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Pevsner Architectural Guides

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The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published between 1951 and 1974. The series was then extended to Scotland, Wales and Ireland in the late 1970s. The Irish guides are incomplete as of autumn 2016. Most of the English volumes have had second editions, chiefly by other authors.

Contents

The final Scottish volume, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, was published in Autumn 2016. This completed the series' coverage of Great Britain in the 65th anniversary year of their inception.

Origin and research methods

After moving to Great Britain from his native Germany in the 1930s, Nikolaus Pevsner found that the study of architectural history had little status in academic circles, and that the amount of information available, especially to travellers wanting to inform themselves about the architecture of a particular district, was limited. He conceived a project to write a series of comprehensive county guides to rectify this, and gained the backing of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, for whom he had written his Outline of European Architecture.

Work on the series began in 1945. Lane employed two part-time assistants, both German refugee art historians, who prepared notes for Pevsner from published sources. Pevsner spent the academic holidays touring the country to make personal observations and to carry out local research, before writing up the finished volumes. The first volume was published in 1951. Pevsner wrote 32 of the books himself and ten with collaborators, with a further four of the original series written by others: the two Gloucestershire volumes by David Verey, and the two volumes on Kent by John Newman. Newman is the only author in the series to have written a volume and revised it three times.

Since Pevsner's death, work has continued on the series, with several volumes now in their third revision, and three in their fourth editions.

Content of the volumes

The books are compact and intended to meet the needs of both specialists and the general reader. Each contains an extensive introduction to the architectural history and styles of the area, followed by a town-by-town — and in the case of larger settlements, street-by-street — account of individual buildings. These are often grouped under the heading Perambulation, as Pevsner intended the books to be used as the reader was walking about the area. The guides offer both detailed coverage of the most notable buildings and notes on lesser-known and vernacular buildings; all building types are covered but there is a particular emphasis on churches and public buildings. Each volume has a central section with several dozen pages of photographs, originally in black and white, though colour illustrations have featured in revised volumes published by Yale University Press since 2003.

Boundaries

The boundaries of each volume do not follow a uniform pattern and have evolved with revisions and expansions. The original intention was to maintain whatever boundaries were current at time of writing; in the first years of the survey these were the traditional counties of England. However boundary changes to the London area in 1965 and the rest of England in 1974 meant that this was no longer practicable. As such there are now many variants: Cumbria, for example, covers the modern non-metropolitan county – excepting the district of Sedbergh which although in modern Cumbria is included in the volume covering the West Riding of Yorkshire. Conversely, the Furness area – geographically in Cumbria but traditionally in Lancashire – is included, having been omitted from the predecessor volume, Cumberland and Westmorland. Five of the six volumes currently covering London collectively represent the 32 London boroughs which constitute the modern Greater London region (the sixth covers the City of London boundary) rather than earlier divisions. The entire volume on Middlesex was an early casualty of this rearrangement, as are parts of the revised volumes covering Surrey, Essex and Kent. The forthcoming Birmingham and the Black Country volume covers the area bounded by the modern West Midlands metropolitan county, but minus the Metropolitan Borough of Coventry and the rural part of Metropolitan Borough of Solihull. These appear in the revised Warwickshire volume, despite no longer being in that county. Hence Warwickshire now follows the boundary of neither the traditional nor the modern county.

The Buildings of Scotland similarly features hybrid divisions, with volumes such as Fife and Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire reflecting their traditional county boundaries whilst Highland and Islands corresponds to the modern counterparts. The Buildings of Ireland has so far broadly corresponded to the traditional provinces of Ireland and is blind to the national boundary. The Buildings of Wales largely follows the post-1974 divisions.

Celebratory volumes

In 1986, Penguin Books published an anthology from Pevsner's volumes edited by Bridget Cherry and John Newman, The Best Buildings of England, ISBN 0-670-81283-8. It has an introduction by Newman assessing Pevsner's aims and methods.

In 2001, the Penguin Collectors Society published The Buildings of England: a Celebration, edited by Simon Bradley and Bridget Cherry, fifty years after BE1 was published: it includes twelve essays and a selection of text from the series.

Volumes in print and their editions

The list below is of the volumes that are in print in 2016 – dates in brackets indicate as yet unpublished new editions. Since 1962, many (although not yet all) of the volumes have been updated to reflect architectural-history scholarship and to include significant new buildings. Pevsner left virtually all the revisions to others, acting as supervisor only. He ultimately revised only two of his original editions alone: London 1: The Cities of London and Westminster (1962) and Cambridgeshire (1970). Both were later revised again by others.

As of 2016, the oldest wholly unrevised volume is Yorkshire: The North Riding (1966). Additionally, readers looking for information on West Sussex will have to consult Ian Nairn's 1965 text, whilst those wishing to read about the architecture of the Black Country must refer to the 1966 text of Warwickshire pending new volumes.

