Series:

Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England

69 total works

Cover of Shropshire

Shropshire

by John Newman and Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 11 March 1958
This fully-illustrated guide to Shropshire treats each city, town, and village in a detailed gazetteer and includes a variety of helpful maps, plans, and indexes along with an illustrated glossary. The book is an invaluable reference work on the appealing and unspoiled county of Shropshire, where many historic towns, including Shrewsbury and Ludlow, are especially plentiful in Georgian and timber-framed buildings. Shropshire boasts the Cistercian abbey of Buildwas and many important country houses, including the 13th-century fortified mansions at Acton Burnell and Stokesay; John Nash's Italianate villa at Cronkhill; and Norman Shaw's splendid Late Victorian mansion at Adcote. Shropshire is also home to numerous prehistoric hill-forts and the Roman town at Wroxeter as well as Coalbrookdale's spectacular bridge, the first in the world to be built of iron.
The unspoiled county of Shropshire is among the most appealing in England for lovers of architecture. The county's many historic towns, of which Shrewsbury and Ludlow are the largest, are especially plentiful in Georgian and timber-framed buildings. Shropshire's villages, intriguingly varied in plan and building materials, reflect the diverse landscape of plains, hills and moorland and the rich and complex underlying geology. The Cistercian abbey of Buildwas is the finest of several notable monastic ruins, and outstanding medieval parish churches and castles are also numerous. Many of the country houses have a central place in the story of English architecture: the fortified mansions at Acton Burnell and Stokesay, thirteenth-century design at its most sophisticated; the vigorous Baroque houses of John Prince and Francis Smith; John Nash's Italianate villa at Cronkhill, looking like something in a Claude painting; Norman Shaw's splendid Late Victorian mansion at Adcote. Shropshire is also unrivalled for its early industrial remains, including the spectacular bridge at Coalbrookdale, the first in the world to be built of iron. More ancient cultures are represented by the numerous prehistoric hill-forts and the celebrated Roman town at Wroxeter.
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 a hundred new colour photographs, full indexes and an illustrated glossary help to make this book invaluable as both reference work and guide.

Cover of Cornwall

Cornwall

by Peter Beacham and Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 5 June 2014
Cornwall was the first volume in the Buildings of England series, published in 1951. This extensively revised edition brings much new research to bear on the history of the county's buildings, beginning with its rich prehistoric remains and early Christian structures and monuments including numerous Celtic crosses and holy wells. The high towers of the village churches, manor houses such as Cotehele, and the distinctive white-walled cottages in the villages and fishing towns contribute to Cornwall's unique, picturesque landscape. Cornwall is home to major country houses, including the spectacular castle of St Michael's Mount, as well as the greatest English cathedral of the Victorian age at Truro. The architectural legacy of industry is also of considerable importance, from the net houses of the fishing industry to the tapering engine-house chimneys of the tin mines.

Cover of Hampshire: Winchester and the North

Winchester, with its Cathedral, Castle, College and churches is unrivalled for medieval architecture, and the surrounding countryside is rich in historic villages and an abundance of country houses. This volume of The Buildings of England also includes monuments of unique national and international significance: Jane Austen's house at Chawton; the spectacular French Imperial mausoleum at Farnborough Abbey; and Stanley Spencer's moving series of war paintings for the chapel at Burghclere.

Cover of Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness

The most authoritative guide to the Lake District and surrounding area, this volume covers the outstanding vernacular architecture, unspoiled historic towns, and fine Victorian and Arts and Crafts houses throughout the region, and ranges from the shipbuilding town of Barrow-in-Furness in the south to the cathedral city of Carlisle in the north. A popular tourist destination, Cumbria inspired the Romantic poets, John Ruskin, and Beatrix Potter.

Cover of Somerset: North and Bristol

This fully revised survey is the essential companion to the architecture of one of England's most rewarding regions. The Georgian spa of Bath and the medieval cathedral city of Wells are deservedly famous, each the finest of its kind in the country. A separate section covers the port of Bristol, with its rich and confident buildings of every period and type. Other highlights include John Nash's picturesque masterpiece of Blaise Hamlet, a noble inheritance of Gothic Revival churches, and some of the greatest structures designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Cover of Herefordshire

Herefordshire

by Alan Brooks and Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 11 March 1963

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.

Cover of Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North
Covering the northern half of Yorkshire, this volume is full of contrasts, from urbanized Leeds to the tight-knit mill towns and villages pushing into the Pennines.

