![]() The society's headquarters, 1 Priory Gardens, Bedford Park, London, built 1880 by E. J. May in British Queen Anne Revival style | |
Nickname | The Vic Soc |
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Formation | 1958 |
Headquarters | 1 Priory Gardens, London, England |
Director | James Hughes |
Chair of Trustees | Professor Hilary Grainger |
Patron | The Duke of Gloucester KG, GCVO |
President | Griff Rhys Jones |
Key people |
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Website | www |
The Victorian Society is a UK charity and amenity society that campaigns to preserve and promote interest in Victorian and Edwardian architecture and heritage built between 1837 and 1914 in England and Wales. As a statutory consultee, by law it must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition or structural alteration. [1]
The society, a registered charity, [2] fights to protect Victorian and Edwardian heritage from demolition or careless alteration. As a membership organisation, the majority of its funding comes from subscription fees and events. As one of the National Amenity Societies, The Victorian Society is a statutory consultee on alterations to listed buildings, and by law must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. [1]
The society:
The society's foundation was proposed in November 1957 by Anne Parsons, Countess of Rosse at her preserved Victorian home at 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington (Linley Sambourne House), with the intention of countering the widely prevalent antipathy to 19th- and early 20th-century architecture. [3] [4] [lower-alpha 1] From the 1890s into the 20th century, Victorian art had been under attack, critics writing of "the nineteenth century architectural tragedy", [6] ridiculing "the uncompromising ugliness" [7] of the era's buildings and attacking the "sadistic hatred of beauty" [8] of its architects. The commonly-held view had been expressed by P.G. Wodehouse in his 1933 novel, Summer Moonshine : "Whatever may be said in favour of the Victorians, it is pretty generally admitted that few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks." [9]
The first meeting was held at Linley Sambourne House on 28 February 1958. [10] Among its 30 founder members were the first secretary John Betjeman, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Nikolaus Pevsner, who became chairman in 1964. [11] [4]
Peter Fleetwood-Hesketh was secretary from 1961 to 1963. Former Bletchley Park codebreaker, Jane Fawcett, managed the society's affairs as secretary from 1964 to 1976. [12] Christopher Costelloe took over as director from Ian Dungavell in 2012. [13] Joe O'Donnell succeeded Costelloe as director in September 2020. [14]
The society has worked to save numerous landmark buildings such as St Pancras Station, [15] Albert Dock in Liverpool, the Foreign Office and Oxford University Museum. [4] Its campaigns have not always been successful, notably its failed attempts to save the Euston Arch from demolition in 1961. [16]
Examples of the society's work with churches include making complaints against proposals of church PCCs to use upholstered chairs during renovation, [17] [18] and appealing against proposals to raise money by selling original features. [19]
In 2015, the society launched a campaign to preserve Victorian gasometers, after utility companies announced plans to demolish nearly 200 of the now-outdated structures. Costelloe, the society's director at the time, commented: "Gasometers, by their very size and structure, cannot help but become landmarks. [They] are singularly dramatic structures for all their emptiness." [20]
The society publishes an annual list of the Top Ten Most Endangered Victorian or Edwardian Buildings in England and Wales. [21]
Published three times a year since 1998 [4] for the members of the society, The Victorian magazine contains book reviews, society news and events, casework reports, and interviews. [22]
The Victorian Society has a sister organisation in the United States, the Victorian Society in America, founded in 1966 in New York City, by such champions of historic preservation as Brendan Gill, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, and Margot Gayle; it was borne from the outrage they felt at the 1964 destruction of New York's Pennsylvania Station. As of 2017 [update] the Victorian Society in America is based in Philadelphia with 12 registered chapters, [23] mostly in the Eastern United States.
The counterpart organisations to the society for the protection of the heritage of earlier and later periods are the Georgian Group (for buildings erected between 1700 and 1840) and The Twentieth Century Society (for post-1914 buildings).
Sir George Gilbert Scott, largely known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started his career as a leading designer of workhouses. Over 800 buildings were designed or altered by him.
