 Okay, good evening, good evening everybody and welcome to this virtual book launch, the County Durham-Pevesner Guide. I'm Martin Posso, I'm Deputy Director for Grants and Publications at the Paul Mellon Centre. It's my great pleasure to welcome you all to this evening's launch of County Durham, which is the latest addition to the building's guide, the Grants and Publications of England series, otherwise known simply to many as the Pevesner architectural guides or even just Pevesner in recognition of their creator and founder, St Nicholas Pevesner. Before we go any further, I just need to draw your attention to some announcements. So if you could all take a close look at these housekeeping points here. There was half a dozen bullet points here. Just to explain how we run things in a webinar if you're not familiar with it, you're automatically muted when you joined the webinar. And you can only communicate verbally, you can only speak if the host un-mutes you, and that will happen during the Q&A session. Otherwise you're invisible, okay, you're mute and you're invisible. We're going to have a talk by Martin and Simon last about 50 minutes. And then after that, we're going to ask you to invite us questions and we'll do that through the Q&A, or you can actually ask your question verbally if you prefer. So you can use the raise hand button if you've got a question to make a comment by audio, or you can use the Q&A. And you can use the chat box. I know many of you are familiar. The chat box runs down the side and I'm sure a lot of you are looking at it right now telling us where you're from and how you are from all over the planet. So you can use the chat box and my colleague Danny will be monitoring that so she'll keep a close eye on what's going on. So if you have a question she won't miss you. It's going to be recorded the session, but we're not going to have any photos taken so don't take any sneaky pictures. And as usual with all these types of events, if there is any offensive behavior, we can't tolerate that and we'll ask attendees to leave the webinar and we may, I'm sure that's not going to happen this evening. So, without further ado, let me just say one or two things by way of introduction. The Pevesner County Guides was inaugurated in 1951 and it was published initially by Penguin Books. And the research and the titles were supported laterally by the Pevesner Books Trust from 2012 to the present day by the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art. That's us. And we supported the research and published by Yale University Press. Before I introduce this evening speakers, I just need to say I'd like to say a few words about the Paul Mellon Center. We are the host of this virtual book launch. And especially for those of you in this, let's see how many, nearly 300. Some of you might know much about us. So let me just say one or two things if you haven't come across us and know what we're about. We're a traditional charity and we champion new ways of understanding British art history and culture. We publish, we teach and we carry out research, both at the Center in London. We're located at 15 to 16 Bedford Square, which is just near the British Museum. And we also work, especially at the moment through our online platforms. The archives library and events program are open to researchers, students and the public. In fact, we will be reopening the public study room in Bedford Square to readers on Wednesday the 21st of April and we'll be taking bookings for places in the public study room from the 12th of April onwards. The arts and fellowships program are an important part of who we are and what we do. And we support institutions and individuals with research projects, publications, exhibitions and events. And in all areas of our work we promote activities that enhance and expand knowledge about all aspects and time periods of British art and architecture. Which was part of Yale University was founded in 1970 by the art collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon and 2020 was actually our 50th anniversary, although it's a year that all of us will remember for a number of other less welcome reasons. And so to business pleasure. It's my pleasure to introduce Martin Roberts, author of the revised 2021 Pepsna County Durham volume in the buildings of England series, and Simon Bradley joint editor of the Pepsna architectural guides, and they'll guide us through the history and the present volume from its inception in 1953 to the present day, taking into account the seismic social cultural architectural interventions that have affected the region. And the country is a whole over the past, nearly 70 years. I'm pleased to say that Martin Simon and I will have strong links to the county in question. Martin's lived there for the last 50 years working both as an architect, a conservation officer, and buildings inspected with English heritage. Simon was born in the Northeast, and I grew up in Gateshead, the town which Dr Johnson described so fondly as the dirty back lane to Newcastle. Before I hand over one more thing, it wouldn't be a proper book launch if we didn't try and sell you a book or two. So the publisher Yale University Press is delighted to offer you the attendees to this evening's virtual book launch a special discount press for the new Pepsna, the new Pepsna guide to County Durham. And you can order your copy by the Yale website, and you enter a code CD MPC at checkout look at our website you'll find that so it's, it's 45 pounds. And there are offer prices 35 pounds and you also get free package and postage. And since it is quite a tone. That's pretty good value. And that's valid until the 7th of April. Okay, so that's enough of the sales pitch for now. And so I'm going to disappear. And I'm going to hand leave you in the very capable hands, the expert hands of Martin and Simon. So over to you. Good evening everybody, Simon are you. Thank you, Martin, and thank you, Martin haha. It's a great day for the Northeast. And before really hearing what the author has to say about the book and the work on the book. I thought I'd just say a little more about the history of the series. There you have the basic details and of course the jacket of the new volume. And there's our founder. Hebsner about the time photograph about the time he would have been working on the county Durham volume itself because his was one of the earlier volumes. The series first appearing in 1951, the county Durham volume appearing in 1953. So there you see the two volumes together in the first incarnation, the 1953 edition, and the revision or updated volume in the same format by Elizabeth Williamson in 1983. Well, when that book came out, I remember seeing it on appear on the shelves of the central library in Newcastle and and that was the point I think that the penny dropped and I realized that the series was a going concern, you know that it with the new volumes was still appearing rather than simply being a sort of fixed set of books from the past. But Martin this was also where your connection with the series begins, could you say a bit about that. I've been working in Durham as conservation officer there for about nine years, I think, and Elizabeth Williamson arrived, and I was very fortunate to be able to contribute in the days when once contributions were in brackets and initialed on matters around Durham City I was able to add in some things on county on Durham City and its environs, and specifically I remember I still got the card somewhere on file, as it was published I remember I must have been brave enough to say to Elizabeth. I thought vernacular was rather thin. And her card says it will get better coverage in the third edition. And I actually remember making a mental note that add on 30 years and I would be retired by the time the third edition came out. I wondered whether I'd have any part in it but one of those strange recollections one has from way back in 1983. It's wonderful because, given how long it takes to to go through a county fully, then it's almost 30 years, perhaps a bit longer when you started work on the series I'm going to show now the, the terrain. I started. Well, I you need to break these things down don't you I mean to make absolutely sure you're not missing something. You need to break it down a large county like County Durham so I broke it down into the traditional districts and the metropolitan areas and so on. And I started in Teesdale because Teesdale is close to where I live in southwest Durham. It was very convenient because it had some essential ingredients it had a good market town Barney Barnard Castle. It had plenty of medieval churches. It had a big tricky building rabies castle if I can put it that way complex. And I need to get my head around that and of course in Barney as well you have perambulations which one you need to get into your head so that when you come to the bigger places like Sunderland and Gateshead and Harlepool and so on. You're familiar with with how to organize that so it was a good training ground and I essentially I moved north and well I said six and a half years later I think I promised you in five. So I'm in my apologies for that, but six and a half years later you reach the time and you stop. And that's also a reminder, something which people don't always grasp straight away but our books are very loyal to the original county boundaries this is the County Durham of the bishops of Durham rather than the County Durham of the 1970s reorganization. And indeed I'll actually delivered it in five years if you'd given me that boundary, but of course I had all the teeside areas and all the time and we're areas and they they are they are big. Essentially take those out and it becomes more of a rural county in some ways. And in case anyone's wondering what will happen to that area of the old north riding isn't it of Yorkshire that was added to the county in the 1970s will we have a revised edition of Yorkshire north riding in progress and that will appear with Jane Rendle as the revising author next year in 2020. Yeah, I should just say I've obviously I've looked at districts and you break it down parish by parish and that way you can pretty sure you're hopefully not going to miss a building which is the one worry I had. I think we've been having fizz and nibbles as I say in the cathedral dormitory, but for COVID, and then I must thank the Dean of Durham very kindly for generously offering and enthusiastically offering the cathedral dormitory