Pevsner's Buildings of England series, a largely single‐handed, county‐by‐county survey of “every building of architectural significance” in England, is a national institution. Originally published by Penguin between 1951 and 1974, its volumes can be seen as one part of an intimate exploration by publishers of the heritage of the British, and, more particularly, the English, provinces, inspired partly by the traumatic losses and threats of losses of two world wars and partly by the spread of car ownership in the 1930s and 1950s. The interwar writings of H.V. Morton and H.J. Massingham, the vast output of Batsford Books, Arthur Mee's The King's England series, the Shell guides and the County Books series published by Robert Hale are all further examples of this high‐quality patriotic publishing. Much more than guidebooks for the mildly curious tourist, these were serious‐minded handbooks that attempted, from differing perspectives, to survey the nation's entire natural and cultural heritage, especially its landscape and architecture.
Nikolaus Pevsner, a German academic art historian who came to Britain to escape the Nazis in 1933, brought a continental scholarly rigour to the description of architecture, which was disturbing to the British dilettante tradition; he and John Betjeman, the founding editor of the rival Shell guides, famously failed to see eye‐to‐eye. Revisions of many volumes, made in the light of the formidable post‐war advances in architectural scholarship, appeared before the master's death in 1983, and separate series were established for Scotland, Wales and Ireland. However, the great defect in modern eyes of Pevsner's originals was their concentration on medieval churches, great houses and buildings belonging to the international Modern Movement at the expense of post‐1830 churches and vernacular and industrial architecture.
As part of the revision process the editors of the series, now published by Yale University Press, have launched a subset of handbooks to England's cities: as well as the present volume, those on Manchester, London's City churches, Bath, Liverpool and Sheffield have already been published; further ones on Birmingham and Leeds should appear in 2005. When the original 1958 volume North Somerset and Bristol is revised, it will incorporate much, but by no means all, the material in the already‐published City Guides on Bath and Bristol. The relationship between the two series may be examined by comparing the Manchester City Guide (2002) with the new Buildings of England volume Lancashire: Manchester and the South‐East.
How does the new volume differ from the Bristol section of its predecessor, now nearly half a century old? More than enough remains of the original concept to keep aficionados content and to justify the claim to continuity in Pevsner's footsteps. The architectural descriptions are, as ever, precise, taut but detailed, and supported by the latest scholarship; the entries for Bristol's two greatest ecclesiastical treasures – the Anglican Cathedral and St Mary Redcliffe – are by Bridget Cherry, one of Pevsner's assistants. However, much has been improved. First, the structure. The tradition of a magisterial introductory synopsis of the area's building history remains, but, after that, Pevsner's division into Cathedral, Churches and Chapels (of whatever foundation date), Public Buildings and Perambulations is modified to reflect the way today's visitor will probably use the guide. First, Major Buildings, those no first‐time visitor would want to miss, e.g. the two Cathedrals, St Mary Redcliffe, the Wills Memorial Building and Temple Meads station; then, the other city Churches of medieval foundation, those which all but the most austere ecclesiologist would instinctively visit first; next, the Streets of the city centre, arranged alphabetically; after that, Walks – the new pedestrian appellation for Perambulations – around the rest of the inner areas and around the outer areas i.e. the inner suburbs, these walks including all public buildings, secular and religious, not covered elsewhere; and, finally, a handful of excursions to “places of outstanding interest nearby”, in outer Bristol and historic Somerset.
The second area of major updating is in the buildings covered. The new volume indicates some of the significant buildings lost since Pevsner's first survey – though the original edition will still be needed for a full description of these – and describes what has replaced both these losses and the extensive bomb damage still evident in 1958. It also describes buildings which Pevsner either overlooked, from lack of time or lack of sympathy, or else misunderstood, but which have been revealed or reinterpreted by subsequent researchers or which a later generation, more indulgent to the minor, the wayward and the non‐canonical, has come to admire. Even for many of those buildings that Pevsner included, the descriptions in the new guide are much fuller, reflecting another 50 years of scholarship and the larger scale of the new work, with roughly three times the number of pages of the Bristol section of its predecessor.
Good‐quality coloured photographs, printed adjacent to the descriptions they are intended to illustrate, replace the atmospheric but not always illuminating black‐and‐white photographs gathered together in the middle of the original Pevsners. The user of the 1958 account of Bristol was expected to find his or her way around without maps; in its successor each walk is illustrated with a clear street map.
My one reservation about this book is whether the paperback format will resist heavy use in the library or the street; since at least the 1960s the traditional county volumes have had hard covers. However, the bindings of those Buildings of England guides published in the 1950s were even flimsier and plenty of them survive in reasonable condition; perhaps the manifest quality of the books stays the roughness of the user's hand.
No British public reference library can afford to be without a full set of Pevsner's Buildings of England, nor can libraries elsewhere with a focus on the culture of Britain. The associated City Guides contain material excluded from the new editions of the relevant county volumes, which may, in any case, be some years away from publication. These urban guides too are essential bricks in the Pevsner edifice.
