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🚨 Booking closes soon for the Third Annual Mark Girouard Symposium:

Untold Tales: Women Pioneers in British and Irish Architectural History

📆 Friday 13 November 2026
⏰ 17:30–20:00

📆 Saturday 14 November 2026
⏰ 10:15–19:30

🎫 £35.00 (including sandwich lunch), concessions available. Booking closes 4 November 2026.

📍Vernon Square Campus, LT2

There have been a growing number of studies of female architects over the past twenty years but almost no accounts of female architectural historians. One exception is Dana Arnold’s edited collection Women and Architectural History: The Monstrous Regiment Then and Now (2025) which involved women operating from the 1970s onwards. This symposium looks back further to the earliest generations involved in the writing and promotion of architectural history in a wide range of spheres. We are interested in women who were involved in the subject as academics, curators, journalists, photographers, writers and in the conservation and heritage spheres from the nineteenth century onwards.

With contributions from:

Dana Arnold (Sainsbury Institute, University of East Anglia)

David Barber (Independent Scholar)

Louise Campbell (University of Warwick)

Matthew Critchley (ETH Zürich)

Luca Csepely-Knorr (University of Liverpool)

Medha Dube (Birmingham City University)

Émilie Oléron Evans (Queen Mary University of London)

Frida Grahn (London South Bank University)

Richard W. Hayes (Independent Scholar)

Joshua Mardell (Royal College of Art)

Sue Palmer (Sir John Soane’s Museum)

Vicky Richardson (Curator and Writer)

Natcha Ruamsanitwong (University of Cambridge)

Tanya Southcott (University of Brighton)

Caroline Stanford (Landmark Trust)

Organised by Dr Kyle Leyden, Lecturer in Early Modern Architecture and Visual Culture, the Courtauld; Dr Manolo Guerci, Reader in Architecture, University of Kent and Prof. Elizabeth McKellar, President, SAHGB. Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and The Institute of Historic Building Conservation.

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I'm excited by some personal research at the moment. Delighted to have had a paper accepted on the historian, campaigner and conservationist Katharine E. Esdaile (1881-1950) for the upcoming @thesahgb Mark Girouard symposium Untold Tales: Women Pioneers in British and Irish Architectural History (13 & 14 Nov @courtauld - link in my bio). Esdaile published several seminal books and over 300 articles; she transformed understanding of English sculpture since the Renaissance (reviving the memory of the wonderfully named Epiphanius Evesham among many others) and was a founder member of @thegeorgiangroup; she transcribed George Vertue's gossipy notebooks, invaluable sources for #18thC art historians. She was the only woman on the wartime committee to record church monuments and encouraged a young John Summerson to carry out his invaluable photographic survey of bombed buildings.
And yet, Passing Honours in Classics at Oxford (with a third) in 1903, she had to wait another 17 years before the university allowed women to be granted degrees (Cambridge didn't do so until 1949). Her 'blue paper' to be elected a Fellow of @socantiquaries was rejected and she was never elected. Her husband Arundell was awarded an OBE for services to librarianship; not she.
Today Esdaile is largely forgotten, yet her work was highly influential at the time and still informs so many areas of scholarship (not least for Eleanor Coade).
An untold tale indeed, of what life was like as a female historian interested in architectural and art history between the wars. She may not look the most glamorous figure in this photo, but I'm really looking forward to sharing more about her life and work.

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4 weeks to go ...

Looking forward to taking part in 'Untold Tales: Women Pioneers in British and Irish Architectural History' @courtauld in London.

In collaboration with @historicengland I'll be presenting new research on Ursula Clark (1940-2000).

My paper explores her pioneering career as both an architectural photographer and architectural historian.

Booking for the 3rd Annual Mark Girouard Symposium is open until 4th November.

For further details, visit the 'What's On' section of the @cortauld website.

https://share.google/SK7FDsDFr2YTxicO5

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It’s lovely to finally share the pieces I’ve been working on for my recent small exhibition, ‘A Mind Insensible of Guile’: reimagining the forgotten architecture of John Meadows.

Here’s a new work inspired by the only extant and visible piece of Meadow’s work that remains, at Hartland Abbey in North Devon. The piece is an homage to an 1830 engraving of John Meadows’ original design, prior to the remodelling of the mid-19th century. Thankfully, in spite of the remodelling, much of Meadows’ work is still quite visible.

If you’d be interested in acquiring this piece you can find the link in my bio.

#CountryHouse #JohnMeadows #architecture #art #britishartist

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Baguley Hall is a spectacular early 14th century hall on a site lived in since Anglo-Saxon times. Listed and scheduled, it is hard to find but steeped in local history.

Although part of a restoration project managed by the NW Historic Buildings Trust, it was still a working farm until the 1930s, after which the area was developed for social housing.

As one of the most important timber framed houses in Europe, it was saved by public petition fifty years ago, when Wythenshawe’s MP Alf Morris urged Parliament to save ‘one of the finest timber buildings in Europe' and 'of outstanding historical and architectural importance, whose demolition would be emphatically contrary to the best interests of Manchester and Great Britain as a whole.'

The standing hall was built in the early–mid 14th century, commissioned by Sir William de Baguley (or possibly completed by his son or grandson). Key architectural features inc:
*Large oak timbers, some over 50 cm thick — among the largest used in any English timber hall;
*Open great hall with central hearth;
*Wattle‑and‑daub walls; and,
*H‑plan layout.

