Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in great little used condition. Ex library book no stamps on pages but cover page has a corner missing where sticker removed. Pages are all good otherwise with no stamps on block or content. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The black and battered splendour of Hardwick brilliantly captured by Edwin Smith in his photograph of the west front has vanished under a bland re-facing which must leave one questioning whether it need have been so drastic; the magic of the Little Castle at Bolsover has been adulterated by well-intentioned but not always sensitive restoration and redecoration; and much of the money lavished on Wootton Lodge once one of the most beautiful houses in England would have been better unspent. The book deals with the buildings which can be connected with Robert Smythson his son John and his grandson Huntingdon and tries to place these in the context of their time. The central source of evidence for their work is the large collection of Smythson drawings now belonging to the Royal Institute of British Architects. My catalogue of these was published in 1962 as Volume V of Architectural History the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians; numbers in brackets in the text of Robert Smythson refer to the drawings as numbered in the catalogue. The drawings combine with documentary evidence from accounts or letters to produce a hard core of buildings with which the Smythsons were definitely involved. Others can be added on stylistic grounds or grounds of family connection but it should be emphasised that there is an especially high degree of surmise in linking buildings of this period to individuals. (MP)