The study of architecture is concerned with the design, structural engineering, construction, and building materials. People recognize certain key elements that buildings contribute to the character of a place – elements such as style, scale, and materials. The houses and shops of its central streets are mostly three storeys or less, and the character of the place owes much to creamy limestone – and a bit of matching pale render here and there. Tucked away on a quiet corner, its entrance front shaded by encroaching trees, it looks every bit the part, the iron walls set off by the white carpentry of the porch, the single bell still hanging above the doorway. It is a bit overpowering, especially close-to. Alec Clifton-Taylor (in Another Six English Towns) found it ‘perhaps a little overpowering, but…undeniably a building of character’. Not for the first time, I find myself with Alec Clifton-Taylor. It’s on the edge of the stone country and bricks find their place here too, just as there is a place for beer as well as wine in the town’s many watering-holes.

The Northgate Brewery in Devizes was designed by the firm’s proprietor, Henry Wadsworth, and completed in 1885. It’s functional – the large-scale brewing process called for generous height and a big footprint. Devizes is diverse and big enough to accommodate its brewery, and be the better for it. For Devizes is not simply a stone town. I think it makes a positive contribution to the town centre (and not just because of the beer it produces, to which I have a certain attachment, because the first pint I ever drank was a pint of Wadworth’s). It’s pointless, of course: the thing will still be standing and we’ll have a sore toe. A lot people believe that design is all about redecorating or beautification but really it’s not. A lot of companies opt for matching colors. Last week I spent an enjoyable couple of days in Harrogate, speaking at the excellent Raworth’s Harrogate Literature Festival and spending a lot of time just standing and staring at the architecture. Alas, one day in September 1952 the whole lot went up in flames. This content was generated with the help of GSA Content Generator Demoversion!

When I finally visited Ashby St Ledgers, I was amazed that the gatehouse forms a tiny part of the whole house, which is huge – more like a cluster of large houses than a single dwelling. Similarly, zoning rules and restrictions may also apply to areas to have a different use than before (like converting a residential property into a commercial property according to the peripheries). But in an age where classic building styles are as popular as new ones, it’s important to have a broad overview of what separates the two. The other thing that marks Harrogate out from those other two great spas is its date. To keep frost from accumulating on exterior windows during the winter, add two cups of antifreeze or rubbing alcohol to each gallon of wash water. This building, for example, is of dark stone in a mix of masonry finishes – mainly rock-faced stone for the walls, with smooth ashlar around the windows and doors. But the great house has left its traces – estate buildings such as a farm and cottages, and these gate piers, which, with their accompanying stone wall, signal to the passer-by that there was once a grand building hereabouts.

This data has been created with the help of GSA Content Generator Demoversion.

I imagined people plotting in the upper room of this gatehouse, from which, no doubt, they’d be able to escape in a hurry if royal spies got wind of their scheming. But what do other people think about it? But I don’t think it has. New buildings are seen by many as a threat, and the greatest threat of all is posed by buildings that don’t ‘fit in’. And seen from the other side of the market place the brewery certainly does stand out, even though its red colour also echoes the mellower Georgian bricks of the non-stone houses that are scattered here and there. And its red bricks were no doubt economical. Whenever someone decides to put up a new building in the middle of one of our historic towns and villages, the temperature of the inhabitants is apt to rise. As someone who grew up Cheltenham and has a particular affection for Bath, both spa towns, I’ve always liked the spa town of Harrogate too – though I’ve not been there for years. This data was created by GSA Content Generator DEMO!

They were built in 1868 by textile manufacture George Rogers, whose business was in Bradford but who had a close connection to Harrogate and intended as houses for elderly people from either place. In contrast to Georgian Bath and Regency Cheltenham, Harrogate came into fashion in the second half of the 19th century, so much of its architecture is Victorian. Victorian values weren’t all bad. Kicked a building lately? Building Trades China, All Construction Directory and Home Improvement Directory, and offering led lighting, and Saniflo Upflush. With these drawings complete, the builders can easily begin the pricing and building permitting, prior to building construction. In the Himalayas you can discover the sources of the Ganges River and (on China’s side) of the Brahmaputra. But this is one of the survivors, down a lane on the western side of the River Severn in Gloucestershire. And then one realises that they signal no entrance drive and are a few paces away from a ha-ha surrounding the park. A city like Bath, for example, is dominated by Georgian architecture no more than a few storeys tall, most of it faced with local limestone; a tall modernist skyscraper made of concrete would look out place there.