This article analyses the gatehouse of the wealthy Benedictine abbey of St Benet's Holm in Norfolk, one of the set-pieces of English monastic architectural patronage in the fourteenth century. The ruinous condition of this building, and its sequestered location, means that it has attracted little scholarly attention in the past, and the neglect has been exacerbated by the presence of a brick windmill-tower superimposed on its remains four centuries after the gatehouse was built. This forced marriage, at once preposterous and compelling in effect, has absorbed most of the attention paid to the site, and because what is left of the gatehouse's main façade is embedded within the mill-tower, and thus difficult to photograph, its artistic uniqueness and quality of execution have been concealed. There has hence been no serious attempt to investigate or contextualize it (Figs 1, 2).

During the decades that followed the loss in 1898 of Spain's last colony, Spanish architecture languished in a turbulent search for identity. In this search, some architects argued for a return to the historic architecture of the Spanish colonial empire, while others followed the progressive ideas of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Finally, in the mid-1940s, Spain's architects began to progress towards a successful reconciliation of these two seemingly opposed camps. A critical moment occurred in 1947 with the publication of Fernando Chueca Goitia's watershed text Invariantes Castizos de la Arquitectura Española (Genuine Invariants of Spanish Architecture). In this text, which Chueca conceived as a pocket reference for Spain's Modern architects, he described Spain as a unique place where the diverse architecture of Christian Europe and Islamic North Africa coalesced into a new — and essentially Spanish — whole. In it, he called on Spain's architects to move beyond superficial considerations of both history and modernity, and to arrive at a genuine, self-critical identity for Spanish architecture.

This article examines an unexecuted example of the work of the prolific architectural practice R. Seifert & Partners designed for a site in central Birmingham in the 1970s. R. Seifert & Partners worked largely for developer clients, and this type of speculative architecture has been little studied by historians of the period. The particular example of the practice's work examined here reveals a complex network of architects, planning facilitators and client organisations that, crucially, spanned the public and private sectors.

Earth, contrary to popular belief, was one of the most widespread building materials in Scottish architecture. A recent study produced by Historic Scotland demonstrates that ‘during the greater part of Scottish history earth construction was predominant’ and various methods of building in turf, mud and clay were evolved. In addition to traditional practices, the technique of rammed earth or pisé was brought from France at the end of eighteenth century. Simultaneously, at the other end of Europe, the Russian architect Nicolai L’vov undertook a large-scale project that involved developing pisé construction. He was assisted by Scotsmen, namely Adam Menelaws, John Cochrane and David Cunningham. They had arrived in St Petersburg from Edinburgh in 1784 in a group of some 70 Scots workmen to execute designs by Charles Cameron in the Imperial residence in Tsarskoe Selo, near St Petersburg. The next year, Menelaws and several other Scots were hired by L’vov. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the co-operation between L’vov and his Scottish associates in designing and constructing earth buildings in Russia.

Ashley House in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey (Fig. 1), is best known to architectural historians for its detailed and informative building accounts, which date from the years 1602 to 1607. The house was demolished in 1925 without adequate record, and scholars have tended to assume that it was built to a quite unexceptional H-plan design and was, therefore, of no great architectural interest.

A recently-discovered contemporary first-floor plan of Ashley House shows that it was in fact a building of considerable importance. The plan (Fig. 2) demonstrates that Ashley was remarkably similar in layout to both Charlton House and Somerhill in Kent, two Jacobean houses justly famous for their innovative, axially-placed halls (Figs 3 and 4). This architectural development, as is now generally recognized, represented a significant departure from the linear house-plans most often associated with traditional, hierarchical household arrangements.

In 1974, Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein, of the leading Glasgow practice of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia (GKC), were announced as the winners of the competition to design the new Robinson College, Cambridge, which had been endowed by the businessman David Robinson. The first (and principal) phase of their design was completed in 1981. Robinson remains the most recently created college in Cambridge, which had seen a flurry of new foundations since the mid-1950s, including Churchill College, Clare Hall, Darwin College, Fitzwilliam College, New Hall, and Wolfson (originally University) College. In addition, Robinson was the last major project by its architects, who had assumed the creative lead at GKC in the early 1950s and were subsequently responsible for a series of significant religious and institutional buildings in both Scotland and England. The firm was wound up in 1987, a move that has been described as ‘a tragedy for Glasgow and for Scottish architecture’.

A significant number of tombs have survived from the Han dynasty (Western Han 206 BC-AD 8, Eastern Han 25–220), an important period for tomb architecture in China. The number of examples is in stark contrast to the lack of evidence of other architecture from the period. In fact, no timber architecture built before the Tang dynasty (618–907) exists today. While much care and scholarly effort has been devoted to the interpretation of ancient architecture, funeral architecture has not received adequate study and scrutiny.