does not to be. I would be giving a talk and a speech and that would be terribly formal and I know that isn't the format tonight but I two things before I forget. I've got to thank you Simon which is very embarrassing since you're interviewing me but but and I will simply say that you're holding my hand for seven and a half years has been very reassuring. I know that your editorial pencil has produced clarity out of out of my very murky pros and text that I forwarded to you, and the book is a great deal better and only you and I know the secret of your, your pencil and your edits, but I'm hugely grateful for that. And I'll mention some of the contributors and the helpers because this is so much a collaborative effort it really is. Hopefully mentioned some names as we go through I, I would have to single out and I know he sadly can't join us because he doesn't doesn't do zoom. But Graham Potts is a unique contributor in that he has produced what I would call a Colvin a biographical dictionary of Edward Union Victorian architects of County Durham gave me all that and then shadowed me when I finished teasedale and he will produce 15 pages of notes about a month afterwards and he literally I never met him. He shadowed me around the entire county and that was remarkable and his, and he's incredibly modest man. But his contribution was quite frankly head and shoulders above everybody else and I'm extremely grateful to him. And whilst talking about you Simon there's a whole team of you at in that last final year particularly that comes into play Linda Alice Charlie has the Judith who bring the volume together and polish it and bring it to perfection and I'm very grateful to you. We're grateful to you too. Now to jump back from Victorian things as you mentioned Graham Potts to the Anglo Saxons news always about the Anglo Saxons somehow. Yes. This is actually my local church, pretty much I'm on the fabric committee then and I do some guiding there in the days when visitors come. And of course it stands in a way as the, the ultimate expression of Anglo Saxon architecture, besides the slightly more fragmentary survivals that we are with and Jaro. We're intensely moving about this little church, and like as we may well discuss Durham Cathedral it has its problems in the sense that there are mysteries there is a West port because we don't quite understand what it was all about so even in a building this small and this simple. I'm not really controlling geometry about it as Eric Furnius pointed out. But it's, it's, I, as may appear during the course of this chat. I'm hard, a great minimalist. And therefore there's something very spiritual about this, which I think comes out, because less is so much more here, because of the lack of ornate furnishings and all the rest of it. I should say that Peter Ryder triggers a thought here because Peter Ryder is one of the other great contributors to this volume. His revision of all the parish churches his archaeological analysis of them. It's spending far more time than I could because I have to move fairly swiftly through the county was huge support. He has revised certain understood approaches to Saxon churches places like see him stained rock which have always been understood to be Saxon and he's looked very closely at the fabric and suggested that they are otherwise I can't go into all of that now but I think, by and large. I can think of one or two places where I added a little bit but Peter's perception and his understanding and the the great knowledge he brings to his subject made the whole job of analyzing the medieval church is a whole lot easier. And so forward in time to the big one. The big one. Yes, indeed. Here, I suppose, as well as the challenge of advising the cathedral entry you've also got the challenge of what to do about his own texts. Yes. I remember I remember when you asked me to do a sample piece, the very beginning and I did easy tonight actually color coded. What was Pesna's contribution what was the lives of Williamson's and what would be mine. In the cathedral that considerable number of pages of the first edition just comes straight through into the third edition unchanged to clearly the great quotes. One wouldn't alter those at all in any way, but his analysis particularly the aesthetic analysis of the interior and the way the eye moves eastwards. It's the only situation I think in the entire but where one was flipping over and say well that that page is just perfect and nothing no need to add to it. There are considerable additions to be made to the account of Durham Cathedral. I remember somebody who didn't know that much about buildings saying to me, well, what are you doing in Canada remain me just adding in new buildings from 1983. I mean, there's nothing more you can say about Doug Cathedral is there. Well, as if I mean, there's a huge amount of ongoing research a whole raft of questions still to be asked. A great deal has been written by people like Eric Fernie and Malcolm Thurlby, particularly the emphasis on the relationship with old St. Peter's in Rome, which I think hasn't been brought out in earlier editions. But all the way through Durham Cathedral one is conscious the fact that you kind of to some extent you stand or fall by how well you revise that. And if ever, I felt I had Nicholas Pearsons standing over my shoulder, looking to see if I was doing a half decent job. It was in Durham Cathedral which of course was his favorite cathedral so even more reason to be to get it right. And also, something that perhaps the large format and the longer extent of the revised series allows us to do. It's impressive to see how you brought out, not just the cathedral as a, you know, as a building. So the importance of the bishops of Durham medieval bishops in terms of their patronage and that and holdings and how enormously dominant they were across the whole of the county. And to some extent using the same workforce and so people like John Lewin that there was, and for those who are wanting to know more I would refer you to Eric Cambridge's thesis which is online about the workforce that was employed on the cathedral and of course on its primary buildings on many of its states its monastic granges throughout the county. And of course that workforce was also employed in outside of the cathedral in in in working on many of the castles and so the figure that emerges through this of a really major master Mason is is John Lewin. And it's interesting to see once you have grasped what he has done at Rabie and Bransforth and Lumley and so on and seen his signatures were on begins to spot it and Malcolm Heslop is the authority on that. And his publication and PhD on on John Lewin is hugely helpful. So yes, this this view I should just say is one that will hopefully be unfamiliar but I'd like it to become more familiar this is the view and I was there yesterday going down to old Durham. If you go early in the morning you get the sun on the east side of the cathedral, and it's the one you don't expect because everybody knows the west front to the view from South Street. And this is magnificent and as you know Simon and colleagues at Yale, we were hoping to have this on the back cover but zooming in, it was taken with a zoom and zooming in even more it began to get a little bit grainy so we took that rather splendid photograph of stained up instead, which I should add less I should forget were taken by my son. This is not I can stress a question of an epitism. It happened to mention it in passing when Simon asked me who I'd used to take photographs of earlier books I've done. And I said by the way you might just like to know that my son is a professional photographer, and you might like to see his website he has architectural clients, and I'll leave it with you. Absolutely certain you wouldn't appoint because I thought you wouldn't do that sort of thing, but you did probably aware of the fact that photographers and authors wouldn't probably fall out. Well, I'm, it was, I think I said in the book it was the sweetest thing that happened, I loved working with wills, and I believe the results speak for themselves. Very good. And not the only graphic contribution by a member of the family, as these are your own work. Ah, yes. Nice to see the right hand one in as much as these are lifted from a lifted. I did them in the Durham book and I use this technique on the right I, I have three volumes downstairs of Prague, a Prague books, all in check, which I can't understand huge tomes I carried back from a visit to Texas back in the 80s. And these, there was a technique of drafting elevations of the streets in Prague, Malistrana and so on. And I must thank I man called Theodore Pish. He had this technique of which I really liked I find it very engaging and I just copied it for the Durham book. And it's a very strong technique, particularly when you reverse into the shadows and white becomes black and so on. The lot of wire wall sketching in but I find drawing and it's true of any surveying and I'm sure other architects on here will agree. Once you get into a building and you draw it and you surveyed it, you learn so much more I think doing the actual practice of drawing up the plan or drawing up the elevation and by engaging that you can understand a lot more of the subtleties of the architecture I think. Yes, and wonderfully instructive to see the image on the right this is a re-fronting rather than building you see what lies sort of beneath that 90th century skin. And John Lou and I think we know, I'm sorry, no, not John Lou and quite yet, but we're still in the terrain of the of the Prince bishops. Yes, and here again, I mean, Auckland, heaven knows Auckland Castle since Jonathan Ruffer took it over and the Auckland project got underway. And this Auckland Castle is the, the one building and the one site I mean Parkland as well, that has moved from having nothing written about it for 150 it deals with London buses if you like I mean from having nothing written about it but 150 years since rain wrote about it. There is stuff just coming out on an annual basis, we will we will touch on the, the fabulous discovery of the Beck Chapel, but there was a wonderful conference on on bishops palaces and Malcolm Thelby, who I greet I think is joining us from Toronto, and we have a paper which redefined our understanding of Auckland Castle Chapel which of course was the former great hall of La Puisé and and showed that it was all of the 1190s and not a building which perpetuated