A revised and abridged record of the Annual Lecture of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, given at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, on 12 November 2012

Two exceptional events in London in 2012, the queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, provoked questions about the origins and legacy of major public events of the past. This article explores the impact on the fabric of London since the eighteenth century of occasional planned spectacles through discussion of two main types of event, namely the procession along a predetermined route and occasions requiring a large organized space.

George, Elector of Hanover, succeeded to the throne as George I on 1 August 1714. The proclamation of a new monarch took place at a series of traditional sites. The Heralds started at the king’s residence, St James’s Palace, and proceeded to Charing Cross, where the statue of Charles I had replaced the medieval Eleanor cross destroyed in the Civil War. The third site, Temple Bar, marked the boundary of the City Liberties. Within the City the proclamation was repeated at St Mary le Bow and at the Royal Exchange — recent post-Fire buildings, but iconic sites — marking the significance of the Church and the power centre of the City merchants.

Francis Vernon (c. 1637-77) is not a particularly well-known figure in the history of British architecture, but perhaps he should be. In 1675 he became one of the first English people to have set foot in Athens and, the following year, published what was undisputedly the first account in the English language of the city and its architecture. Vernon was a member of the recently founded Royal Society and one of a group of English and French travellers who journeyed through central Greece and Turkey in the 1670s. He was murdered in Isfahan in early 1677. Vernon's account of the time he spent in Athens was published in the Society's journal, the Philosophical Transactions, in 1676, and it included brief but illuminating descriptions of the Erechtheion, the Temple of Hephaestus and the Parthenon, the latter written over ten years before the bombing of the temple by a Venetian army in 1687. The Transactions often contained both travel writing and antiquarian material and, in this respect, Vernon's account was typical of the journal's somewhat eclectic content in its early years. Significantly, Vernon's publication predated more famous accounts of Greece from the period, such as those written by his travelling companions Jacob Spon (who released his Voyage d'ltalie, de Dalamatie, de Grèce et du Levant in France in 1678) and George Wheler, whose A journey into Greece was published in 1682. Unlike Vernon, both Spon and Wheler survived their journeys. The only European publication on Athens that preceded Vernon's was a French text of 1675 that would prove to be a fabrication. As this article will demonstrate, Vernon's initial exposure of this fabrication was one of the reasons why his account of the city became so important in English intellectual culture at the time.

Few questions have more exercised historians of eighteenth-century British architecture over several generations than that of the authorship of the design of Holkham Hall in Norfolk. The house, built between 1734 and 1765, is the quintessential domestic example of English Palladianism at its most Neoclassically extreme. Almost every feature of Holkham's exterior elevations replicates motifs to be found in Antiquity, transmitted through Andrea Palladio or other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources, whilst inside not a single painted god, hero or saint complicates the clearly defined surfaces of the damasked walls or coffered ceilings. As a result, Holkham is a building of high international importance since, as John Summerson put it in describing the roots of later eighteenth-century Neoclassicism, it was in earlier eighteenth-century England that ‘the first categorical revolt against the Baroque and the first architectural statements of the new attitude are to be observed’.

In one of the witty characterizations for which he is justifiably famous, Horace Walpole described the subject of this article — the transformation of the villa at Old Windsor owned by his friend, Richard (Dickie) Bateman — as a bout of one-upmanship between two men of taste: ‘[I] converted Dicky Bateman from a Chinese to a Goth […] I preached so effectively that every pagoda took the veil’. He later described the change of the style of Bateman’s house in terms of spiritual affiliation: Bateman’s house had ‘changed its religion […] I converted it from Chinese to Gothic’. Here as elsewhere in the early years of the Gothic Revival, Walpole serves as principal interlocutor, providing keen, if sharply biased, insights on many significant building projects in England. Walpole positions himself as a teacher and Bateman as a disciple whom he convinced to change his tastes from Chinoiserie (‘the fashion of the instant’) to the Gothic, the style ‘of the elect’. Walpole’s clever allegory of stylistic change as national and religious conversion was based in part on the fact that he provided the conduit for Richard Bentley and Johann Heinrich Müntz, two of his closest designers in the ‘Committee of Taste’, to design Gothic additions for Bateman between 1758-61. Rebuilt and expanded in the fashionable mode of Walpole’s own Strawberry Hill and by its designers, from Walpole’s perspective at least, Old Windsor as remodelled for Bateman served to reinforce his role as arbiter of the Gothic taste and Strawberry Hill as its paradigm.

