Suffolk

by Nikolaus Pevsner, Enid Radcliffe (Editor)

In this agricultural county of East Anglia, "scenery and buildings are a delight", wrote Pevsner. Numerous medieval houses and magnificent flint-faced churches with fine roofs and rich furnishings bear witness to the prosperity brought by the late medieval cloth trade. Castles are nobly represented by the unusual polygonal keep of Orford and the curtain-walled Framlingham, and great houses by a notable sequence of brick buildings of the sixteenth century. Among the coastal settlements are the lost town of Dunwich and picturesque Southwold; the varied inland towns range from Lavenham, remarkable for its exceptionally well preserved timber-framed buildings, to Bury St Edmunds, where fine Georgian houses are gathered around the precinct of the vast Norman abbey.

Genres: Reference

568 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner was one of the twentieth century's most learned and stimulating writers on art and architecture. He established his reputation with Pioneers of Modern Design, though he is probably best known for his celebrated series of guides, The Buildings of England, acknowledged as one of the great achievements of twentieth-century scholarship. He was also founding editor of The Pelican History of Art, the most comprehensive and scholarly history of art ever published in English.

Reviews

[Zoe Deacon · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I lied. I didn’t read the whole book. It’s 600 pages of passionate descriptions of churches and buildings in Suffolk. It’s more of a flick through and learn a few things book, which I had fun doing over a week or so. Definitely reassured my love for my favourite churches and reminded me that perhaps I do finally understand architectural terminology. I also found a few new churches I want to now explore! #roadtrip. Now I need to go and prepare my fruit salad, baguette and pretentious extra salty butter, the kind you get in the country. Partnered with my new OS maps of Suffolk I’ve truly become a force to be reckoned with.

Finding a Pevsner book that didn’t cost me my spleen was truly enthralling. It’s not the new edition, so is a little outdated, but it’s not like there’s any interesting modern buildings in Suffolk anyways. You buy a book on Suffolk’s architecture because you want to look at pretty Tudor houses, not brutalism. If I wanted to do that I’d just go to some hip independent book shop in London, buy a book, go stare at the Barbican once again (book in hand for reference), saying “yeah that’s cool”, then proceed to have a good minute of silence for gentrification and the death of communities, and then just go home.

Where’s the best place to buy small salty butter sachets?! Straight from the cow or farm shop ran by one? Pevsner’s book won’t be able to tell me that, but I can sure as hell tell you where the best rood screens of Suffolk are.