right through into the 13th century so great deal of scholarship, and literally almost at the point of going to press we were adding in material which was coming to light from some of the parkland research as well. I think it's important to stress that although we're up in the remote parts of Northern England, these are buildings of absolutely European sophistication and importance. Yes. I was reminded. Dave, the peasant said Northumberland is a rough county and there is a tendency to characterise the Northumbrian counties as rough. But I think this speaks volumes for the other old approach that there is an incredible elegance and sophistication in some of its buildings. This of course was built by the most powerful man in the north of England pretty much and therefore he had his disposal. He was a great craftsman. He had some wonderful materials, frosty marble, not a true marble but the local marble that took over from Perbeck, and I would argue in one of those kind of competitions, great rooms of the northeast doing this must be in the top six easily. It's magnificent and the beauty is the contrast between the sophistication and almost the minimalism of the architecture again, dare I say, and the richness of the cousin woodwork as well. And it's a wonderful contrast. The kind of thing you get in Abidore in here for I always find that very simple distortion architecture and a very big screen if I remember and it's that that contrast which is so so so exciting, I think. Well, our next image was perhaps we should skim over that one as we've already mentioned John Lewin, but we can jump forward again. And perhaps this is the point at which the question of a sort of northern ruggedness or plainness or whatever you want to call it comes to the fore but at the same time this is a sophisticated building to isn't it. This is an extraordinary building. And it kind of comes back time and again, and I keep on thinking how good this is. This is what you see Gameford Hall 161603. It's a double pile plan where the basically the rooms are folded back against each other and you get a row of central row stacks you can see there. And almost certainly this this is a product of a design from London it I think it was first drawn by John Thorpe in Potter's Bar about four years before. So it's leapt I mean there's a tendency to see the northeast as part of a sort of rippling out of of culture and architectural innovation from London. It's not from Scotland from Edinburgh, but often it these things take a long time the Renaissance took best part of 3540 years in some ways to reach the northeast. And then suddenly Gameford just leaps over that and four years after the double pile plan was first found in London, it appears in Gameford, and there are copies there are later versions of this. And none of them match up to the quality of this this was this was designed by somebody who knew that it's very sophisticated you have to draw it basically this is not vernacular. I know some of the windows are relatively small and so on but particularly these the the use of these end turrets the turrets on the side on the left hand side you see which mask the real problem with a double power plan which is the side elevations, which can look awful. And it was only actually through studying a building that we've lost called Roger Lee demolished in the 1940s. You realise drawing that up and looking at the elevations how bad that was for all sorts of reasons that I can't go into that you realize how good game for days and therefore I think we do have a London polite. This is this is if you like it so it's our own prodigy house almost in the northeast and later buildings don't match up to it. I think in North York really like it but I think Nicholas Cooper thinks that's from a London source but there is a building at Gillingwood, which is gone, which is almost a dead ringer for game for it so it had its admirers which were copied but this is very sophisticated and delighted to know that Lord Barnard and the building is on the process of beginning a restoration of the building. And moving on to perhaps something more vernacular but at the same time sharing a vocabulary with perhaps more polite buildings. Yes. This is up Eggleston Way teesdale part of a group of buildings. I really like the bay window those of you know Barnard Castle will know play Graves which is a multi storied bay and these are quite characteristic of of County Durham. The bulls eyes of the book or what you will very much late 17th century I think this is dating 1670. That's very helpful and then, like all vernacular buildings if you can find a date particularly now with the end of a gender ecology that begins to give you some fixed points to get some kind of architectural changes and fashions and having this 1670 probably the same Mason as did play Graves in Barnard Castle gives us some indication of architectural style and how it's moving forward. In the 17th century, we mustn't forget the cousin school and here again, we were lucky to coincide with some very interesting new research and to be able to draw on that. Yeah, I remember conversation I had with the cathedral architect Dean Curry many, many years ago and he said, we were kind of talking about cousin and he said well not much has been written on cousin and I think. Oh, suddenly in is no longer with us but I don't think you would say that now a Edwin Green particular has put cousin into a sort of context and particularly the sort of the, what is sometimes regarded as the battle of styles between classical and gothic and he has seen it as both of them as as part of taking the traditions of the English church and moving them forward and embracing modern as it was then classicism. And then Trevor Cooper I spent a very happy day with Trevor Cooper with a torch crawling all over the choir stalls here. I need you do need a good torch for cousin would work to distinguish between the Victorian and the original and Trevor has done a great deal of research on dates, looking at church warden's accounts and so on. I'm indebted to those two in particular for for the work and so cousin I think has come a little bit more into the limelight I've done I'm fascinated by some of the craftsman some of the great craftsman that that did this quite the screens that at Auckland, Castle Chapel, they couldn't they couldn't write their own name and yet they could do the most gorgeous carving. And the cousin would work the contribution it has made on behalf of the county to the decorative arts in the UK is on a national is nationally significant and I can't recall precisely the personal quote but I mean he sums it up that it really does lift the county above so many others in the quality of its woodwork. But if we jump forward a century or so then perhaps there's a less of a distinctive quality to mid Georgian in the region, at least at the upper levels. Yes, and there's a problem as well in terms of attributions. This is this is hard work. And again, I mean there's there's a site that in the previous editions was hauled over the coals by by by President Williamson because it had not. It was literally lying I don't have been turned into a country part of the temple have been dismantled and a great led by Tony Smith to large extent the Durham County Council embraced the whole idea and restored the parkland and filled the lake again, did a wonderful restoration. And here we have the temple of Minerva. And this is pain. This is James pain. And we've course we have a very good biography of James pain so we have some fixed points there but a lot of mid 18th century architects were still floating around with various attributions is it Thomas right is it's a Thomas Robinson. Is it Daniel Garrett. We need a little bit more scholarships and more biographies perhaps to nail those down but a lot of incoming architects and a lot of local architects sometimes acting as executive architects clarker works. It's the same way that William Etty was clarker works to vambrough he was doing his own work in the county again difficult to nail precisely what. And sometimes even a man like Thomas Shirley was acting as executive to to William Etty so there's a whole interesting sort of research to be to be examined there and I give thanks to two Richards as it were Richard Hewling's ex colleague of mine from English Heritage and Richard Pairs, who is on strong across the board but particularly strong on the Georgian period and my thanks for many often very often sending to emails to the two Richards on anything to do with the 18th century and they've greatly contributed to the book. And outside the parks and gardens of the 18th century and the rest of the county and amazing new technology is taking shape of course the railways. And here we have a structure which if you remember the old George Stevenson five pound notes you may vaguely remember it somewhere there in the background that this is that one of those things which still seems like things categories that shouldn't belong together it is a Georgian railway building. Yes, a local Georgian architect. Indeed Ignatius Bonomi very much the sort of the county during equivalent of john Dobson in the Thumbeland and, of course, you will know Simon I mean in 2025 will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the railway, and that has triggered a great deal of funding which is obviously very good from historic England and all sorts of partnerships, but also a great deal of scholarship and research, and the line has been walked things 26 miles extensively and there's been a survey. So again, an awful lot we're learning about and obviously through learning sites which were not protected before are becoming protected a lot of the line with the schedule danger monument anyway one should say but a great deal of research and everybody and there's a real partnership I think there was a time when for various reasons different local authorities didn't respect or appreciate what they got and this perhaps is a case in point in that this is a much improved view if you to take this photograph 10 years ago. It would have looked dreadful but but even given that you've got sewer pipes you can't easily move. This now has been presented it's really off the main street, but it's it's part of a magnificent railway, and again, as you will well know, I mean, one always has to be very careful about superlatives in county Jeremiah one was wary of superlatives and nothing worse in some ways than railway superlatives. Was this the first