Originally published in 1953 by Penguin and revised in 1983 with new material by Elizabeth Williamson, this 2021 edition of Pevsner’s County Durham in the Buildings of England series features new contributions by Martin Roberts.
When Nikolaus Pevsner left Göttingen and came to England as a refugee in 1933, his career soon took him into the milieu of art and architectural history. He was most surprised to discover that in England there was no equivalent to the monumental series of German architectural guides founded by Georg Dehio (1850–1932), 100 Jahre Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmaler. This eventually inspired Pevsner to found his ever-popular series. The concept was always that the books should be easy for the traveller to carry and be literally packed with all the information needed to enjoy a building. How pleased he would be to know that County Durham has not only gone into a third edition, fully and excellently revised by Martin Roberts, FSA, but also that, although expanded and larger, it has kept to the original concept of being comfortably portable.
County Durham is a treasure-house of historic buildings of every category. The range of type, date and style is wide, the star monument being Durham Cathedral, indisputably the finest Norman church in England. Early medieval monuments include Jarrow, Monkwearmouth (Outer Sunderland North), Escomb, Seaham, Auckland Saint Andrew (South Church) and a fine cross-head in Durham Cathedral. Notable castles include Durham, Brancepeth, Auckland, Lumley, Lambton and Raby. The comprehensive gazetteer describes a multiplicity of churches and chapels, historic county houses, stone-built market towns, railway buildings, newly-discovered work by local Victorian and Edwardian architects and Modernist architecture. Importantly, it includes a chapter on the industrial heritage of the county, ‘Industrial Archaeology’ by Stafford Linsley.
In 1974, the boundaries of County Durham were altered by government reorganisation. In her postscript to the introduction of the 1983 edition, Elizabeth Williamson explains the reasons. In his foreword, Martin Roberts writes that his 2021 volume retains the pre-1974 county boundaries. The 1983 edition is well-expanded from the 1953 volume, with Elizabeth Williamson’s foreword and her ‘Extensively Revised Introduction’. This third edition of 2021 has been skilfully enlarged and extended by Martin Roberts.
The introduction now embraces fourteen specialist and inspiring chapters. Topics are wide-ranging and include landscape, geology and building stones, early settlement in County Durham (with material on the Mesolithic period), parks and gardens c 1550 to 1800, vernacular buildings from c 1550 and industrial archaeology. The chapters are substantial and follow Roberts’ foreword, where he records his ‘first thanks’ to Nikolaus Pevsner and Elizabeth Williamson ‘for the fine text that I inherited’.
Another star feature of the volume is the section of 125 brand-new, fine colour photographs in the middle of the book, most of them taken by Roberts’ son, Will. The glossary, good as ever, is rearranged with its line drawings together in the centre. This is a superb Pevsner, and clearly the result of driving work and research. In his foreword, the author records that the project took him six years to complete. One may hazard a guess that even more time and study went into the task.
County Durham will be indispensable for the architectural student and the exploring visitor alike, and equally valuable for the armchair traveller. The masterpiece in the gazetteer is the essay on Durham Cathedral. The spirit of this spectacular building shines through the book, a fitting tribute to Nikolaus Pevsner, who loved Durham Cathedral above all other monuments.
