Revising Pevsner - the North Riding - Dr Jane Grenville OBE FSA

The Talk:

Our speaker writes: Pevsner undertook fieldwork for the North Riding in July and August 1963 amidst storms and ‘then hot summer, with the air filled with camomile, jasmine and lime’, according to his wife Lola, driver as always, writing afterwards to a friend about the joyousness of that summer together. Pevsner loved the North Riding: the buildings, the scenery, the people (it is the volume that is famously dedicated to ‘those publicans and hoteliers…who provide me with a table … to scribble on’).

Revising the volume has been an extraordinary privilege, getting to know the man, understanding his enthusiasms, his dislikes, and, by working out his routes, his curious omissions. Inevitably in such a rural county, much of what I see is just what Pevsner saw, but there are also pockets of major change in the industrial north of the county. And what a vast county it is: it takes me two hours to reach the furthest corner from York.

With two national parks, a fine selection of castles, abbeys, parish churches (no cathedrals…) and country houses it has been a feast of material at the polite end. But also the industrial, the seaside, the vernacular, the military and the archaeology all give it an extra edge of endless interest. This lecture will cover Pevsner’s background and that of the Buildings of England series before going on to give a (necessarily selective) account of the work of six years.

Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983), a renowned writer on art and architecture, began his career in his native Germany but moved the England as a refugee in the 1930s.

He started work on his The Buildings of England series of architectural guides in 1945 with the books being published between 1951 and 1974. In total, he produced 46 volumes in the series. The continuing programme of publishing additional and updated volumes has led to a further 15 volumes being published between 1978 and 2016 in The Buildings of Scotland series. From 1979 to 2009, a further 10 volumes appeared on The Buildings of Wales.

Originally published by Penguin Books, the books are now published by Yale University Press.

Our Guest Speaker:

Jane Grenville began her career in digging archaeology but became interested in the archaeology of buildings while working with Harold Taylor (Anglo-Saxon Architecture) on the Anglo-Saxon church excavation at Repton in the 1970s. By her mid-20s she had become an above-ground ground archaeologist. She taught at the University of York from 1991 to 2015 when she retired and embarked on the the project of a lifetime: the revision of Pevsner's volume on the North Riding of Yorkshire.

The event:

This talk will be presented in the Kingswood Suite at Wakefield Town Hall, Wood Street, Wakefield, WF1 2HQ, starting promptly at 7.30pm. (Doors open at 7pm.)

The event is free to attend and is open to all who are interested in the subject matter.

A live stream option will also be available for anyone unable to attend in person. When selecting your tickets, please make sure you select either an 'in person' ticket if you wish to come to the Town Hall, or a 'live stream' ticket if you wish to watch on-line via Zoom. A link to the talk will be emailed to you on the day of the event.

This talk is being presented as part of Wakefield's Our Year 2024 and is one of a number of aspirational series of talks and events around Wakefield district in the Key to the North programme. Talks, lectures and other events will shine a light on the rich heritage and popular culture of both the Wakefield district and Yorkshire.

Host or Publisher Wakefield Civic Society