Until 1953, all volumes were published in paperback only, after which both hardback and paperback versions were issued. The revision of London: 1 in 1962 was the first volume to be issued in hardback alone, and no further paperbacks were issued after 1964. Until 1970 volumes bore a sequential BE reference number, with Cornwall being BE1. The last volume to be so numbered was Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean (BE41). Thereafter ISBNs identify each volume.

Beginning in 1983, a larger format was introduced, and all subsequent new editions have been issued in this format. Volumes revised pre-1983 have been reprinted in the original, smaller format (marked with an asterisk in the table below). All editions are now published by Yale University Press.

Where revisions have been spread over more than one volume, the preceding edition remains in print until the whole area has been revised. Editions which have been partly superseded in this way are marked ‡.

City Guides

The first of the paperback City Guides, covering Manchester, appeared in 2001. It featured a new format with integrated colour illustrations. In most cases the City Guides have preceded a revision of the county volume in which they are located, although they do go into greater detail than the county volumes and have more illustrations. Thus the Birmingham guide completely supersedes the central Birmingham section of the Warwickshire volume, which is now almost fifty years old. Two of the guides, covering Newcastle and Gateshead and Hull, are more recent than the hardback editions for the surrounding counties, and therefore update as well as expand the coverage of those cities. This series appears to be on a hiatus, with no new volumes published since 2010 and none confirmed as in planning.

  • Bath (2003) (Michael Forsyth) ISBN 978-0-300-10177-5
  • Birmingham (2005) (Andy Foster) ISBN 978-0-300-10731-9
  • Brighton and Hove (2008) (Nicholas Antram and Richard Morrice) ISBN 978-0-300-12661-7
  • Bristol (2004) (Andrew Foyle) ISBN 978-0-300-10442-4
  • Hull (2010) (David Neave and Susan Neave) ISBN 978-0-300-14172-6
  • Leeds (2005) (Susan Wrathmell) ISBN 978-0-300-10736-4
  • Liverpool (2003) (Joseph Sharples) ISBN 978-0-300-10258-1
  • Manchester (2001) (Clare Hartwell) ISBN 978-0-300-09666-8
  • Newcastle and Gateshead (2009) (Grace McCombie) ISBN 978-0-300-12664-8
  • Nottingham (2008) (Elain Harwood) ISBN 978-0-300-12666-2
  • Sheffield (2004) (Ruth Harman and John Minnis) ISBN 978-0-300-10585-8

    • Two supplementary works – thus far the only of their type – were published in 1998, one covering London's City Churches and the other the Docklands area (see London Docklands in Superseded Volumes below). Both were issued in the format of the main series rather than the City Guides. However, unlike the Docklands edition which represented preliminary work for an expanded main volume, the City Churches volume augmented the text in London 1: The City, published the previous year. The continued development of the Docklands area meant that the volume was superseded when London 5: East was published seven years later, but the City Churches volume remains current and was reissued by Yale in 2002.

  • London City Churches (1998) (Simon Bradley) ISBN 978-0-300-09655-2

    • Buildings of Scotland

    The series continued under Pevsner's founding editorship into Scotland. The format is largely similar; however, only Lothian was published in the original small volume style. One noticeable difference in some of the Scottish series is a greater subdivision of the main gazetteer (e.g. in Argyll and Bute mainland Argyll has separate gazetteer from its islands, and Bute similarly is treated on its own). Unlike The Buildings of England, none of the Scottish volumes adopts a hierarchy of ecclesiastical buildings, instead grouping them together. As with the English revisions, several of the volumes are the work of many contributors. The series was completed with Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, published in November 2016.

    The volumes on Glasgow and Edinburgh are, with Dublin (see below) the only Pevsner volumes outside London to focus exclusively on a city. These volumes should not be confused with the City Guide format (see above).

