That great educator, architect, historic buildings man, historian of architecture and inspirer of others, William Richard Lethaby, wrote of his essays on Webb which in 1935 were gathered up and republished as a book on Philip Webb and His Work that he was drawn ‘by a most uncritical admiration and reverence to make this little memorial’, and that Webb ‘did, or tried to do, for building what Browning attempted for poetry: to revitalize it by returning to contact with reality.’ He also wrote that ‘No other man ever loved old buildings as Ruskin and Morris did — except Webb’, thereby emphasizing and refocusing attention on something which has now been unfairly forgotten, namely that we owe our appreciation of the special qualities of old buildings, their textures and (as we would say today) their ‘authenticity’ to Webb as much as to Ruskin and to Morris. Moreover, we owe to Webb something else which those other two great giants of historic buildings preservation could not provide us with, namely a methodology for repairing old buildings which takes into account their original methods of construction, respects their materials and the qualities of the original craftsmanship, and is largely non-destructive. By so doing, Webb became the originator of a tradition of skilful repair of old buildings which has been passed down by a series of influential figures including Lethaby himself, Hugh Thackeray Turner, William Weir, A. R. Powys and a whole host of other and later architects, conservators and craftsmen who are fostered to this day by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings which Webb did as much as Morris to found; and which he made into not simply a campaigning body for saving old buildings, which Morris could have done quite effectively enough on his own, but gave credibility by showing that there was indeed an alternative to destruction and neglect, that old buildings could be sensitively repaired, and that they could very often be transformed and given a new lease of life by skilful adaptation and additions.

When the Society of Architectural Historians visited Little Wenham Hall in September 1998 Edward Martin’s conference notes presented it in the light of a relatively new interpretation of such lordly buildings. This interpretation generally rejects the old view that they are ‘upper halls’ on the grounds that they are instead chamber blocks that have lost the hall ranges on which they once depended. While this seemed to offer a plausible explanation of Little Wenham Hall, it was not entirely convincing (Fig. 1). As a matter of record the Society also visited both Framlingham Castle, which contains the ruins of a possibly similar domestic structure, again now thought to be a chamber block dependent on a lost hall range, and Colchester Castle, of which more below.

There has always been something curious, if not exotic, in that all-embracing category of post-Conquest stone domestic building known as the ‘upper hall’. It rose from the wastes of the Dark Ages like a shooting star to glitter briefly in the twelfth century only to fade away slowly a century or so later. The new explanation that its function was different from that of the hall and was moreover dependent on an open hall is therefore compelling: after all, open halls and dependent chamber blocks have a well-established pedigree.

Many attempts have been made to determine how the Westminster Hall roof works, and nearly as many different conclusions have been reached (Figs 1, 3, and 4). Some architects, engineers, and architectural historians have concluded that the principal support of the roof is provided by its great wooden arch. Some have argued that the roof functions like other hammerbeam roofs, but they have not been able to agree on how a hammerbeam roof works. Still others have held that so unprecedented a space could only have been spanned with wood by combining two different types of roofs — the hammerbeam roof and the arched roof. The Westminster Hall roof is so complex that it appears as if it might function in any one of these ways, but it cannot function in more than one.

It is a general law of Islamic architecture that elements and features that evolved for a structural reason come, with the passage of time and refinement of the forms, to be transformed into decorative features; that is, non-structural embellishments or modifications of the forms begin to appear. The same process is common to other schools of architecture, but a specific characteristic of Islam has been its propensity to draw upon previous sources and to develop them as a specifically Islamic idiom or theme. It is also a characteristic of Islamic art that an ambiguity often remains as to whether certain forms were meant to be fully decorative or purely architectonic; there are many instances where they represent a mixture of the two. The shouldered arch is an interesting example of this characteristic evolutionary approach, and this paper reviews the chronology of its use and development in the areas most populated and influenced by the early expansion of Islam: Iran, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt. The study seeks to trace the development of the decorative form of the shouldered arch and its use as an articulating device, and to suggest the influences in its evolution. It focuses on the Saljuq (1040–1194) and Mongol or Ilkhanid (1220–1336) periods, while including mention of other contemporary dynasties and cultures of relevance.

