The Story of Britain's Best Buildings

by Cruickshank, Dan

• ISBN13: 9781552977484
• ISBN10: 155297748X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-02-01
• Publisher: Firefly Books Ltd

Summary

Britain is home to an extraordinary array of impressive and historic buildings. They are outstanding architecturally and hold fascinating secrets within their walls.Durham Cathedral has long been celebrated for the bold simplicity of its architecture and great beauty. But look closer, and its pioneering engineering becomes more apparent and the symbolism of its decoration more mysterious. Much speculation has been focused on the columns in the south transept -- especially on the odd one at the end. In the riddle of its stones, the cathedral gives us important clues to help understand the aspirations, beliefs, and struggles of the society that built it.The Story of Britain's Best Buildings explores eight such edifices that characterize a nation. From the heroic to the idiosyncratic, this sweeping survey also looks at: Windsor Castle Holyroodhouse Blenheim Palace Tower Bridge Midland Grand Hotel at St. Pancras Highpoint One Cardiff Castle.In this handsome book, illustrated with more than 120 color photographs, the author celebrates the architecture of great buildings and tells their stories which, together, form a gripping portrait of over a thousand years of British history.

Author Biography

Dan Cruickshank is an architectural historian and the author of London: the Art of Georgian Buildings and Life in the Georgian City. He appears regularly on the BBC television series House Detectives, and he has contributed to BBC2's One Foot in the Past.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Durham Cathedral

Windsor Castle

Holyrood house

Blenheim Palace

Cardiff Castle

The Midland Grand Hotel

St Pancras Tower

Bridge Highpoint One

Acknowledgements and Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

IntroductionThe history of Britain is enshrined in its buildings An exploration of the island's architecture offers dramatic insights into the often strange, even unlikely, juxtapositions that have given the nation its cultural identity. This book explores a thousand years of Britain's history through the story of eight buildings. These buildings represent different epochs and regions but they all express the creative fusion of ideas and ideals -- artistic, spiritual, technical, social, political -- that go into the making of great architecture. They also show that great buildings are corporate works of art, often conceived and constructed by many people over many years, and they reveal ways in which buildings can be enriched through generations of adaptation as they evolve to meet changing needs.All eight buildings develop ideas about the nature of architecture, and their stories reveal a diverse range of inspiration. Durham Cathedral is a monument both to the creative power of foreign influence -- in this case Norman ideas about Romanesque architecture -- and to the way imported ideas can be fused creatively with local artistic tastes to create a distinct national and regional architecture. Furthermore, Durham is a spectacular example of the way architectural and structural innovation can explode from within a well-established design and construction tradition. The realization, during the 1120s, of the pointed transverse arches of the Durham nave is a key moment in Western architecture. The arches show how architectural thinking, ever evolving, can be launched in a new direction by a moment of revolutionary brilliance that reevaluates the established way of doing things.An exploration of Durham's architecture is also an exploration of architectural meaning. As a great cathedral, Durham was built to express the Christian religion through forms and symbols. To understand the cathedral and decode the secrets embedded in its stones, it has been necessary to attempt to enter the minds of medieval men and see the building and God's Creation -- the world -- through their eyes. A prime key to unlocking the mysteries and meaning of Durham has been an investigation of the geometry that underpins its design and construction. In the Middle Ages geometry was seen as a sacred science, a divine force latent in nature and an expression of God's creative power, which man could harness to form his own works in harmony with God's cosmos. Durham Cathedral is a powerful expression of this belief as is St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.As with Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Windsor Castle is a complex and ancient structure, more a village than a building, that tells the story of its nation. Both Windsor and Holyroodhouse have evolved to fulfil differing roles, ranging from defensive site and refuge to epicentre of royal pomp and power. Both have sought to give physical meaning to the changing institution of monarchy.Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, is an expression of both personal power and national glory. As a very explicit monument to military triumph, paid for by the government, it is hardly the typical English eighteenth-century country house. The architecture of the palace -- massive, theatrical, portentous -- was also exceptional. But the process through which the house and estate was created is a story of high drama that throws light on the way a great work of art is formed.The three nineteenth-century buildings explored in this book each reflect aspects of the great developments and debates -- scientific, technical, artistic and religious -- that galvanized that tumultuous century. The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, London, ushered a new building type into Britain -- the grand railway hotel -- and utilized the revolutionary and pioneering building technology of the railway age. Cardiff Castle is an extraordinary product of the great conflict between traditional and doctrinai