In January 1859, Henry Cole, the first Director of the South Kensington Museum (from 1899 known as the Victoria and Albert Museum) was in Rome, commissioning the photographer Pietro Dovizielli to produce photographs of buildings in the capital which Cole considered ‘suggestive’ and ‘picturesque’.

Given its importance to his ‘education’, Wright’s introduction to Japanese prints must have been a major, and one would imagine memorable, turning-point in his career. Yet, curiously this pivotal event remains something of a mystery, as does Wright’s rapid assimilation of expertise in a field so remote from his background and training. There seems to be a considerable gap between ‘Frank Wright’, a nineteen-year-old engineering student from rural Wisconsin, and Frank Lloyd Wright, respected connoisseur of Ukiyo-e. Rather conspicuously Wright himself provided little or no information with which to bridge this gulf, and in the absence of any explanation from him, two principal theories have developed as to how he might have been first introduced to Oriental art.

The emphasis laid on the glorious artistic past of France under the restored monarchy is a notable feature of the French architectural writings of the 1840s. The most glorious period of French architecture was then identified as being the Middle Ages, climaxing in the thirteenth-century religious architecture, much disregarded in the eighteenth century as a time of barbarous feudality and despotism. The neglect into which the medieval religious monuments had fallen in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1789 when they had been confiscated from the Church appeared intolerable and the situation required urgent action, it was thought, not least in the highest political circles. F. Guizot, an influential politician and renowned historian, believed that studying the past could only benefit modern man, providing him with examples of ‘disinterestedness and moral energy which are the strength and the dignity of man in this world’, and would thus reinforce the ascent of the bourgeoisie in a country with a restored monarchy. The artistic ambition of Guizot had ranked only second to his political aims when, in 1830, he advised the King to appoint a General Inspector of Historical French Monuments. This initiative soon developed into the Commission for Historical Monuments, which was granted its definitive status in 1837, but which in effect had been in existence since 1830. Its aim was to sort out and classify the demands from local authorities for works of restoration to be undertaken on medieval buildings. It was composed of archaeologists and architects headed by an Inspector, first Ludovic Vitet, replaced in 1833 by Prosper Mérimée with E. Viollet-le-Duc as his assistant. Thus, the merits of medieval buildings, Gothic churches in particular, were brought to the forefront of public attention at a time when popular enthusiasm had been kindled by Victor Hugo’s romantic glorification of Gothic in Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), in whose preface the author had proclaimed that it was a duty to preserve ancient monuments until the times were ripe to build modern ones. Hugo’s glorification of Gothic architecture was emblematic of French Romanticism, coloured as it was by the democratic ideals that had triumphed with the 1789 Revolution. He saw the passage from the Romanesque architecture of the early Middle Ages to the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century as reflecting the progress of society from its theocratic, Church-dominated feudal state to a more democratic state. Gothic architecture is thus seen by Hugo as the symbol of the people’s newly-acquired status and power. Speaking of Notre-Dame in Paris, which is not pure thirteenth-century Gothic, he wrote:

The dominant historical account of constructional polychromy in Britain describes its emergence in the fifteenth century as a by-product of the introduction of brick-making under Flemish influence. Blue bricks, over-fired or possibly deliberately vitrified, were put to use creating patterns and colour contrasts in load-bearing walls. This constructional polychromy passed from fashion in the late Renaissance period before returning to popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, prompted, it is said, by John Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–53), and landmark buildings, notably William Butterfield’s All Saints, Margaret Street in London, designed in 1849.

The dance hall was a symbol of social, cultural and political change. From the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s, the dance hall occupied a pivotal place in the culture of working- and lower-middle-class communities in Britain. Its emergence and popularity following the First World War reflected improvements in the social and economic well-being of the working and lower middle classes. The architecture of dance halls reflected these modernising trends, as well as a democratisation of pleasure. The very name adopted by the modern dance hall, ‘palais de danse’, emphasises this ambition. Affordable luxury was a key part of their attraction. This article examines how the architecture of dance halls represented moments of optimism, escapism and ‘modernity’ in British history in the period 1918–65. It provides the first overview of dance halls from an architectural and spatial history perspective.

On the 12th of February, 1652, a Declaration, ‘that Scotland shall, and may be incorporated into, and become one Common-wealth with this England’ was proclaimed at the Mercat Cross, in the High Street of Edinburgh. An English bystander noted with innocent surprise, that ‘there was a very great concourse of people att the proclayming … but soe sencelesse are this generation of theire owne goods that scarce a man of them shew'd any signe of rejoycing.’ This Union with Protectorate England was to last until the Restoration.