It is a rare survival of a fully timber‑framed medieval manorial hall, making it one of the finest in northwest England.

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Looking forward to taking part in 'Untold Tales: Women Pioneers in British and Irish Architectural History' @courtauld in London in November.

In collaboration with @historicengland I'll be presenting new research on Ursula Clark (1940-2000).

My paper explores her pioneering career as both an architectural photographer and architectural historian.

Booking for the 3rd Annual Mark Girouard Symposium is now open.

For further details, visit the 'What's On' section of the @cortauld website.

https://share.google/SK7FDsDFr2YTxicO5

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What do the caryatids at John Soane’s early 19th-century homes have to do with slavery and abolition?

My new article, just published in @thesahgb Architectural History, explores this question across Soane’s architectural projects, asking whether these figures can be understood as anti-slavery or abolitionist symbols.   See link in bio to read.

#johnsoane #caryatids #architecturalsculpture #neoclassicism

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The Victorian Society is deeply saddened to announce the death of Peter Howell, one of the Society’s longest-serving and most distinguished members, a former Chairman, and one of its great and defining characters.

Read our tribute to Peter on the link on our bio.

An obituary will appear in the next edition of 'The Victorian', our membership magazine.

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Double major award recognition for 'Architecture and Artifice'!
We are delighted to share that Professor Christine Casey’s monograph, 'Architecture and Artifice: The Crafted Surface in Eighteenth-Century Building Practice', has been shortlisted and longlisted for two of the most distinguished honours in art and architectural history.

- Longlisted for the 2026 Berger Prize:
Awarded annually by The Walpole Society through the inspiration of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, celebrating brilliant writing and scholarship on the arts and architecture of the United Kingdom.

- Shortlisted for the 2026 Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion:
Awarded annually since 1959 by @thesahgb, recognising a monograph that makes an outstanding contribution to the study and knowledge of architectural history.

This research, based @trinitycollegedublin (@history_art_architecture), reflects major support from @erc_research and @researchireland in examining the intersection of craft, material history, and eighteenth-century building practice.
Warmest congratulations to Christine Casey on these major national and international recognitions!
Learn more via the link in our bio.

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Left the lovely @emfcamp on the way to @downstairskhead to watch @floandjoan and then show off myself - back playing London tomorrow at @redimpcomedyclub with Steve Punt - this is #coventry station - I love the font of it

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The first episode of The Public Architect is out now.

This new five-part podcast series is hosted and produced by our own MArch Course Leader Dr Claire Jamieson, together with London Met colleague Dr Jessica Kelly, for the @thesahgb. It is an RIBA-funded project exploring the relationship between the architectural profession and the public sector, from the post-war period to today.

In episode one, historian Professor John Gold discusses post-war architecture in Britain and its relationship to the state and local government, including some of the common misconceptions about the period. Claire and Jess are then joined by practitioners and researchers Mike Althorpe @karakuseviccarsonarchitects , Andrea Jung from Islington Council, David Knight @dk_cm and Holly Lewis @we_made_that to discuss what that relationship looks like now.

The series runs fortnightly from Friday 10th July, bringing together twenty-two contributors – historians, policy experts and practitioners – to trace how the architectural profession has understood its role in relation to planning, local government and the public since the war.

The Public Architect is a project of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, funded by @riba edited by Front Ear Podcasts, with production support from @matthewlloydr.

Listen via the link in bio or find it on Spotify!

Image: Part of a model prepared to the plans of Donald Gibson (Coventry City Architect) for the post-war rebuilding of Coventry's city centre.

#architecturalhistory #publicarchitecture #welfarestate #architecturalresearch

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The Summerhouse at Berkley Power Station.

A recent field trip to the landscape at Berkley revisited one of the many layers of history on the site, namely this small Grade II-listed summerhouse. Constructed in the 19th century for the Earl of Berkley, it is a small, perfect example of folly architecture, with a hexagonal plan, a fireplace, and windows on three sides that give views onto the Severn estuary and ignore the power station beside it.

This Cotswold stone-roofed building is marooned in a no-man’s land and seems forgotten. I got talking to a local woman in her 80s, who told me that local people used to bring their children down to picnic alongside it in the summer, and that it was open to the public when the power station was still in operation.

The power station was designed in the 1950s, opened in 1962, and was a fascinating and unique design, located on a thin slice of geological rock extending inland from the Seven Estuary and situated in what had been the deer park of nearby Berkeley Castle, which had been sold after the war to pay death duties.

The former reactor towers at Berkley, which have been reduced to 2/3 of their original height, are not shielded, unlike those at its sister station, Bradwell. The buildings’ muscular concrete facade is still partly visible. Designed with Sir Giles Gilbert Scott as the architecture consultant to the CEA.

To the right of the Summer House, behind the barbed wire, is (for a nuclear anorak) the legendary Cavendish Laboratories.

It may not look it, but it was very dark when I took this image, with a 2.5-minute exposure and a lot of wind, holding onto the underside of my tripod to keep it steady!

#FollyArchitecture
#IndustrialHeritage
#ListedBuilding
#ForgottenPlaces
#SevernEstuary

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