THE ARCHITECTURE OF ENGLAND 2023
SEPTEMBER 2 to 11,2023
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PRESERVATION GREENSBORO
$3950 DOUBLE OCCUPANCY
Single supplement $1400
Accommodations: 100 Queens Gate Hotel (London); The Randolph Hotel (Oxford) and Timbrell’s Yard (Bradford on Avon)
Tour includes 9 nights accommodation, 9 breakfasts, 4 lunches, 2 dinners, 1 high tea, 1 farewell reception, all trip-related admissions and guides, private chartered bus and gratuities. Cost does not include airfare, airport transfers or alcoholic beverages unless stated in the itinerary
(For those wishing to arrive prior to the official beginning of the trip or to stay longer at its conclusion please click the link below)
Saturday, September 2nd
Tour begins at 2:00 p.m. when we gather in the lobby of our hotel
We walk the short distance to the magnificent Victoria and Albert Museum where we will be led on an extensive guided tour of its remarkable collection of decorative arts for the home.
Tea at the V&A
It’s our tradition—tea on the afternoon of our first day. Indeed, there are few things more charming than afternoon tea with treats—and there is simply no place more charming than the ‘Refreshment Rooms’ at the V & A, beautifully preserved in their original condition since their design and installation by a young William Morris and his friend, the painter Edward Burne-Jones.
Sunday, September 3rd
Eighteenth century architect Sir John Soane was a devoted Neo-Classicist who donated to the nation his eponymous house as a museum of treasures including architectural models, paintings, sculptures, drawings and antiquities. Designed between 1794-1825, there is no place quite like it and arguably no place more delighting to architectural enthusiasts.
Walking Tour of Knightsbridge and Kensington
We take a walking tour of the architectural landmarks and wonders of Kensington and Knightsbridge guided by our own inestimable Benjamin Briggs.
Monday, September 4th
We leave London today to visit not one but two cathedrals on our way to Oxford
Winchester Cathedral & Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral is considered one of England’s purest examples of Early English Gothic. Its elegant and lofty 440-foot central spire and treasures such as one of the world’s oldest known working clocks, and its one of four extant copies of the Magna Carta make this a memorable destination. Winchester Cathedral features a representation of architectural styles from Norman to English Perpendicular Gothic. One of the largest cathedrals in all of Western Europe, its treasures include the Winchester Bible, thought to be the oldest illuminated Bible retained in its place of creation. These majestic ecclesiastical wonders are less than an hour apart, allowing us to a unique opportunity to deepen our understanding and appreciation of Gothic architecture with thoroughly enjoyable day of ‘compare and contrast’.
Tuesday, September 5th
Today we wake up in the ‘city of dreaming spires’ to explore Oxford’s picturesque beauty and architectural richness. We won’t see all that it has to offer (Oxford has buildings in every style of English architecture starting with late Anglo-Saxon to the present day!) but we will see a lot during our busy day. In the morning, we will start with a view from the water, punting down the Cherwell while our guides introduce us the city and her 1000-year history. In the afternoon we switch back to land for tours of some of the colleges and a selection of Oxford’s most iconic buildings. We think we have designed the perfect day for first time visitors or old hands alike.
Wednesday, September 6th
We start our day in Oxford and end it in Bradford-on-Avon with two wonderful stops along the way.
The Gordon Russell Design Museum
Our first stop of the day is in the charming Cotswold village of Broadway to tour this museum dedicated to the early 20th century furniture designer Gordon Russell. Russell’s work served as the vital link between Arts and Crafts and such later design movements such as Danish Modern. In a radical break with Late Victorian romanticism, he believed not only in elegant simplicity and craftsmanship but also in the value of machines as tools of modernity. To quote Russell, he was all about ‘teaching the machine manners’ in order to create beautiful and accessible objects.
The gardens of King Charles’s private residence have been designed & developed with equal passion for sustainability and elegant tradition. Highgrove includes a wild garden, a formal garden and a walled kitchen garden as well as a large number of trees and garden ‘rooms’ throughout the grounds. The commitment to this garden has been through-going for the past four decades and is considered by all accounts to be one of the monarch’s fondest achievements.
Thursday, September 7th
We begin the day exploring Bradford-on-Avon and what better way than with an architectural walking tour of this richly rewarding spot which abounds not only in Medieval and Georgian buildings but also has as one of its greatest treasures the thousand-year-old The Church of St. Laurence. St Laurence is a Saxon church—one of the few Saxon churches known to exist in all of Britain and considered to be far and away the finest extant example.
Friday, September 8th
This is the day we must bid farewell Bradford-on-Avon
To the committed Anglophile with a penchant for period dramas Stourhead will no doubt seem familiar given its use as a location in innumerable movies and television shows over the past several decades. Those glimpses, however, no matter how tantalizing, only hint at all the riches in store during today’s visit. A short distance from Bradford, this Palladian jewel of an estate includes an iconic—and stunning—manor house and 2650 acres of landscaped gardens, follies and woodlands. We will begin with a tour of the house whose collections include its unrivaled library and fine Chippendale furniture and then take an in-depth tour of some of the highlights of the estate’s finely landscaped and iconic grounds.
This afternoon we’re off to view a spot that may at first blush may seem a departure. Messums Wiltshire is a highly regarded contemporary art space in the village of Tetford. The fact that it is housed a repurposed and beautifully restored thirteenth century tithe barn—the largest thatched building in the country—brings it into perfect alignment with the focus of our multi-day adventure and serves as a potent reminder that the vitality of a historic building can live on into new and different futures while remaining just as valuable and just as beautiful.
We have a special access tour of this the first of the two Modernist houses held by the National Trust. Designed as his personal residence early in his career, Patrick Gwynne’s The Homewood is a stand alone masterwork while also drawing inspiration from Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe and the International Style of the 1920’s.
Saturday, September 9th
Benjamin’s London—Regents Park
Our walking tour of Regents Park will begin in Park Crescent, the John Nash-designed Regency-style terraced housing of 1812-1821. From there, our tour progresses chronologically to Nash’s Cambridge, Chester, and Cumberland terraces. Our tour ends in Park Village West, an early example of a “rus-in-urbe” neighborhood of charming, stuccoed villas cloaked in fashionable Gothic, Italianate, and Tudor styles.
This modernist house designed by Ernő Goldfinger, is the second of the two modernist homes managed by the National Trust. Hungarian-born Goldfinger was a designer of both furniture and buildings. This austere house—composed as it is of reinforced concrete embellished with brick sheathing and banded metal-framed windows—was his personal residence.
Sunday, September 10th
This one is just luck. Our time in London happens to coincide with one of the rare scheduled ‘Open House’ days of Inigo Jones’ masterpiece Banqueting House, the first fully realized Neo-Classical design in Britain, which in turn influenced centuries of future architecture—and that is just the exterior! The interior, also designed by Jones, has a stunning grace note—a series of allegorical ceiling paintings by Peter Paul Rubens.
Chiswick House is a Neo-Palladian benchmark of English architecture completed in 1729. The house represents the introduction of Italian Renaissance aesthetics to England by Richard Boyle, the third Earl of Burlington. Chiswick’s extensive gardens were designed by the Earl’s friend and fellow Neo-Classicist William Kent, who introduced the ‘natural’ layout of the English garden style.
Monday, September 11th
Tour ends after breakfast