"'Thirst for information, faith in commerce and industry, inventiveness and technical daring, energy and tenacity, and a tendency to mix up religion with visible success - all these qualities have to be remembered as one embarks on a conducted tour of some of the exhibits of 1851.'"

The Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace was opened by Queen Victoria and would attract more than six million visitors. Writing one hundred years later, Nikolaus Pevsner makes a brilliant survey of what the Exhibition - 'the final flourish of a century of great commercial expansion' - offered to posterity as the hallmarks of High Victorian Design; also as windows into the mentality of mid-nineteenth-century England.

Rich in new discoveries and fresh interpretation, this fully revised survey is the perfect companion and guide to one of England's most beguiling counties. A profusion of black-and-white timber-framed houses testifies to the prosperity of earlier centuries, as do the many and varied parish churches. Highlights among these include the extraordinary Norman carvings at Kilpeck, the exquisitely spare Cistercian architecture of Abbey Dore, the seductive Georgian Gothick of Shobdon, and Lethaby's Arts and Crafts masterpiece at Brockhampton. The city of Hereford is freshly presented in detail, from its splendid medieval cathedral to the architectural adventures of the Georgians and Victorians. Country houses are plentiful and diverse, including much that is well in step with national fashions. The characteristic landscape of hills and woods lends a special pleasure to architectural exploration, while market towns such as Ledbury, Leominster, and Ross-on-Wye can match any in England for visual and architectural appeal.

A comprehensive architectural guide encompassing three centuries of metropolitan growth spanning an area from Georgian St Marylebone and the riverside terraces of Chelsea and Chiswick to Heathrow Airport and the outer fringes of Middlesex.

The buildings of East London reflect a chequered history of economic change, social need, urban renewal, and conservation. Along the Thames relics of a powerful industrial and maritime past at Wapping, Limehouse and the Isle of Dogs remain among the glossy new offices and smart riverside flats of the former Docklands. In the fast-changing historic East End, where the City edges ever closer, Hawksmoor's monumental Baroque churches still tower over their surroundings, while Georgian houses of prosperous silkweavers are juxtaposed with philanthropic institutions which catered for the Victorian poor of Spitalfields, Whitechapel and Bethnal Green. The contribution of successive generations of immigrants is reflected in the variety of places of worship and cultural centres, from chapels to synagogues and mosques, while a century of social housing has produced innovative planning and architecture, now itself of historic interest. Further out, in London-over-the-border, medieval churches and merchants' country mansions lie embedded among the suburban streets of Walthamstow and Woodford, and proud civic buildings of the busy towns of Barking, Stratford, Ilford and Romford. Essex, and traditional rural buildings among the marshes and farmland of the Essex countryside. This volume covers the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. For each area there is a detailed gazetteer and historical overview. Numerous maps and plans, over one hundred specially-taken photographs and full indexes make this volume invaluable as both reference work and guide. London 5: East is the fifth in the six-volume London series of The Buildings of England. Already published: London 1: the City of London, London 2: South, London 3: North West, London 4: North and London 6: Westminster. Also available in paperback: London: The City Churches.

This essential guide opens up the treasures of London's most alluring quarter. At its core are Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and the palatial Government buildings of Whitehall, together with the great band of Royal Parks stretching westward toward Kensington. It also includes London's West End (Covent Garden, Soho, Mayfair, and St. James's) and the less well-known Belgravia and Pimlico. For each area there is a detailed gazetteer and brief introduction. A general introduction provides a historical and artistic overview. Numerous maps and plans, over 100 new color photographs, full indexes, and an illustrated glossary help to make this book invaluable as both reference work and guide. This is the fifth of six Pevsner Architectural Guides volumes on London available in cloth.