The rule of General Monck was arbitrary and military in character. It evolved in a system of Justices of the Peace, a highly successful instrument of government. That it was effective is shown by the following ‘letter from the Highlands’:

The study of one department of state in relation to its activities in building is at present being undertaken by a group of historians surveying the Office of Works. That Office, however, was certainly not the only department in the late seventeenth century concerned with the construction and management of edifices of national importance. For the Office of Ordnance was one of the most vital building departments during this period with responsibility for the maintenance of all kinds of garrison buildings as well as the erection of fortifications throughout England and later in Scotland and the colonies. It is this concern of the Office for fortifications - without which ‘no monarch, prince or state has been or can be safe in their government’ - that I wish to discuss in this paper.

It is not the purpose of this short article to announce a new discovery or to draw new conclusions, but to make readily available a document of considerable significance to all concerned with the development of the eighteenth-century provincial town house.

Nicholas Hawksmoor is usually seen as the antithesis of the English neo-Palladians. The unprecedented originality of Christ Church, Spitalfields, and St George-in-the-East has little in common with the carefully derived compositions of Colen Campbell or Lord Burlington. Lord Shaftesbury, often seen as the harbinger of neo-Palladianism, condemned the sterility of Wren’s court-based architecture, much of which involved Hawksmoor, and, without mentioning its name, Blenheim Palace, designed by Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh in collaboration. Campbell’s neo-Palladian manifesto, the Introduction to Vitmvius Britannicus, attacked the ‘odd and chimerical Beauties’ of Borromini, and so by inference, it is assumed, Hawksmoor, the only English architect whose attitude to the Classical orders was as unrestrained as Borromini’s. Because of this, because Hawksmoor was dismissed from his main posts in the Office of Works by the neo-Palladians, and because Lord Burlington criticized his lack of architectural purity, the links between Hawksmoor and the neo-Palladians have never been given the detailed consideration they deserve.

It is just a century since an architectural competition was held for building new courts of justice in London, and it may be an appropriate moment to re-examine the history of that unfortunate episode. Only forty-two years earlier a new range of law courts had been completed at Westminster to the designs of Sir John Soane (1753-1837). Because of interference by the House of Commons, these courts proved inadequate from the start. A difficult task had been imposed on Soane: Westminster Hall had for centuries been the seat of the courts of law; and when it became necessary to provide more adequately for the needs of justice in the early 1820s, enthusiasm for tradition and legal conservatism combined to demand that the new courts should be as close as possible to the Hall. A restricted site to the north-west was available as a result of the demolition of the old Exchequer Buildings.

Architectural casts collections — the great majority of which were created in the second half of the nineteenth or the early twentieth centuries — have in recent years met with a variety of fates. While that of the Metropolitan Museum in New York has been dismantled, that of the Musée des Monuments Français in Paris has with great difficulty been rearranged to suit current tastes. Notwithstanding this limited rediscovery of architectural cast collections, they remain part of a past era in the ongoing history of architectural museums. While drawings and models have always been standard media for the representation of architecture — whether or not ever built — architectural casts seem to have become the preferred medium for architectural displays in museums during a period beginning in 1850. Indeed, until the development of photography and the democratization of foreign travel, they were the only way of collecting architectural and sculptural elements while preserving their originals in situ. Admittedly, the three-dimensional experience of full-sized architecture in the form of casts, or even of actual fragments of architecture, played a considerable part in earlier, idiosyncratic attempts to display architecture in museums, indeed as early as the late eighteenth century. Nevertheless, it was only from the mid-nineteenth century that they became the preferred medium for displaying architecture. The cult of ornament reached its climax in the years 1850–70, embodied, in the field of architecture, in the famous ‘battle of styles’ and in the doctrine of ‘progressive eclecticism’, and, in the applied arts, in attempts at reform, given a fresh impetus by the development of international exhibitions. It is not surprising, then, that the first debate about architectural cast museums should have been generated in the homeland of the Gothic Revival and of the Great Exhibition of 1851. For it was in London that this debate crystallized, specifically between the Architectural Museum founded in 1851 and the South Kensington Museum (now known as the Victoria and Albert Museum) created in 1857.

In 1946 J. M. Richards, editor of the Architectural Review (AR) and self-proclaimed champion of modernism, published a book entitled The Castles on the Ground (Fig. 1). This book, written while working for the Ministry of Information (Mol) in Cairo during the war, was a study of British suburban architecture and contained long, romantic descriptions of the suburban house and garden. Richards described the suburb as a place in which ‘everything is in its place’ and where ‘the abruptness, the barbarities of the world are far away’. For this reason The Castles on the Ground is most often remembered as a retreat from pre-war modernism, into nostalgia for mock-Tudor houses and privet hedges. The writer and critic Reyner Banham, who worked with Richards at the AR in the 1950s, described the book as a ‘blank betrayal of everything that Modern Architecture was supposed to stand for’. More recently, however, it has been rediscovered and reassessed for its contribution to mid-twentieth-century debates about the relationship between modern architects and the British public. These reassessments get closer to Richards’s original aim for the book. He was not concerned with the style of suburban architecture for its own sake, but with the question of why the style was so popular and what it meant for the role of modern architects in Britain and their relationship to the ‘man in the street’.

