The Buildings of England: Dorset

摘要

This is the latest in the new editions of the Buildings of England series, completing the revision of all the counties of the South-West peninsula. As with all the new volumes, it is in the larger hardback format of 216mm × 114mm and weighs nearly 21b (900g), really no longer able to be put in one's pocket. It follows the time-honoured and familiar format of these exemplary Pevsner Architectural Guides of a series of introductory essays, followed by a descriptive gazetteer of buildings by place or building name. It is fully indexed by place and architect. Its predecessor volume was first published in 1972 and contained in total 554 pages prefaced by four introductory sections. This new edition is 780 pages long, with eleven introductory sections. It has entirely new photographs, all (in colour) by James O. Davies. The authors of the 1972 volume, Nikolaus Pevsner and John Newman, are joined for this new edition by Michael Hill. The new author has not only largely revised all the text, but has also written the seven introductory sections that cover the architecture of Dorset from the Anglo-Saxons to the present day. He has (amongst other work) already written two volumes on Dorset country houses, as well as introductory sections in the Cotswold Buildings of England volume, and was clearly the right person for this work, most successfully incorporating and expanding the original material. Some building entries remain much as they appear in the original edition. However, others (e.g. Lulworth Castle) have been completely revised to incorporate new thinking and his own research. As with other new volumes, the bare architectural content is much enhanced over the original editions by the addition of building plans and town maps, as well as by brief descriptions of the settlements in which the buildings are located. No doubt the entirety of the contents of the volume will be of interest to Vernacular Architecture readers, but what does it offer to our particular interest? Dorset is a relatively neglected county in terms of vernacular architecture, with little recent material in print about its buildings and few dendrochronology dates; it also has the dubious distinction of never having hosted a Vernacular Architecture Group Spring Conference. Perhaps this is because it has lived in the shadow of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), who surveyed the whole county before and after the Second World War and published their results in nine finely illustrated books (now available online). Vernacular architecture was far from ignored in these, but there is very little synthesis of their material, although in Volume 2, part 1 (1970) the Commission classified vernacular plan types, following the model used by their colleagues in Cambridgeshire. Forty-eight years later there is fresh synthesis, in one of this new Pevsner's introductory sections, written by a long-standing VAG member and the doyen of Dorset vernacular architecture, Bob Machin. It is regrettable that he has only six pages for the purpose, since his other valuable publications are not easily found - perhaps his most readily available work on Dorset house plans is his chapter in Houses and the Hearth Tax (CBA, 2006). His section here ('Traditional Dorset Rural Houses') briefly covers the county's vernacular building materials as well as its roof truss types (dominated by jointed crucks), and sets out a scheme of comparative plan types found in the county; these plans not only include typical West Country cross-passage houses but also lobby-entry houses, particularly those with an unheated central service room sandwiched between hall and kitchen. In these houses, both hall and kitchen have their own gable-end stack. A desire for external symmetry came early to Dorset, and this was a preferred way of achieving this while still keeping to a single-pile plan. Using both his own work and that of the RCHME and the National Trust, Bob has analysed some 765 Dorset farmhouses to quantify the county's plan forms. He reveals that he has identified eight standing longhouses and believes that on archaeological evidence almost half of the three-unit central-hall houses have been converted from long-houses. He proposes that longhouses were once common in the county, as they were in the adjacent county of Devon (where over 100 identifiable longhouses survive). This is perhaps a contentious argument, as the Devon longhouses are overwhelmingly on the uplands of Dartmoor and Exmoor, whereas those in Dorset are in comparatively lowland situations. In lowland Devon there is virtually no evidence of such conversion of longhouses. However, the rendered rubble and cob walls of Devon houses can be more difficult to read archaeologically than the stonework of Dorset houses, so the jury remains out on this issue.