I was in general impressed by the way Preston has retained so much of its Victorian urban fabric, particularly the brick housing round Winckley Square and south to Avenham, including the Harris Institute:-

I was intrigued by a comment by Pevsner – ‘it is curious that some people should have moved on recently to a nostalgia for the grimmer aspects of Victorian architecture’ (p.198 1969 edition).

Look at the entrance to Sainsbury’s, converted from a Victorian bank in 2014:-

I had wanted to see Preston Bus Station, a heroic piece of late 1960s brutalism, designed by local architects, Keith Ingham and Charles Wilson, working for Building Design Partnership, originally a local firm, and Ove Arup.

It is indeed impressive:-

Odd to think that it was only listed relatively recently after being scheduled for demolition.

The Harris – a combination of museum, art gallery and public library – re-opens on Sunday after a £19 million renovation, part-funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which gave £6.3 million.

It’s a wonderful late Victorian building, designed by James Hibbert, described by Pevsner as ‘widely unknown’.  He was actually the Mayor of Preston and was certainly able to design in a convincing Greek Revival style, as Pevsner, says, more like Glasgow than elsewhere in England:-

Inside is a wonderful triple-storey, top-lit atrium with casts of the Elgin marbles:-

And the frieze:-

I hope the exhibition of Wallace and Gromit will encourage people to visit.

I spent the day at Clandon, an extraordinary and massive conservation project.

I don’t think I had registered the full extent of the damage: that so little was left apart from the exterior shell, with its amazingly beautiful brickwork left intact.

The major thing about Clandon was the Marble Hall which filled the central volume of the house, two storeys high.  It has all gone, apart from the two great chimneypieces north and south by Rysbrack (signed).  Of the great ceiling, presumed to be by Artari and Bagutti still, nothing apart from melancholy fragments survive.

Here is the exterior shell from the west, covered in scaffolding:-

We entered from the east via what was the Saloon, with what’s left of a grand chimneypiece:-

Into the Marble Hall:-

Houghton is the only equivalent in terms of grand classicism.

The only plasterwork to survive is the ceiling of the Speaker’s Parlour:-

It is planned to re-open in 2029.  The chimneypots were piled outside, waiting to be reinstated:-

Some time ago, I visited Culham Court Chapel, shown round by its architect, Craig Hamilton. I was impressed by it, although it’s unlike – perhaps because it’s so unlike – most contemporary architecture in being Catholic, private and essentially commemorative. I wrote it for the August/September issue of The Critic and the article has just appeared online:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/a-neoclassical-style-fit-for-a-queen/

By chance, it coincides with the announcement of Martin Jennings as sculptor of the commemorative statue of the Queen on the Mall (actually just off the Mall in the entryway to St. James’s Park). It’s not clear whether it will be equestrian, as suggested in Norman Foster’s competition entry. Not an easy commission.

We went last night to a performance of How to be a Dancer in Seventy-Two Lessons at Sadler’s Wells East. I am not going to pretend that I am an aficionado of contemporary ballet, having so seldom been, but the work was amazing, very excitingly danced and if there are tickets left for tonight’s performance – there probably are because it’s a big theatre – I strongly recommend it.

A very nice obituary of Nick Grimshaw in tomorrow’s Observer, but online today:-

https://observer.co.uk/profile/obituary/article/obituary-sir-nicholas-grimshaw

Things are hotting up in terms of my forthcoming Vanbrugh book with the release of a podcast by Ambrose Gillick, called A is for Architecture.

He asks me a whole series of interestingly searching questions about Vanbrugh as an architect – his life, and the links of the world of the theatre to his work as an architect which you can feel me sometimes struggle to answer.

I don’t come across as knowing the answers, but I hope that makes it interesting, if you have the patience to listen to the end:-

A treat in store, thanks to the generosity of the V&A, who own so many of Vanbrugh’s drawings:-

https://share.google/W3UwHdywfuG5XESn8

In talking to Rowan Moore about Nick Grimshaw, I was asked about his musical interests. Then I spotted on Instagram an interview he did some time ago with Gramophone magazine and reproduce it as an important aspect of his character.