English Buildings

On the road to recovery There will be celebrations today in Shrewsbury, with the announcement that one of its major buildings, which has ...

Show-stopper This surprising structure, Henley's Imperial Hotel and its flanking shops, is meant to make travellers pause in amazemen...

Brush with the lore Peacocks, lambs, ducks, foxes: thatchers often like to top off their roofs with an animal finial. I’ve been noticing ...

Gothic on speed In the middle of the small town of Brewood, strategically placed by a T-junction, is Speedwell Castle. This house is to...

We are amused 'Give us more architectural cats,' requests a friend, in the wake of Shugborough's classical maritime mouser ...

'Get a cat' again In a post a couple of years ago I recalled the lovely story in Patrick Leigh Fermor's Mani: Travels in th...

Chinoiserie I might have given the impression in my recent post about the 18th-century garden buildings at Shugborough that the dominant...