First published across four separate volumes: Middlesex, London, except the Cities of London and Westminster, Surrey and Kent: West and the Weald Buildings of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales (BOE01) Archive Collection | Historic England". historicengland.org.uk . Retrieved 30 June 2022. A landlady in a million? Snapshots of days gone by" (PDF). Birmingham University online newspaper. No.57. 2005. p.10. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2009. Harrison, Brian (2004). "Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon (1902–1983)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/31543. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Cornwall was researched and written by the art and architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, who also served as author and co-author of the later volumes. Its purpose echoed that of other guides from the interwar and mid-century periods. H.V. Morton’s In Search of England (1927) was a popular example. Its success inspired many to produce similar works aimed at discerning tourists or ramblers. Pevsner’s main competitor was the Shell Guide to the Countryside, as published between 1934 and 1984. These took a county-by-county approach but were lighter in depth and detail than Pevsner’s exhaustive works.

Pevsner also received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1975. [19] Death and legacy [ edit ] Nikolaus Pevsner, an art historian of European standing, conceived the idea of English architectural guidebooks after he settled in England in the 1930s. At that time architectural history was hardly recognised as a serious academic subject, nor was trustworthy architectural information readily available for the traveller. The success and achievement of his aim eventually became possible with the assistance and enthusiasm of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, for whom Pevsner had written his Outline of European Architecture in 1942. Lane provided Pevsner with the means to begin research for the books in 1945 with the help of two part time research assistants, both German refugee art historians, and a secretary. For the next twenty five years a pattern was established whereby an assistant worked for around a year on each county, preparing notes from published sources. During the Easter and Summer university vacations, then armed with fat folders of half-foolscap sheets, Pevsner set off to visit two counties, driven by his wife and, after her death in 1963, by others, usually students at London University or the Courtauld Institute of Art. The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. 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. Most of the English volumes have had subsequent revised and expanded editions, chiefly by other authors. From the 1960s onwards more information was available to be consulted and new research began to make the emphases of the early volumes appear a little unbalanced. Although from the beginning the books had broken new ground by covering all periods of architecture, the greatest space had been devoted to medieval churches and their furnishings. Secular buildings, with some notable exceptions, had been treated more summarily. Revisions, before and since Pevsner’s death, have continued to take advantage of developments in architectural scholarship. The scope of the series has been broadened and deepened by the transformation of our understanding of the post-medieval centuries, the research into architecture and urban planning of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the wealth of interest in both rural vernacular buildings and the surviving structures of Britain’s industrial past.In the 1970s and 1980s a younger generation began to show a greater interest in cinemas and Art Deco factories and over time that interest extended to an appreciation of the best of postwar architecture, from schools to council estates and from private houses to office buildings. The results are more inclusive, but the aim remains the same: to present to a broad public up-to-date and accessible information about the most significant buildings in the country whilst always keeping under review the definition of ‘significant’.And Huntingdonshire and Peterborough; people aren’t really sure what that means, because they were abolished as counties in the 70s. Again, other than people who live there it’s not somewhere people are particularly familiar with. Which is a shame really because there is a distinct architectural identity. But in terms of interesting facts … it’s interesting in that there is quite a lot more than you imagine. I felt, when I was there, that I was constantly seeing things that I just hadn’t expected, particularly with the quality of the buildings. The Buildings series and the Pelican History of Art series were taken over from Penguin by Yale University Press in the 1990s and new editions continue to be published. In 2001 the first in the series of Pevsner Architectural Guides on Manchester was published and volumes on other cities, such as Bath, Bristol and Sheffield, followed. More recently, in 2016, the first Pevsner Introductions which cover different types of buildings appeared, on housesand churches. The latest (2017) volume of The Buildings of England to be published was Oxfordshire North and West. Online Winter Talk Series: Four Nations and an Island: The Pevsner Architectural Guides in the 21st Century

Papers relating to the work of the Victorian Society during his years as chairman are held by the Victorian Society themselves and the London Metropolitan Archives. ( Victorian Society archives) In London 2; South, published in 1983, The Old Town Hall, which houses the Information and Reference Library is described thus: In 2016, Yale University Press published three volumes, each serving as an introduction to some of the buildings and the architectural terms mentioned in the text of the guides. Published as Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions these are: an architectural glossary (also available as an app), a volume focusing on church buildings and another on dwelling houses (including vernacular architecture).

