Joy. Discovery. Invention

Architectural historian and Dorset resident Roger White welcomes the publication of the latest revised ‘Pevsner’

- Kate Green

ALL ‘Pevsner’ revisions are eagerly awaited, but perhaps none more so than this one, which focuses on one of England’s loveliest and least spoiled counties. Dorset has no cities, cathedrals or motorways and is still, as at the time of the first edition in 1972, essentially rural. as Pevsner aptly declared, it has ‘few buildings of the first rank in size or importance in the history of English architecture; but, though scale may be lacking, there is abundant character’.

Sherborne Abbey is the county’s finest ecclesiastical building, wonderfully harmonious in glowing Ham Hill stone thanks to the 15th-century remodelling that gave it the earliest major fan vault in existence. However, there is no use pretending that Dorset’s modestly sized churches can compare with those across the border in south Somerset, with their thrillingly ambitious towers.

On the other hand, it can certainly hold its own very well in the country-house field, which is, indeed, Dorset’s special forte: an endlessly varied sequence starting perhaps with 13th-century Moignes Court and running through to such vast Victorian statements as Canford and Bryanston—the latter now lending themselves more workably to school rather than domestic use. In between are plenty of attractive Georgian houses, although the greatest, Vanbrugh’s Eastbury, was, alas, blown up in the 1780s.

Chronologically, the sequence now comes further up to date with neo-Georgian Lulworth Castle House (1977) and Bellamont (1995–96), both by the Dorchester architect Anthony Jaggard, and with nash-influenced Hyde House (2004) by Winchester-based Robert Adam.