In the Dublin Journal of 4 April 1769, Thomas Weston, recently arrived from London and ‘versed in the Stucco Art’, announced his proficiency in the ‘Antique Taste’, having worked ‘some Years under the Designs of Mess. Adams, Chambers and Stewart [sic]’. His timing was far from coincidental: less than a month earlier the premium for the design of the Royal Exchange in Dublin, awarded to the English architect Thomas Cooley, had been announced; the competition had generated no less than thirty-three British submissions (or 60% of the total number of competitors). Just as enlightened Irish architectural critics had deemed the employment of an English architect for this particular project as ‘too obvious to be insisted upon’, so it would appear that Weston had identified an opportunity to establish himself in Ireland as an unrivalled exponent of the Neoclassical style. Some weeks later, on 27 April, Weston amended his original advertisement to record that he had ‘served his Apprenticeship to Mr. Rose of London’.

The decorative arts are integral and crucial elements in the works of Philadelphia architect Frank Furness (1839–1912) (Fig. 1). The wonderfully inventive embellishments to his buildings, in wood, metal and glass, contribute to a memorable richness and help distinguish his buildings from those of his contemporaries. Our current understanding of Furness and his works has been based primarily upon considerations of the buildings themselves, and on anecdotal information concerning Furness’s personality and family, and some reasonable assumptions as to how his work fits within the architectural and design trends of his day. A fuller understanding has been hindered by the fact that he wrote very little, that first-hand accounts of his working methods are few, and that, of his relationships with the artisans who produced his decorative designs, only the collaborations with the furniture maker Daniel Pabst (1826–1910) and sculptor Karl Bitter (1867–1915) have been documented. Therefore, the discovery of new sources of information that document an overlooked but long-time working relationship between Furness and a noted English artist is an important addition to Furness scholarship.

From time to time since his death in 1961, R.S. Wilshere has been referred to as a leading figure in the development of Modern architecture in Ireland, and his series of schools built in Belfast between the two world wars has been cited as an important part of that story. Yet the full significance of his schools has not hitherto been discussed in detail, while the full extent of his building achievement has not been outlined anywhere. The great esteem in which Wilshere and his Belfast schools were once held by contemporaries, however, merits both the recounting of his life and overall career, and an explanation of the nature of his special achievement in schools architecture.

In addition to the twin aims of re-establishing Wilshere's reputation as an architect of more than usual worth and revealing the notable qualities of some of his schools, this exploration of his career and buildings also points to other themes of the inter-war era which have not been fully explored elsewhere and would benefit from further research.

In an interview recorded shortly before his death in 1987, Maxwell Fry recalled the birth of Modern architecture in Great Britain around a half-century earlier. In the course of discussing the work of the Modern Architectural Research (MARS) Group — the society that he had helped to establish in February 1933 and of which he was then the last surviving founder-member — Fry highlighted the links between architects in Britain and their continental European counterparts. Observing that MARS was first established on the basis of an invitation that Wells Coates had received to form a British chapter of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), he noted that the Group had immediately gained an entrée into an international forum that functioned as a unique gathering point for the architectural avant-garde. At the same time, he asserted that membership brought with it commitments that conferred ‘a very serious responsibility’.

CIAM was not, of course, the only conduit for the links that MARS members had with the wider world, but in many ways it was the MARS Group’s relationship with the ‘international community of modern architects […] made visible in the foundation of CIAM’ which defined it and differentiated it from other architectural groupings of its day. Most other such bodies initially coalesced around a single manifesto or exhibition and then quickly fell apart when their members found that they had little in common apart from an enthusiasm for Modernism. By contrast, MARS retained an enduring purpose through its membership of CIAM.

