Northumberland

Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England

by Nikolaus Pevsner, John Grundy, Grace McCombie

The county's remarkable and richly varied military architecture, from Hadrian's Wall to Warkworth, contrasts with monastic ruins buried deep in the valleys of the Coquet and the Aln or standing proudly by the sea at Holy Island and Tynemouth. Newcastle upon Tyne has the most elegant nineteenth-century city centre in England. Elsewhere the distinctive smaller towns include Alnwick, dominated by its castle, Hexham with its priory, brick-built Morpeth, and Berwick-upon-Tweed, ringed with exceptional sixteenth-century fortifications. Great country houses range from Vanbrugh's theatrical Seaton Delaval to Sir Charles Monck's austere Belsay and Norman Shaw's romantic Cragside. Monuments of a great industrial past, as well as a wealth of smaller buildings, such as bastles (unique to the Border country), are all vividly described in this revised guide to Northumberland's architectural pleasures.

Genres: Reference

704 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1974

About the author

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (January 30, 1902 - August 18, 1983) 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.