Cover of Northumberland

Northumberland

by Nikolaus Pevsner and I. A. Richmond

Published 27 August 1970
The county's remarkable and richly varied military architecutre, from Hadrian's Wall to Warkworth, contrasts with monastic ruins buried deep in the valleys of the Coquet and the Aln or standing proudly by the sea at Holy Island and Tynemouth. Newcastle upon Tyne has the most elegant nineteenth-century city centre in England. Elsewhere the distinctive smaller towns include Alnwick, dominated by its castle, Hexham with its priory, brick-built Morpeth, and Berwick-upon-Tweed, ringed with exceptional sixteenth-century fortifications. Great country houses range from Vanbrugh's theatrical Seaton Delaval to Sir Charles Monck's austere Belsay and Norman Shaw's romantic Cragside. Monuments of a great industrial past, as well as a wealth of smaller buildings, such as bastle houses (peelhouses or stronghouses unique to the Border country), are all vividly described in this revised guide to Northumberland's architectural pleasures.

Cover of Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

by Nikolaus Pevsner, John Harris, and Nicholas Antram

Published 26 February 1970
First published in 1964, this text has been expanded to include coverage of 19th and 20th century architecture, industrial archaeology and lesser rural buildings. The way in which buildings relate to their surroundings is also considered.

Cover of North Lancashire

North Lancashire

by Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 11 March 1969
An area of extreme contrasts, from the close-packed but proudly independent textile towns north of Manchester to the romantic scenery of the southern Lake District, and from high Pennine moors to the sandy beaches of Bloackpool and the Fylde Coast. Wordsworth's poem describes how the beauty of the ruins of Furness Abbey reduced even a gang of railway navvies to reverential silence. Many gentry houses display a tenacious local brand of Jacobean; others, including the Pugins' Scarisbrick, demonstrate the strong local affinity with the Gothic Revival. Voysey's internationally important Arts-and-Crafts houses in Lakeland sit happily alongside the whitewashed local cottages.

Cover of South Lancashire

South Lancashire

by Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 11 March 1969
The great industrial cities of Manchester and Liverpool dominate the southern band of Lancashire. Manchester's buildings range from its little-known medieval cathedral, housing some of the finest medieval wood carving in England, to imposing factories and civic and commercial monuments, among which Waterhouse's great Gothic Town Hall is the supreme example. Liverpool's two famous twentieth-century cathedrals watch over a no less proud city, whose distinctive mixture of toughness and display appear variously at the early Victorian Albert Dock, its sumptuous contemporary St George's Hall, and the great commercial parade alongside the Mersey. Towns such as Bury and Rochdale, showing the same civic endeavour on a smaller scale, stud a landscape that rises into dramatic moorland country to the east.

Cover of Cornwall, Second edition
The first volume in the series, covering a county rich in prehistoric remains and early Christian structures and monuments including numerous Celtic crosses. The high towers of the village churches, a particular characteristic of the county, manor houses such as Cotehele and the distinctive white-walled cottages contribute to Cornwall's picturesque landscape. The architecture of industry also has its place, frequently marked by the tapering chimneys of the tin-mines but most visibly by Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash. Major houses can be found from all periods, but none more picturesque or spectacular than the island castle of St Michael's Mount.

Cover of North East and East Kent, Third edition
At the heart of this volume lies a discussion of Canterbury and its outstanding Cathedral, site of St Thomas a Becket's shrine and significant in countless ways for the history of medieval art and architecture but especially memorable for its stunning stained glass. Other churches vary from remains of St Augustine's early Anglo-Saxon mission churches to Pugin's St Augustine at Ramsgate. Smaller buildings demonstrate Kent's especially fine and varied mixture of materials: the native ragstone and flint, exceptionally good brick and tile, and timber-framed hall houses, indicative of Kent's wealth in the fifteenth century. But Kent looks towards the continent too, its defensive and marine history maked by its medieval and sixteenth-century castles - such as Deal and Chilham - and coastal towns and ports as different as Dover and Ramsgate.

Cover of Kent: West and the Weald, Second edition
This volume covers buildings as different as the modernist suburb of New Ash Green and the ragstone sobriety of Knole, originally the Archbishop's palace and little altered since its seventeenth-century remodelling. West Kent has notable domestic buildings of all periods, from the timber-framed 'Wealden' house to the Palladian masterpiece of Mereworth Castle and Philip Webb's Red House built for William Morris, the Arts-&-Crafts house par excellence. The Norman castle and cathedral at Rochester make an unforgettable pairing, while Hildenborough church is but one of many delights in an area unusually rich in Victorian church architecture. The elegant townscape of Tunbridge Wells and the Georgian dockyards at Chatham further demonstrate the breadth of building to be found in this area.

