This article examines the architectural evolution of Barlborough Hall from its construction in 1583 to the present day, using a number of previously unpublished documents, mostly from the Locker-Lampson Collection. It also discusses a painting in the British Library which indicates that the house was once prefaced by ranges of forecourt buildings, and it outlines the various alterations made to the house and garden between 1696 and 1714, identifying the architect responsible for at least some of these changes as John Hallam. The most important source of new information is an album of drawings by Lindley, Woodhead & Hurst of 1815, which records the building in detail before further alterations completed in 1825. These drawings also permit reconstructions of the likely design and appearance of the original house. The relatively minor additions in the mid-nineteenth century and the alterations made to the building since it became a school in 1938 are also outlined.

Despite an extensive literature on Castle Howard and its innovative landscape, few details have been known about the important naturalistic garden at Wray Wood. This article identifies four drawings attributed to Nicholas Hawksmoor as designs for the wood's rockwork and watercourses. Although these features have long since disappeared, building records, letters and visitor accounts confirm their existence and show that Hawksmoor was also involved in the display of the sculpture and fountains, with subjects drawn from classical myths and legends. His later designs for the two temples on the east wall of the wood further illustrate his personal vision of the woodland garden and of the sources that inspired its mythological theme. This article draws together all the evidence relating to the wood and considers it in the context of innovative European garden design and its transfer to England in the first years of the eighteenth century. The wood has usually been attributed in more or less equal measure to Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh and their patron Lord Carlisle, but the evidence indicates that it was Hawksmoor who took the lead in carrying out Carlisle's wishes.

Thomas Sandby (1721/3–98), who served as the Royal Academy's first professor of architecture from 1768 to 1798, shaped his students’ architectural thought. His lectures represent some of the crucial developments in viewing architecture that occurred during the period. They are vibrant expressions of how a viewer's experience of buildings informs architectural teaching and design, and demonstrate the importance of architectural experience for eighteenth-century architectural thought. This article explores Sandby's thinking, first in his own observations of buildings in his diary of a tour through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and then in his teachings, which functioned as a kind of manual for future architects. It examines the diary and the lectures for his ideas on the effects of architecture — a building's situation, exterior, interior and decorations — in relation to the picturesque, one of the dominant concepts in his texts and drawings. Sandby's architectural thought is shown to be a relatively early statement of the picturesque applied to architecture and its setting.

The Melville Monument, which stands at the centre of St Andrew's Square in Edinburgh, was erected between 1821 and 1823 in memory of the Tory statesman Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville (1742–1811). The design for the monument, more than 150 ft tall, was provided by William Burn (1789–1870). The 15 ft statue of Dundas that stands on top, added in 1827, was carved by Robert Forrest (1789–1852), a Scottish sculptor from Lanarkshire, from a design by Francis Chantrey (1781–1841). The Melville Monument, imperial in character and context, is part of a series of highly visible monuments built in Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century to celebrate such figures as Horatio Nelson, Robert Burns, William Pitt, King George IV and the dead of the Napoleonic wars (National Monument). This article examines the commission and construction of the Melville Monument, and analyses the choice and significance of St Andrew's Square as a locus for commemoration. The monument is shown to be part of an emerging commitment to enhance the more picturesque qualities of the city, a reaction against the exaggerated formality of the first New Town and its grid pattern.

As one of the world's great centres of trade, the port of Liverpool developed a dedicated office district from an early date. In the 1780s, lettable offices were built by the Corporation near the Georgian Exchange (later known as the Town Hall), making possible the separation of home and workplace. The creation of the public square called Exchange Flags, and the erection of the first Exchange Buildings (1803–08), led to the rapid concentration of business activity in the surrounding streets. Early buildings combined offices with warehousing, but changes in the cotton trade resulted in their replacement with offices only. The first major speculative block was India Buildings (1833), and its success heralded a wave of rebuilding from the 1840s to the 1860s. Many office developers were merchants, but banks and insurance companies also incorporated lettable space into their premises. Classical styles predominated, but traditional fenestration was modified to ensure good natural lighting. The result was an exceptionally imposing business district, symbolising the immense commercial importance of Victorian Liverpool.

This article provides the first account of key texts and concepts in the theory and criticism of Arthur Trystan Edwards. Edwards's notion of ‘civic design’, which emanated from the Liverpool School of Architecture in the second decade of the twentieth century, was part of a broader international trend (particularly in the US and Europe) towards formal, axial and monumental planning. Edwards imbued civic design with a philosophical and political sophistication that set him apart from many of his non-Modernist contemporaries. The article discusses the underlying precepts — such as ‘subject’, ‘form’, ‘urbanity’ and ‘manners’ — in some of Edwards's critical texts, including Good and Bad Manners in Architecture (1924). The final section traces his pioneering interest in high-density, low-rise housing, which culminated with the establishment of the Hundred New Towns Association in 1933–34.

The dance hall was a symbol of social, cultural and political change. From the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s, the dance hall occupied a pivotal place in the culture of working- and lower-middle-class communities in Britain. Its emergence and popularity following the First World War reflected improvements in the social and economic well-being of the working and lower middle classes. The architecture of dance halls reflected these modernising trends, as well as a democratisation of pleasure. The very name adopted by the modern dance hall, ‘palais de danse’, emphasises this ambition. Affordable luxury was a key part of their attraction. This article examines how the architecture of dance halls represented moments of optimism, escapism and ‘modernity’ in British history in the period 1918–65. It provides the first overview of dance halls from an architectural and spatial history perspective.

Although architects collaborate with engineers in the design of buildings, the contribution of the latter is seldom known to historians. This paper examines the design of the Snowdon Aviary at London Zoo, which is typically attributed to Lord Snowdon and Cedric Price. However, the vast majority of surviving design sketches are in the hand of Frank Newby, the structural engineer. Apart from giving clues about the way in which the design developed, these sketches leave the strong impression that Newby was taking the lead in proposing specific forms that the structure might take, because he alone was aware of the structural possibilities. The sketches raise the question: how common was this dynamic? Examples of Newby's contribution to other projects are suggested.

This article examines an unexecuted example of the work of the prolific architectural practice R. Seifert & Partners designed for a site in central Birmingham in the 1970s. R. Seifert & Partners worked largely for developer clients, and this type of speculative architecture has been little studied by historians of the period. The particular example of the practice's work examined here reveals a complex network of architects, planning facilitators and client organisations that, crucially, spanned the public and private sectors.