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To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
Architectural History after Summerson
by Dr Steven Brindle FSA
Sir John Summerson’s famous book Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830, one of the earliest volumes in the Pelican History of Art, was first published in 1953 and remained the prime textbook on the subject until well after the millennium. Summerson was primarily concerned with the growth and development of classical architecture and the succession of major architects who carried this forward, and his book remains a pre-eminent statement of this point of view. However, there are many other ways of thinking about the subject, relating for example to gothic architecture and vernacular traditions, to social and economic history, to the development of towns, to construction methods and craft techniques, to infrastructure and industrial architecture, and to the way that buildings are used and evolve over time – ways that are marginalised or excluded by this approach. Furthermore, Summerson’s title relates to Britain but in practice deals mainly with England: Scotland and Ireland receive short and marginal treatment.
The time seemed ripe for a new survey, addressing the subject from these different points of view, and synthesising some of the wealth of recent scholarship. Steven Brindle’s new survey, Architecture in Britain and Ireland 1530-1830, published in November 2023 by the Paul Mellon Centre, is intended to do this.
This lecture considers Summerson’s great book in its context, acknowledging its merits and strengths, while looking at alternative ways of thinking about the subject, as they have developed in the seventy years since it was published. Steven Brindle sets out some of the thought that underlies his new survey, and argues that architectural history should engage with wider historical themes and narratives, with social and economic history. Architecture in these centuries should be understood as an evolving culture – which developed from being entirely comprised in the minds and skills of craftspeople, to being a ‘subject’ embodied on paper, in books and drawings – a process which allowed clients and literate society at large to be involved in myriad new ways. This process also enabled the rise of the professions, the architects, surveyors and engineers who gradually assumed control of the design and execution of buildings. He also argues that architectural history should support the understanding, conservation and management of the historic environment, which is coming under ever more pressure. Historians of architecture should not be indifferent to the fate of their subject-matter.
This event will be both in person at Burlington House and online. Please select the appropriate ticket below.
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