References

First published as two volumes: North Devon and South Devon–see Superseded and unpublished volumes. His first intention was to move to Italy, but after failing to find an academic post there, Pevsner moved to England in 1933, settling in Hampstead, where poet Geoffrey Grigson was his next-door neighbour in Wildwood Terrace. [3] [4] [5] Pevsner's first post was an 18-month research fellowship at the University of Birmingham, found for him by friends in Birmingham and partly funded by the Academic Assistance Council. [6] A study of the role of the designer in the industrial process, the research produced a generally critical account of design standards in Britain which he published as An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England (Cambridge University Press, 1937). He was subsequently employed as a buyer of modern textiles, glass and ceramics for the Gordon Russell furniture showrooms in London. Pioneers of Modern Design (originally published as Pioneers of the Modern Movement in 1936; 2nd edition, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949; revised and partly rewritten, Penguin Books, 1960)

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 the time of writing; in the first years of the survey these were the traditional counties of England. [2] 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. On his arrival as a refugee from the Nazis in the 1930s, Pevsner was amazed to find that there was no comparable accessible detailed record of English architecture along the lines of the invaluable "Hand-bucher", compiled by the great pioneering architectural historian Dehio who had cycled his way round every important building in Germany.

Charles O’Brien is joint series editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides and author and contributor to several volumes in the series. Charles is a child of Surrey and the second edition was his first introduction to the Pevsner series. He has spent four years writing and researching this volume and describes it as the most significant project in his 25 years of working on the series, because of his personal connections to the area. MUNICIPAL OFFICES (former Town Hall), Hill Street. 1893 by WJ Ancell; mixed Renaissance. Originally with an ornate gabled skyline, destroyed in the Second World War. Remodelled by Gordon Jeeves, 1952. Interior rebuilding planned 1981. Pevsner, Nikolaus. "The Englishness of English Art: 1955". The Reith Lectures – BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 6 December 2017.

A fictionalised Pevsner appears in the 1998 novel The Spell by Alan Hollinghurst. [ citation needed] Notable ideas and theories [ edit ] Prepare to be Outraged". The Sunday Times. 28 March 2010. Archived from the original on 22 March 2016 . Retrieved 14 May 2014– via hughpearman.com. Review of Pevsner – the Early Life, by Stephen Games Once all the volumes of The Buildings of England were completed work then began on The Buildings of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It was Pevsner’s energy and single-mindedness which enabled this Herculean task to be completed. His aim was to encourage people to look at the buildings around them, and to be able to put those buildings within a national tradition and within a European context and above all he wanted people to enjoy their local built environment. He was knighted in 1969 for services to art and architecture and he died on 18 August 1983 at his Hampstead home (2 Wildwood Terrace) where he had lived since 1936. He was buried, alongside Lola, at St Peter’s Church, Clyffe Pypard, Wiltshire where the Pevsner family cottage was. A very well-attended memorial service was held in December at the University Church of Christ the King, WC1. Even today, nearly 25 years after his death, the various Buildings series are still referred to as “Pevsner’s” and he is listed as being the founding editor . Erten, Erdem (2004). Shaping "The Second Half Century", The Architectural Review, 1947–1971 (PhD. thesis). MIT. hdl: 1721.1/17662.Pevsner, Nikolaus (2010). Aitchison, Mathew (ed.). Visual Planning and the Picturesque. Getty Research Institute. ISBN 978-1-60606-001-8.