  • Aberdeenshire: North and Moray (2015) ISBN 978-0-300-20428-5 (David W. Walker and Matthew Woodworth)
  • Aberdeenshire: South and Aberdeen (2015) ISBN 978-0-300-21555-7 (Joseph Sharples, David W. Walker and Matthew Woodworth)
  • Argyll and Bute (2000) ISBN 978-0-300-09670-5 (Frank Arneil Walker)
  • Ayrshire and Arran (2012) ISBN 978-0-300-14170-2 (Rob Close and Anne Riches)
  • Borders (2006) ISBN 978-0-300-10702-9 (Kitty Cruft, John Dunbar and Richard Fawcett)
  • Dumfries and Galloway (1996) ISBN 978-0-300-09671-2 (John Gifford)
  • Dundee and Angus (2012) ISBN 978-0-300-14171-9 (John Gifford)
  • Edinburgh (1984) ISBN 978-0-300-09672-9 (John Gifford, Colin McWilliam and David Walker)
  • Fife (1988) ISBN 978-0-300-09673-6 (John Gifford)
  • Glasgow (1990) ISBN 978-0-300-09674-3 (Elizabeth Williamson, Anne Riches and Malcolm Higgs)
  • Highland and Islands (1992) ISBN 978-0-300-09625-5 (John Gifford)
  • Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire (2016) ISBN 978-0-300-21558-8 (Rob Close, John Gifford and Frank Arneil Walker)
  • Lothian, except Edinburgh (1978) ISBN 978-0-300-09626-2 (Colin McWilliam)
  • Perth and Kinross (2007) ISBN 978-0-300-10922-1 (John Gifford)
  • Stirling and Central Scotland (2002) ISBN 978-0-300-09594-4 (John Gifford and Frank Arneil Walker)

    • Buildings of Wales

    The series has also been extended to Wales, and was completed with the issue of Gwynedd in 2009 (although this initial survey had taken seven years longer than Pevsner's first complete survey of England). Only the first volume, Powys (edited by Richard Haslam, and published in 1979) appeared in the original small format style; and this volume has now been superseded by a revised large-format edition, published in 2013. This is the first (and to date only) guide outside The Buildings of England series to be revised.

  • Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion (2006) ISBN 978-0-300-10179-9 (Thomas Lloyd)
  • Clwyd (Denbighshire and Flintshire) (1986) ISBN 978-0-300-09627-9 (Edward Hubbard)
  • Glamorgan (1995) ISBN 978-0-300-09629-3 (John Newman)
  • Gwent/Monmouthshire (2000) ISBN 978-0-300-09630-9 (John Newman)
  • Gwynedd (2009) ISBN 978-0-300-14169-6 (Richard Haslam, Julian Orbach and Adam Voelcker)
  • Pembrokeshire (2004) ISBN 978-0-300-10178-2 (Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield)
  • Powys: Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Breconshire (1979; 2013) ISBN 978-0-300-18508-9 (rev. Robert Scourfield and Richard Haslam)

    • Buildings of Ireland

    The Irish series is not so far advanced as the others, with only four volumes being published between 1979 and the present day. Research for several of the intended volumes has not yet begun.

  • Belfast, Antrim and County Down (in preparation)
  • Connacht/Connaught (in preparation)
  • Cork (TBA) (in preparation) (Frank Keohane)
  • Dublin (2005) ISBN 978-0-300-10923-8 (Christine Casey)
  • Dublin: County (in preparation)
  • Munster, except Cork (in preparation)
  • North West Ulster: the Counties of Londonderry, Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone (1979) ISBN 978-0-300-09667-5 (Alistair Rowan)
  • North Leinster (1993) ISBN 978-0-300-09668-2 (Alistair Rowan and Christine Casey)
  • South Leinster (in preparation)
  • South Ulster: the Counties of Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan. (2013) ISBN 978-0300186017 (Kevin Mulligan)
  • West Leinster: the Counties of Kildare, Laois and Offaly (in preparation)

    • Superseded volumes

    The revision of the series has rendered some original volumes obsolete, usually as the area of coverage has changed. To date the following volumes have been entirely superseded:

  • Cumberland and Westmorland (1967)
  • London: the Cities of London and Westminster (1957, rev. 1962 and 1973)
  • London, except the Cities of London and Westminster (1952)
  • London Docklands (1998) (with Elizabeth Williamson)
  • Middlesex (1951)
  • North Lancashire (1969)
  • South Lancashire (1969)
  • Suffolk (1961, rev. Enid Radcliffe 1974)

    • In addition, two volumes, North Devon and South Devon (1952) were superseded by a single volume covering the entire county. Parts of the original Hampshire & the Isle of Wight and Yorkshire: the West Riding volumes have been superseded by revised volumes.

    Unpublished volumes

    In some published volumes and in advance publicity, certain titles were announced which were ultimately never published. A number of factors accounted for this, including the readiness of parts of the text covering certain areas and the anticipated size of the volumes. Unpublished titles included:

  • Argyll, Bute and Stirling
  • Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire
  • Dublin: City and County
  • London III
  • South Strathclyde

    • Travels with Pevsner

    In 1997 the BBC broadcast a series of documentaries entitled Travels with Pevsner, in which six writers and broadcasters travelled through a county which had particular significance to them. They revisited buildings mentioned by Pevsner, critically examining his views on them. A further series was broadcast in 1998. John Grundy, who presented the programme on Northumberland, was one of the revisers of that county volume. The counties visited and the travellers were:

    In both series extracts from Pevsner's text were read by Benjamin Whitrow.

    References

    Pevsner Architectural Guides Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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