| Nicolas Pevsner's Staffordshire | |
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Taking time out from editing and setting the society's newsletter, our October speaker was William Henwood, who gave us a talk on the Staffordshire volume of the Buildings of England. The originator of this series of books, and author of most of them, was Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, art and architectural historian, prolific writer, critic, broadcaster, campaigner and much else. Born in 1902 in Leipzig in Germany, he studied the history of art at the university there and, after working at the art gallery in Dresden, took up a teaching post at the University of Göttingen. Pevsner's heritage was Jewish so when the Nazi party was elected to power, and passed laws discriminating against non-Aryans, he realised that his future did not lie in Germany. In the Autumn of 1933 Pevsner came to England, soon moving from London to Birmingham where he lodged in Edgbaston. He managed to get a research fellowship at the University of Birmingham and wrote his first books in English. These sold well and began to establish his reputation in this country. By the outbreak of war in 1939 Pevsner's wife and children had joined him in England and they set up home at Hampstead in London. During the war Penguin Books published Pevsner's "An Outline of European Architecture"; which became a bestseller in its field, remaining in print for decades. In 1945 Pevsner and Allen Lane, founder and head of Penguin Books, discussed several publishing projects that Pevsner had in mind. One was a series of guides to the buildings of England (and only England at that time), county by county; based on something similar for Germany that was written by a German academic in the late nineteenth century. Lane was enthusiastic and he and Pevsner signed a contract. What was planned as 40 books to be published over 15 years, eventually turned out to be 46 books in 25 years! This was not to be a desk-based exercise. Pevsner would visit each county and inspect its buildings himself, armed with guidebooks, magazine articles and other reference material supplied to him by researchers that he employed for the task. His university work meant that he could normally only make the visits during the two long vacations, at Easter and in the summer, and a schedule of two counties and two books each year was established. So, in the late 1940s, Pevsner's odyssey began. He would spend all day, every day, visiting places and buildings by car, always being driven as he never mastered the art, writing up his notes in a pub or modest hotel in the evenings and adding an introductory essay when back in London. The first fruits of his labours appeared in 1951: books on the buildings of Cornwall and Nottinghamshire. Their layout set the model for all subsequent volumes: an introductory essay, an A-Z gazetteer of places, a glossary of architectural terms, and an index, with a section of photographs in the middle. They were typical Penguin paperbacks of the time, printed on paper of indifferent quality and priced at 3/6 (17½p). From the mid-1950s the books were published in both paperback and hardback; from the mid-1960s, only in hardback. As more information and research became available the books got thicker, moving away from the original concept of an inexpensive guide to be carried in a coat pocket. From the later 1960s some volumes were written by other authors under Pevsner's general editorship. As one county had to be the first so another had to be last; and this was Staffordshire, published in June 1974. The very last of all the tens of thousands of buildings that Pevsner visited was The Parsonage at Sheen, a small village in the Staffordshire Moorlands. The A-Z gazetteer of Staffordshire is only 280 pages long. The research and Pevsner's visit took place before the local government changes of 1974, so the book includes what are now the four Black Country boroughs of Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley and Sandwell. Without them, the gazetteer would only run to about 250 pages, much less than many earlier volumes. After 25 years' work on the project, perhaps Pevsner was getting tired. So, what did he have to say about Lichfield? Most of the buildings one would expect to find are mentioned. Unsurprisingly, the Cathedral is described in detail, although Pevsner's strictly analytical approach leads him to describe the visible fabric as largely Victorian. He was evidently impressed by The Close and its setting ("more complete than most and more intimate than any") and The Vicar's Close is "a pleasant backwater". He found The Deanery "beautiful" and the wings added to the Bishop's Palace in 1864 "amazingly sensitively done". The parish churches of St Chad, St Mary, St Michael and Christchurch are also all described. Among secular buildings in the city centre, Pevsner considered the George Hotel to be "one of the best late 18th century hotel buildings in