English Buildings

Across the fields This is one of those buildings I’d seen for years across the fields, but hadn’t got round to a proper visit until comparatively recently.

At the rock houses When I first went to school we were taught that the very first human homes were in caves and that these were clearly damp, dark, unpleasant places to live, soon superseded by tents, wooden huts, and other such shelters.

Letters from the turn of a century, 3 The third and last, for now, of my series on Art Nouveau lettering from Manchester.

Letters from the turn of a century, 2 Next in my series of three bits of Art Nouveau lettering is Albert House, a building in Manchester’s Bloom Street that once housed offices, although for what company or organization I’m not sure.

Letters from the turn of a century, 1 From around 1890 and for the first ten or so years of the 20th century, a new decorative style, Art Nouveau, arrived in England.

Geological pudding Enjoying coffee one morning at the Cock and Rabbit, by the village green at The Lee, my eye caught what looked like some sort of prehistoric standing stone.

Distinctiveness at the fingerpost In 1964, the Warboys Committee, led by Sir Walter Warboys, reported on traffic signs on the roads of Britain.

Well built York’s New Walk is a tree-lined path running south along the bank of the River Ouse that was new in the 1730s.

Scene with cranes As regular readers of this blog will have noticed, I’m rather fond of pubs decorated with tiles.

Iron on display Look up in central York and, above the shopfronts, you’ll see all kinds of evidence of the city’s architectural and social history.

Gate of peace I thought, when I first caught site of this structure in York’s Rowntree Park, that it must have been moved here from elsewhere.

Ice cream, confectionery and books ‘The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream,’ wrote the American poet Wallace Stevens.

All done in brick Glancing up a York backstreet called Oglethorpe, I caught sight of this, a brick building of 1648, to which a pair of curvy, Dutch-style gables with dormer windows were added a bit later in the 17th century.

The view from the pavement When I go to a city that’s new to me, or one I’ve not visited for years, one of the things I do is stroll around randomly and look out for any interesting buildings that I come across.

New light on an old box I interrupt my flow of blog posts featuring buildings seen on my travels to turn my attention to something only a few miles from where I live.

Crossing point The Palladian Bridge in the park at Stowe was built in 1739 by the first Viscount Cobham, around the time that many of the numerous other garden structures – temples, pavilions, statues and monuments – were erected there.

Wellsprings of Liberty When I catch myself taking our water supply for granted in the face of countless communities in other parts of the world who do not have the benefit of a reliable supply of clean water, I think back to my childhood.

In the wind I’ve featured a number of windmills on this blog, because they fascinate me as ingenious structures in which a distinctive architectural form is well adapted to do the job it needs to do – housing heavy machinery such as large rotating millsto…

Changing roles To the traveller along the Lower Icknield Way, north of Tring, the village of Marsworth seems unimpressive, somewhere to pass by quickly perhaps, on the way to Dunstable.

Wooden leg, or, Odd things in churches (19) How odd to find the effigy of a medieval leg leaning against one of the piers in the aisle of Hereford cathedral.

Wood, coal and iron The Forest of Dean, the area of ancient Gloucestershire woodland between the Rivers Severn and Wye, is a place of extraordinary natural beauty.

Mermaids revisited One morning recently the Resident Wise Woman and I, finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere in northern Herefordshire, realised we were not far from Ludlow.

Who did that?

From the far shore Enjoying an aimless stroll across Hereford a few weeks ago, I decided to cross the bridge over the Wye in St Martin’s Street and turn left along a path that ran along the south bank of the river.

A kind of cocktail Walking along Weymouth Street the other week, a number of houses caught my eye, not least this one which in spite of visual obstructions such as cars revealed itself as cramming a lot of architectural incident into a relatively small ex…

On celebrating your heritage I live in Gloucestershire, so Gloucester is my county town and one of the two big towns near me.

Beasts, chevrons, and scrolls I apologise to any readers who have been frustrated at my previous post, which illustrates a notable Norman church but discusses the flowers in the churchyard.

Green thoughts Churchyards.

Underneath the arches I break off my succession of posts about buildings in London and Liverpool to report that I found myself in Amersham the other week, having coffee with friends from the Czech Republic (as you do), and making brief observations of the…

A moment of confusion Standing in St James’s church, Somerton* recently, I was amazed, Why was this not more famous: a 14th-century reredos consisting of a depiction of the Last Supper, with intact figures of Jesus and the apostles in a row of niches.

Liverpudlian Goth-ish St John’s Lane in central Liverpool is dominated by St John’s Gardens and one end of St George’s Hall on one side; the other side is made up mostly of recent developments – St John’s Precinct and a large, glass-fronted office buildin…

Liverpudlian Gothic There are still a large number of good 19th-century commercial buildings in central Liverpool, and some of them are highly decorative, as if to emphasise the prosperity of the city in this period.

Second among equals The Vines* is in many ways similar to Liverpool’s magnificent Philharmonic Dining Rooms – it was built for the same brewery, Robert Cain & Sons, and designed by the same architect, local man Walter Thomas.

Listed When visiting a city I don’t know very well, I make lists of major buildings that I want to see, but once I arrive I’m constantly on the lookout for unexpected delights – the assorted unregarded shopfronts, pubs, sheds and shelters, many of which m…