Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales
By Adam Voelcker, 2011.
Published by Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales
April 2011
ISBN: 978-1-871184-41-9
Price: £14.95
Postage: £0.00
Buy Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales

Review of Contents

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales by Adam Voelcker with a forward by HRH The Prince of Wales, published by The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, paperback, 136pp, £14.95.

This book explores the beautiful and inspiring buildings of the Arts and Crafts architect Herbert Luck North (1871-1941). Although less well known than the architects with whom he began his career, J. D. Sedding and Edwin Luytens, North was an outstanding designer of humane buildings that were sensitively grounded in their local environments. He took an early interest in vernacular building traditions, writing two pioneering books on Snowdonia churches and houses, and he absorbed into his own design work distinctive regional details, the use of local materials and a keen sense of how buildings could complement the landscape. He had a direct or indirect influence on a number of Welsh architects, and his thoughtful, modest and sensitive approach, so lovingly expressed in this new book, still has the power to inspire.

Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales is superbly illustrated with specially-commissioned photography and ground-plans as well as historical photographs and North’s handsome original drawings. It will enable an understanding of this significant architect’s legacy for the first time, and allow more people to appreciate the richness of his contribution to our built heritage.

CONTENTS
Forward by HRH The Prince of Wales
Preface
Introduction
Early Life: 1871-1898
Early Projects 1898-1900
Domestic Work 1900-1940
Church Work
Other Work
North's Legacy
Notes and References
UK map
Chronological List of Selected Works
Herbert Luck North Collection
Bibliography
Index

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Book Launch at the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC)


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Book Launch at the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC)

The Royal Commission’s latest work Herbert Luck North: Arts and Crafts Architecture for Wales written by Adam Voelcker, was launched at the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC) conference held at the St George hotel in Llandudno on Friday June 17. The previous evening delegates from the conference were taken on a guided tour by the author of some of the distinctive houses that North designed in Llanfairfechan, including his home, Wern Isaf, where he lived from 1901 until his death in 1940. The book covers all aspects of North’s life and career and is profusely illustrated with original plans, designs, photographs and other archive material and also contains a gazetteer of the buildings North designed, including many that never got built. The National Monuments Record of Wales holds many of his original drawings and plans which can be viewed at our reading room in Aberystwyth.


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Royal Commission films with Ray Mears on Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire

Toby Driver filming with Ray Mears inside a prehistoric hut on the southern side of Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire.

The Royal Commission has been getting some insight into prehistoric ways of life and survival on an off-shore island from the expert – Ray Mears. As part of the Skomer Island project, where the Royal Commission is working with partners to map and understand the well-preserved prehistoric houses and fields, we were invited to film with Ray Mears for his new television series Wild Britain, due to be aired on ITV in autumn 2011.

Filming inside one of the best preserved Iron Age huts on the south of the island, which is still accessible to visitors, Ray was fascinated to hear how a combination of aerial photography, airborne laser scanning and detailed ground survey is allowing the Royal Commission to develop a new understanding of the ways that Skomer was settled and farmed in later prehistory.

However, Ray’s international knowledge of the ways that modern tribes and peoples live off the land brought new insight some aspects of Skomer’s prehistory. Ray reminded Toby Driver that Burdock root was a common cultivated vegetable before potatoes came to the British Isles, and an important part of prehistoric diets; it still grows on the island today and may once have formed a staple crop. He also discussed the need for managed woodland on the island in prehistory, which would have provided not only a renewable source of straight poles for building and fencing, but also hazel nuts in the autumn which were a valuable source of prehistoric protein. Current blank areas in the prehistoric fields may show where permanent managed woodland was located.

Ray was particularly taken with some recent finds of stone tools from Skomer, collected from the ground surface during survey work this spring. Properly recorded prehistoric finds from Skomer are lacking, so these rare finds will be carefully studied and catalogued before being placed in a museum. Ray liked a hand-sized rubbing stone, collected from the prehistoric fields on the northern part of the island and doubtless used with a quern stone to grind corn to make flour. He noted that Aboriginal examples of rubbing stones can be passed down many generations as a family tool. He also like a small flint ‘burin’, manufactured from a flint beach pebble, which is a pointed tool held between thumb and forefinger. It was found along with other flints on an eroding headland on the north-west of the island. Some burins may have been used to pierce holes in leather, but Ray thought that this one was just the right shape to cut needles from animal shin bones; the Inuit people of the Arctic still use similar tools today.

A probable prehistoric rubbing stone, perhaps used to grind grain on a quern stone, collected from prehistoric fields on the northern part of Skomer Island during Royal Commission fieldwork in 2011.

Work continues by the Royal Commission during 2011/12 to make a new map of Skomer Island’s prehistoric fields, working from specially-flown airborne laser scanning data or LIDAR from the Environment Agency. Find out more about Skomer Island in prehistory at www.coflein.gov.uk . ‘Quicksearch’ for Skomer.

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Gwent Family History Society Open Day - Cwmbran

Gwent Family History Society Open Day, Cwmbran

On Saturday 11th June 2011, the Royal Commission attended the Gwent Family History Society Open Day in Cwmbran where we helped genealogists find images and information on where their ancestors lived, worked and worshipped.

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Surveying a 19th Century Manganese Mine

RCAHMW Investigator Spencer Smith carrying out a GPS Survey of a Manganese Mine on Mynydd Nodol, Arenig, Bala.

The Atlanterra Project have been surveying a 19th Century Manganese Mine on Mynydd Nodol, Arenig, Bala. The survey is amplifying work carried out by the Uplands Survey and will produce a detailed plan of the workings and associated infrastructure.

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Garth Point Pier - Site Details Online Images Associated Sites & Records

RCAHMW colour slide oblique aerial photograph of Bangor Garth Pier, Bangor, 2004.
DI2005_0811     NPRN: 34150

Stretching over 460m across the Menai Straits, Garth Point Pier is the longest surviving pier in Wales. Originally built for pleasure steamers, it was constructed in steel and cast-iron in 1896 by J.J. Webster of London and the contractor was Alfred Thorne of London. It was damaged by a ship in 1914 and was closed in 1971, but re-opened in ...
Read full site description of Garth Point Pier on Coflein - Discovering Our Past Online

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Read more: Garth Point Pier www.coflein.gov.uk
 Online Images (10)
 Associated Collection Records (21)


Coflein is the NMRW's public online database, searchable geographically through Ordnance Survey maps or by text queries.

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