Nikolaus Pevsner described Berkshire as ‘half home county, half West Country’. This revised and comprehensive guide follows the county’s historic boundaries, including the large area transferred to Oxfordshire in the 1970s. The variety of architecture is, in consequence, broad and remarkable. Berkshire’s houses range from intriguing early timber-framed dwellings to the splendors of Windsor castle, at once England’s greatest fortress and finest royal palace, through Georgian, Victorian and Arts and Crafts mansions of exceptional diversity and richness. Besides its many medieval churches, the county is a wonderful huntiong ground for the Gothic Revival, including works by famous names such as Butterfield and G. E. Street. Its market towns retain much of their Georgian charm, while the prosperity of recent years has brought new waves of confident and innovative architecture.
The northern half of Hampshire covers landscape ranging from the rolling chalk downland of the Test and Itchen valleys to the Wealden edge and heathland at the borders with Surrey and Berkshire. Winchester is not only unrivalled for medieval architecture but like many of the smaller towns, such as Alton and Alresford, has also some of the most charming streets in the southern counties. The countryside is rich in small villages, with buildings of every period in a delightful mix of timber-framing, brick, flint and tile, and a notable abundance of fine gardens. There are major country houses, from the quiet grandeur of The Vyne to the Victorian showpiece of Highclere Castle, but the area also has late twentieth-century architecture of great distinction, much of it by the County Council’s own architects. Several monuments are of unique interest, from Jane Austen’s house at Chawton, to the spectacular French Imperial mausoleum at Farnborough Abbey and Stanley Spencer’s moving series of war paintings for the chapel at Burghclere.
