Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A newly expanded volume on England's preeminent "Home County," exploring its mix of rural and urban architecture as well as its many major historic buildings Surrey is the preeminent "Home County." For centuries it has been the playground for London and its towns and villages home to thousands of its daily commuters by rail. Yet much of Surrey is still rural and rich in churches and timber-framed, tilehung cottages and farmhouses in landscapes saved more than a century ago by some of the earliest altruistic campaigns to protect from the spread of development.
This revised edition, the first since 1971, revisits Surrey's major monuments such as Waverley Abbey and Farnham Castle but also extends its scope to a wide diversity of structures of the more recent past with greater appreciation of the twentieth century, from Modernist villas to Guildford's Cathedral and Postmodern Business Parks. Greater coverage is given to its many towns, eighteenth-century landscape gardens, and the remains of its industrial heritage. The guide once more brings to the fore the county's unrivaled collection of Victorian and Edwardian architecture from the celebrated houses by Philip Webb, Norman Shaw, Lutyens, Voysey, and their multiple disciples to major institutions like Royal Holloway College and Charterhouse School.
Synopsis
A newly expanded volume on England's preeminent "Home County," exploring its mix of rural and urban architecture as well as its many major historic buildings
Surrey, originally published in 1962, was the first Buildings of England volume that Pevsner shared with another author, and Ian Nairn's brilliant, provocative descriptions have been treasured by many ever since. For centuries Surrey has been the playground for London, and home to thousands of its commuters. Yet much of the county is still deeply wooded or surprisingly bucolic. This fully revised and enhanced edition, the first since 1971, is packed with new information on its major historic buildings - Waverley Abbey, Farnham Castle, Sutton Place and Loseley Park among others - and much-expanded accounts of its Victorian set pieces - Royal Holloway College, Holloway Sanatorium and Charterhouse School - alongside fresh appreciation of the twentieth century, including its principal monument, Guildford's cathedral. To the fore in Surrey is domestic architecture: medieval farmhouses, seventeenth-century gentry houses in the Artisan Classical style, eighteenth-century country houses, Victorian and Edwardian businessmen's residences, designed most famously by Norman Shaw, Lutyens and Voysey, and high-class suburban estates. Into this small county is fitted architecture of endless variety, ranging from Georgian designed landscapes to military cemeteries, from seminaries to shooting clubs, and from lime kilns to lunatic asylums.