206 bce–ce 220). In addition to their structural role, column and bracket sets fulfilled important social and cultural needs related to the representation of celestial and spiritual qualities. Understood variously as pillars of heaven, gates of heaven, the constellations, Kunlun Mountain and celestial plants, column and bracket sets engendered a rich iconography that served to bond architecture closely to the heavens.

Many attempts have been made to determine how the Westminster Hall roof works, and nearly as many different conclusions have been reached (Figs 1, 3, and 4). Some architects, engineers, and architectural historians have concluded that the principal support of the roof is provided by its great wooden arch. Some have argued that the roof functions like other hammerbeam roofs, but they have not been able to agree on how a hammerbeam roof works. Still others have held that so unprecedented a space could only have been spanned with wood by combining two different types of roofs — the hammerbeam roof and the arched roof. The Westminster Hall roof is so complex that it appears as if it might function in any one of these ways, but it cannot function in more than one.

Bishop Gillis of Edinburgh has never been made the subject of a full and scholarly biography: those printed sources which are more than mere chronologies are largely given over to eulogy, and the one dissenting voice — a manuscript life written by a contemporary — inclines to the other extreme. All writers, however, recount the following facts: in 1802 James Gillis was born in Montreal; in 1816 his Scottish parents returned with him to their homeland, and the following year he began his training for the priesthood, first in Scotland and subsequently in France; ordained in 1827, he was consecrated titular Bishop of Limyra in 1838, and acted as auxiliary to Bishop Carruthers, at that time Vicar Apostolic of Scotland’s Eastern District; he soon assumed direct responsibility for the congregation in Edinburgh, and eventually succeeded Bishop Carruthers as Vicar Apostolic on the latter’s death in 1852; Gillis himself died in 1864.

‘Architecture and History’: I take my title from a lecture by William Morris, delivered in 1884. One of its themes was the link between art and society, between style and culture, between architecture past, present, and future. My lecture takes up a similar theme from a rather different perspective. I want to concentrate on the stylistic problems created by those assumptions of continuity and reciprocity. In a nutshell, Morris’s generation was faced with an architecture apparently dying from a surfeit of history. In an age of extraordinary scientific and technological progress — an age bewitched by theories of evolution — architecture seemed to be mesmerized by the Renaissance, by the Middle Ages, by Antiquity. Hence the dilemma of style. What I shall try to do is to examine that Victorian problem of style through the eyes of the Victorians themselves. But this is an inaugural lecture. So the witnesses I shall call will be my predecessors.

The small Spanish island of Minorca is the unexpected setting for a British naval hospital. It was constructed from 1711, during the first years of the British military occupation of the island, to provide medical care to mariners as they served in the strategically important Mediterranean. Scholars working in the fields of both medical and architectural history agree on the innovative importance of this hospital. Christine Stevenson, the foremost expert on early modern British hospital architecture, stated that: ‘the first of the purpose-built naval hospitals was at Port Mahon, Minorca […] [It] was, however, unique until the 1740s, when others were built on Jamaica and Gibraltar’. In terms of the history of hospital architecture, the Minorcan hospital’s role, as the sole purpose-built British naval hospital for over three decades, was a reflection of its exceptional setting, for it presented the British navy with an opportunity to create an infirmary that realized contemporary ideals of hospital design. The single-storey limestone edifice, which adopted the U-shaped plan already pioneered by Sir Christopher Wren (1635-1703) back in England, was located on an island in the middle of Mahon harbour, known by the name Isla del Rey. This was a highly significant location in Minorcan history, formerly called Ilia dels Conills (Rabbit Island), and was named for King Alfonso III of Aragon. It was from this island that Alfonso launched his reconquest of Minorca for Christendom from the Moors, and from this point in time Minorca was incorporated into Catalonia. No evidence has yet come to light of this important name in British usage; instead the occupiers referred to it as ‘Bloody Island’, or ‘Hospital Island’. Despite the informal and macabre renaming of the harbour island it was, however, a beautiful location, cooled by sea breezes, and was visible from all the surrounding cliffs.

The revolutionary new window type that emerged from the London joiners’ workshops during the period c. 1670 to c. 1685 (see Part One) owes its existence to two novel features in particular, the introduction of the glazed wooden sliding frame or ‘sash’, and the application of a counterbalancing mechanism. The first technique, a French innovation of about half a century earlier, greatly enhanced the weather-proofing capacity of the window and, because of its rigidity, also permitted a more effective exploitation of advances made in the manufacturing of large sheets of clear flatglass (for mirrors & windows) than had previously been the case. The second, an English invention, released the full potential of the new wooden frame and encouraged the development of a large openable window which, in terms of convenience and technical efficiency, was superior to anything else on the market. In order to understand why this development took the course it did we need to look briefly at the general state of fenestration in English architecture at the time of the sash-window’s appearance.

