Browse previous Gazette articles
RIPON ONE OF PEVSNER'S TOP TWELVE
Published by the Society in the Ripon Gazette, 13th January 2012
Making lists seems to respond to something deep down in the human psyche. New Year resolutions, shopping lists, a hundred places to visit before you die, the ten best goals of the premier league season . . . The list (of course) is endless.
So here’s another list. What do you make of it? And who do you think compiled it?
Bewcastle Cross
Durham Cathedral
The façade of Ripon Cathedral
The vault of Exeter Cathedral
St George’s Chapel, Windsor
King’s College Chapel, Cambridge
Astley Hall
St Stephen Walbrook
Seaton Delaval
Strawberry Hill
St Augustine, Kilburn
Impington Village College
You may know all, or most, of these structures – and you may be thinking that it’s a very curious list. How nice to see Ripon Cathedral there, you may say, and as a religious building it has some connection with St George’s Chapel and Kings’ College Chapel, and with the two London churches, St Stephen Walbrook and St Augustine Kilburn. But what about Astley Hall, Strawberry Hill and, most curious of all, Impington Village College? Who is responsible of this odd list, and what does it tell us?
The list appears in a recent biography of the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, written by Susie Harris. It was compiled by Pevsner in 1974 as his mammoth undertaking, ‘The Buildings of England’ at last reached completion with the publication of the last volume, Staffordshire. In forty-six volumes, the first of which came out in 1951, Pevsner had listed and described all the important buildings in each county.
With rigour and Teutonic thoroughness Pevsner tagged and docketed every aspect of the buildings. His purpose was to catalogue, not to pass judgement. That disappointed some of his contemporaries. The artist John Piper said that the Pevsner guides told you everything about a place except what it was like; Alec Clifton-Taylor, an architectural historian like Pevsner (but with a more accessible style, perhaps) and an old friend of his, said that Pevsner left out ‘the one thing we wanted to know most, which was whether the churches were any good or not.’
But this was not Pevsner’s point. He presented the facts; it was up to the users of the books to visit and make up their own minds. Many, though, found this difficult to take; they wanted guidance – a map through the maze of styles and architects, the thicket of columns and buttresses, the jungle of big-city architecture. Did Pevsner actually have opinions and preferences, or was it solely list-making in which he was interested?
To help, the Daily Telegraph asked Pevsner to select his twelve ‘favourite buildings’ to mark the end of his English journeys. Most of us, asked to do the same (why not have a go?) would probably compile a long list and eventually whittle it down to the required dozen. The finished result would reflect our prejudices as well as our enthusiasms.
Typically, Pevsner didn’t work like that. His list was based on the architectural styles, chronologically from Anglo-Saxon to his own day – one example for each. So he begins with Bewcastle Cross – one of the greatest of Anglo-Saxon crosses, set up in Cumbria in the late 7th century – to represent the Anglo-Saxons. We may think he could have chosen St Wilfrid’s crypt in Ripon, but we mustn’t be greedy.
Durham Cathedral represents the Norman period of architecture – he’s thinking particularly of the nave with its massive columns and its high vault. Then comes Ripon. Here he is very specific; it’s the façade – the west front – of the cathedral that gets his vote as the best piece of Early English architecture in England. It’s a great accolade, and one which Ripon should trumpet.
Yet if you read his description in his ‘Yorkshire West Riding’ volume of ‘The Buildings of England’, little of this is allowed to intrude. The nearest he gets to enthusiasm is the comment that ‘The Ripon façade has a clarity and balance rare in E[arly] E[nglish] facades’. Nevertheless, Ripon’s west front obviously left a great impression on him. He visited it for ‘The Buildings of England’ in 1958 and it appeared in his favourite buildings list 16 years later.
Pevsner’s other choices represent later periods – Exeter’s vault the Decorated period; St George’s Chapel and King’s College Chapel both appear for the Perpendicular period. Astley Hall in Chorley stands for Elizabethan and Jacobean country houses. Wren’s fine church of St Stephen Walbrook in London and Vanbrugh’s Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland are chosen for the Baroque. Strawberry Hill, at Twickenham (recently restored to its 18th-century magnificence) is there for the Georgian Gothic Revival; for the more serious Victorian Gothic Revival is the Victorian Church of St Augustine Kilburn designed by John Loughborough Pearson in 1880.
You may have noticed that there is nothing neo-classical or Palladian there – nothing by Inigo Jones, nothing by Lord Burlington or William Kent, nothing by James Wyatt or William Chambers, both of the latter with good Ripon connections. Pevsner was not a classical man.
And what of Impington Village College? Impington, a village just north of Cambridge, had its new College built in 1938 by one of Pevsner’s heroes, the German architect Walter Gropius. Working with the English modernist Maxwell Fry, he produced what Pevsner described, in an unusual burst of enthusiasm for ‘The Buildings of England’, as ‘One of the best buildings of its date in England, if not the best.’ He liked its grouping, its clean lines and its planning. To us, it seems very much a period piece. Almost 800 years separate us from the construction of Ripon cathedral’s west front, but it is still appreciated as a great work. It would be fascinating to know if, in the unlikely event of its surviving, Impington Village College appears on list of great buildings by Pevsner’s distant successors.