Forty Hall, built in 1629 for Nicholas Rainton (1569–1646), is one of a group of Jacobean and Carolean suburban villas around London. This type of house has its antecedents in medieval secret houses and Tudor lodges, and was influenced by Italian Renaissance models. It provided a convenient escape from the bustle and squalor of the City, whilst being close enough to stay in touch with business or court, and so was popular with aristocrats and merchants alike.

Rainton was one of the latter, a wealthy London merchant who imported fine textiles, principally satin and taffeta, from Florence and Genoa. He took an active part in the corporate and political life of the City, including serving as Alderman of Aldgate Ward from 1621, Sheriff of the Ward in 1622 and Lord Mayor in 1632–33. He was also master of the Haberdashers’ Company in 1622–23 and 1632–33. His religious sympathies were firmly Puritan, and he consistently sided with Parliament in its disputes with the Crown in events leading up to the Civil War.

The appearance of the Octagon today (Fig. 1) is frequently seen as owing rather more to Sir George Gilbert Scott than to its medieval designers, and disparaging comments about its fidelity to the original structure suggest a widespread ignorance as to the real nature of the two great restorations which the building has undergone. It is the aim of this paper to delineate the precise extent of, and to examine the motives for, James Essex’s work in the eighteenth century and that of Scott in the nineteenth. Far from reiterating the usual condemnation of the latter’s restoration, it will be argued that Scott’s work closely adheres to the appearance of the fourteenth-century building and, except in a few details, conforms to his avowed intention to return the Octagon to its medieval form. A number of newly discovered drawings made in connection with the project reveal Scott’s meticulous attention to detail and incidentally throw much light on the work undertaken by Essex. In contrast with their works on the Octagon, both architects, and the deans and chapters who commissioned them, are shown to have been inspired by very different motives in their relocations of the medieval choir-stalls.

The Rome prize for architecture was established in 1912 as the last stage of a recent and systematic reform of British architectural education. It was supported by those who felt that British architecture reflected the individualism and haphazard character of articled pupillage, and hoped to correct these tendencies by providing, as an alternative, full-time training leading to a professional qualification. The prize was visualized as the finale to the new system of architectural education, the summit of a ‘ladder of prizes’ for design which led from the Tite Prize to the Soane Medallion and Victory Scholarship and culminated in the Rome Scholarship. The first Faculty of Architecture of the British School at Rome contained advocates of the new architectural education, and at first constituted a lively forum for discussing the purpose and direction of architectural training as well as of the Rome prize itself. But a considerable gulf soon developed between the Faculty and progressive ideas on architecture and its teaching. Within a decade of its creation, the Faculty began to use the Rome scholarship not simply to encourage systematic working methods, clarity of planning and good draughtsmanship but actually to discourage what it termed ‘modern tendencies’. The scholarship gradually lost its status as the apex of progressive architectural education and by the 1930s came to be regarded as highly reactionary. Since then, writers have tended to use the Rome scholarship as an indication of the backwardness of twentieth-century British architecture, contrasting the late establishment of the prize with the reaction against academic training which transformed inter-war European architecture. More recently, it has been suggested that the dwindling prestige accorded the Rome prize in the inter-war years represented merely a temporary set-back for the otherwise triumphant progress of the classical tradition in British architecture from the seventeenth century to the present day.

In the best room of an otherwise unpretentious house in Lincoln is a ceiling ornamented with octagonal plaster coffering modelled on that of the first-century Temple of Bel, at Tadmor (the ancient Palmyra), in Syria. The most frequently copied antique coffering is composed of octagons whose cardinal sides are each adjacent to, and parallel with, the cardinal side of another octagon. The residual space between any four octagons in this arrangement is a small square. In the Palmyrene variant the octagons meet each other only at their angles. The residual space is a four-lobed star, which always (though not of necessity) inscribes a small square.

This article is tended to draw attention to the existence of a house, Woodhall House, Lanarkshire, which until 1981 was unknown outside its locality. Since then a series of early twentieth-century photographs has been discovered and an early nineteenth-century gouache has been purchased by Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow, which shows a general view of the house in its setting. Publication of some of the only known views of the house may help to identify the designer.

The use of Liardet’s stucco by Robert and James Adam has often been noted. The dispute with John Johnson, about alleged infringement of the patent, is well known because of the pamphlet warfare which occurred in 1778 and because it was for many years regarded as a leading case in patent law. But Liardet v. Johnson was only the first of three major lawsuits which embroiled the brothers between 1777 and 1787. Although they were successful it was a pyrrhic victory. By 1780 the deficiencies in the stucco were becoming apparent. The brothers faced a major claim for damages from Lord Stanhope and their agreement with Liardet collapsed in recrimination.

Walter Muir Whitehill’s Spanish Romanesque Architecture of the Eleventh Century was published in 1941 and it is still the only book in the English language given exclusively to the Romanesque architecture of Spain — though, as its title states, it does not cover the full span of the stylistic period.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, country-house tourism became increasingly popular in England. By 1770, hundreds of tourists were visiting the country’s greatest estates every summer. The nature of the attraction varied from house to house. Some, such as Kedleston Hall and Stowe, were considered ‘elegant’ modern buildings, while others, such as Blenheim Palace, were already seen as historical sites. Although country-house visiting as a concept dated back to the seventeenth century, there had never been so many tourists, nor such a variety of them. While one needed to be relatively wealthy and genteel in order to travel and gain admission to great houses, tourists included not only those who had their own estates but also those who could only be spectators. Early country-house tourists have been examined by a number of historians, but the ways in which the houses themselves were presented have hitherto been little studied. A better understanding of this manner of presentation illuminates the nature of tourists’ experiences and how the country house itself began to be identified as an attraction during this period. In essence, in an effort to cope with the influx of visitors, country-house owners began to formalize the terms under which their estates were open to the public. As part of this process, houses were metaphorically ‘remade’ in order to function as tourist attractions as well as private residences. It was not enough for owners simply to allow entry. They had to decide what would be shown to visitors, and how to provide visitors with information about the house and its contents. At first, these problems were solved by instructing housekeepers to guide visitors, but, as certain houses became exceptionally popular, a new practice developed: publishing guidebooks. This article considers the methodologies by which the interior spaces of country houses were remade in guidebooks (a type of re-presentation that can still be observed in many properties that are open to the public today), as well as the effects of this process.

Fifty years ago there appeared a book by the late Beresford Chancellor entitled The Private Palaces of London. In it he described with a facile but not altogether unscholarly pen those great mansions in which the English aristocracy still lived and entertained in a style as yet untroubled by surtax, death-duties and the economic difficulties created by two World Wars. Of the fifteen great town houses to each Of which he devoted a separate chapter less than half now survive, and none of them in private occupation. Apsley House is a museum, Bridgewater House shelters a great industrial organisation, and Spencer House does the same. Lancaster House alone can claim, as a centre of Government hospitality, to continue to fulfil ‘ those social-political functions for which it was long famous and for which it is undoubtedly the best of any surviving in the capital‘ What is more, its careful restoration by the Ministry of Works has given back to London a spectacular interior in the Louis XIV style which became suddenly fashionable during the latter years of George IV.

While carrying out fieldwork in the Annan area on behalf of the Scottish Development Department my attention was attracted by a remarkable series of Renaissance buckle quoins at Hayknowes farm — at first sight puzzling, since the architectural style of Hayknowes otherwise indicates a building date of somewhere around 1800. These quoins are built in to each of the front angles of the house, and rise to a height of about five feet. And nearby, at Newbie, on the spot identified by the Ordnance Survey map as the site of ‘Newbie Castle’, a single similar quoin exists, built in to one angle of a nineteenth-century cottage.

A clue to the puzzle was provided by the coincidental re-cataloguing of part of the Annandale family archive by the National Register of Archives (Scotland) [NRA(S)], whose secretary drew attention to the existence of a body of material relating to the construction in the later 1650s of a house at Newbie for the Earl of Hartfell. One surviving receipt in this group, for having produced a sundial, is from John Mylne, King’s Master Mason, and dated 1655. This document is of particular interest since, by linking Mylne’s name with Newbie at the same time that a new house, or an addition to a house, was being built there, it indicates the possibility of Mylne having also been involved with the design of the building at Newbie.

This article examines the work of the Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister. A leading representative of Austrian architecture between the wars, and a significant figure in the 1950s and 1960s as teacher of the new generation of Austrian architects including Hans Hollein and Gustav Peichl, Holzmeister presents a perplexing image. In the 1920s, he played an important role in the early architectural projects of Red Vienna, but in the following decade he endorsed the Austrofascist regime of Engelbert Dollfuß and Kurt Schuschnigg of 1934–38. This article argues that his work presents other interpretative challenges too, for he was a prolific designer of churches, which have seldom been integrated into wider narratives of modern architecture. However his work is viewed, it was an important barometer of wider cultural and political currents in inter-war Austria, in particular the country’s attempt to construct a meaningful identity after the collapse of the Habsburg empire. The aim of the article is not to rehabilitate or recover Holzmeister, but to consider the light his work casts on inter-war cultural politics in Austria, as well as the broader questions over the implicit value judgements that inform histories of modern architecture.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and Prince Albert (1819-61) first visited Scotland in 1842 when they were both twenty-three years old. What began as a puppy love turned into a life-long affection for the country its landscape and its architecture. Their passion culminated in 1852-56, when they had their holiday home, Balmoral Castle, built in the remote hills near Aberdeen, following a design by the Aberdonian architects John Smith (1781-1852) and his son William (1817-91). This article will analyse Balmoral Castle as an example of what we will call ‘built unionism’, that is, a building that promoted the royal couple's agenda of underlining the union between England and Scotland and the strength of the British nation. At the same time, we will show how this building communicated ideas about national revival that, at the time, were also developing in many other European countries, and particularly in Germany.