Pevsner Architectural Guides

The Pevsner Architectural Guides are four series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. The Buildings of England series was begun in 1945 by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, with its forty-six original volumes published between 1951 and 1974. The fifteen volumes in The Buildings of Scotland series were completed between 1978 and 2016, and the ten in The Buildings of Wales series between 1979 and 2009. The volumes in all three series have been periodically revised by various authors; Scotland and Wales have been partially revised, and England has been fully revised and reorganised into fifty-six volumes. The Buildings of Ireland series was begun in 1979 and remains incomplete, with six of a planned eleven volumes published. A standalone volume covering the Isle of Man was published in 2023.
The series were published by Penguin Books until 2002, when they were sold to Yale University Press.

Origin and research methods

After moving to the United Kingdom from his native Germany as a refugee in the 1930s, Nikolaus Pevsner found that the study of architectural history had little status in academic circles, and that the amount of information available, especially to travellers wanting to inform themselves about the architecture of a particular district, was limited. He had previously written An Outline of European Architecture for the Pelican imprint of Penguin Books. When he was invited to suggest ideas for future publications by Penguin founder Allen Lane, he proposed two: the Pelican History of Art, and a series of comprehensive architectural guides to the English counties which became The Buildings of England.
Work on The Buildings of England began in 1945. Lane employed two part-time assistants, both German refugee art historians, who prepared notes for Pevsner from published sources. Sources used included the inventories of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, the Survey of London, and the Victoria County History. Pevsner, who held positions at Birkbeck College, University of London and the University of Cambridge, spent the academic holidays touring the country to make personal observations and to carry out local research, before writing up the finished volumes. The first of the original forty-six volumes, Cornwall, was published in 1951, and the last, Staffordshire, in 1974.
Pevsner wrote thirty-two volumes himself and ten with collaborators. A further four of the original series were written by other authors: the two Gloucestershire volumes by David Verey, and the two volumes on Kent by John Newman. The first volume of The Buildings of Scotland was published in 1978, and the first volumes in The Buildings of Wales and The Buildings of Ireland in 1979. Revisions to the original English series began in 1962, and continued after Pevsner's death in 1983. Several volumes are now in their third or fourth revisions, and the final unrevised first edition, Staffordshire, was superseded by an updated edition in 2024.

''The Buildings of England''

The books are compact and intended to meet the needs of both specialists and the general reader. Each contains an extensive introduction to the architectural history and styles of the area, followed by a town-by-townand in the case of larger settlements, street-by-streetaccount of individual buildings. These are often grouped under the heading "Perambulation", as Pevsner intended the books to be used as the reader was walking about the area. The guides offer both detailed coverage of the most notable buildings and notes on lesser-known and vernacular buildings; all building types are covered but there is a particular emphasis on churches and public buildings. Each volume has a central section with several dozen pages of photographs, originally in black and white, though colour illustrations have featured in revised volumes published by Yale University Press since 2003.

Boundaries

The volumes originally used the boundaries of the historic counties of England, which were current at the time of writing. They largely continue to use the historic boundaries, but have been partially updated to reflect changes in London, Birmingham and the Black Country, and Cumbria. The volume on the historic county of Middlesex, for example, has been superseded by three of the six volumes covering the Greater London area, whereas Tyne and Wear, which was established from parts of County Durham and Northumberland in 1974, is covered in the volumes about those two counties.

Volumes in print and their editions

Since 1962, the guides have undergone a gradual programme of updating to reflect architectural-history scholarship and to include significant new buildings. Pevsner left virtually all the revisions to others, acting as supervisor only. He ultimately revised only two of his original editions alone: London 1: The Cities of London and Westminster and Cambridgeshire. Both were later revised again by others. The programme of revision of first editions was completed in 2024 with publication of the second edition of Staffordshire, replacing that published in 1974.
Until 1953, all volumes were published in paperback only, after which both hardback and paperback versions were issued. The revision of London: 1 in 1962 was the first volume to be issued in hardback alone, and no further paperbacks were issued after 1964. Until 1970 volumes bore a sequential BE reference number, with Cornwall being BE1. The last volume to be so numbered was Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean. Thereafter ISBNs identify each volume. Beginning in 1983, a larger format was introduced, and all subsequent new editions have been issued in this format. All editions are now published by Yale University Press.
The list below is of the volumes that are currently in print; for superseded volumes, [|see below]. Where revisions were spread over more than one volume, the preceding edition remained in print until the whole area had been revised.

Title of current edition	First edition	Co-author or sole author	Second edition	Co-author or sole author	Third edition	Co-author or sole author	Current ISBN
Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire and Peterborough	1968		2014
Berkshire	1966		2010	, Simon Bradley
Birmingham and the Black Country	1966–1974		2022
Buckinghamshire	1960		1994
Cambridgeshire	1954		1970		2015
Cheshire	1971		2011	, Matthew Hyde
Cornwall	1951		1970		2014
County Durham	1953		1983		2021	Martin Roberts
Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness	1967		2010
Derbyshire	1953		1978		2016
Devon	1952		1991
Dorset	1972		2018
Essex	1954		1965		2007
Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds	1970		1979		1999
Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and Forest of Dean	1970		1976		2002
Hampshire: South	1967		2018	, Bruce Bailey
Hampshire: Winchester and The North	1967		2010	, John Crook, Rodney Hubbuck
Herefordshire	1963		2012
Hertfordshire	1953		1977		2019
Isle of Wight	1967		2006
Kent: North East and East	1969		1976		1983 2013
Kent: West and the Weald	1969		1976		2012
Lancashire: Liverpool and the South West	1969		2006
Lancashire: Manchester and the South East	1969		2004	, Matthew Hyde
Lancashire: North	1969		2009
Leicestershire and Rutland	1960		1984
Lincolnshire	1964		1989
London 1: The City of London	1957		1962		1973 1997	Simon Bradley
London 2: South	1951–1976		1983
London 3: North West	1951–1952		1991
London 4: North	1951–1952		1998
London 5: East	1952–1965		1998		2005	Charles O'Brien
London 6: Westminster	1957		1962		1973 2003	Simon Bradley
Norfolk 1: Norwich and North East	1962		1997
Norfolk 2: North-west and South	1962		1999
Northamptonshire	1961		1973		2013
Northumberland	1957		1992	, Grace McCombie Peter Ryder, Humphrey Welfare
Nottinghamshire	1951		1979		2020	Clare Hartwell
Oxfordshire: North and West	1974		2017
Oxfordshire: Oxford and the South East	1974		2023
Shropshire	1958		2006
Somerset: North and Bristol	1958		2011
Somerset: South and West	1958		2014
Staffordshire	1974		2024
Suffolk: East	1961		1974		2015
Suffolk: West	1961		1974		2015
Surrey	1962		1971		2022
Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove	1965		2013
Sussex: West	1965		2019	, Tim Hudson, Jeremy Musson
Warwickshire	1966		2016
Wiltshire	1963		1975		2021	Julian Orbach
Worcestershire	1968		2007
Yorkshire: The North Riding	1966		2023
Yorkshire: The West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North	1959		1967		2009
Yorkshire: The West Riding: Sheffield and the South	1959		1967		2017
Yorkshire: York and The East Riding	1972		1995