‘Joinery’ in Chinese architecture is defined as non-structural carpentry (xiao muzuo, literally ‘minor carpentry’), as distinguished from ‘carpentry’ (da muzuo, or ‘major carpentry’). It is one of thirteen building operations specified in the Yingzao Fashi, the official standard for building construction, published and enforced by the Song sovereign in 1103. According to the Yingzao Fashi, joinery includes the delicate woodwork of interior structures, such as fixed, movable or removable partitions, screens, doors and windows, decorative or ornamental ceilings, floors and staircases. It also covers buildings or structures on a small scale, including well pavilions or huts, entrance gates, fences and balustrades, and gigantic furniture, such as shrines and sutra-case cabinets.

The chapters about the classical orders in Book One of Palladio’s I quattro libri dell’archittetura are among the most influential architectural texts ever written. Together with Vignola’s Regola delli cinque ordini they represent the best-organized and most thorough formulation of the canon of the classical orders inherited from the Renaissance. This paper analyzes the genesis of Palladio’s theory of orders by comparing the proportions of the elements of the classical orders stipulated in his treatise with those advocated by Vitruvius and other Renaissance authors who had previously written about the orders.

The palace at Stirling Castle, c 1538–40, the culmination of the architectural (?) career of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, c. 1495–1540, was the most arresting achievement of the architectural patronage of King James V. Until James V had begotten an heir, the Earl of Arran, head of the Hamilton family, stood to inherit the Scottish crown and Finnart was Arran’s elder, but illegitimate, half-brother. During his brother’s minority, from 1529 to 1539, Finnart — ‘the bastard of Arran’ as he was known — was head of the house of Hamilton, one of the country’s elite, and familiar with the king. Curiously, he also displayed an unwonted interest in, and capability for, construction much remarked by his contemporaries. Of his buildings, the Palace at Stirling (Fig. 1) occupies a particular place, since this elaborate and expensive royal lodging may have been built at his own, rather than royal, expense, and gifted to his king in return for the formal grant of his enormous free barony of Avendale, and for legitimization (see below). It was a high price to pay for bastardy.

The revolutionary new window type that emerged from the London joiners’ workshops during the period c. 1670 to c. 1685 (see Part One) owes its existence to two novel features in particular, the introduction of the glazed wooden sliding frame or ‘sash’, and the application of a counterbalancing mechanism. The first technique, a French innovation of about half a century earlier, greatly enhanced the weather-proofing capacity of the window and, because of its rigidity, also permitted a more effective exploitation of advances made in the manufacturing of large sheets of clear flatglass (for mirrors & windows) than had previously been the case. The second, an English invention, released the full potential of the new wooden frame and encouraged the development of a large openable window which, in terms of convenience and technical efficiency, was superior to anything else on the market. In order to understand why this development took the course it did we need to look briefly at the general state of fenestration in English architecture at the time of the sash-window’s appearance.

In a letter of November 1694, Sir Christopher Wren set down some thoughts on the purpose and benefits of drawing:

For Wren, drawing was more than a means of depicting a design, but a process which facilitated the conceptualization and refinement of a design. It was by ‘drawing’, he believed, that skill in ‘invention’ was most effectively acquired; hence his regret that native craftsmen lacked an ‘education’ in ‘designing or drawing’. He continues the letter by suggesting that drawing, as ‘the Foundation of all Mechaniek Arts’, might ‘usefully’ be included in the education of the young:

Sir John Soane’s tomb in St Pancras Gardens, London (Fig. 1), has a claim to popular fame as the inspiration for Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s design of the K2 telephone kiosk. It is also one of only two tombs in London to be listed Grade I; the other is Karl Marx’s in Highgate Cemetery.

