A Landmark for Native Architects

Posted: 26 June 2023

A Landmark for Native Architects 

We’re delighted that a building we designed in Husthwaite, North Yorkshire, the new village hall, is featured in the revised North Riding of Yorkshire volume of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’s masterful national survey, The Buildings of England. The book, which has recently been re- published has been revised by Dr Jane Grenville. 

Dr Jane Grenville, retired in 2015 from her role as Deputy Vice-Chancellor for students at the University of York, and since her retirement has had the wonderful task of revising the North Riding volume of Nikolaus Pevsner’s iconic series.  Returning to her first stamping grounds, Jane has been travelling the highways and byways of the North Riding, looking at lovely buildings and writing about them. Jane’s career began as a member of the Listed Buildings Re-Survey Team in Yorkshire in the mid-1980s.  She then went to work in historic buildings conservation until she joined the University of York’s Archaeology Department in 1991, where she taught medieval archaeology, heritage management and archaeology of buildings. She was Head of Department 2001 to 2006, Pro Vice Chancellor for Students 2007-2015 and Deputy Vice Chancellor for Students between 2012 and 2015.  

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner CBE was a German-British art historian and architectural historian, best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951–74).  Work on the Buildings of England  series began in 1945, and the first volume was published in 1951. Pevsner wrote 32 of the books himself and 10 with collaborators, with a further four of the original series written by others. Since his death in 1983 work has continued on the series, which has been extended to cover the rest of the United Kingdom, under the title Pevsner Architectural Guides (now published by Yale University Press).   

Husthwaite Village Hall is now included in the Husthwaite village section. The building is a new replacement building for the life expired timber pre-war hut that served as a community hub. We designed the new hall in 2012 and it was bult in 2013,  funded by a Big Lottery Grant that we assisted the client in obtaining, together with a community consultation exercise to inform and educate the local community during the planning process and construction period. The building includes many environmentally inspired features and natural materials, and you can read a full account on our website. 

Pevsner’s guides are known to describe historic buildings with formal analysis and wry observations.  Now, the updated volumes that chronicle the national picture of our varied architectural heritage take the opportunity of including buildings that have been built since the original 1960s volumes. Jane has now included a selection of contemporary additions, including Husthwaite Village Hall, that sit alongside the traditional core of historic buildings in the North Yorkshire region. 

For rare and out of print books on architecture contact Janette Ray – Fine and rare books on Art + Architecture York England