Exhibition 58: Modern Architecture in England, held between 10 February and 7 March 1937 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), was a notable event. Amidst claims that ‘England leads the world in modern architectural activity’, the exhibition ‘amazed New Yorkers’ and equally surprised English commentators. However, it has not subsequently received any extended investigation. The present purpose is to look at it as a multiple sequence of events, involving other exhibitions, associated publications and the trajectories of individuals and institutions, through which tensions came to the surface about the definition and direction of Modernism in England and elsewhere. Such an analysis throws new light on issues such as the motives for staging the exhibition, the personnel involved and associated questions relating to the role of émigré architects in Britain and the USA, some of which have been misinterpreted in recent commentaries.Hitchcock's unequivocal claim for the importance of English Modernism at this point still arouses disbelief, and raises a question whether it can be accepted at face value or requires explaining in terms of some other hidden intention.

During the decades that followed the loss in 1898 of Spain's last colony, Spanish architecture languished in a turbulent search for identity. In this search, some architects argued for a return to the historic architecture of the Spanish colonial empire, while others followed the progressive ideas of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Finally, in the mid-1940s, Spain's architects began to progress towards a successful reconciliation of these two seemingly opposed camps. A critical moment occurred in 1947 with the publication of Fernando Chueca Goitia's watershed text Invariantes Castizos de la Arquitectura Española (Genuine Invariants of Spanish Architecture). In this text, which Chueca conceived as a pocket reference for Spain's Modern architects, he described Spain as a unique place where the diverse architecture of Christian Europe and Islamic North Africa coalesced into a new — and essentially Spanish — whole. In it, he called on Spain's architects to move beyond superficial considerations of both history and modernity, and to arrive at a genuine, self-critical identity for Spanish architecture.

The architect Maxwell Fry (1899–1987) is widely recognized as one of the key protagonists in the development of Modernist architecture in Britain. Discussion of this role perhaps inevitably tends to focus on Fry's early involvement in the Modern Architectural Research (MARS) Group and his inter-war work, particularly his prestigious partnership with the Bauhaus-founder Walter Gropius. Post-war, emphasis shifts to Fry's advancement of ‘Tropical Architecture’ in former British colonies with his wife and partner, the architect Jane Drew (1911–96). Despite a string of important commissions on home soil, their post-war work in Britain has been sidelined due to a historical narrative focused on the rise of ‘New Brutalism’. This article contributes to a reassessment of Fry, Drew and Partners’ work in 1950s and 1960s Britain. It uses the Pilkington Brothers’ Headquarters (1955–65) in St Helens as a case study to examine post-war industrial patronage and how this affected the architectural approach of the project's lead designer, Maxwell Fry. In particular, it investigates his background in civic design at Charles Reilly's Liverpool School of Architecture. Furthermore, it examines Fry's reassessment of pre-war Modernist theory and practice during the mid-1950s and his response to the younger generation of MARS members, such as the Smithsons and Denys Lasdun.

After the Second World War, economic development across Western Europe resulted in the spectacular transformation of cities into large and densely populated urban agglomerations. Although the underlying driving force of demographic change had already become apparent in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, it now manifested itself on an unprecedented scale and at an increasing speed. In most Western European countries the Roman Catholic Church’s leadership responded to this with massive church-building campaigns, suggesting that it viewed architecture as a critical means by which to re-establish a religious presence within these urban agglomerations. To this end, many dioceses established administrative structures dedicated to the planning, financing and designing of religious infrastructure.

These bodies have been little studied hitherto, but this article argues that they played an instrumental role in the post-war Catholic revival, by establishing a dense pastoral network within the newly urbanized areas. Moreover, they fostered a new culture of ecclesiastical patronage, as the scale and urgency of the task required new operational and managerial structures for building, fund-raising and mobilizing congregations to support this massive undertaking.