public railway, you know, and defining that was done brilliantly by Andy guy in a very well organized conference that the Friends of Stockton and Darden railway held very early on. They published the papers at the same time as the cold in the conference it was that good and Andy guy nailed I think the very difficult question of what is it the first or did it preempt what was and bring together the the components which ended up being the local in Manchester and so on. So a lot of really good scholarship is going into this and of course physically on the ground a lot of conservation work as well. And we must mention also one of the structures we've got an image of in the text illustrations in the book, the gauntlet bridge and astonishing structure Stevenson design structure of cast iron. That was the iron bits anyway we're taking away to the National Railway Museum at York, but they're being repatriated to County Durham and they'll be reassembled shortly at the locomotion museum at shielding. Indeed, we've got at the moment we've got a gap across the gauntlet we've got the two bridge abutments but nothing else and I have a wild ambition, and I'm still waiting for reply. I've written to Santiago Calatravia if he'd like to bridge design a little footbridge for us. He has not even bothered to reply yet. I'd like to get a refusal from him saying you know that sorry he can't do it he's designing something much bigger in San Paolo or somewhere but it needs a good bridge to bridge that again and it needs it to be in the spirit of what was there before a quite exceptional and innovative bridge. So to our cover star, which wealth a great many themes that come out of this one, possibly and Cole, both because of it being Lord Durham, the coal magnet who is commemorated, but also that blackened quality and that puts me in mind, you know where the blackening is coming from. But that puts me in mind of Tyneside Classical, and these of course Tyneside architects who designed it and we're into that period in which the classical architecture of Tyneside and spreading out from there is equal to anything really that's happening across Britain. Yes. And I've always, I don't know why I mean you know when, when one's doing a peasant you have to smooth out all those irregular graph of your interest in architectural periods and learn a great deal more about those you didn't know so much about and I've always found and I don't know why the Greek revival, I find whether it's simplicity, I don't know whether it's minimalism to some extent, it's a powerful style which blends well with the idea of the north and a rough sturdy architecture. As a child I cycled past Thomas Harrison's Chester Castle twice a day, going to school, maybe it's something to do with that that it's been drilled into me, but this is quite late for Greek revival. It really stemmed from Belse in the region in the Thumbeland, but it's particularly from the Stokos from Tyneside, it did the Moot Hall in Newcastle, their work appears south of the Tynes, and then you get these strange peculiarities of the Thumbeland Castle. I'm sure it's just one man, I haven't been able to find out who it was, a local builder who he has his own personal, almost vernacular interpretation of Greek revival, and that's just peculiar to Barnard Castle, and that's a little delight to see time and again his little signature around the buildings, taking the fluting, taking the Doric capitals and so on, but giving his own spin on it, but it's all very important. And other industries too, this partly shown to introduce the truly wonderful landscape of the North Pennines. Yes, I saw Ian is with us tonight so I'm glad he'll be glad we've got this in, in Forbes who was director at Killip. This is magnificent, and lead, well we had an interesting discussion about lead roofing of, don't cathedral recently is a post publication but with a student, and it raises how important lead was right back probably in the time of the first building of the cathedral church in 1104 when they were roofing that they were using weird ale lead, although we don't have the documents and weird ale. Well a weird ale and tea sale they're two magnificent dales. I always rather simplify this by thinking that tea sale is generally thought to be more picturesque it's got its rabies white lime washed cottages and farms. And I've always thought the rabies state are tidy. If they've found in, I don't know 1900s of farmhouse I didn't want. They would demolish it and keep the stone and reuse it very good on recycling. But there is not littered across the landscape, a lot of half derelict buildings weird ale is quite different. I think it's rougher. I think it's not quite as picturesque but in some ways, a lot more interesting because things have been left the whole legacy of the minor farmer. The lead miners who also had small holdings. They lived and worked both and also lived collectively in the lead mine. That landscape, particularly upper weird ale is really quite dramatic and I think it's wonderful and given half a chance. But for the factors two or three foot of snow when there's a sprinkling down here in the lowlands. It's a great place to live I think. And I don't forget that Durham County has a coast. Yes. There's something about Hartlepool headland and then, well, you and I have sampled the fish and chips not in the place I would have liked Simon but I have to say, but it has got the best fish and chips up in the northeast I think, although I should probably say other fish shops are this is magnificent. Hartlepool headland is is such a, I don't know, it's a bit of a motorway crash of all sorts of interesting things happening, and you get a shock to the system you have. You have a 14th century town wall right on a beach it's a little beach behind the camera here with a lovely 15th century gateway where kids are playing with buckets of space and the lovely 15th century sand gate. It's lined with Georgian houses just around the corner there's a row of 70 detached houses. There's an alleyway just beyond that pink house and I could show you a wall of really substantial 14th century cost masonry wall of a townhouse there was serious money here. It was an important medieval port. And then of course West Hartlepool comes and the new docs and the cranes and the oil supply ships and the juxtaposition all that is huge exciting. It's not easy picturesque chocolate box heritage by any means, but I would contend there's no more place in county Durham than the headland at Hartlepool. And wow and of course that's not forget St. Elders, what a magnificent church that is and of course the history of that going right back to the Anglo Saxon period. Great place and go so go there rather than to the historic key which is wonderful in its own way total sham, although it's got an historic ship in the middle of it which is perverse but there we go. But if you want, if you want your heritage to be exciting and be unsure what you're going to find around the next corner, then go to the headland at Hartlepool. So here you could pick up on some of Ian Nairn's writings about County Durham. Yeah, contributed to the series as you see from his own quotation below. Well, I never met Nicholas Pesner and reading his biography sometimes a difficult man to feel you'll be fine as a good friend, but he says something very admirable I think he's incredibly generous on one person the volume. So Nairn is very critical saying he totally to relax any sense of place he simply describes the buildings architecturally dryly. There's no feeling for the context and the setting of the buildings. And they meet, they meet in a kind of I don't know a London sherry reception or whatever. But Pesner says you can write well it's there you can write so much better than I do I can't do your stuff. You know, and so he suggested on West Sussex they do a collaboration which they did, but Pesner in the end I think Julian Darley says packed in because basically, because he couldn't stand the constant request for more details on dates and architects and DNA is something that haunted me for six and a half years. When I be not sure of dates and architects and have to dig around or get help to find the relevant architect so it was the sort of that degree of detail which in Nairn couldn't stand. He did however write a wonderful review of 76 villages in County Durham, and the risk of having a commercial break. I did publish that with your help indeed Simon, some years ago. And if you want to know, because I think it needs to come out of the pages of architecture review, which it was 1964 65 I think, and there's no better writing on on the pages of County Durham, the name I was brought up with him on TV in the north I lived in Chester time. Nairns North was a TV program, and he was an exciting man to to listen to on TV, tragically died to young, but I would say if you do want, if you do want a copy, it all proceeds go to all Durham gardens there's no profit in it for me it's it's simply a love that I think his, his, his literature should be out on in a wider wider field. Very good and perhaps you can just look briefly at your categorization in a rather ne'er in way of the village greens or some of them are currently Durham. Yes, this is extracted from a talk I give and I think there's really a talk on village greens. It's lovely. I mean, it's a planned feature of it to go to Brian Robinson's research on on the, the planned villages planned by the Bishop of Durham in the late 12th early 13th century. So the green is is a standard motif in in villages in County Durham tends to be east west and so on. And they, depending on where they are they've either ended up as here at Stain Drop, still as a village green, or they've been absorbed by by by industrial plants like Klein and we're south wicket in Sunderland, for example, sometimes they're still wild sometimes the mowers mow them to within an inch of their life. Sometimes they're slightly suburbanized by planters and things like that. And sometimes there are diversions you go the village green at Long Newton. The vein mansion was demolished 150 years ago. The road still swerves around it because the vein family enclosed part of the village green because they didn't want the riffraff coming past their front door. So 150 years later when you when you do that swerving motif in the middle of Long Newton you're basically tugging your forelock to the vein family from 150 years ago so British greens are fascinating studies in their own right. And moving