Architecture In Britain

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31135, 11 August 1966, Page 13

Architecture In Britain

If British architects have their short-comings, it is not for want of opportunity. Not only has the facility of travelling made them acquainted with the works which adorn all the great cities of Europe, but they have had the means of studying the requirements of their own country in a vast variety of buildings. I Churches, town I ns, courts- | of law, clubs, banks, blocks of i [business chambers, gentle-: : men’s houses in town and; country, villas, ornamental I 'cottages, have been multiplied' Ito a degree surpassing any former times. France itself, though the improvements of its capital and chief cities have been

mure systematically con-ii ducted, can hardly rival the ' variety and profusion of i British buildings. i

Certainly, no single work to be compared with the Houses of Parliament at Westminster has been produced by any other nation. And yet we seldom look forward with pleasure and ■confidence to the erection of ■ any great public edifice. Public architecture in this country has had too many failures |for ordinary people to be sanguine When they read a discussion on art in the House of Commons or hear of elaborate plans and competitions of architects, it is with something like a settled melan-

choly, in which the reflection, “It is no use, the thing is sure to be hideous,” chiefly prevails.

For, while private persons or societies, and in some cases provincial corporations, have been well served, the nation has been cursed by a strange fatality with a succession of buildings either mean, ill placed, or inconvenient. Either architects have been appalled at the responsibility of building for the nation, and have lost their wonted skill, or else the dictation of commissions, or committees, or great personages has curbed their genius.—From “The Times” of 1866.