the land". He also praised the statue of Johnson and (as an art historian) he thought the reliefs around its base "outstandingly good". He felt the Tudor Café and Donegal House to be two of the best houses in Lichfield. In his introduction to Staffordshire, Pevsner wrote "Some words on the completion of the Buildings of England ..." which concluded "the first editions are only ballons d'essai [experimental projects]; it is the second editions which count.". Indeed by 1974, many of the earlier volumes had been revised by other authors. The books became ever thicker, leading to a change of format with a larger page and slightly smaller typeface in 1982, allowing about 25% more text per page. Since Pevsner's death in 1983, a charitable trust has overseen work on the series. In 2002 publication of the books transferred from Penguin to the Yale University Press but, apart from the introduction of colour photographs and the Yale logo, the look and feel of the books stayed the same. New editions always depended on sales figures and the availability of funding and authors. As one county had to be the last to be published first time around, one had to be last to be issued in a second edition and again it was Staffordshire. In June 2024, almost 50 years to the day since the first edition, it was revised by Dr Christopher Wakeling of Keele University. Sadly, he died in 2023 with his work about 99% finished. In both editions, Lichfield punches above its weight in terms of text and photographs: of the latter, 9 out of 104 in 1974 and no less than 17 out of 123 in 2024. What new did Dr Wakeling have to say about Lichfield? The text on the cathedral is greatly expanded, drawing on the work of Warwick Rodwell when he was cathedral archaeologist; eliciting its early history and detailed chronology. To Pevsner's description of St. John's Hospital, with its "extremely impressive east range" facing St John Street, Wakeling adds the John Piper chapel window of 1984, "its greatest treasure". Pevsner regarded what in the 1970s was the Bakers Lane shopping precinct as "well tucked in and well managed". Wakeling thought what is now the Three Spires to be "a decent if not outstanding scheme". The 2024 edition includes many buildings that were either ignored or overlooked by Pevsner. He tended to omit non-Anglican places of worship, because there was little information available about them and they were usually locked, and he rarely covered industrial and commercial buildings. Pevsner's withering comment "nothing in Tamworth Street" is corrected by entries for the Methodist Church and the former Regal Cinema. Other places of worship now noted are the Roman Catholic church of Holy Cross; SS Peter and Paul at the Dimbles ("an arresting design"); Wade Street Church; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at Netherstowe and the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Lombard Street. Omitted from both editions is any mention of Alexandra House in Queen Street. Opened in 1970 for the Police Mutual Assurance Society, it was praised at the time by the Civic Society as the city's best new building. It has recently been refurbished and is now the headquarters of Central Co-op. A notable addition is text on St. Chad's Well explaining that the structure of 1949 was designed by Frederick Etchells, who had been a Vorticist (a modernist artistic movement around the time of the First World War) and who had translated the works of the architect Le Corbusier into English. If Pevsner had known this, he would surely have included it. New also are entries for Sandfields Pumping Station; St. John Street railway bridge; City Station and goods shed; the former Lichfield Brewery; King Edward VI school and Quarry Lodge on Tamworth Road. The 2024 text records a few losses in the city since the 1970s (Bird Street post office; much of the brewery and the original Trent Valley station); and adds several recent buildings. Among these, the Lichfield Garrick Theatre and the Chapter House apartments at The Friary merit both text and photographs. The former is thought "not a design to sit quietly among the city's Georgian and neo-Georgian streets", while the latter is considered "one of the better new developments in Lichfield". Pevsners no longer cost 3/6. When first published in 1974, Staffordshire was priced at £ 4.50, but the new edition is £ 45, which will increase to £ 60 next year. As for the future, Staffordshire is almost certainly the last of the line. The books are now considered old fashioned. There is talk of digital versions, but no more printed volumes are in prospect. As the Guardian reviewer of the new Staffordshire put it: "they are redolent of the years when you might stow your guidebooks and Ordnance Survey maps in the glove compartment of your Morris Minor.". Nevertheless, to quote another critic, "No other country in the world has anything like Pevsner". Sources:
William Henwood |
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