A fascinating insight into Britain’s industrial past as evidenced by its buildings, richly illustrated with intricate line drawings.
Architecture historian and artist Hubert Pragnell offers an engaging insight into Britain’s industrial heritage through its historical industrial buildings. The book takes a catholic view of its subject, going far beyond the mills and machine houses of the Industrial Revolution. It looks at the power stations and monumental bridges of Britain, including the buildings and engineering projects associated with the distribution of manufactured goods – docks, canals, railways and warehouses.
From forges and furnaces to the architecture of the Railway Age, temples of mass production and dock and harbour buildings, Industrial Britain tells the story of development at a fascinating period in Britain’s history. Buildings across the country are featured, from pottery kilns in Stoke- on-Trent to windmills in Norfolk and oust houses in Kent. Battersea Power station rubs shoulders with the Iron Bridge and New Lanark sits alongside Millennium Mills.
It’s also a story of industry’s ultimate decline. As manufacturing has been increasingly supplanted by services in contemporary Britain, new uses have been found for at least some of the country’s great industrial buildings. Not least as containers for art and heritage, such as the Bankside Power Station (Tate Modern) and Saltair Mills (Salts Mill). Other buildings featured are still used as originally intended today, such as King’s Cross Station and Smithfield Market in London and the Shepherd Neame brewery in Faversham.
Illustrated throughout with over 200 original line drawings, Industrial Britain is a celebration of industrial architecture and its enduring legacy.
Hubert Pragnell studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and the Ruskin School of Drawing at Oxford. He taught art at the Kings School, Canterbury and is the author of several books on architecture. He lives in Canterbury, Kent.
ISBN
9781849946131Title
Industrial Britain: An architectural historyAuthor
Hubert PragnellPublisher
BatsfordPublication year
2021Binding
HardcoverLanguage
English
