Tewkesbury Abbey was originally a Benedictine monastery and is now a parish church. It was built in the early 12th C and remains, although in part, a significant example of Norman architecture. In the 14th C the abbey received an upgrade. This post looks at the...
THE SHELL GROTTO AT JORDANS, SOMERSET Shell grottoes grew as a fashion in the 18th C. The grotto was a creation of somewhere ‘other’ than the formal country house and garden. A magical place embellished with exotic shells, corals, fossils, stalactites, stones and...
Situated near Wimborne Minster in the Dorset countryside in an incongruous site. An ‘Italian Palazzo’ which would possibly be more at home in the Veneto. Light, Italianate and airy, whilst still retaining something of England. Perhaps it is the large double-hung sash...
The changing architecture of the English country house demonstrates the evolution of arrangement in how people used and circulated within them. Fashion and educated taste combined with developments in technology provides a fascinating history of country house design....
The main photo for this post is the beautiful marble-tiled paving of the chancel at All Saints Church, Babbacombe in Devon. It is made up of coloured Devon Marble varieties from the Petitor beds – a form of limestone that can be polished for a marble effect (not a...
Parish Church of All Saints, St. Alban’s Road, Babbacombe, Torbay, Devon (1865-74). One of the key works of the architect William Butterfield (1814 to 1900) that sticks in my mind is that of Keble College, Oxford. The overall shape of the building appears as a sober,...