back to the sort of chronological story it perhaps no need to linger too long over this one, but just to mention that every new volume brings in fuller accounts and more inclusive survey of Victorian Edwardian buildings and this is one of the highlights. Absolutely. And if you don't, and perhaps let's be honest not a lot of people will go to heaven if they're in the Northeast for a short period of time but go to see this place because I'd never knew it existed. And you just go from heaven high up and you go down the hill down to the river time and this thing just shoots up and up and up and up and up. And I must thank Bev for correcting me that it's John Johnston and not Johnson the architect RJ Johnson, because I thought it was so magnificent. It's now I think a Buddhist temple beautifully looked after. And it's a, it is, I must be one of the tallest if not the tallest spires in the county. And yes, the high spot in many, many non conformist churches and chapels, many of which post publication have been researched by Peter Peter rider who part of the many strings to his bow. It's his interest in non conformist chapels and churches, and he's been gradually working his way around the county indeed the Northeast, and has brought all this together now so it's another wonderful database for research on non conformity. And now to a building, which perhaps people do go a long way to see and which introduces, well, very much from an outside architect from the Northeast in times but it gives us full throttle arts and crafts. Yes. And here I must thank sadly no longer with us Neil Mot who was as well as being a great stained glass expert was very strong on the arts and crafts. And this is the, the, well, some people call it the cathedral of the arts and crafts, and it had its, its copies, it was influential. And one looks at churches in Sunderland as well even I think the church at Lanchester. And in homage as it were to, to, to, to roka. It is a wonderful coming together of the arts and crafts and, of course, it established also I think I hesitate to say a regional style because I wouldn't pretend to know that much about it but there was certainly extremely competent architects in most of the major towns who operated in the arts and crafts and by stained glass workshops and people like Hadley in woodwork and so on. And Clark and Mosscrop of Darlington is one that comes to mind, because so often their little church at Heavary Clough has been mistaken for the work of Carrot, which Carrot did the little church at Rookope higher up of the Dale. But Clark and Mosscrop, when you look at the range of their work and Graham Potts has done a study of his work, you can see that they're very much working, very competent architects working in the arts and crafts tradition. Well, I just briefly show some northeast arts and crafts stained glass glass, of course, being a regional, one of the regional industries, but I'm going to move on as time is a bit pressed. Okay, I'd just like to thank Dave Webster for his immaculate photographs, wonderful stained glass photographs. And we have. Well, I suppose when Persona was writing in the 50s, modernism, serious high, you know, high modern movement buildings. It was pretty well pitted bars wasn't it, not much else. Sadly, this is the only one we've got left in County Durham. I mean, since the last edition, we've lost, I don't know, precisely three or four on the East Coast. I think Thumbelins only got one left of these Frizel baths which which were very influential between the wars, very influenced by do dock and modernism in Holland. I suppose they're probably quite often when they've gone they're difficult buildings to convert I think and this one I mean. I suspect at one point it was marginal whether it should go in because it's been messed around a little bit it's getting a bit of an income from its its aerials and so on. But if finding a use for this is not easy but I think we really need to hang on to this one it's the last one we've got. And this style and you can see it in some of the is it the baths in Gateshead have the same strong blockish massing very few windows. But they're very powerful buildings and we really need to hang on to these because Frizel was such an important element of modernism in the Northeast. And another building which perhaps was threatened at one point, a rather unconventional building. Yes, I must apologize to some friends because I love this building. I know one would like to bomb it, but I'm, please don't do it Tina. This is fantastic. I always think this makes the angel of the North looking a little bit conventional almost. This is Victor Passmore using actually bridge money at Peter Lee in a rather part of a very interesting south west area housing, and a building that had been abused and abandoned and derelict for many years. It was wonderfully restored by Tony Burns David Beaumont with Joe architect. This capturing I think this amazing you have to slightly blur your eyes to this to get the abstract quality of what Passmore was about. And they're even better photographs I know disrespect to my son, but when those those louvers, when they light comes through them you get another diagonal operating in the opposite direction. So, and internally you're creating spaces and you're creating views out glimpses. Also, the restoration should pay tribute to some county council have not put yellow stickers saying beware hazard you might bang your head into a large concrete beam. They've left it free of everything just to experience the spatial changes when you move across this bridge towards your goal the eye catcher at the far end so of course it's it's more often seen as a bridge across a lake, it was protected first as a as a registered landscape and then listing came along after, and then the restoration thanks to a very major pioneering campaign by the cultural officer who was working in easington. So, needs to be better signed hard to find, but people you beat a path to it if you're not going abroad this summer, come to Peter Lee and see this. And stood in the 60s. As a known pair of structures, perhaps. Yes. Well, yes. My old prof Douglas wise said that these two buildings with greatest contribution modern architecture made the enjoyment of an English medieval city. It sounds like an exam question but I think what he was getting at is it the way it introduces you to the peninsula from a totally new direction. One of the beautiful buildings. One is already protected the bridge. This Denome house provisionally recommended for grade two listing after a long campaign, which we can't go into but it was threatened with demolition by the university. I do hope now because we're at the point where if it is indeed confirmed and it's listed, then the university have got a magnificent opportunity to renew their, their, their laudable role as a commissioning agent to to conserve this building and extended to create some use for it which has a cultural significance invites more people into it. And so you they could have a win win situation here actually conserving a well loved and highly respected piece of modern architect Brutus modern architecture and get a new 21st century added on to it and remember, and it was quite quiet at the time when it was muted. National portrait gallery wanted to move here. Some years ago, it fell because of the directorship and the portrait gallery changed, but the idea of this becoming a new cultural centre with a fully restored Denome house and a wonderful 21st century extension is a great opportunity to do hope the university will embrace that. We mustn't leave out gateshead. And here there was more recent work than 1980s to pick up wasn't there. There was and then here I must add my thanks to Grace McCombie who throughout my life has been a great encourager. And of course, did not only in the Thumbeland volume with others, but also the Newcastle Gateshead volume and that was a great help when I was doing gateshead. And, and really, this is one of the most exciting townscapes in Britain, surely. With respect to London's Millennium Bridge, I think this is a magnificent structure and the buzz you get when you see it tilt. I mean, it only costs about £3.50 to tilt it, and it's magnificent. And I was working in Bessie 30s house when this was brought down the time and dropped in place. And I saw people coming down Dean Street, and as they turned the corner saw this bridge, their jaws dropped and just wow and delight with not over the face faces and that once before, and that was in the great court in the British Museum when when I was leaving and people were coming in for the first time. And of course foster sage building which is magnificent. The auditorium is gorgeous. We long to go back there. The interaction between the sort of semi external space between the halls is magnificent. I actually like the back of it I like the back of it better than the front of it. I think when you come down from the car park as many others do the way that looks like a taught tented structure is really quite dynamic but this is a great sense of space here great sense of place rather. And just to finish, we go back to the territory of the Prince Bishops for the last building in the photo section of the building. Yes, I'm learning to love this when it first went up. I wasn't sure about at all. But, well, you just have to see never got into work to know what a quality architect is and of course we've just missed out on the faith gallery which has just been revealed for its scaffolding in the previous months so it will not obviously be in the volume. But this is a strange building it is part contextual and part deliberately non contextual. But I think, again, one has to praise the quality of architects that the Auckland project has brought to Bishop Auckland and I think Bishop Auckland doesn't have that many high skyline buildings that he can't do without another one. It's got a fully established skyline that this would interrupt. And I think in lots of ways when you move around it you actually see that it's pitches and its design does pick up on a lot of the buildings in the marketplace so I think we're very lucky to have this and I think the faith gallery from if the visuals or anything to go by the interior of the faith gallery will be absolutely stunning. And having seen it close to the detailing and the use of materials and the resolution of every single sort of join and all of those things that you look for in the building of a house quality it's