Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel (1887-1959) is someone who has loomed very large in this blog. I’m aware that I’ve quoted him extensively without fully explaining who he was and why he matters so much to any student of Victorian architecture. It is now time to bring him centre-stage, even if that means straying outside the chronologicalContinue reading “H.S. Goodhart-Rendel and the 20th century Victorians”
Tag Archives: France
Robert Lewis Roumieu: progressive or prankster?
One is the former London office of a firm that produced vinegar and fortified wines. The other is a speculative development of townhouses aimed at the affluent middle classes. Fairly mundane projects typical of the 19th century, one might think; typical, indeed, of hundreds such up and down the country, brought into being by theContinue reading “Robert Lewis Roumieu: progressive or prankster?”
Introducing C.H. Driver (1832-1900), Architect to the Steam Age
It is a measure of the prominence which civil engineering assumed in the 19th century that members of the profession achieved the status of household names. Indeed, they not merely achieved, but also retained it – witness, for instance, Isambard Kingdom Brunel polling second place in the 100 Greatest Britons television series of 2002, nearlyContinue reading “Introducing C.H. Driver (1832-1900), Architect to the Steam Age”
Architect of a lost London: Thomas Edward Knightley (1823-1905)
To a greater or lesser degree, lasting success in any profession comes down to luck and architecture is no exception. Success has to be measured not only in terms of what an architect gets to build in his or her lifetime, but also of the subsequent fate of these achievements. Many posthumous reputations which deservedContinue reading “Architect of a lost London: Thomas Edward Knightley (1823-1905)”
French Architecture for Armchair Travellers – the éolienne Bollée and Clovis Normand
Tracing and unravelling all the routes by which France exerted an influence on Victorian architecture is such an enormous task that it would more than suffice to keep an architectural historian busy for the whole of an academic career. Some of the influence is very obvious, such as the enormous interest excited by the restorationContinue reading “French Architecture for Armchair Travellers – the éolienne Bollée and Clovis Normand”
Less Eminent Victorians 