Sir John Betjeman, was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, helping to save St Pancras railway station from demolition. He began his career as a journalist and ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate and a much-loved figure on British television.
The Jacobethan architectural style, also known as Jacobean Revival, is the mixed national Renaissance revival style that was made popular in England from the late 1820s, which derived most of its inspiration and its repertory from the English Renaissance (1550–1625), with elements of Elizabethan and Jacobean.
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951–74).
The year 1958 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) is an amenity society founded by William Morris, Philip Webb, and others in 1877 to oppose the destructive 'restoration' of ancient buildings occurring in Victorian England. "Ancient" is used here in the wider sense rather than the more usual modern sense of "pre-medieval."
Sir Arthur William Blomfield was an English architect. He became president of the Architectural Association in 1861; a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1867 and vice-president of the RIBA in 1886. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied Architecture.
Edward Linley Sambourne was an English cartoonist and illustrator most famous for being a draughtsman for the satirical magazine Punch for more than forty years and rising to the position of "First Cartoonist" in his final decade. He was also a great-grandfather of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, who was the husband of Princess Margaret.
William Burges was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoclassical architectural style and re-establish the architectural and social values of a utopian medieval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, his works echoing those of the Pre-Raphaelites and heralding those of the Arts and Crafts movement.
The Georgian Group is a British charity, and the national authority on Georgian architecture built between 1700 and 1837 in England and Wales. As one of the National Amenity Societies, The Georgian Group is a statutory consultee on alterations to listed buildings, and by law must be notified of any work to a relevant listed building which involves any element of demolition.
Sambourne House, previously known as 18 Stafford Terrace and Linley Sambourne House, was the home of the Punch illustrator Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910) in Kensington, London. The house, now Grade II* listed, is currently open to the public as a museum.
Save Britain's Heritage is a British charity, created in 1975 by a group of journalists, historians, architects, and planners to campaign publicly for endangered historic buildings. It is also active on the broader issues of preservation policy. SAVE is a registered charity governed by a board of trustees.
Edwardian architecture usually means a Neo-Baroque architectural style that was popular for public buildings in the British Empire during the Edwardian era (1901–1910). Architecture up to 1914 is commonly included in this style.
The Twentieth Century Society, founded in 1979 as The Thirties Society, is a British charity that campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. It is formally recognised as one of the National Amenity Societies, and as such is a statutory consultee on alterations to listed buildings within its period of interest.
Anne Parsons, Countess of Rosse, was an English socialite and one of the founders of The Victorian Society. She was the mother of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon and Brendan Parsons, 7th Earl of Rosse.
In England and Wales, an amenity society is an organisation which monitors planning and development.
Romanesque Revival, Norman Revival or Neo-Norman styles of building in the United Kingdom were inspired by the Romanesque architecture of the 11th and 12th centuries AD.
The statue of John Betjeman at St Pancras railway station, London is a depiction in bronze by the sculptor Martin Jennings. The statue was designed and cast in 2007 and was unveiled on 12 November 2007 by Betjeman's daughter, Candida Lycett Green and the then Poet Laureate Andrew Motion to commemorate Betjeman and mark the opening of St Pancras International as the London terminus of the Eurostar high-speed rail link between Great Britain and mainland Europe. The location memorialises the connection between St Pancras station and Betjeman, an early and lifelong advocate of Victorian architecture.
St Chad's, Haggerston, located on Dunloe Street in Haggerston, is an urban Anglican parish church in the diocese of London, England. Built to designs by architect James Brooks and completed in 1869 as part of the Haggerston Church Scheme, the Grade I Listed church was united with the parish of St Mary, Haggerston in 1953, following the destruction of that church in an air raid in 1941. St Chad's has a historical association with High Church liturgy and Anglo-Catholicism.
George Harry Devall (1869–1956) was a British architect, who worked in Birmingham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contributing much to the streetscape of the city. He was a contemporary of J. L. Ball, William Bidlake, Herbert Tudor Buckland, W. A. Harvey, and William Haywood, all of whom lived in Edgbaston and had architect practices in the city.