Cover of Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire

by Bridget Cherry

Published 31 January 1974
Some of England's grandest country houses are to be found in this prosperous rural midland county with its excellent local building stone from the limestone belt. The Elizabethan Renaissance Kirby Hall, the late seventeenth century French-inspired Boughton, Hawksmoor's stately Baroque Easton Neston and the interiors of Althorp provide a fascinating survey of changing taste through the centuries. The great houses are complemented by smaller buildings of great character, supreme among them Sir Thomas Tresham's eccentric and ingenious Triangular Lodge at Rushton. Of no less interest in this county of "spires and squires" are the fine village churches, from Early Saxon Brixworth to the noble early Gothic buildings which so inspired the Victorians.

Cover of London

London

by Dr Elizabeth Williamson and Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 30 November 1969
London Docklands is a new paperback addition to Pevsner's Buildings of England series. Elizabeth Williamson provides an enlightening record of the historical character of the Docklands as well as describing the new and vital changes in recent architecture. With the aid of numerous text figures and excellent photographs (many of them specially taken by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments), this book provides a valuable and handy guide as well as a reference tool enchanced by extensive indexes and glossary.

Cover of Suffolk, Second edition

Suffolk, Second edition

by Enid Radcliffe

Published 11 March 1974
In this agricultural county of East Anglia, "scenery and buildings are a delight", wrote Pevsner. Numerous medieval houses and magnificent flint-faced churches with fine roofs and rich furnishings bear witness to the prosperity brought by the late medieval cloth trade. Castles are nobly represented by the unusual polygonal keep of Orford and the curtain-walled Framlingham, and great houses by a notable sequence of brick buildings of the sixteenth century. Among the coastal settlements are the lost town of Dunwich and picturesque Southwold; the varied inland towns range from Lavenham, remarkable for its exceptionally well preserved timber-framed buildings, to Bury St Edmunds, where fine Georgian houses are gathered around the precinct of the vast Norman abbey.

Cover of Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire

by Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 29 October 1970
A full account of Cambridge begins this volume, tracing its development prior to the University and continuing with the architectural splendours that have appeared since. Cambridge's architectural highlights are numerous. From the medieval college precincts, built throughout the town and marked out by their turreted gatehouses, to Wren's Trinity Library, through the period of Victorian expansion and on to the ambitious and innovative buildings of the 20th century. In the county itself the most notable monument is Ely Cathedral with its unique octagonal crossing, and the Georgian river port of Wisbech is especially attractive, while Wimpole Hall exemplifies the grandeur of the major country houses. Substantial survivals of timber-framed buildings are more modest in scale but no less significant. Cambridgeshire architecture cannot fail to delight.

Cover of Lancashire: North

Lancashire: North

by Clare Hartwell and Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 26 March 2009

The landscapes of Lancashire range from the shores of Morecambe Bay and the wild Forest of Bowland in the north to the coastal flatlands and Pennine mill towns in the south. Lancaster, the historic county town, boasts some of the finest Georgian buildings in northern England, while Blackpool is unrivaled anywhere for spectacular seaside architecture.

Lancashire treats each city, town, and village in the county in a detailed gazetteer. An expert general introduction provides a historical and artistic overview. Numerous maps and plans, over a hundred new color photographs, full indexes, and an illustrated glossary help to make this book invaluable as both reference work and guide.

Cover of Cheshire

Cheshire

by Clare Hartwell, Matthew Hyde, and Nikolaus Pevsner

Published 11 March 1971

A comprehensive guide to the buildings of Cheshire in all their variety, from Pennine villages to coastal plains and seaside resorts. Chester, the regional capital and cathedral city, is famous for its Roman walls and black-and-white timber architecture, its noble Neoclassical monuments, and its unique medieval shopping 'rows' with their upper walkways. But Cheshire is also a major industrial county, with spectacular and internationally significant mills and canal structures. Specialist settlements include the famous railway borough of Crewe, the salt towns of Nantwich, Northwich and Middlewich, and Lord Leverhulme's celebrated garden suburb at Port Sunlight.