A considerable number and variety of Tudor and Stuart buildings remain in Britain. However, many are hidden, concealed behind the facades of later buildings. To appreciate them, we must look beyond the skin, to delve deep into the core of buildings.

Just like their buildings, most of the building personnel remain mysterious. A few names are well known from the later sixteenth century onwards, the likes of Robert and John Smythson, John Thorpe, and Nicholas Stone. However, most of the craftsmen involved and their working methods remain little known. Most continued on from their medieval predecessors: sons followed their father’s profession, a good example being John and Robert Smythson. We can only call a few individuals architects, beginning with Inigo Jones (1572 -1652), and it not until the Restoration (1660) under Charles II that the architectural profession was firmly established under the leadership of Sir Christopher Wren (1632 -1723). Perhaps that is why Wren’s portrait was chosen much later as the image of the architect on the exterior of the RIBA (1934)?

Sources

Books

Towards the end of the fifteenth century the first printing presses were established in Britain. However, most texts printed remained religious in subject matter; architectural texts were few in number. Some books discussing the qualities of ancient architecture were printed abroad, like Palladio’s Quattro libri dell’ architectura (1570). Written in Latin, copies found their way to Britain. However, most architectural texts printed in Britain were pictorial, like John Shute’s The First Groundes and Chief Groundes of Architecture (1563), the earliest architectural text in English. Only from the mid seventeenth century were extended architectural texts published, like John Greaves wonderfully illustrated Pyramidographia (1646) considering Egyptian buildings, and the first English translation of Palladio (1668).

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Drawings

Architectural drawings dating from the middle of the sixteenth century have survived in some quantity. Most remarkably, collections of drawings amassed by masons, surveyors and architects survive, notably those connected to the Smythson family and Inigo Jones both preserved in the library. Again, the Victorians offer us a wealth of detailed studies of Tudor and Stuart buildings. In the later half of the nineteenth century there was a revival of interest in vernacular buildings. Tudor and Stuart buildings were regarded as ideal sources for a national style, and inspired both the Old English style and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

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Photographs

Obviously photography only developed many centuries beyond this period. However, photographs can be a fantastic source for research on Tudor and Stuart buildings, as they record the treatment of, and reactions to buildings from this period. The rich collections of the Photographs Collections let us appreciate the changing state of sixteenth and seventeenth-century buildings, for example the view of Lord Leyster’s Hospital, Warwick (1870), before its later restoration.

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