Although no taller than a telephone box, it is the most assertive tomb to be designed by a British architect for his own use. It is a masterpiece of multum in parvo — or, as Soane’s assistant said of his master’s Museum, ‘a conglomerate of vast ideas in little’. Previous studies have tended to evaluate the structure in the context of Soane’s architectural style, as an extreme expression of a highly personal manner. Studied in the context of the Georgian churchyard its design is even more startling: it was the boldest, subtlest, and most perplexing tomb in London. Soane broke every rule in the highly conventional language of churchyard commemoration, prefiguring the bombastic exuberance of the Kensal Green necropolis by two decades.

In his article entitled Gandy and the Tomb of Merlin, published in 1941, John Summerson brought to light one of the most introverted figures in the history of early nineteenth-century architecture. The essay, which begins with an analysis of one of Joseph Michael Gandy’s finest watercolour perspectives (Fig. 1), shows how the scene represented in the painting could be associated with a passage from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Some years later, the same author described the architecture of ‘Merlin’s Tomb Chamber’ as ‘a version of Anglo-Norman, with some reminiscences of Roslin Chapel which Gandy had measured and drawn.’

One of the concerns of The Ecclesiologist from its very first edition, and one that was subsequently to reappear regularly in its pages, was the provision of church designs that would be appropriate for erection in the colonies. While subsequently the Cambridge Camden Society had much success in this direction, the outstanding artistic exports of the middle years of the nineteenth century were to sites rather closer to home: the designs — both executed and unexecuted — for great churches and cathedrals on the Continent of Europe by, among others, G. G. Scott senior, William Burges, E. W. Pugin and G. E. Street. Perhaps at no period in history was the Continent more ready to look to England for artistic inspiration, in contrast to a flow of ideas that more usually travelled in the opposite direction. It was ‘one of the very few artistic revolutions that began in this country and swept the world.’ Yet the starting point for the crown of European artistic leadership passing to England was a most unlikely one: in all probability the first nineteenth-century English architect to be employed at a Continental cathedral was Robert Dennis Chantrell (1793–1872), from Leeds. In 1839, in the very year that the Cambridge Camden Society came into existence, he was involved with the rebuilding of the roof of St Saviour’s Cathedral in Bruges following a fire that year; subsequently he repaired and considerably extended the tower and proposed other additions to the west end of the building.

In 1997 Lanarkshire House (Fig. 1), located on Ingram Street in the ‘Merchant City’ and one of Glasgow’s landmark buildings, was vacated by the High Court and put up for sale. The present structure stands on the site of the renowned eighteenth-century Virginia Mansion and was created over several decades in the nineteenth century by three (or perhaps four) of the city’s leading architects. The original building was designed in the early 1840s for the Glasgow and Ship Bank by David Hamilton (1768–1843), the ‘Father of architecture in the West of Scotland’. It subsequently became the office of the Union Bank of Scotland and was altered by James Salmon Senior (1805–88) in the 1850s and underwent major redevelopment twenty years later under John Burnet Senior (1814–1901), possibly with the assistance of his son John James (1857–1938). The Union Bank operated from the site until the 1920s when it moved to St Vincent Street and its old building was occupied by Lanark County Council’s offices and latterly the courts.

In 1973 our first investigations relating to the career of Enoch Bassett Keeling (1837–86) were published as an illustrated paper in Architectural History; so this brief Postscript is intended to augment and correct the information previously noted. We ended our paper with a plea that Keeling’s work should be reassessed ‘before his last buildings vanish’, but, in spite of our modest suggestion, many more demolitions and alterations have taken place.

One of Goodhart-Rendel’s ‘Rogue Goths’, Keeling has not been treated with kindness by posterity. The late Mr Gordon Barnes referred to ‘poor old Bassett Keeling’, a valedictory remark from which it would be difficult to dissent, for not only were his buildings often panned during his lifetime, but they were savaged by later critics. The church of St Mark, Notting Hill (1862–63), for example, was denounced as an ‘atrocious specimen of coxcombry’ in Building News, and Pevsner perceived that work as endowed ‘with all the ham-fisted ugliness which [Keeling] commanded’. The façade, to Pevsner, was ‘madly asymmetrical’, and the interior employed a ‘wild use of multi-coloured brick’. Professor George L. Hersey has likened the arrival of Butterfield’s church of All Saints, Margaret Street, in a world ‘not greatly disturbed by Pugin’, to a ‘Congo chieftain’ bursting ‘into a performance of Les Sylphides’, but the simile perhaps is even more apposite in the case of St Mark’s, the barbaric uproar of which was more strident than anything Butterfield achieved. St Mark’s was demolished in the 1970s, a fate that has befallen many of Keeling’s creations, while other surviving fabric has been neglected or altered almost beyond recognition.

