Christopher Hussey CBE MA FSA HONARIBA, who died on 20 March 1970, was the doyen of English architectural historians. By any standards, he was an extraordinarily prolific writer. The high points of his literary career were undoubtedly The Picturesque (1927) - a brilliant ‘essay on a way of seeing’ which opened the eyes of a whole generation; English Country Houses: Early, Mid and Late Georgian (3 vols, 1955-58) - the product of forty years’ research; and The Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens (1950) - a biographical classic written with all the wit and sympathy which its subject deserved. But it was week by week in the pages of Country Life that Hussey built up his reputation. Landscapes, country houses, town houses; medieval cottages, Georgian seats and Victorian public buildings, as well as the new-built classics of the Modern Movement, Hussey described them all. His range was remarkable, and his expository power unfailing. More than anyone it was Hussey who made Country Life, in Lord Runciman's words, ‘the keeper of the architectural conscience of the nation'. Of course he travelled a royal road: Scotney Castle, Eton and Christ Church. But he put these inherited advantages to excellent use, delighting in the appreciation of architecture by a wider and wider audience. His whole life was really a triumphant vindication of the English amateur tradition. During his lifetime architectural history was transformed from a species of belles lettres into a serious academic discipline. Almost accidentally, Hussey played a crucial part in this process. Rather more consciously, he helped to turn preservation from a minority cult into a major national concern.

On 23 May 1951 a collection of 271 architectural drawings belonging to the5th Marquess of Bute was sold at Sotheby’s in thirty-five lots. Of these drawings, 108 (lots 1–17) were catalogued as relating to St Paul’s Cathedral, London churches, Whitehall or other works on which Sir Christopher Wren was engaged. Drawings for London churches comprised 59 drawings(lots 4–15)and these are the subject of the present catalogue. Lots 4–6 and 10–15 were among those acquired at the sale by the National Art Collections Fund and subsequently either resold to the RIBA at the saleroom prices or presented as a gift. Lots 7–9 were bought by Mr Merrit Ruddock and are now in the collection of Mrs Tweet Kimball of Sedalia, Colorado, USA. Photographs are in the Conway Library of the Courtauld Institute.

In 1818 the Church Commissioners instructed the three Attached Architects of the Office of Works to submit specimen designs for new churches to accommodate the spiritual needs of the rising population. The history of this Government investment in public morality has already been documented. But the stylistic contributions of Nash, Smirke and Soane have been largely overlooked since only Soane's designs were available. Recently, however, a virtually complete set of designs by Nash, and the majority of those by Smirke, were discovered in the Muniment of the Church Commissioners. Nash presented ten elevations, with ground and gallery plans, which were later attached to the versos. Smirke sent elevations and plans of six different church types. The surviving schemes by Soane appear to illustrate a series of church designs based on a single ground plan and with one section. One of these (Fig. 35a) resembles a minor Valhalla of church buildings. Both Soane and Nash colour-tinted their designs; Smirke added only a slight wash to suggest the fall of light.

Many historians have maintained that the true pioneers of the Modern Movement were the engineers of the Crystal Palaces and railway stations. Architects are supposed to have adopted a reactionary position by adhering to masonry structures and persisting with the strict imitation of historical motifs. Recent research in nineteenth-century architectural theory, however, suggests a rather different interpretation. Many architects and architectural writers in the mid-Victorian period were deeply involved with the question of new materials; and they proposed quite a variety of solutions to the ‘iron problem'.

The friendship between Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Robert Ashbee [Fig. 40a] has often been noticed in connection with Ashbee’s introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright: Aüsgefuhrte Bauten. The following letters, found in Ashbee’s journals, add to our knowledge of this friendship; and perhaps to a sense of its intellectual complexity.

Ashbee first met Wright at some time in late November or early December 1900. He was impressed, and wrote in his journal:

Wright is to my thinking far & away the ablest man in our line of work that I have come across in Chicago, perhaps in America. He not only has ideas, but the power of expressing them, & his Husser house over which he took me, showing me every detail with the keenest delight, is one of the most beautiful and the most individual of creations that I have seen in America. He threw down the glove to me in characteristic Chicagoan manner in the matter of Arts & Crafts & the creations of the machine.

According to contemporary building journals, the number of theatres built, rebuilt or remodelled in the British Isles 1840-1920 was as follows:

Thus the total over a period of eighty years is 413. Allowance should be made for the metropolitan emphasis of early and mid-Victorian trade journals; no doubt provincial theatres were built which escaped the notice of the Builder, but a distinct boom is shown from 18% to the end of Edward VII’s reign. The first world war and the coming of the Picturedrome account for the paucity of building in the decade before 1920.