victorian architecture

Grave concerns: Exploring the history of the British cemetery and its uncertain future

The cemetery – defined as a burial ground without an attached primary church or chapel – is a place where artistic, architectural, horticultural, historical, and literary interests are combined. Many were planned as places of botanical and geological instruction, while the epitaphs, extolling the moral virtues of the deceased, were intended to encourage emulation by the living. Appreciating their great value is a vital step towards ensuring that these spaces do not succumb to neglect and decline, as Chris Catling reports.

Castell Coch (Nilfanion, CC BY SA 4.0)

Seeing red

Rising high above the floor of the Taff Valley, north of Cardiff, the conical towers of Castell Coch are a familiar sight to travellers driving along the A470. The Victorian architect William Burges designed the castle for the 3rd Marquess of Bute between 1875 and 1881, resulting in a masterpiece of High Victorian romanticism.

Preserving a Palmerston Fort

The Historic Buildings Team from Cotswold Archaeology has recently carried out a detailed recording of Fort Gilkicker in Gosport. This fort is part of the Victorian defences around the town’s harbour. It is one of a number of structures known…

The Corbett Society

Harold James Dyos, late Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester, wrote that London underwent three distinct periods of growth: an increasingly dense build-up of the population in the centre, its spill-over into the outer districts of London,…

LEFT The exterior of Icknield Street School in Birmingham. photo: Stephen Hartland

Victorian architecture

There is a growing realisation that the solution to the climate emergency is to retrofit existing buildings, with all their embodied carbon and energy, rather than to build new ‘environmentally sustainable’ structures in place of old.

Left The Cloister Cafe at London’s St Bartholomew the Great has been described by the Financial Times as ‘probably among the nicest in England’.

Nooks, Corners, and Cloister Cafés

The Cloister Cafe at London’s St Bartholomew the Great (used as a location for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, Sherlock Holmes, and Muppets: Most Wanted) is described as ‘an extraordinary cafe for an extraordinary church.