In 1594, a new Chapel Royal was erected at Stirling Castle, for the baptism, on 30 August of that year, of Prince Henry, first-born son and heir to James VI King of Scots and his wife, Queen Anna, sister of Denmark’s Christian IV. James saw the baptism as a major opportunity to emphasize, to an international — and, above all, English — audience, both his own and Henry’s suitability as heirs to England’s childless and elderly Queen Elizabeth. To commemorate the baptism and associated festivities, a detailed written account was produced, entitled A True Reportarie and attributed to William Fowler. It provided a remarkable piece of Stuart propaganda, as testified by many subsequent reprints, including during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. James no doubt had in mind the example of the celebrations at his own baptism in December 1566, which ‘took the form of a triumphant Renaissance festival, the first that Scotland — and indeed Great Britain — had ever seen’. Despite apparently being constructed within a mere seven months, the new chapel achieved its aim of being both impressive and symbolic of the aspirations of the Scottish king (Fig. 1). It can claim to be the earliest Renaissance church in Britain, with its main entrance framed by a triumphal arch, flanked by Italianate windows. However, even more significant is the evidence that the chapel was deliberately modelled on the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington (1694–1753), was a Yorkshireman, and his role in the north of England was significant, both as a designer and as an authoritative arbiter of taste. His position as Lord Lieutenant of both East and West Ridings of Yorkshire paralleled his land holdings at Londesborough near Beverley, the location of his family seat, and at Bolton Abbey, in Wharfedale. Significantly, his acceptance of a commission to supply the Corporation of the City of York, the social capital of the north, with a design for the new Assembly Rooms resulted in one of his most radical works. Burlington’s authorship of the Assembly Rooms is established, but less well known is how he also worked collaboratively in the county, alongside a group of craftsmen and gentlemen amateurs. One of these collaborators, James Moyser, can now be shown to have been responsible for the execution of Wandesford Hospital in York (Fig. 1).

In his exemplary account of Canterbury Cathedral in The Buildings of England, John Newman observed that the proportions of the Trinity Chapel constituted an improvement on those of the choir and presbytery (Figs 1, 2 and 3). This perception of improvement results from the reduced height of the Trinity Chapel piers that produces a more satisfactory balance in the design of the elevation and, more significantly, a consequential change in the proportions of the piers, which now take on the appearance of classical columns. That this classicizing appearance is intentional is manifest in the elegant attic bases, the finely carved Corinthian-style capitals and particularly in the use of polished limestones to give the effect of marble. The piers are columnar, constructed in drums of predominantly Purbeck marble of varying colours, but the conspicuous eastern piers are partly made up of two other stones which must have been imported: a smooth creamy-white peletal limestone from Caen and a rose-pink marble which has now been shown to come from the area around Tournai. The supply of these imported stones was obviously limited and must have run out as two of the piers had to be completed in Purbeck, as can be seen in Figure 3. In fact, the use of such exotic polished stone was already well established at Canterbury, having been employed by Prior Wibert as early as the 1150s in the infirmary cloister and in the undercroft to the Treasury where both Purbeck marble and onyx can be found.

The twelve letters published here are the majority of the only known original letters from Thomas Coke (1697–1759), the builder of Holkham Hall, Baron Lovell of Minster Lovell and later first Earl of Leicester, to Matthew Brettingham senior (1699–1769), his executive architect, draughtsman and clerk of works. They were written between 1734 and 1741, as work on Holkham Hall began with the building of the first wing, the south-west Family Wing.

The letters were found in the Holkham Archives in 1996, as the process of sorting and cataloguing reached a tin deed box of miscellaneous unsorted papers. They were in a flat packet, labelled in pencil ‘Lovel (Ld.) of Minster Lovel, 18 Autograph Letters’. (There are, in fact, twenty letters or part letters.) Wrapped with them were several short notes from a Birmingham antiquarian book dealer in 1900, admitting that he was not sure whether they were of any great importance but offering to send them for inspection; a couple of copy replies, indecipherable owing to the action of ink on flimsy copy paper; and notes from Wenman Coke (younger son of the elderly second Earl) and the estate agent, Wood, which show that Coke (Viscount Coke, the future third Earl) refused to read them but was eventually persuaded to buy them for 42s., the dealer having reduced his asking price of 50s.