Exhibition 58: Modern Architecture in England, held between 10 February and 7 March 1937 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), was a notable event. Amidst claims that ‘England leads the world in modern architectural activity’, the exhibition ‘amazed New Yorkers’ and equally surprised English commentators. However, it has not subsequently received any extended investigation. The present purpose is to look at it as a multiple sequence of events, involving other exhibitions, associated publications and the trajectories of individuals and institutions, through which tensions came to the surface about the definition and direction of Modernism in England and elsewhere. Such an analysis throws new light on issues such as the motives for staging the exhibition, the personnel involved and associated questions relating to the role of émigré architects in Britain and the USA, some of which have been misinterpreted in recent commentaries.Hitchcock's unequivocal claim for the importance of English Modernism at this point still arouses disbelief, and raises a question whether it can be accepted at face value or requires explaining in terms of some other hidden intention.

The later eighteenth century was a period when, as a result of increasingly eclectic and picturesque taste in the use of the classical language of architecture, young British architects were effectively compelled to spend some years studying in Italy if they wished to reach the forefront of their profession. The importance of this first-hand experience of Italy is attested by the physical and financial hardships many architectural students were prepared to endure in order to gain it, as well as by the fact that the pattern of travel continued unabated in the face of political hostilities in which Britain was periodically engaged within Europe. During the Seven Years War of 1756–63, for example, when the British found themselves at enmity with the French, the Austrians and, after 1762, with the Spanish, no fewer than eight British architects nevertheless travelled on the continent and did so relatively unimpeded. In fact there was at least one British architectural student present in Italy in every year between 1740 and 1797. This consistent pattern of travel was brought to an enforced end, however, when the Italian peninsula itself became the setting for overt military action after Napoleon had invaded Piedmont in April 1796. While five British architectural students managed to reach Italy during the brief peace which followed the conclusion of the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, one finding it possible to travel ‘through the heart of France without the least molestation’, the deterioration of Anglo-French relations after Trafalgar in 1805 left the peninsula largely inaccessible to the British until the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo on 18 June 1815.

‘The greatest fa presto in architectural history’, as Paul Frankl called him — although there are plenty of other contenders for that dubious honour — Gilbert Scott occupies an ambiguous place in the history of English architecture. The sheer volume of his work, and its lack of stylistic consistency, disturbed his contemporaries and have continued to vex later writers. Yet the history of the Gothic Revival cannot be written without him, and through some of his buildings he helped shape its future course. Among these buildings was the chapel at Exeter College, Oxford, begun in 1856 and finished three years later. The survival of a substantial collection of drawings and correspondence in the college’s archives enables us to establish and reinterpret the significance of this magnificent and still somewhat under-appreciated building.

It is a commonplace on occasions such as this for speakers to begin the lecture by acknowledging the honour they feel in having been asked to deliver it. In most instances there is no means of knowing whether the sentiment is anything more than a rhetorical flourish for form’s sake; this evening however may be different, because of the chronological centre of gravity of the Society’s interests, as indicated, for example, by the fact that the great majority of articles in the Society’s journal deal with the buildings of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Thus, as a historian of the architecture of the Middle Ages, I think I can say, not rhetorically, but as an almost quantifiable statement, that it is indeed an honour to be asked to deliver the Society’s annual lecture this evening.

In November 1882 the Royal Courts of Justice moved house, exchanging premises built by Sir John Soane along the flank of Westminster Hall (Figs 1, 2 and 3) for George Edmund Street’s Gothic masterpiece in the Strand. The new building, some sixteen years in the making, solved one problem but left another in its wake. Back in Parliament Square were Soane’s Courts, redundant and, worse, covering over a large part of Westminster Hall. Constructed in the late eleventh century, the massive Hall had been transformed three centuries later. Outside are six splendid flying buttresses (Soane had incorporated them into his cross walls) built to receive the thrust generated by Hugh Herland’s peerless hammerbeam roof, a wonder of high medieval carpentry (Fig. 4). Here was an unmissable chance to raise the profile of the ancient masterpiece, which was hemmed in by Georgian brick and masonry, and overshadowed by the modern medieval pomp of Pugin and Barry’s New Palaces of Westminster. The solution seemed simple: demolish Soane’s ranges and tidy up what was left. It was more like housekeeping than architecture and what was more it would not cost much. As for Soane’s ranges (and Vardy’s to the south), they were seen to be completely without merit.