A comprehensive guide to the buildings of South-East Lancashire. The heart is the great industrial city of Manchester, with its proud municipal buildings and pioneering mills and transport structures, offset by some of Britain's most innovative new architecture. Full accounts are given of the suburbs in all their variety, and of the separate City of Salford to the west. North and east of this metropolis are the industrial towns of Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham, each with its own tradition of civic buildings and crop of talented local architects. Around and between are the high moorland hills and steep Pennine valleys, with constantly surprising juxtapositions of rural, vernacular and industrial buildings. Also distinctive are the little-known late medieval churches and timber-framed country houses, their settings now often green again after the retreat of heavy industry. Each city, town or village is treated in a detailed gazetteer. A general introduction provides a historical and artistic overview. Numerous maps and plans, over 100 new colour photographs, full indexes and an illustrated glossary help to make this book invaluable as both reference work and guide.

This comprehensive and generously illustrated guide explores the beguiling buildings of the Isle of Wight. The island's many towns, villages, and resorts are included in a detailed gazetteer, as are the charming villas and "cottages ornes" dotted around the spectacular coasts. Among the grand architecture found on the island are the powerful fortress of Carisbrooke Castle; the rich Baroque mansion of Appuldurcombe; Victoria and Albert's Osborne House; and the extraordinary Quarr Abbey, a masterpiece of Expressionist brick. Other attractions include Roman villas, sturdy manor houses, powerful coastal defenses built for Henry VIII (and reinforced under Queen Victoria), and the retreats of Tennyson and other Victorian notables, not to mention a well-established tradition of innovative modern design.

This comprehensive guide to the buildings of South-West Lancashire treats each city, town, and village in a detailed gazetteer. The great port city of Liverpool dominates, with its cathedrals, mighty commercial buildings and warehouses, and Georgian inner city. Full accounts are also given of the suburbs and industrial towns beyond. But most of the area remains rural, and in this distinctive landscape are found such memorable buildings as Sefton church, Speke Hall, and the Georgian country houses of Knowsley, ancestral seat of the Earls of Derby, and Ince Blundell, with its extraordinary Neoclassical sculpture gallery. Numerous maps and plans, color photographs, indexes, and an illustrated glossary complete this volume.

Essex, one the largest counties of England, stretches from the suburban fringes of East London to the fishing and sailing ports of Harwich and Maldon and the famous seaside resorts of Clacton, Frinton, and Southend. Its buildings encompass rich Roman survivals, powerful Norman architecture, and the remains of major Tudor and Jacobean country houses. Essex is first and foremost a county famed for its timber buildings, from the eleventh-century church at Greensted to the early and mighty barns at Cressing Temple, and a wealth of timber-framed medieval houses. Later periods have also made their contribution, from Georgian town houses to Victorian and Edwardian industrial and civic buildings, and from important exemplars of early Modern Movement architecture to the major monument of High Tech at Stansted Airport.

Originally published in 1940, this book charts the origins and evolution of academies of art from the sixteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Pevsner expertly explains the political, religious and mercantile forces affecting the education of artists in various countries in Western Europe, and the growing 'academisation' of artistic training that he saw is his own day. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the various historical schools of art instruction and the history of art more generally.

This book, written in 1952, examines the intrinsic design everyday household objects. It evaluates them, criticizes them, and investigates the difficulties encountered in producing them, marketing them, and advancing them. At the root of the author's mind is a conviction in the importance of effective design of these items despite methods of mass-production, which he believes should involve the same kind of devotion as has always inspired freelance craftsmen. Professor Pevsner, who initiated such a book in 1935, provides a foreword and a postscript of commentary about Mr Farr's book. The book is accompanied by a number of photographs of the products it discusses and will be of interest to designers of everyday objects and to those who use them.

Originally published in 1937, this book was created to provide a survey of the conditions and artistic value of design in British industries. Through interviews with manufacturers, managers of department stores and shops, principals and teachers of art schools, commercial designers, artists, and architects, principally in the Midlands area, a composite portrait is developed. This portrait emphasises the interaction of seemingly disparate elements in the production of quality design, and shows the complexity of the process whilst remaining concise and accessible. The text is also well presented, containing a large number of illustrative examples. This is a fascinating volume that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of British design.

