Welcome to Pevsner

Welcome to the home of Pevsner Architectural Guides - part of the Yale London website.

"Yale University Press deserves all the plaudits it has already received for perpetuating the series and bringing it as close to perfection as is possible in an imperfect world." —Ferdinand Mount, TLS

 

  

 

Browse the Guides

Buildings of England
Buildings of Scotland
Buildings of Wales
Buildings of Ireland
Pevsner City Guides
Pevsner Introductions

News

Announcing a new Pevsner series, Pevsner Introductions

Read the latest Pevsner Architectural Guides Newsletter below or download a pdf here.

 

Yale’s Pevsner Architectural Guides series is awarded The Longman - History Today Trustees’ Award 2013 

Thursday, 10 January 2013
Yale University Press London is proud to announce that the Pevsner Architectural Guides series has won the Longman - History Today Trustees' Award.
Read More »

About Pevsner Guides

"The greatest endeavour of popular
architectural scholarship in the world."
—Jonathan Meades, The Observer

The Pevsner Architectural Guides, were begun in 1951 by the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-83) with the aim of providing an up-to-date portable guide to the most significant buildings in every part of the country, suitable for both general reader and specialist. The success of the volumes covering The Buildings of England led to the extension of the series to Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Each volume provides an introductory overview of the architecture of the area, followed by a descriptive gazetteer arranged alphabetically by place. Whilst cathedrals and their furnishings, great country houses and their parks form the grand set pieces, the books demonstrate the enjoyable diversity of architecture in the British Isles in accounts of rural churches and farmsteads, Victorian public buildings and industrial monuments.



A continuing programme of new editions keeps the series up-to-date with new information on older buildings and recent architecture while maintaining the tradition of Pevsner's own succinct accounts. Each book has over 100 photographs, mostly specially commissioned, numerous maps and plans, a glossary and indexes.

To contact the Pevsner team email: pevsner@yaleup.co.uk
www.lookingatbuildings.org is a resource from the Pevsner Architectural Guides and the Buildings Books Trust with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund

Pevsner History

Pevsner Architectural Guides is celebrating
its 60th Anniversary in 2011. None of this would have been possible without one man...

Nikolaus Pevsner, an art historian of European standing, conceived the idea of English architectural guidebooks after he settled in England in the 1930s. At that time architectural history was hardly recognised as a serious academic subject, nor was trustworthy architectural information readily available for the traveller. The success and achievement of his aim eventually became possible with the assistance and enthusiasm of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, for whom Pevsner had written his Outline of European Architecture in 1942. Lane provided Pevsner with the means to begin research for the books in 1945 with the help of two part time research assistants, both German refugee art historians, and a secretary. For the next twenty five years a pattern was established whereby an assistant worked for around a year on each county, preparing notes from published sources. During the Easter and Summer university vacations, then armed with fat folders of half-foolscap sheets, Pevsner set off to visit two counties, driven by his wife and, after her death in 1963, by others, usually students at London University or the Courtauld Institute of Art.

The tours, initially made in a 1933 Wolseley Hornet borrowed from Penguin, began in 1947 with Middlesex. The first book, on Cornwall, appeared in 1951, the forty-sixth, and last, on Staffordshire, in 1974. A first draft was written immediately after each long day's visit, a feat of prodigious energy (hence the dedication of one of the volumes "to those publicans and hoteliers of England who provide me with a table in my bedroom to scribble on".) As soon as the travelling was finished, Pevsner shut himself away for a week to write the Introduction while everything was still fresh in his mind. These lively essays on the development of architecture in each county, written by a scholar up to date with the latest art-historical scholarship, were another feature which set the series on quite a different level from previous guidebooks.

Pevsner was unable to devote much more than a month to visiting each county and the speed at which the books were prepared inevitably led to errors and omissions. Each volume invited readers to send in comments and publication, and was immediately followed by a shower of letters eagerly drawing attention to anything from minor misprints to the relatively rare absence of whole villages or substantial houses. As the work became more demanding and time-consuming it became essential for Pevsner to share the writing with others. In the end, thirty-two of the books were written by Pevsner alone, ten together with collaborators, and four were delegated to others, all of whom made their own valuable contribution to the series.