Among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Library is a document in the hand of John Webb, headed ‘Notes of Practise uppon the Gate at Temple barr. 1638’. It refers to a design commissioned from Inigo Jones in 1636, never built, on which Webb also worked. Several drawings by Jones and Webb survive, and the ‘Notes’ complement them and fill out our knowledge of the commission. A transcript of the document (noticed since the nineteenth century but unpublished) is offered here, with an introductory discussion of Jones’s idea for rebuilding Temple Bar as a triumphal arch (Fig. 1).

In the 1720s the family of Dundas of Arniston,1 already long distinguished at the Scottish bar, entered on the three generations of their greatest achievement and influence. Their estate of Arniston had been acquired in 1571. Here, in about 1620, their mansion was built by the founder of the family’s law dynasty, James Dundas, who was knighted by King James. In the next six generations their protagonists numbered two knights (Sir James and his son), six MPs for Midlothian, four Lords of Session, two Lords President of the Session and a Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. While not, it was generally felt, particularly remarkable for intellect they were admired for equally important qualities, notably a strict regard for justice — to the extent that the second Sir James, created a Lord of Session in 1662, felt unable to compromise over the Test Act even under the liberal interpretation allowed by Charles II, and his seat was therefore suspended. He lived retired on his estate, dying in 1679.

In 1953 Rudolf Wittkower referred to proportion as ‘a problem that to-day is perhaps more on artists’ and architects’ minds than at any time during the last 150 years’. Indeed, from the end of the Second World War until the late fifties, proportion aroused exceptional interest among artists and architects. Why, we might ask, at a time of prevailing modernist ideology, was the historically rooted and rather esoteric subject of proportion of absorbing interest to many architects, and why should that interest have vanished towards the end of the fifties?

Gothic churches of the 1880s bear little resemblance to those of the 1850s. Within less than a generation, a style based on an aesthetic of sublimity, proclaiming an ideal of ‘muscularity’ and eclectic in its sources, had been replaced by a picturesque mode which upheld ‘refinement’ as an ideal and preferred exclusively English models. This change can be traced back to the revisions G. F. Bodley made at the end of 1862 to his designs for All Saints, Jesus Lane, Cambridge. His abrupt abandonment of the style of the 1850s now known as ‘High Victorian’ was early, decisive, and astonishingly influential. However, though All Saints is well known and well documented, the only attempt to explain its architect’s apparently surprising change of direction is the assumption of unsympathetic historians that it represents a failure of nerve. Was it no more than a retreat from the provocative stylistic innovations of the High Victorian years into the safe arms of irreproachable historicism?

In the early nineteenth century thousands of Scots emigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada, settling there principally in Pictou and Antigonish Counties. This article considers the transformation of the domestic architecture of emigrants from the Scottish Highlands, from earth and random-rubble-walled ‘black houses’ to Classically ornamented and proportioned timber-framed houses. It demonstrates that, in contrast to the transferable traditions of Lowland Scottish settlers, virtually no element of the Scottish Highland vernacular building tradition was established in Nova Scotia, and that Scottish Highland emigrants adopted a new architecture with near total uniformity. These changes in architectural practice are described here in some detail, and then interpreted as indicators of changed social practice within the immigrant Highland community.

In a letter of November 1694, Sir Christopher Wren set down some thoughts on the purpose and benefits of drawing:

For Wren, drawing was more than a means of depicting a design, but a process which facilitated the conceptualization and refinement of a design. It was by ‘drawing’, he believed, that skill in ‘invention’ was most effectively acquired; hence his regret that native craftsmen lacked an ‘education’ in ‘designing or drawing’. He continues the letter by suggesting that drawing, as ‘the Foundation of all Mechaniek Arts’, might ‘usefully’ be included in the education of the young:

A revised and abridged record of the Annual Lecture of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, given at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, on 12 November 2012

Two exceptional events in London in 2012, the queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, provoked questions about the origins and legacy of major public events of the past. This article explores the impact on the fabric of London since the eighteenth century of occasional planned spectacles through discussion of two main types of event, namely the procession along a predetermined route and occasions requiring a large organized space.

