Word reached me at the end of last month of an exciting new addition to the National Heritage List, Historic England’s register of all the listed sites nationwide. On 26th November 2020, Fawkham Manor of 1866-1867 near Brands Hatch in northwest Kent became a Grade II-listed building. Far more than the date makes it ofContinue reading “A house and a manifesto: E.B. Lamb’s Fawkham Manor”
Category Archives: Kent
An obscure figure finally gets his due
I am delighted to announce that I am the winner of this year’s annual Stephen Croad Essay Prize of the Ancient Monuments Society. My entry, ‘From Georgian antiquarian to Victorian rogue’, was an account of the life and work of the architect Edward Lushington Blackburne (1803-1888). It is, to the best of my knowledge, theContinue reading “An obscure figure finally gets his due”
Ghastly good taste in the Weald
Again rural Kent and again a residential property – very different in scale and style to the cottages in Leeds featured a few weeks ago, but, like them inasmuch as it is the sort of architecture that slips below the radar of historians because it is neither ‘properly’ vernacular nor (at any rate, as farContinue reading “Ghastly good taste in the Weald”
A High Street extravaganza
An awful lot of towns in the Home Counties were badly sinned against in the post-war years by planners, developers, traffic engineers and architects, but few quite as grievously as Maidstone. While I can’t feel too upset about the destruction visited on certain places, where there may well never have been anything terribly interesting, MaidstoneContinue reading “A High Street extravaganza”
Fabulous folk art in Leeds (no, not that one)
Fascinating though Victorian ecclesiastical heritage can be, I’m concerned that this blog shouldn’t get too church-heavy, so here is something completely different – a building that is every bit as colourful and exuberant as architecture already featured here, but apparently off everyone’s radar. Leeds Castle is one of Kent’s big tourist attractions – or atContinue reading “Fabulous folk art in Leeds (no, not that one)”
A newly discovered work by George Gilbert Scott Junior
George Gilbert Scott Junior (1839-1897) is not an overlooked architect. At any rate, he shouldn’t be. He was recognised in his time as a hugely talented designer, yet never received his posthumous due for a number of reasons. One, inevitably, was that he was overshadowed by his more famous namesake father, but his breakdown, relativelyContinue reading “A newly discovered work by George Gilbert Scott Junior”
William Eden Nesfield (1835–1888)
The subject of my first post is someone who, if not exactly obscure, nonetheless is very much a connoisseur’s architect. W. Eden Nesfield (as he tended to call himself) was born into an affluent old Durham family. His father, William Andrews Nesfield (1793-1881), was a veteran of the Peninsula War who subsequently became a waterContinue reading “William Eden Nesfield (1835–1888)”
Less Eminent Victorians 