From the 1960s onwards more information was available to be consulted and new research began to make the emphases of the early volumes appear a little unbalanced. Although from the beginning the books had broken new ground by covering all periods of architecture, the greatest space had been devoted to medieval churches and their furnishings. Secular buildings, with some notable exceptions, had been treated more summarily. Revisions, before and since Pevsner's death, have continued to take advantage of developments in architectural scholarship. The scope of the series has been broadened and deepened by the transformation of our understanding of the post-medieval centuries, the research into architecture and urban planning of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the wealth of interest in both rural vernacular buildings and the surviving structures of Britain's industrial past. A younger generation have a greater interest in cinemas and Art Deco factories, and there is an ever growing supply of even more recent architecture to be recorded. The results are more inclusive, but the aim remains the same: to present to a broad public up-to-date and accessible information about the most significant buildings in the country whilst always keeping under review the definition of "significant."

The Guides

There are more than 80 volumes in the Pevsner Architectural Guides Series, with new editions being revised and published every year...

The Pevsner Architectural Guides were founded by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983). There are four series: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Each county volume comprises a gazetteer describing the buildings of significance, accompanied by maps, plans, and more than 100 specially commissioned photographs; an informative introduction explains the broader context

The series also includes paperback City Guides, as well as the acclaimed Pevsner Architectural Glossary. Click on the links below to view the complete series.

• Buildings of England
• Buildings of Scotland
• Buildings of Wales
• Buildings of Ireland
• Pevsner City Guides
• Pevsner Introductions

Yale also publish a wide range of other Architecture titles. Take a look at a sample selection below, or click here to view a comprehensive list

Next

Prev

• 

  Gardens of Court and Country

  David Jacques
  RRP: £45.00
• 

  Hardwick Hall

  David Adshead
  RRP: £75.00
• 

  Apethorpe

  Kathryn A. Morrison
  RRP: £60.00
• 

  Space, Hope, and Brutalism

  Elain Harwood
  RRP: £60.00
• 

  Centre Pompidou

  Francesco Dal Co
  RRP: £20.00
• 

  Charles Percier

  Jean-Philippe Garric
  RRP: £50.00

Newly Published

Take a look at a selection of our most recently published and revised Pevsner Architectural Guides...

To keep up to date with Pevsner's new releases as well as other architectural news, you can follow Pevsner on Twitter under the username @yalepevsner or you can like our Facebook page.

Work in Progress

Work continues to provide unrivalled coverage of the nation's buildings through a series of revised and new editions...

Forthcoming in 2018
Dorset
Hampshire South
Central Leinster

Forthcoming in 2019
County Cork
County Durham
Hertfordshire
Sussex: West

Forthcoming in 2020–21
Birmingham and the Black Country
Hampshire: South
Lothian
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire: South
Staffordshire
Surrey
Yorkshire: North Riding
Wiltshire

We also anticipate a range of new volumes in the Pevsner Introductions series.

To find out more about forthcoming Pevsner Guides, contact the team: pevsner@yaleup.co.uk

Map

Use the map below to find out which locations
are covered in the Pevsner Architectural Guides series...

Click on the locations to read more about the books...



Open the map in a new window

Key

Buildings of England
Buildings of Scotland 
Buildings of Wales
Buildings of Ireland
Pevsner City Guides


Follow Yale Books's board Mapping Pevsner on Pinterest.

Links

If you would like to keep up to date with all
things Pevsner, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook. If you are interested in buildings, you may like to visit these other sites...

 

A
Ancient Monuments Society
Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland
Architecture Centre Network
Architecturelink
Architecture.com
Astoft

B
British Academy
Building Connections
Buildings of the United States

C
CADW
Churches Conservation Trust
Cinema Theatre Association
The Civic Trust
Companion to British and Irish Country Houses
The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland
Council for British Archaeology
Country Life

D
Dehio Handbuch
Digiatlas

E
The Ecclesiogical Society
English Heritage

F
The Folly Fellowship
Friends of Friendless Churches

G
The Georgian Group
Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society

H 
Historic Scotland
Historic England

I
ICOMOS UK
Images of England

J
John Soane's Museum

L
The Landmark Trust
Looking at Buildings

M
Mausolea and Monuments Trust
Museum of London

N
National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
The National Trust
The National Trust for Scotland
National Churches Trust

P   
Parks and Gardens UK
Public Monuments and Sculpture Association

R
RCAHM of Wales
RCAHM of Scotland
RIBA

S
SAVE
The Scottish Civic Trust
Scotcities.com
Scottish Architecture
Society of Antiquaries
Society of Architectural Historians
Stone Pages

T
Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society
Twentieth Century Society

V
Victoria County History
Victorian Society

W
Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
The Workhouse

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