For more than one reason Professor Pevsner, eleventh Slade Professor of Fine Art in the University of Cambridge, takes as the topic of his Inaugural Lecture Matthew Digby Wyatt, the Victorian architect and the first Slade Professor. He begins by inspecting some of Wyatt's major works - Addenbrooke's Hospital at Cambridge and the Paddington Station among them. Presently he allows himself to be diverted from his light architectural candour about Wyatt's buildings to an account of Wyatt's more general interests in design, and so to investigate the Victorian arena, with Pugin, Ruskin, and Morris, the conservative idealists, preaching one gospel, and Wyatt, Cole, and the Prince Consort preaching something different. The battle being fought was, as the Professor's 1950 text shows, deeply important; and its effects remain.

Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East and its companion, Norfolk 2: North-West and South, aim to provide a lively and uniquely comprehensive survey of the architectural treasures of Norfolk. Extensively revised and expanded, these new editions of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner's original volumes bring together the latest research on a county which has some of the most attractive buildings in England. The gazetteer is enhanced by an introduction which provides a perceptive overview of the region's architectural inheritance, and is illustrated by numerous text figures, maps and 130 photographs (many specially commissioned). Pre-eminent in this volume is the city of Norwich, rich in major buildings of outstanding quality, from Norman cathedral and castle to twentieth-century city hall and university. Supreme among the ports described in this volume is the medieval walled town of Great Yarmouth, whose highly individual history and buildings are here examined in detail for the first time. There are also full descriptions of many appealing market towns, whilst the rest of the county is revealed through succinct accounts of its parish churches and less well-known buildings. Abbey ruins, brick eighteenth-century farmhouses and estate cottages in quiet inland villages contrast with coastal fishing settlements and resorts. Great barns testify to the significance of agriculture. Country houses range from the magnificent Jacobean Blickling Hall to seaside extravaganzas by Lutyens. Detailed indexes make this not only an essential reference book, but also a guide book for anyone interested in the rich region of Norfolk.

This completely new edition reveals a county of contrasts. The semi-rural suburbia of outer-Outer London, with its important early Modern Movement houses, is counterbalanced by magnificent mansions and parks, like idyllic Stowe and the Rothschilds' extravaganza at Waddesdon. The Saxon Church at Wing, the exquisite seventeenth-century Winslow Hall, and Slough's twentieth-century factories all contribute to Buckinghamshire's rich inheritance. In this new edition, the unspoilt centres of small towns, like Amersham and Buckingham, are revisited and Milton Keynes, Britain's last and most ambitious New Town, is explained and explored. The rich diversity of rural buildings, built of stone, brick, timber, and even earth, is investigated with scholarship and discrimination. This accessible and comprehensive guide is prefaced by an illuminating introduction and has many excellent illustrations, plans and maps.

Available again in paperback, this first survey of building types ever written remains an essential guide to vital and often overlooked features of the architectural and social inheritance of the West. Here Nikolaus Pevsner shares his immense erudition and keenly discerning eye with readers curious about the ways in which architecture reflects the character of society. He describes twenty types of buildings ranging from the most monumental to the least, from the most ideal to the most utilitarian. More than seven hundred illustrations illuminate the text.

Both Europe and America have been covered with examples chosen largely from the nineteenth century, the crucial period for diversification. Included are national monuments, libraries, theaters, hospitals, prisons, factories, hotels, and many other public buildings; churches and private dwellings have been excluded for practical reasons. The author is concerned not only with the evolution of each type in response to social and architectural change, but also with differing attitudes toward function, materials, and style.

Exeter Cathedral is but the crowning glory of Devon's wealth of medieval churches, replete with sumptuous fittings and monuments. The county's peak of prosperity from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth-century is reflected too in its castles, its secluded manor houses, and its scores of sturdily built farmhouses. The delights of Devon's well loved seaside and country towns are explored from the distinctive merchants' houses of Totnes and Topsham to the elegant Regency crescents of Teignmouth and Sidmouth. The picture is completed by accounts of the creation of the docks at Plymouth, industrial relics, and the substantial but little known store of Devon's Victorian churches.