In 1991 two previously undocumented façade designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for a shop and office block and a warehouse block, both in an arcaded street, were auctioned (Figs 1 and 2). These drawings have been related to Patrick Geddes’ town-planning work in India after 1914, yet the background of the designs has remained unexamined. The available evidence presented in this essay allows one to argue that Mackintosh conceived both blocks for the city of Lucknow. They were ideal designs which responded to Geddes’ criticism of Lucknow’s Victoria Street. This street symbolized a type of destructive urban planning whose rectification demanded exemplary architectural and urban design efforts. Required was ‘reconstruction towards Arts and Crafts’ which meant for Geddes and his circle of friends to recreate the city as a, indeed the most, human form of life.

The English language is noted for the richness of its vocabulary, but it has failed to generate an adequate technical terminology for the discussion of plasterwork. This probably accounts for the importation into English of the Italian term ‘stucco’, to refer to one of the materials used by plasterers; and of the Italian ‘stucchi’, in its anglicized form ‘stuccoes’, to describe the decorative plasterwork executed in ‘stucco’. But the ways in which these terms have been used and their meanings shifted over time, appear to have produced greater confusion rather than clarification, and it is the purpose of this article to examine the process whereby this situation has arisen.

It is not only in English that the use of the term ‘stucco’ now fails to convey any clear meaning to an audience, as was made apparent in a recent summary of the situation in France:

To make the identification of a source the determining factor in the dating of an architectural design is tantamount to making the tail wag the dog. This is precisely what has happened to James Paine’s unexecuted design for the south front of Kedleston. Unable to find any precedent prior to the 1770s for its giant domed and colonnaded bow, Christopher Webster hastily concluded that the design, which does not survive and is known only from the engravings published by Paine in 1783 in the second volume of his Plans, was made shortly before that publication and specially for it; not in 1759 for Lord Scarsdale, as Paine claimed and architectural historians have always believed.

In 1805–06 Charles Harcourt Masters designed Cheltenham’s Royal Crescent, a seminal work within the town’s architectural history in that it was the first important terrace to grace the town at a time of rapid expansion and unprecedented popularity during the early years of the spa’s development.

In Bath and North-East Somerset Library is a plan signed by Masters for St James’s Square, Cheltenham, which though never completed was much more ambitious than Royal Crescent and possibly the largest projected square ever to grace the town. It is not dated, but it would be reasonable to assume a dating c. 1808–09 bearing in mind contemporary deeds, maps, and a newspaper advertisement to be discussed later. The earliest deeds in the possession of No. 1 St James’s Square go back only to 1856, but crucially they repeat the content of the original ones. They confirm that the square was begun in 1809 in accordance with its earliest appearance on a map called ‘Plan of The Town with the Situation of the Mineral Wells at Cheltenham’ surveyed by Daniel Trinder in 1809. He blocks in the square on three sides, excluding the south, as early as 1809, and shades in the north where No. 1 is, indicating that it was built or in the process of being built. The extent of the north side appears to be exaggerated, indicating more properties than there actually were. The deeds refer to 16 April 1808 as the date of the purchase of the land between a ‘Thomas Read of the City of Bath Esqre and a William Read of Cheltenham’, both presumably of the same family. Thomas Read’s connexion with Bath might explain in simple terms why Masters was working in Cheltenham. The 1809 date is again confirmed by the following advertisement in the Cheltenham Chronicle for Thursday, 25 May 1809: