The Blog

The Victorians, blessed with the control of a rich, global economy, housed their world-leading – and world-beating – engineering in buildings of uncompromised architectural brilliance. While today money is rarely spent on adorning buildings that have only been built to perform a commercial or industrial function, the Victorians’ sense of architecture, design and ornament extended across anything and everything they … Read More

Tallest building in the world from 1930 to 1931 Still the world’s tallest steel-frame, brick-clad building First man-made structure to stand taller than 1,000 feet Cost: $15 million Sold by Walter Chrysler in the mid 1950s Floors: 77 Floor area: 1,195,000 sq. ft. Elevators: 34 3,826,000 hand-laid bricks 391,881 rivets Voted New York’s favourite tower by 100 architects, builders, critics, … Read More

“The general aspect of this structure is grand in the extreme—perhaps not to be surpassed by any Gothic edifice in the kingdom; whilst in its details it presents a rich field of beautiful variety, almost every period of Gothic architecture being illustrated in one part or other.” Walter Thornbury, ‘Westminster Abbey: The Church Building’ (1878) There are few buildings in … Read More

Most Georgian country houses are known for their architecture and gardens – their previous occupants too unremarkable for either history to remember them or for us to take more than a passing interest. Some properties, though, are actually famous simply because of the people who made them their home. Properties like Tittenhurst Park…

Come on! Come on! This hillock hides the spire, Now that one and now none. As winds about The burnished path through lady’s-finger, thyme, And bright varieties of saxifrage, So grows the tinny tenor faint or loud All all things draw toward St. Enodoc. Come on! Come on! and it is five to three.   Still, Come on! come on! … Read More

Tate Modern started life as Bankside Power Station. Built in two stage between 1947 and 1963, it was the last major ‘cathedral of power’ designed by the great Sir Giles Gilbert Scott who died just three years before its completion. Scott was generally opposed to such massive, industrial structures going up in city centres but relented and accepted the commission, … Read More

The last 70 years have seen architecture develop with unprecedented imagination. Of course, the modern started back in the late C.19th and, following the horrific hiatus of WWII, Le Corbusier’s Cité radieuse (Marseille, 1952, and the first of his Unités d’habitation), re-energised and re-asserted the movement. From that point, (nearly) anything went…

There are around 200 toilets in the Houses of Parliament and, as befits their eminent users, those that were part of Barry’s original plan are extraordinarily lavish and feature luxurious marble panelling…

Just as the swinging sixties was closure for WWII, so Art Deco was for WWI. There are relatively few pure Art Deco houses and the movement’s impact on our domestic architecture was more as an influence than a rigid template. Indeed, the two main influences during this period are seemingly at odds: Art Deco, determined to machine a new future … Read More

During the 1980s, we were regulars at the National Trust property, Polesden Lacey working our way through three separate contracts…