all there it really is. Yeah. Building building. Well, thank you, Martin very much. It's been very enjoyable to revisit the county. We hope that if you don't know the area then the book will be a stimulus and if you do know the area then it will be a stimulus to, but now I hand back to Martin, other Martin, and we can move on to the questions. Thank you very much, both Simon and Martin. I'm going to turn myself into a human being again. I'm going to do a vegetable plot. That was what I was really, thank you so much. You covered so much ground in such a short space literally in such a short space of time. I'm going to go straight to the questions because we do have some and I'm going to start in the order that they were put to us. This is Edmund Thomas and it's a, it's basically to do with size. Okay, and which is a general question as well as a specific question. And I'll read out economy is very long question I'll read out the second half says this is a beautiful book and each new person of volume is ever more beautiful. But for that reason it becomes something to guard in the bookcase at home rather than to bring into the field. It's interesting that staff at Durham Cathedral see its value as a reference work. So is the person a series also having to spread its identity by having to cover both for the extinct shell guides, and for the increasingly extinct Victoria country histories I'm assuming that what VCH is referring to here. Um, maybe Simon you'd like to because this is something that doesn't just relate to this particular volume but to the thing that a lot of people of course be talking about the disparity in size and volume, quite literally. Yes, well they are bigger they are heavier. They're a bit more for your money. But we do also take care to make them as easy as possible to use the indexing and the cross referencing. And anything like that where we can see a way of reducing or simplifying your path through the books, when you're moving from one entry or reference to another. Then that's something which we really take very seriously, but perhaps more so than it was back in the maybe sort of in the time of the 80s revision. Other than that I don't know you can't. It's a classic instance of not being able to have it both ways, we can't address things which were neglected or passed over last time stained glass non performance chapels and so on areas where there is a great deal of interest and you know discoveries to impart and keep all the other stuff done cathedral, you know, so the books get longer. Inevitably they're still selective inevitably there are things which would be worth including, but which we've had to leave out for reasons of space or describing quite compressed ways. Yeah. I mean the only I had, well, you could all go out and buy a barber jacket that would help south shields great deal. If you have a barber jacket you have this where you normally stuff your dead pheasant you know that inside, you can take several peasanters one each side I think there, but I agree. Okay you can't sit them in as you used to. I do recall a comment that Colin would Bruce made about his handbook to their own wall, where he said for God's sake don't leave it on the shelf get it dirty and out in the field and I kind of would hope that's the same. Because you really have to take these things out and look at the building and then look at the description. Hopefully, the two will will marry up to some extent, but yes, I still without becoming your salesman I think it's still very good value. When you consider what you play for some books quite slim volumes, which are in excess of 50 60 quid. So, and I think quite frankly, and this is, I will remove County Durham from this but I mean if you go to any county in England, and you want to study its architecture you will choose a peasant. So that's not being me being in any way in modest because I won't make any claims for this volume. But I mean, and I'm looking at mine in front of me here. You know, it's impossible if you're in any way remotely interested in architecture not to have a fat peasant. And at one point we've added 90% to the text Simon did say initially at 100,000 words which turned out to be 60, and I was always writing too much. And I was right up to the very end I was kind of waiting for time to say, Okay, you've gone over just slash the whole thing by 10%, which would be a horrendous thing to do but bless him. He kept on saying it's okay it's okay it's good stuff. And so we packed. I'm looking at Devon Devon is Devon is pretty fat, it's fatter. I think it's near 1000 pages. I'm excited in a single volume county that with a county Durham is a substantial volume and a lot of detail and of course a lot of detail we had to leave out. Yeah, I must say also since the question mentioned the Victoria County histories. They are not definitely not fading in County Durham this in a splendid new volumes appearing and I think more work is currently underway. I have an email I got from Tony Pollard only today I think all yesterday asking for some contribution on game for so work in teesdale is progressing. And, yes, recent volumes on Darlington asunder and so it's a very active publication in County Durham which is very healthy. Yeah, Jonathan peacock says as chairman of the Durham VCH Mary suggested we under by no means extinct exclamation mark. I was sharing a glass of champagne with Jonathan Caroline, when we released from lockdown two days ago because they're very kindly invited me to their garden. And we talked about the VCH there and it's a very safe hands in Jonathan's hands. I've got I've got some I've got quite a few questions now but I'll go to the ones we're asking a very specific question and I won't admit the others. I go to Catherine hanky and Catherine says what are your thoughts on the buildings around the gala theater area the new buildings in clay path that involve the loss of the palladium and the former town clocks office question mark. Oh, well I declare an interest because I was involved when I was at Durham with the millennium scheme which was McCormick James and Pritchard which I think is excellent. I think less I'm afraid of the buildings below that which were meant to be suppressed to allow the other buildings to rise higher and in fact I think they're a lesser architectural quality. I do miss the variations of clay path. I don't mind the architect just too much but I think it's taken a great length of street facade and the diversity that existed before. Whether one would have said let's keep the palladium facade and put student houses behind it is different is a difficult issue and student housing is a big issue in in Durham anyway because there may well be an over supply for the demand. But it's architecturally it's quite good but I think in its in its breadth, it has destroyed. Well I suppose it's destroyed in much the same way that peasant dislike told Shire Hall, taking out 25 Georgian houses, but the variation that you had on clay path in the higgledy piggledy variations in same higgledy piggledy piggledy piggledy piggledy piggledy piggledy different plus but different for thought of different periods is something I do regret. Thank you. Let's go to Dr Simon Woodward who asks a short question but it's, it's interesting one, what one example of vernacular architecture sums up county Durham for you. One example vernacular architecture with me give me a day to think about that. There is a building type called the Half Passage Farmhouse, which vernacular enthusiasts will know about. And I remember Ronald Brunskill, who was the Dwayne of vernacular architecture, saying in the conference what 30 or 40 years ago, I know of no examples in Canada of a Half Passage Farmhouse. And now every village you look at has got derivations of them or so on. It's an updated version of the old medieval longhouse. And I think that type, and I could think of some in Weirdale, like Wisely Hall. But in every village, I think you'd find that. And also the one which is in the book, which is Sparta Lee House, which is a minor farmer, which is this interesting piece of social history to do with lead mining, where in some cases, you're actually living above the buyer. So literally the heat from the cattle below is heating the residents in the winter. It looks like a basalt, but it's not. And when we brought vernacular architecture group to County Durham, we tried to show them really old stuff. And I think they were interested by that clearly. But when they saw a late 18th century house over buyer in Weirdale, they were ecstatic because they have seen nothing like it in any part of the country. And it's very common in County Durham in the Dales. And I think that's a very distinctive feature of the vernacular architecture in the county. Right, thank you very much. It feels like a bit like Mastermind this. Edward Smith, I might be in line to that one. Is it accurate to say that County Durham is the only county in the country without a concert hall? Oh, grief, or surely not. No, Simon's gonna answer this for me before I think. Well, I mean, it's got the sage, hasn't it? I mean, let's be honest. I mean, you know, I have to be careful what I say here. I understand the sage was offered to Newcastle. Newcastle prevaricated an hour in so much that the sage people just upsticks and said, because Gates said, well, say, just put it anywhere you like. And this is one of the great, oh, it's a paradox in, I have real problems with Gates said, because I think it's a magnificent town, what it's done, the way it's lifted itself from the garden festival onwards and all those things along the quayside and the angel, of course. And then it fails to deliver in the middle of the town center, where it really matters. But I mean, wow, the sage is a magnificent county. And it's a magnificent auditorium. And I love the space between the concert halls. So I think we have, and we must have plenty of Victorian ones as well. Yeah. Can I just, we've got plenty of other questions. I just wanted to ask something along that, since you're on the subject of Gates said and urban architecture and modernism and brutalism. Very interesting reading. Of course, as it comes out 53, it comes out 83. And then what happens between 53 and 83 is seismic in somewhere like Gates said, because Gates said is ripped apart and has the heart ripped out of it in the 60s. And old Gates said, just disappears. That whole sort of area down by the river. And then you've got this new architecture comes, things like St. Cuthbert's village, for example, which hardly, Harold Wilson opens it, what, about 1970, 25 years later it's gone. And it's lauded as this new great architecture. And then of course you've got Trinity Square in Gates said, which is own Luda, the famous car park and the square around it, which gets a mention in the 83, very unflatteringly as being dreary gray and pretty horrible. I mean, it gets about three lines. And then you actually taught more sympathetically about it. But of course by then it's gone. Yeah. It's easy. