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September 2014

Vol. 156 / No. 1338

The Building of England. How the history of England has shaped our buildings, S. Thurley

Reviewed by Owen Hopkins

544 pp. incl. 542 col. ills. (William Collins, London, 2013), £35. ISBN 978–0–00–730140–9.

Reviewed by OWEN HOPKINS

This is, by some reckoning, Simon Thurley’s fifth ‘big book’ – no mean achievement even before one considers the eight smaller books he has written or edited, as well as numerous scholarly articles and essays. All this Thurley has managed while charting a professional career that has seen him move from Historic Royal Palaces, via the directorship of the Museum of London, to his current role as Chief Executive of English Heritage – and this is not to mention the considerable broadcasting career he has also sustained during this time. Thurley has brought all this accumulated experience and expertise to bear in tackling a survey as ambitious as ‘a history of English buildings [. . .] the history of the nation through what it has built’. The result is a meticulously assembled, wide-ranging and well-written book that displays all his talents in describing the social lives of buildings in a lively and engaging way.

Early on Thurley is at pains to explain why this is history of English, and not of British, architecture. Many studies have tackled the history of the whole British Isles, just as others have focused on the forging of Britain as a political entity. Meanwhile, architectural his­torians have been frequently guilty of conflating England and Britain, or even using them synonymously. A case in point is John Summerson’s Architecture in Britain 1530–1830, which must surely have been one of the inspirations of Thurley’s project. Given the book’s title, Summerson begins rather incongruously and abruptly with a chapter on ‘The English Renaissance’. (Scotland gets just an appendix; Wales even less). Thurley’s specificity is, therefore, refreshing. Indeed, he takes great pains to include all of England, not falling into the common trap of giving too great a prom­inence to the architecture of London, the country house or the medieval cathedral. Chapter sections on such topics as ‘Civic Pride 1350–1450’, ‘Keeping Clean and Warm’ or ‘Inland Transport’ reveal the scope of Thurley’s interests. ‘High’ and ‘low’, the work of famous architects and of comparative unknowns, are treated with relatively equal attention. This, of course, reflects the equivalent approaches of Thurley’s professional career where he has garnered popular success, for example at Hampton Court, by ‘dressing’ both the kitchens and state rooms as they might have been. It is here, though, in this conjunction of Thurley’s professional and academic careers, that his account begins to fray at the edges.

For all the trumpeting Thurley gives it, his social approach to architectural history is not strictly social history at all, but rather, one could say, a kind of ‘social heritage’. In outlining his methodology, Thurley takes aim at the notion of style that he strongly argues has given a determinist slant to so much architectural history. Against this, he constructs what he sees as a broader architectural history that encompasses questions of function, techno­logy and geography. But, today, this is a rather outdated argument; such questions are inseparable from the study of architectural history as it is currently practised. What Thurley means by ‘social history’, then, is really a consideration of architectural production that makes no distinction between the buildings and spaces of those of high status or of modest means. This is quite sensible, and clearly an advance when one compares this work to other equivalent surveys – but the claims for it being a distinctly social project are ambiguous.

As far as the book’s intention of exploring the history of England through its buildings goes, major political, economic or demographic changes are outlined for their impact on architectural production, both what was built, where and how. Yet, the economic and social forces and trends that drove those changes, often over considerable periods of time, get comparatively short shrift. Ultimately, for Thurley, England was – and remains – a nation of individuals. England’s architecture, therefore, is the result of individual choices, whether by kings, aristocrats or wealthy merchants. This is, of course, only part of the story.

In many ways, one can see this work as a companion volume to Thurley’s previous book, Men from the Ministry (2013),1 where, in advance of English Heritage’s forthcoming restructure, he explored the history of how the state has sought to preserve the nation’s architectural heritage. (Indeed, the present book’s focus on England clearly derives from Thurley’s professional remit.) It is, though, this conjunction of Thurley’s professional and academic careers and interests, which so shapes this book, that leaves one ultimately wanting more from it.

Early on, Thurley shoots down the idea of ‘progress’ as an anachronism. Yet, it is also an anachronism to compare, as he does, the medieval craftsmanship of, say, Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey with a contemporary skyscraper in order to argue that there has been no absolute advance between the two. This odd suggestion of relativity derives essentially from the arguments that are used to form the notion of heritage. Once buildings or objects are deemed significant enough, by whatever criteria, to be preserved for the future they leave their respective times, places and social contexts to become ‘heritage’ – a separate, elevated category of cultural production to which a common set of assumptions (and legal protections) apply. From this derives Thurley’s almost phenomenological assertion that ‘what buildings of the past tell us is less important than the way they affect us now’. But this is to instrumentalise the past in a way that becomes determinist and, moreover, socially exclusive; different people – and, importantly, different social or cultural groups – see different things in buildings. Viewing the history of England’s architecture through the lens of how these buildings ‘affect us now’ distorts the picture and ultimately and irrefutably competes with the analysis of buildings in their own historical contexts.

Thurley’s overriding concern with his methodology, it seems, is to avoid the assumptions that questions of style bring to architectural analyses, as well as the established hierarchies of place and power and of the well-known architect versus the humble craftsman. But, in the end, the apparently neutral concept of heritage itself tends towards ideology; once the status is accorded it becomes unquestioned – even unquestionable. For all this book’s qualities, wide scope, clear, lucid prose and conscientious attention to the often overlooked, it is in this originating idea where it unfortunately falls short; one can reveal how people lived and how they built, but it does not explain why.

1     Reviewed by Chris Miele in this Magazine, 156 (2014), p.117.