Browse previous Gazette articles
RIPON ONE OF PEVSNER'S TOP TWELVE Published by the Society in the Ripon Gazette, 13th January 2012So here’s another list. What do you make of it? And who do you think compiled it?
Bewcastle Cross
Durham Cathedral
The façade of Ripon Cathedral
The vault of Exeter Cathedral
St George’s Chapel, Windsor
King’s College Chapel, Cambridge
Astley Hall
St Stephen Walbrook
Seaton Delaval
Strawberry Hill
St Augustine, Kilburn
Impington Village College
You may know all, or most, of these structures – and you may be thinking that it’s a very curious list. How nice to see Ripon Cathedral there, you may say, and as a religious building it has some connection with St George’s Chapel and Kings’ College Chapel, and with the two London churches, St Stephen Walbrook and St Augustine Kilburn. But what about Astley Hall, Strawberry Hill and, most curious of all, Impington Village College? Who is responsible of this odd list, and what does it tell us?
The list appears in a recent biography of the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, written by Susie Harris. It was compiled by Pevsner in 1974 as his mammoth undertaking, ‘The Buildings of England’ at last reached completion with the publication of the last volume, Staffordshire. In forty-six volumes, the first of which came out in 1951, Pevsner had listed and described all the important buildings in each county.
With rigour and Teutonic thoroughness Pevsner tagged and docketed every aspect of the buildings. His purpose was to catalogue, not to pass judgement. That disappointed some of his contemporaries. The artist John Piper said that the Pevsner guides told you everything about a place except what it was like; Alec Clifton-Taylor, an architectural historian like Pevsner (but with a more accessible style, perhaps) and an old friend of his, said that Pevsner left out ‘the one thing we wanted to know most, which was whether the churches were any good or not.’
But this was not Pevsner’s point. He presented the facts; it was up to the users of the books to visit and make up their own minds. Many, though, found this difficult to take; they wanted guidance – a map through the maze of styles and architects, the thicket of columns and buttresses, the jungle of big-city architecture. Did Pevsner actually have opinions and preferences, or was it solely list-making in which he was interested?
To help, the Daily Telegraph asked Pevsner to select his twelve ‘favourite buildings’ to mark the end of his English journeys. Most of us, asked to do the same (why not have a go?) would probably compile a long list and eventually whittle it down to the required dozen. The finished result would reflect our prejudices as well as our enthusiasms.
Typically, Pevsner didn’t work like that. His list was based on the architectural styles, chronologically from Anglo-Saxon to his own day – one example for each. So he begins with Bewcastle Cross – one of the greatest of Anglo-Saxon crosses, set up in Cumbria in the late 7th century – to represent the Anglo-Saxons. We may think he could have chosen St Wilfrid’s crypt in Ripon, but we mustn’t be greedy.
Durham Cathedral represents the Norman period of architecture – he’s thinking particularly of the nave with its massive columns and its high vault. Then comes Ripon. Here he is very specific; it’s the façade – the west front – of the cathedral that gets his vote as the best piece of Early English architecture in England. It’s a great accolade, and one which Ripon should trumpet.
Yet if you read his description in his ‘Yorkshire West Riding’ volume of ‘The Buildings of England’, little of this is allowed to intrude. The nearest he gets to enthusiasm is the comment that ‘The Ripon façade has a clarity and balance rare in E[arly] E[nglish] facades’. Nevertheless, Ripon’s west front obviously left a great impression on him. He visited it for ‘The Buildings of England’ in 1958 and it appeared in his favourite buildings list 16 years later.
Pevsner’s other choices represent later periods – Exeter’s vault the Decorated period; St George’s Chapel and King’s College Chapel both appear for the Perpendicular period. Astley Hall in Chorley stands for Elizabethan and Jacobean country houses. Wren’s fine church of St Stephen Walbrook in London and Vanbrugh’s Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland are chosen for the Baroque. Strawberry Hill, at Twickenham (recently restored to its 18th-century magnificence) is there for the Georgian Gothic Revival; for the more serious Victorian Gothic Revival is the Victorian Church of St Augustine Kilburn designed by John Loughborough Pearson in 1880.
You may have noticed that there is nothing neo-classical or Palladian there – nothing by Inigo Jones, nothing by Lord Burlington or William Kent, nothing by James Wyatt or William Chambers, both of the latter with good Ripon connections. Pevsner was not a classical man.
And what of Impington Village College? Impington, a village just north of Cambridge, had its new College built in 1938 by one of Pevsner’s heroes, the German architect Walter Gropius. Working with the English modernist Maxwell Fry, he produced what Pevsner described, in an unusual burst of enthusiasm for ‘The Buildings of England’, as ‘One of the best buildings of its date in England, if not the best.’ He liked its grouping, its clean lines and its planning. To us, it seems very much a period piece. Almost 800 years separate us from the construction of Ripon cathedral’s west front, but it is still appreciated as a great work. It would be fascinating to know if, in the unlikely event of its surviving, Impington Village College appears on list of great buildings by Pevsner’s distant successors.
