Family traditions about English country houses are often despised by art historians, but they have a habit of being based on fact, however long forgotten. The attribution of a certain wing to a certain architect has more than once been verified by the rediscovery of his original drawings, framed in passe-partout, in a remote servants’ lavatory. Often, as in the case of Cliveden, the evidence is far closer at hand but it has for one reason or another been overlooked.

In about 1905, twelve years after buying Cliveden and embarking on a scheme of major alterations to the house and garden, William Waldorf Astor had all the surviving eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architectural drawings, garden designs, engravings and manuscripts to do with the building bound in a large album for safe keeping.

‘A variety of buildings are necessary for carrying on the business of field culture; the nature and construction of which must obviously be different, according to the kind of farm for which they are intended. Suitable buildings … are scarcely less necessary to the husbandman than implements and machinery … There is nothing which marks more decidedly the state of agriculture in any district than the plan and execution of the buildings.’ These words, written in 1844 but paraphrasing remarks made by Arthur Young in the 1790s, emphasize the importance that well-designed buildings held in the eyes of the improver-landlords and agricultural theorists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when the farmsteads on most great estates were rebuilt to ideal plans. Surprisingly, these buildings have received little attention from architectural historians despite the fact that many of the leading architects of the period including Robert Adam, Sir John Soane, Henry Holland, James and Samuel Wyatt and Thomas Cundy Snr were all involved to a greater or lesser degree in the design of model estate buildings.

In the emergence of the architectural profession in Britain two phases can be identified. The first, from the end of the eighteenth century to the successful establishment of the Institute of British Architects in 1835, saw the development of various ‘para-professional’ societies and an increasing demand for the clarification of the architect's role. In these years the occupations of architect, engineer, surveyor and draughtsman were increasingly differentiated, each developing its own body of specialized knowledge. In the second period, the half century following 1835, the Institute of British Architects (‘Royal’ from 1837) consolidated its position as the main professional association governing the practice of architecture; it became the model for provincial societies and the legitimate body competent to pronounce on professional conduct and negotiate on behalf of architects with both government and the public. The agreement, in 1890, on a body of examinable knowledge appropriate for associateship of the Institute may be seen as closing this period of consolidation.

Personal and Professional Recollections, by the late Sir George Gilbert Scott, R.A. was published in 1879, the year after its author's death. It is, perhaps, a measure both of Scott's fame and the status of his profession that it was the first autobiography of a British architect to be published, but the book has often been used to undermine the reputation which Scott enjoyed in his lifetime. The passages of self-justification, the accounts of his successes, the regrets for his failures and the descriptions of his cathedral restorations can make Scott appear a naïvely self-confident careerist. The qualities of character admired by the Victorians have been at a lower premium this century, but from a more sympathetic reading of Scott's Recollections emerges a more complex individual, often subject, indeed, to those feelings of doubt and guilt which arouse such interest today. Nevertheless, he was sustained in his successes and in times of difficulty by a simple but profound Christian faith.