Those interested in local architectural history have keenly been anticipating the completely revised edition of Nikolaus Pevsner’s volume by James Bettley. Now available, at 939 pages, it is over twice the size of the previous edition despite the subsequent ‘disappearance’ of part of the county – Barking, Romford, West Ham etc – into London. It’s a colossal achievement, five years’ work, well written, and completely updated to reflect latest research, covering the New Towns and omitting the buildings that are no longer with us.
To see how accurate it is, I checked my local parish. It includes Pevsner’s famous line on the bell tower slightly amended: “Blackmore possesses one of the most impressive, if not the most impressive, of all English bell towers, built (according to tree-ring dating) in 1400” (p.141). The dedication of the church is properly stated (“St Laurence” not “St Lawrence) and Blackmore House, properly titled Jericho Priory which since 1954 “deserves detailed investigation” (p.89 previous edition) has now been accorded such an entry.
Inevitably there are some updates required to the work even on release: the Community Hospital at Brentwood (p.174) has recently been demolished; the north doorway of St Peter & St Paul, Stondon Massey (p.754) is no longer blocked but forms the entrance to a new toilet facility; the Harlow Study Centre closed a matter of just months ago at St Andrew’s Netteswellbury (p.460) with documents transferred to the town’s Museum. Such changes naturally reflect our changing use of buildings. Writing a volume such as this must be like painting the Forth Road Bridge, if you will excuse the analogy.
There are 123 lovely new colour pictures replacing the black and white ones of the 1954 edition. Unfortunately the inside of the Blackmore bell tower is omitted but locals are compensated by a drawing of the framework of Stondon’s belfry (p.26), being a representative example of the county’s craftsmanship. It’s not a cheap book (on Amazon, £23.99) but a wonderful reference and update to the original.
Andrew Smith
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