Over a year ago I was privileged to be invited by the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society to contribute an essay to a festschrift in honour of the 80th birthday of John Archer. On 11 January this year I attended the reception at which the new volume was presented to him.
John Archer is a well respected Architectural Historian who has taught at Edinburgh and Manchester Metropolitan University. In Manchester, his native city, he undertook pioneering studies of Victorian architecture, especially the Town Hall, and helped secure the preservation of numerous buildings.
It was only after the presentation that the contributors had a chance to examine the new volume as a whole. The book is titled Making Manchester and contains eleven essays on the architecture of the city and its surroundings; there are 59 black and white illustrations. I was pleased to find my essay on Bradshaw Gass & Hope placed after Julian Holder’s work on Emanuel Vincent Harris. Both BG&H and Harris were significant twentieth century Classicists whose work has been ignored by critics; possibly because most of their buildings were public rather than private commissions. Harris designed Manchester’s Central Library and Town Hall Extension. Bradshaw Gass & Hope designed Bolton Central Library and a number of Town Halls - one of their apprentices was John Parkinson, architect of Los Angeles City Hall.
Classicists will also be interested in Clare Hartwell’s essay “Manchester and the Golden Age of Pericles. Richard Lane, Architect”.
If you would like to buy the book (or persuade your academic librarian to purchase a copy) the details are as follows:
Making Manchester
Clare Hartwell & Terry Wyke (editors)
Lancashire & Cheshire Antiquarian Society
ISBN 978 0 900942 01 3
Price £25Available from:
Lancashire & Cheshire Antiquarian Society
57 Mosley Street
Manchester
M2 3HY