When it opened in March 1958, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, was the first new professional theatre to be constructed in Britain for nearly two decades and the country’s first all-new civic theatre (Figs 1 and 2). Financially supported by Coventry City Council and designed in the City Architect’s office, it included a 910-seat auditorium with associated backstage facilities. Two features of the building were especially innovative, namely its extensive public foyers and the provision of a number of small flats for actors. The theatre, whose name commemorated a major gift of timber to the city of Coventry from the Yugoslav authorities, was regarded as the herald of a new age and indeed marked the beginning of a boom in British theatre construction which lasted until the late 1970s. Yet its architecture has hitherto been little considered by historians of theatre, while accounts of post-war Coventry have instead focused on other topics: the city’s politics; its replanning after severe wartime bombing; and the architecture of its new cathedral, designed by Basil Spence in 1950 and executed amidst international interest as a symbol of the city’s post-war recovery. However, the Belgrade also attracted considerable attention when it opened. The Observer’s drama critic, Kenneth Tynan, was especially effusive, asking ‘in what tranced moment did the City Council decided to spend £220,000 on a bauble as superfluous as a civic playhouse?’ For him, it was ‘one of the great decisions in the history of local government’. This article considers the architectural implications of that ‘great decision’. The main design moves are charted and related to the local context, in which the Belgrade was intended to function as a civic and community focus. In this respect, the Labour Party councillors’ wish to become involved in housing the arts reflected prevailing local and national party philosophy but was possibly amplified by knowledge of eastern European authorities’ involvement in accommodating and subsidizing theatre. In addition, close examination of the Belgrade’s external design, foyers and auditorium illuminates a number of broader debates in the architectural history of the period. The auditorium, for example, reveals something of the extent to which Modern architecture could be informed by precedent. Furthermore, the terms in which the building was received are also significant. Tynan commented: ‘enter most theatres, and you enter the gilded cupidacious past. Enter this one, and you are surrounded by the future’. Although it was perhaps inevitable that the Belgrade was thought to be unlike older theatres, given that there had been a two-decade hiatus in theatre-building, the resulting contrast was nonetheless rather appropriate, allowing the building to connote new ideas whilst also permitting us to read the Belgrade in terms of contemporary debates about the nature of the ‘modern monument’.

The development of a scholarly discourse about Maori ‘architecture’ has been somewhat hampered by a perception, amongst architectural historians, that Maori buildings are part of a building tradition in which purpose, design, and construction, are unchanging and solely determined by custom. Until the last two decades, architectural historians in New Zealand have largely accepted this view of Maori building, possibly because the discipline is still influenced by Banister Fletcher’s ‘tree of architecture’, which never had an Oceanic or Maori branch. In Fletcher’s influential opinion architecture could only be a Western concept. As a consequence only a few scholars have attempted to attach the word ‘Maori’ to the word ‘architecture’. Even in the revised edition of Fletcher’s History of Architecture (1996) which claims to ‘contain more information about vernacular buildings’ by contemporary contributing editors, the entry for New Zealand warns that Maori architecture ‘cannot be easily related to architecture derived from Europe’.

The late medieval English laity expressed their piety through ostentatious artistic and architectural patronage. The rood, a large-scale image of Christ on the cross, flanked by the Virgin and St John, and placed in or above the chancel arch, was a particular object of both liturgical and financial devotion in the later Middle Ages.1 One of the more interesting conclusions of recent scholarship has been the recognition that the late medieval desire to express one’s piety through donations to the church was not limited to the upper classes or to one gender. Both men and women of all social classes and ages participated to the best of their ability through collective as well as individual giving.2 Moreover, people made very deliberate choices about the types of images and architectural forms on which they spent their money.3 Scholars have argued that the roots of this very active lay patronage lie in the mid-thirteenth century when diocesan statutes first assigned responsibility for maintaining the nave and most of a church’s ornaments to its parishioners.4

Little is known about the contacts Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Minister to the Court of Louis XVI between 1784 and 1789 and future President of the United States, had with French architects during his residence in Paris, except those with Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721–1820), who collaborated with him on the design of the Capitol of Virginia in Richmond from 1785. We know, however, that, at the end of his stay in France, Jefferson was in close touch with the French architect and agriculturalist François Cointereaux (1740–1830), as is proven by several unpublished letters written by each of them.