This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
JeremyMusson


I am amused to be regarded as a priest of a “cult of ruins” – not least because I have spent 15 years writing about old houses which remain in use for Country Life. But I accept that my recent book celebrates


A


ruins and the place that they occupy in our landscape, and in our shared national culture (physical, literary and artistic). That was of course the aim of the book, as it was first thought of as collaboration with a gifted photographer Paul Barker – perhaps it was also for us both a brief escape from the study of the continuously inhabited country house, which is our speciality. Jenkins cannot, I think, deny that the English


do occupy “a landscape of ruins”, or that most English towns have a ruin, a castle, abbey or other that is seen as a symbol of the older history of the place. I do include buildings in my book which are ruins which will be repaired and some (namely the Victorian terraces of Liverpool being demolished under the Pathfinder initiative) which should have been repaired. Jenkins thinks that the ruins of abbeys (the left overs of the Dissolution) and castles (deliberately undone after the civil war) were inherited by the Georgians as “an astonishing collection of gaunt and gutted structures”. Jenkins admires the restorations of castles by


Victorian architects – and many of these are indeed works of art in their own right – and he contrasts this with the abbeys “frozen in time” to the “delight of scholars, but their mounds of stone were largely meaningless to the public”. I am just not sure that that is true – or even, that it matters. Visits to ruins for pleasure have a long history, as any one who has leafed through 19th-century tourist photograph albums must recognise. The idea that the preserved ruin is necessarily rendered “soulless” by being cared for seems to me also a curious assertion, if compared with many “restored” buildings which are certainly rendered “soulless”. The Victorians rebuilt vigorously, it is true,


and it was surely this as much as anything that led to the foundation of the Society for the


76 Cornerstone, Vol 32, No 2 2011


COMPAREDWITH MANY “RESTORED” BUILDINGS WHICH CERTAINLY ARE RENDERED “SOULLESS”’


RENDERED “SOULLESS” IS CURIOUS, IF


‘THE IDEA THAT THE PRESERVED RUIN IS


Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877, as the genuine fabric of ancient buildings was swamped in new interpretations of what it might have been or just what the current owner would like it to be. The untouched ruins therefore took on an even greater importance in the minds of Ruskin and Morris and their followers. Jenkins rightly praises the skills, expertise


and funding which means that our ancient ruined sites can be protected well. But he also allows himself considerable latitude in his own argument to declare that “there are obviously national icons whose character derives from their ruined state, such as Fountains Abbey, Tintern


reply from a priest of the cult of ruins… It is curious that one of the great champions of our shared national heritage should take such a harsh view of the place of ruins in our culture.


SIMON MARSDEN/THE MARSDEN ARCHIVE/BRIDGEMAN


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88