London 2: South is a uniquely comprehensive guide to the twelve southern boroughs. Its riverside buildings range from the royal splendours of Hampton Court and Greenwich and the Georgian delights of Richmond, to the monuments of Victorian commerce in Lambeth and Southwark. But the book also charts lesser known suburbs, from former villages such as Clapham to still rural, Edwardian Chislehurst, as well as the results of twentieth-century planners' dreams from Roehampton to Thamesmead. Full accounts are given of London landmarks as diverse as Southwark Cathedral, Soane's Dulwich Picture Gallery and the arts complex of the South Bank. The outer boroughs include diverse former country houses - Edward IV's Eltham Palace, the Jacobean Charlton House, and the Palladian Marble Hill. The rich Victorian churches and school buildings are covered in detail, as are the exceptional structures of Kew Gardens.

Bedfordshire is one of the smallest English counties but encompasses great variety in landscape and architecture. Its major monument is Woburn Abbey, one of the finest Georgian country houses in England, and the influence of the estate is widely felt in the model housing and schools in the county's villages. Its many other attractions range from the churches of the market towns of Bedford, Leighton Buzzard, and Ampthill to the majestic gardens at Wrest Park. Such variety is also to be found in Huntingdonshire and Peterborough, famous not only for the cathedral and the spires of the stone medieval parish churches scattered across its remote and intimate landscape but also for vast and stately Burghley House and Vanbrugh's Kimbolton Castle. This a fully revised edition of Pevsner's original guide of 1968 and contains separate introductions, gazetteers, and photographs for Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough.

The newly revised Pevsner guide to the buildings of Oxford and South-East Oxfordshire This updated guide addresses half a century of change and development since the previous edition, including a wealth of ambitious new buildings for the University and its colleges. Familiar buildings such as the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera are reinterpreted, and the many renovations and extensions are described and assessed. Oxford’s commercial buildings, suburbs, and houses are also explored in depth, including much that is published here for the first time. The county area extends from the outskirts of Oxford to Henley-on-Thames, following the historic Thameside boundary of Oxfordshire and taking in the hills of the southern Chilterns. Here the new volume includes fresh accounts of major country houses such as Nuneham Courtenay and Thame Park, new assessments of church restorations, furnishings, and stained glass, more inclusive coverage of commercial buildings in the towns and a fuller selection of vernacular and rural buildings across the whole of this attractive and rewarding part of England.

This authoritative survey of east Suffolk includes some of England's most beautiful landscapes, including "Constable Country," the land surrounding the River Stour that was home to John Constable. East Suffolk's rural landscape includes a variety of intriguing medieval buildings: brick and timber-framed houses, stunning churches, and the grand castles of Orford and Framlingham. Additionally, Suffolk's coast is home to a number of charming resorts, as well as the Viking ship burial site at Sutton Hoo. This volume also includes the town of Ipswich, where medieval buildings are situated alongside Norman Foster's offices for Willis Faber, one of the major works of 20th-century British architecture.

The latest revised volume in the Pevsner Architectural Guides, covering Birmingham and the towns and settlements of the Black Country This fully revised account of the buildings of the City of Birmingham, its suburbs and outskirts, and the adjacent Black Country explores an area rich in Victorian and Edwardian architecture. Even the small towns of the Black Country supported local architects with their own distinctive styles, such as C. W. D. Joynson in Darlaston and A. T. Butler in Cradley Heath. Much West Midlands industry was organized in small to medium-sized firms, resulting in a rich and diverse streetscape and canalscape. The Arts and Crafts tradition also established deep roots in the area, resulting in masterpieces such as Lethaby's Eagle Insurance in Birmingham and Wolverhampton's Wightwick Manor, as well as a host of fine villas and churches. Older buildings of national significance include the grand Jacobean mansion of Aston Hall, Thomas Archer's Birmingham Cathedral, and such unexpected delights as the neoclassical barn in Solihull by Sir John Soane. Featuring new color photography and numerous maps and text illustrations, this volume will transform understanding and enjoyment of the architecture of this key English region.

This volume on London architecture covers the boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey and Islington. It gives a view of London's expansion northward from formal Georgian squares, to the hill towns of Hampstead and Highgate.