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, and I'm a great fan of great get Carter. So any sites which are figuring get Carter were fine by me almost justifying listing. And that was an issue about listing the own Luda Trinity Square development. But the shopping center had suffered. Dear God, it was awful. It really was. I mean, whether, I don't know the reasons for that but operating on the ground as a shopping center. I mean, dramatic though it was beautifully modelled and all the rest of it, it was dark, it was dingy, it was vandalised. You could see why it was as hated so much. The tragedy is that they got rid of something which at very best was very interesting. And put back a building which is frankly appalling. I shouldn't say that. And I hope I have put it more eloquently in the book. But now it dominates the middle of Gateshead. It rises right above. And as skyline is so important on the Tying Gorge as it were it's produced something infinitely worse than was there before. And when you're on the street, although the New Trinity Square itself internally is quite attractive to the outside. It's just sheer walls and lacking use and vitality. And I think that's where I probably have to say Gateshead is probably one of the worst city centre streets in the county. And yet it can deliver magnificent stuff on Tying Gorge looking across Newcastle and of course as an entrance for the angels. It's a real paradox. How that quality couldn't be delivered in the middle. I mean, there are good things like the bus station. Marvelous location in itself. But as you say, the heart is kind of ripped out. And then you go inside the solo park and they... Absolutely, absolutely. You're wonderful people and great conservation officers and a great conservation tradition in Gateshead as well. But I think that road network, I mean, I mentioned, I would have to be in Boston when they were doing the big dig where they'd simply dropped the entire urban motorway system 50 foot into the ground and reclaimed the land on the other side. And short of doing that at some horrendous cost, it'll never happen. I don't see how Gateshead Town Centre will ever come back to its riverside again. You have to negotiate so many roads and flyovers. It's very difficult. Yeah, indeed. I'm going to move on. I know we'd love to spend the whole evening talking about Gateshead but as Edward Smith says, it is wonderful but isn't Gateshead now in time and we're... Well, technically kind of yes, but... Yes and no. I'm going to move on to Andrew Shields. And he says, Andrew says, I'd be very interested to hear about Martin's working methodology for a project of this scale. How long in the field and how is it organised and how long writing and revising and at what point do you stop? Well, when you get time. No, I mean, you break it down. I think if, I mean, if I was probably a third, somebody kept on asking me, I bet you're enjoying it, it must be wonderful. Well, when you're doing a marathon, you don't actually think of whether you're enjoying it. You're thinking of the finish and indeed the finish in many ways is tonight. You break it down into small pieces. It's not jack-hobs, but it's something like that when faced with a second inning's total of 350 to get and he said, we'll get them in singles, I think. And if you take them small enough, parish by parish, and then you feel you're going to, you don't always need to see the bigger picture because of course the introduction, which is the bigger picture is written at the very end when you've gone around the whole county. So you do it slowly. I think to give you some rough idea, I'd say I spent four and a half years out and about two years, writing all the way through and Simon was editing from day one pretty much. Two years, quite intensively, ridiculous amount of time I spent for two years, I really worked morning, noon and night because I realized I really needed to deliver this thing. So I think six and a half years to do it all. And I roughly speaking, the last year is when it gets back into Yale University Press and Linda and Alice and all the other people come on board and it's all the photographs come in and so on. Photographs have been happening over the last two or three years with Wells. But yeah, I never, well, I think it's a bit like A-Levels. I think there is a fear that you'll just pack in halfway through. I never felt that at all. I never thought that because it would be the shame of packing in and Simon has told me one or two people have in the past, but one just really wanted to see it through and relieved to see it published. Thank you. I've got a question here from Mary, Mary Sider. And she says, I think it's your daughter. Has Martin met and assisted the person who wrote the previous revision? I wonder whether he feels he has met the person that will follow on from him. Oh gosh. Well, that's probably a letter. Thank you, Mary. Mary emailed me to staff and said, I won't ask any difficult questions. It's probably a, I don't know what will happen fourth edition. I do, I mean, as Mary has two children and I've got seven grandchildren, in part you're writing it for them because there will be menial royalties, hopefully in the decades to come, which will go to my grandchildren and they'll remember some old man who gave them a volume. The poor things are gonna get a volume of Pesna when they're all age five, three and two or whatever. So whenever they'll read it, I don't know. I don't know. There are people, yes. I mean, there are, I wouldn't name names. I wouldn't dream of it, but I wanted two people. I said, when I met Simon, I said there are two or three people who could do a better volume than me. Cause I thought, and we talked about collective efforts as well, which I know they're not embracing at the moment, but we'd probably be talking 30, 40 years hence. So I don't know. I've got one person in mind who is younger than I, who could have done a very good volume, whether he will be around in 30, 40 a time, if indeed they're published or they might be online and then I don't know, Simon will probably know what the vision is for the next 30, 40 years. Yes, well, no plans for a hard book format, hard copy fourth edition. Online remains very much a goal. I do want to say though, in praise of Martin as our author, his ability to draw on and enlist and tap into and work with in a constructive way, a huge range of people. And there hasn't been time to mention all of them at all, but it was marvelous to see, there's the other model, which the editors from the office, because of course we also work on our own books in the series of being the outsider, you go in and you start knocking on doors and asking people, but you might very well be starting almost from scratch. But Martin seemed to know everyone already and to be on the very best of terms with everybody. And this was wonderful as the work went forward. Well, I would only say, and this isn't a speech giving thanks to people, but it was really lovely to work with the people who did the specialist authors on the introduction and particularly home welfare, who actually I was a student with and I went to student parties with home back in 1968-69 and worked for him as it were at DH and so on. So to come again and work with him on doing the archeological Gazetteer entries was a delight. Particularly as one gets older, completing circles like that and still working with people one new 50 years ago, it's very satisfying. But yeah, I always said, if I don't know, I know who does know. And that's one of the beauties of being stuck in the same place and County Durham isn't a bad place to be stuck for half a century. You do tend to know who knows information if you don't know it. And here we must mention the geology map does include some inaccuracies and when we reprint those inaccuracies will be corrected and all of our books include a request for information on corrections of that kind. So gratefully received. We don't think there are very many though, do we? I know I was going to finish up. I know the introduction said to finish up with the corrections and errors and I think it was Linda who said she didn't think it was a single volume where there wasn't one error somewhere in it. And considering we're talking 350,000 words and most of those are factual, you know what I mean? There's a fair chance that you're going to get something wrong somewhere. And so yes, please let us know. We have one or two logged already. Please don't tell us tonight because I'd like to believe it's perfect just for tonight. But dribble in the information in the coming months. But no, it's writing a person is like hitting a moving target because the buildings are being built. The buildings are being demolished. The buildings are changing all the time. So I'm trying to get it right at the point of publication. And so where there are errors, they need to be corrected in due course. I'm sure as you say things will come out and I won't go into detail, but Edmund Thomas has suggested the Renforth Monument, which is that sculpture outside the Shipley Art Gallery of the two chaps, the rowing monument outside the Shipley, which is actually rather fine in its own way. I would just say, I would just say about sculpture. I mean, there are some, I thought, well, I could fill that. Simon and Mike, thank me for adding an extra 50,000 words if I sculpture. There is an excellent, and I think they were across the country, excellent publications and public sculptures done and certainly a very good landscape volume for the northeast. That is a real Bible for it. And I think if there is a sculpture sitting next to an important piece of architecture, one would put it in in the middle of a town square or whatever. If one had to drive out of town to a remote sculpture on a hillside, and it was just a sculpture, perhaps there's less need to put it in because it's, this is a book about buildings primarily, but clearly where sculpture enhances a space surrounded