First, a paragraph of bibliographical reminiscence which explains the choice of my subject for this Festschrift. In the late 1940s I found some eighty letters written in the period 1685-1700 by the soldier-architect, Captain William Winde (?—1722). They were addressed to his cousin, Lady Mary Bridgeman, and concerned the remodelling of Castle Bromwich Hall, Warwickshire, in which she and her husband, Sir John Bridgeman, lived. I published brief extracts from some of the letters in an account of Castle Bromwich Hail, and supplied details of mentions of other houses by Winde for incorporation in the first edition (1954) of Howard Colvin’s Dictionary.