Rousham was one of the first gardens I ever visited as it was not so far from where we lived at Cuddesdon and I vividly remember its combination of parkland, paths and garden monuments, laid out in the early 1720s, originally to designs by Charles Bridgeman.

Alexander Pope described to Brigadier Dormer in November 1726 how ‘I was at Rousham twice last summer in a visit which I find extremely improv’d’[1] and a couple of years later he revisited, describing to Martha Blount how it was ‘I lay one night at Rowsham which is the prettiest place for water-falls, jets, ponds inclosed with beautiful scenes of green and hanging wood, that I ever saw’.[2]

It was no doubt inevitable that the government’s task force looking for potential sites for new towns should have chosen some sites in areas of natural beauty. One of them is the old RAF airfield at Upper Heyford, just north of Rousham, and there is an inevitable risk that development will blight the view of the unspoilt countryside immediately north of Rousham.

It is going to be a test case.

[1] George Sherburn (ed.), The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, II 1719-1728 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p.416.

[2] Pope Correspondence, II, p.513. 

As you will all know, I have been preoccupied by the possible closure of Leila’s Shop, which I have grown to love particularly since lockdown – a place to buy bread and cheese and apples and often unexpected treats as well, including introducing me to Macintosh’s ale.

Leila is unbelievably knowledgeable about where to buy produce and her shop is what I would describe as a community asset; but not Tower Hamlets which threatens to close it down by a massive threefold rent hike, as if it was a fashion store.

I have written about some of the problems and issues surrounding smaller shops in the September issue of The Critic which has just gone online:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/no-longer-a-nation-of-shopkeepers/

Assuming you can open up the attached article in Building Design, you will see that I am co-hosting an event at the Building Centre on November 20th. about what can go wrong in a building project.

It is the same day as the launch of my biography of Vanbrugh at the Wigmore Hall, which, as it happens, provides an immensely detailed account of what went wrong at Blenheim between Vanbrugh and the Duchess of Marlborough, an account of a classic, long drawn-out and meticulously well documented mega-dispute between an architect and (from his perspective) the client from hell.

https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/fragmented-by-design-what-happened-to-joined-up-construction/5138755.article?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Building%20Design%20%20Daily%20news&utm_content=Daily%20Building%20Design%20%20Daily%20news+CID_ab7a0e46a8369b0d87602c2d277aa0d5&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor%20emails&utm_term=Fragmented%20by%20design%20what%20happened%20to%20joined-up%20construction

https://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/202511201200

When I opened my computer this morning, Google flashed an article from Country Life in front of me which, because of its lovely picture of books, I opened up and found it was an article about the London Library in which I am quoted.

I owe the London Library a great deal and use it constantly. I like the helpfulness of its staff at the front desk and the curious arrangement of the stacks at the back, with topography down in the basement and a section on the history of museums in Science and Miscellaneous. In the early 1980s, I was sometimes the only person in the Reading Room apart from John Julius Norwich. Now it is always packed.

Here is the article:-

After visiting Clandon, I wanted to visit Kirby Hall, which has been a romantic ruin since the nineteenth century, was taken on by the Ministry of Works in 1927 and was John Summerson’s favourite building (he made a TV programme about it in 1971).

It’s slightly surreal, so close to Corby, and totally deserted:-

The sun came out on the north façade:-

Amazing carved decoration on the gate to the entrance courtyard:-

It was an incredible treat to stop off on the journey south at Hardwick, such a wonderful house on its hill overlooking the M1.

The approach:-

Not surprisingly, I liked the Muniment Room:-

But I was totally ill prepared for what lay upstairs:-

The glories of the Long Gallery.

The state bed which I have discovered is a nineteenth-century fake (aka a reconstruction):-

The mantelpiece which is not a fake:-

But most magical is the ensemble, the way it envelops one:-

A beautiful place !

I have been to the Piece Hall before, but not recently.  In fact, I remember it – not necessarily correctly – as unoccupied in the late 1980s.

A monument to commerce on a magisterial scale:-

Strange to find the remains of such a fine Cistercian abbey so close to the centre of Leeds,, but I presume it was remote countryside in 1152 when first established:-

I haven’t been to Hepworth Wakefield since COVID and indeed since Tom Stuart-Smith created a garden to its south, filling the space between the gallery and the adjacent mills.

I was incredibly impressed by how well David Chipperfield’s design has worn: its sense of complexity of internal gallery spaces, the quality of light in its galleries, its reticent monumentality.

One of the strange things about it is that it is exactly as it was originally drawn for the competition entry – a set of complex interlocking polyhedral spaces. 

£35 million, more than double the cost of Turner Contemporary, but very well worth it:-

The mills are due to be renovated:-

The gallery mirrors some of its industrial surroundings:-

A very beautiful exhibition of work by Liz Fritsch at Hepworth Wakefield, quietly monumental.

One only normally sees them as one-offs, as shown by Adrian Sassoon, but they look wonderful in groups as if they had been composed that way.

Bowls from 1974-5:-

1976-9:-

c.1984:-

1998-2008:-

1990-2000:-

1999-2001:-