by buildings, we would include it. Okay, sorry. I'm just zipping up and down the Q&A. I've got a couple I'll save till the end, because they're not strictly about architecture, but they're terribly important. Any chance of a third editions for Simon really? Any chance of a third edition for Northumberland? That would be nice, wouldn't it? But again, as that format revision, then we don't have any plans. So I would say though that the paperback city guide that Martin mentioned earlier, the Grace Macombie's Newcastle Gateshead volume, that does take that story forward into the 21st century, and it also gives a fuller description of many of the buildings than there was room for in the hardback. I could just add that one of the most depressing conversations I had during doing peasant, there was somebody when I was explaining what I was doing. So they turned around and said, so you're just doing County Durham. You're not doing Northumberland. And I sort of was speechless. Well, yeah. Seven and a half years just County Durham, and I kind of went away, sunken and rather feeling rather inadequate. David Beaumont asks, he says, fabulous work, Martin. Is there a new fan gem or something that needs more attention or rescue? I think Gainford was supposed to have something to mind, but is there anything that really is, you know, in trouble? Well, I suppose Dunnell House is in trouble, but possibly there's a way out as it were. Gosh, that's a difficult question. I mean, we know there are some great churches at risk as well. So under use. I mean, the Frizzelle, let's say, as a sole surviving example of the Frizzelle baths at Easington Colliery, that must be under threat in some way. It doesn't necessarily, I can't remember whether it's two or two star or one listing. I mean, obviously it's one or two star. So the number of people that are on the historic England's Monuments of Risk, Billings at Risk, a register will be actively being pursued by their team. And I know that County, the Durham County did do a grade two survey as well. I think there, I mean, it's partly Lee House. Let's take a small example, that little minor farmer building up the dale, it could be an excellent, you know, sort of stone tent arrangement for Ramblers and so on. But again, North Penn Irons AOMB has done a great deal of work on things like that. So there are usually agencies and obviously things like Stockton Darlington, hopefully one likes to feel that anything that might be of value there is clearly going to be protected up to 2025. Thank you very much. Peter Ayers has got another format question here. County Durham was the last of the smaller format pevsners. London two was the first of the larger format. If that is revised, it'll have to be in two volumes. How likely is that? And how will they be named? London Simon. Technical question. Yes. It may be that a revision of the South London volume does appear. It's quite right to say that it's the first of the large format. And when you look at the other London volumes, by the time we were finishing with Westminster and East London, then the level of coverage was that much greater as well as of course all the changes that had happened in between over more than 20 years actually the London series took from first to last volume. So it is possible. You could of course cover a great deal more if it were split between, well, two volumes. There's more than one way of making that split. But nothing, no firm plans at present, let's say. I've got another techie question here, which I don't know if you can answer or whether there is even an answer. This is from an anonymous attendee. Could the perambulations be produced as a smartphone app? Again, this goes back to the digital question and being able to have the text in electronic form, whether it's an app or some other form, there's more than one way of turning a book into a digital information stream. So we are continuing to investigate ways of taking that forward without having any sort of firm dates or plans yet to announce. And Keith Stalker's just come up with a really, probably the most fundamental question of all, Martin, what's your favourite building? I knew that would happen. I know, and I should have prepared an answer. I really don't have one. I suppose you've got to say that for sheer fascination and endless source of inquiry, it's got to be Durham Cathedral. In terms of what building would you save? I'll tell you two things about Durham Cathedral just briefly. I think the Neville screen, and I don't profess to have been in every cathedral, I think the Neville screen is one of the most beautiful objects in any English cathedral. And then a tiny little thing, and this was in the second edition, so it's not something I've put in, but I delight in thinking outside the box, maybe because I'm not a thinker outside the box, I probably could confess. And if you go to the Neville tomb in the damaged Neville tomb, damaged by the Scots in the nave, and you look around the base of the Neville tomb, there are all these little weepers, traditional round tombs, they're all devoutly praying, and they're rather boring because everybody just turns out the same number of weepers. They're sometimes representing children and so on. One on the Neville screen, on the Neville tomb rather in the nave of Durham Cathedral is turned around. Somebody has decided that this is about grief, and so they turn around and they have the, it looks like a man leaning on the tomb in the usual form of grieving, touching the coffin as it were, and it's a kind of universal theme. And I find that deeply moving every time I see it. It's a kind of realism. You'll find the same thing that I think, is it much more than in Herriford where that lady's dress on the tomb slips over and is carved into the moulding of the tomb edge. I find that intensely moving. So it's often very small things that will excite me, but I've gone in Durham Cathedral umpteen times, thousands of times, I suspect, over the 50 years I've worked there in the city, and I miss that until starting Pesna, and I look at it every time now. And it's just one of those, it's just one thing in a building of such immense fascination. And the fact that there are so many uncertainties about it, and that's a problem as well, because Pesna readers want certainty. But if you can, where there is uncertainty, that often is where the most fascination lies. And I think, and I've been guided by Simon and this, if we don't know, say so, because in some ways that's a signal for future research and for more inquiry and so on. That's not answering the question, and it's easy to say Durham Cathedral. Otherwise, let me take Eskim, please. Eskim. Yeah. Does it island disc? Yes, I know. Eskim, he's more easily on the island. Exactly. That's right. I guess there's just a couple before we wind up. Simon Nock. So Staffordshire was the last first edition. Will it be the last of the second? Sorry, that was a bit too quick. Staffordshire was the last of the first edition. Will it also be the last of the second edition? That makes sense. Yes, it very probably will. We do have a running order now sketched out for the remaining volumes into 2023 to complete the revision of the English series. I will say, though, as we're into the tricky terrain of county boundaries and how they change, we are respecting the historic boundaries of Staffordshire with the exception that the Black Country area is being covered in a separate volume. Andy Foster's Birmingham in the Black Country and that will come out sooner. That will come out in 2022. Lovely. Just two more and then we will draw it to a close. Colin South asks, and I guess I might be able to answer this. Will there be a similar webinar for the revised Wiltshire volume in due course? Well, we're working on that. I guess that is the answer. But yes, we will definitely be doing something with our colleagues at the University Press. And I've got an interesting question here. I can't leave it alone because it's, you know, I've always wondered this myself. So I hope to come to the area as soon to travel from the US. Is it encouraged? What is the fish and chip shop in Cartlett Pool that you recommend? Well, I've got the name of it. Blast it. Very well, you'll find it. I mean, when the 12 o'clock bell goes at St Hilda's and you think that people are coming out for mass, they're not. They're coming for verals. Is it verals? No, is it verals? I forgot the name. It's right at the foot of St Hilda's church. St Hilda's. What's so good about it is that you can take your fish and chips and you can go and stand and sit rather in the, in the, in the park, little urban park, which was where the marketplace would be. It's a bit of a blasted town is Hartley Pool. It was, it was bombarded by cruises in the First World War. Strange history. And you can glance over Hartley Pool Bay and you can see all those Georgian houses and the medieval wall and the oil platforms. And you can see a nuclear power station and you can see the derelict red Castile works. It's a very, I'm not decrying it. I think it's a very dynamic, very Northeastern. It's not Brighton, but it's a very Northeastern landscape. And gosh, the fish and chips are good, but they're pretty good in South Shields too, I have to say. And there you are. I was going to say, the horse is mad. Verals, fish. Verals. Verals. There's also the almighty card, but I mean, I guess that's not one that you, maybe there's one called that in Durham. I don't know. We always thought when we're at English Heritage, we should produce a gastronomic guide to the Northeast because wherever we were traveling, we'd find interesting for chop shops. But we thought we should put this together. We never did, sadly. Yeah. Well, Edmund agrees. He says verals too. So, we're all getting a bit peckish now. So that's probably a really good point to end on. And I would just like to say once more, thank you to Simon and thank you to Martin. I mean, not just for being with us tonight, but for all that heroic effort you've put in over the past few years. Yeah. So, I think that's a good point. Whatever we think about our favourite buildings or our taste in architecture, these are the most extraordinary volumes, and we owe you a great debt. And we all know that there'll be served generations to come, as well as ourselves. And we just have to buy bigger pockets, as you say in our poachers coat. So thanks, everyone for attending. And we hope to see you here again soon. So good night from all of us. Thank you.