George, Elector of Hanover, succeeded to the throne as George I on 1 August 1714. The proclamation of a new monarch took place at a series of traditional sites. The Heralds started at the king’s residence, St James’s Palace, and proceeded to Charing Cross, where the statue of Charles I had replaced the medieval Eleanor cross destroyed in the Civil War. The third site, Temple Bar, marked the boundary of the City Liberties. Within the City the proclamation was repeated at St Mary le Bow and at the Royal Exchange — recent post-Fire buildings, but iconic sites — marking the significance of the Church and the power centre of the City merchants.

Wooden columns surmounted by bracket sets are a key element of the great buildings of Imperial China and have received a tremendous amount of attention from scholars and architectural professionals. This article revisits the question of their symbolic function during the Han dynasty (206 bce–ce 220). In addition to their structural role, column and bracket sets fulfilled important social and cultural needs related to the representation of celestial and spiritual qualities. Understood variously as pillars of heaven, gates of heaven, the constellations, Kunlun Mountain and celestial plants, column and bracket sets engendered a rich iconography that served to bond architecture closely to the heavens.

Bishop Gillis of Edinburgh has never been made the subject of a full and scholarly biography: those printed sources which are more than mere chronologies are largely given over to eulogy, and the one dissenting voice — a manuscript life written by a contemporary — inclines to the other extreme. All writers, however, recount the following facts: in 1802 James Gillis was born in Montreal; in 1816 his Scottish parents returned with him to their homeland, and the following year he began his training for the priesthood, first in Scotland and subsequently in France; ordained in 1827, he was consecrated titular Bishop of Limyra in 1838, and acted as auxiliary to Bishop Carruthers, at that time Vicar Apostolic of Scotland’s Eastern District; he soon assumed direct responsibility for the congregation in Edinburgh, and eventually succeeded Bishop Carruthers as Vicar Apostolic on the latter’s death in 1852; Gillis himself died in 1864.

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.

‘Architecture and History’: I take my title from a lecture by William Morris, delivered in 1884. One of its themes was the link between art and society, between style and culture, between architecture past, present, and future. My lecture takes up a similar theme from a rather different perspective. I want to concentrate on the stylistic problems created by those assumptions of continuity and reciprocity. In a nutshell, Morris’s generation was faced with an architecture apparently dying from a surfeit of history. In an age of extraordinary scientific and technological progress — an age bewitched by theories of evolution — architecture seemed to be mesmerized by the Renaissance, by the Middle Ages, by Antiquity. Hence the dilemma of style. What I shall try to do is to examine that Victorian problem of style through the eyes of the Victorians themselves. But this is an inaugural lecture. So the witnesses I shall call will be my predecessors.

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 development of a scholarly discourse about Maori ‘architecture’ has been somewhat hampered by a perception, amongst architectural historians, that Maori buildings are part of a building tradition in which purpose, design, and construction, are unchanging and solely determined by custom. Until the last two decades, architectural historians in New Zealand have largely accepted this view of Maori building, possibly because the discipline is still influenced by Banister Fletcher’s ‘tree of architecture’, which never had an Oceanic or Maori branch. In Fletcher’s influential opinion architecture could only be a Western concept. As a consequence only a few scholars have attempted to attach the word ‘Maori’ to the word ‘architecture’. Even in the revised edition of Fletcher’s History of Architecture (1996) which claims to ‘contain more information about vernacular buildings’ by contemporary contributing editors, the entry for New Zealand warns that Maori architecture ‘cannot be easily related to architecture derived from Europe’.

Many attempts have been made to determine how the Westminster Hall roof works, and nearly as many different conclusions have been reached (Figs 1, 3, and 4). Some architects, engineers, and architectural historians have concluded that the principal support of the roof is provided by its great wooden arch. Some have argued that the roof functions like other hammerbeam roofs, but they have not been able to agree on how a hammerbeam roof works. Still others have held that so unprecedented a space could only have been spanned with wood by combining two different types of roofs — the hammerbeam roof and the arched roof. The Westminster Hall roof is so complex that it appears as if it might function in any one of these ways, but it cannot function in more than one.