Mouldings as used in the medieval period can be described as contours applied to the salient parts of a building to give emphasis through light and shade.

It is significant that Robert Willis, whose writings set an unsurpassed standard for art historians, opened his important book on architectural nomenclature with a chapter on moulding terms, analysing William Worcestre’s drawing and its accompanying description. Willis used moulding data as long ago as 1845 to distinguish successive phases of building work in the nave of Winchester cathedral. The moulding surveys published soon after by the architect Edmund Sharpe proved exemplary both in quality of draughtsmanship and methodical approach. In the twentieth century W. R. Lethaby, aware of the value of moulding analysis, laid the foundation for recognizing individual styles in his two books on Westminster Abbey. He directly influenced Mr John Harvey, who collected the dated mouldings of one master mason, Henry Yeveley, and his associates, thus giving new direction to architectural studies. ‘Every historian of art who is concerned with Gothic’, wrote the late Paul Frankl in i960, ‘makes a note of the profiles.’

Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannkus is remembered today as the manifesto of English Palladianism. It was published at the outset of Campbell’s own career as an architect, and although he had almost certainly begun work already on his important house at Wanstead, it was probably the publication of his book in 1715 which established his reputation in London and led in 1716–17 to his replacement of Gibbs as the architect in charge of the rebuilding of Lord Burlington’s house in Piccadilly. Despite this auspicious start, however, the role of Campbell both as a publisher and as an architect in the beginnings of the Palladian revival was soon obscured and then forgotten. The dilettante public which by its subscriptions made such a lavish publication possible generally treated it merely as a series of ‘views of seats’ in the traditional manner and failed to notice Campbell’s other aims.

Much has been written in recent years on the architecture of Stowe. Mr Laurence Whistler's guidebook was first published in 1956 and two revised editions have subsequently appeared; the issue of Apollo for June 1973 was devoted to Stowe; numerous articles on the house and its gardens have appeared in Country Life, from 1905 to 1974; and a detailed history of Stowe by Mr George Clarke and the present writer published in instalments in the Stoic (Stowe School Magazine) has been completed in July 1977. For a comprehensive pictorial record before the family sold up, one can turn to Messrs Jackson-Stops's sale catalogue of 1922. However, it is felt that students of English architecture and garden design will find it helpful to have briefly set out the authorship of the various elements of the house and the garden buildings and that is what this catalogue is intended to do.

James Wyatt (1746–1813), architect to George III, was the most celebrated English architect of his day, but his fame was not based on a strongly personal manner. Wyatt’s use of a wide variety of historical styles baffled contemporaries and posterity alike. The architect William Porden sniffed that ‘Wyatt had no principles in his art’ ; nineteenth-century writers excoriated his lack of historical accuracy. Both attitudes fail to understand that scenic effect and innovation within historicism were crucial to James Wyatt’s work. His approach was pragmatic, not aligned solely with archaeology or the Picturesque, although deeply aware of both. Wyatt’s work for one patron in particular, John Penn, demonstrates the complexity of his attitudes toward historical styles and toward the process of design.

Among the records transferred to the Public Record Office from the Commissioners of Crown Lands in 1961 is a plan [PI. 17] for ‘roads, fences, water and plantations’ proposed for Marylebone Park, signed by John Nash and dated March 1811.1 This is the earliest known version of Nash’s design for the park, but in spite of its obvious importance has never been adequately published or described. Its interest is enhanced by the fact that it is the only plan which relates to the two well-known scenic panoramas [Pis20-35], also now in the PRO-2 Of these, only small sections have hitherto been reproduced. It therefore seems worth while to bring the three drawings together here, reproducing both panoramas in extenso.

The story of the Ringstrasse in Vienna is familiar. It took the place of the outdated fortifications round the medieval city. The Emperor decided in 1857, a competition was held in 1858, and the plan was approved in 1859. The ring was going to be a wide green belt with large public buildings dotted around: the Parliament Grecian, the Town Hall Gothic, the Opera, the University, the Museum and School for the Decorative Arts, the Exchange and the Burgtheater all in one form or other neo-Renaissance, and so on.

But one major building was already started when the Ringstrasse was laid out. The Votivkirche was vowed after an attempt had been made in 1853 to assassinate the Emperor. A competition was held and won by Heinrich Ferstel, and the foundation stone was laid in 1856. In the designs, and later in the execution, the church looked like a High Gothic French cathedral [Pl. 36). It is about 90m long and has a facade with two towers crowned by spires and a choir end with an ambulatory and radiating chapels – seven of them as at Beauvais and Cologne. The church was consecrated in 1879.

The history of the Cliveden album and its rediscovery was given in the last issue oi Architectural History, when the twenty-one architectural drawings relating to the ist Earl of Orkney’s garden buildings and proposed alterations to the house were catalogued and illustrated. The remaining twenty-seven drawings discussed here fall into three main groups: nineteenth-century designs for Cliveden itself (by Charles Barry, Robert Edis and, possibly, Henry Clutton), to which have here been added, for the sake of continuity, Burn’s drawings for the rebuilding of 1827 (in the RIBA Drawings Collection); second, some drawings for Taplow Court made about 1743 for the Earl of Inchiquin by Stiff Leadbetter; and third, a small number of schemes for other houses – a plan related to Duff House, Banffshire, in the style of Roger Morris, four ground plans related to Chicheley Hall in Buckinghamshire, here attributed to Thomas Archer, c. 1719-23, and a set of designs for a small villa commissioned by Sir George Warrender from James Gillespie (later Gillespie Graham) in 1819.