Britain's Lost Cities

Description

It is not only the Luftwaffe that was to blame for the destruction meted out on Britain's city centres during the20th century. The utopian dream of postwar planners beguiled by modernist visions of a car-bourne, tower-block-dwelling society saw Medieval churches, Tudor alleyways, Georgian terraces and Victorian theaters vanish for ever, to be replaced by a gruesome brutalist landscape of concrete office-blocks and characterless shopping malls.

Now, for the first time, Gavin Stamp shows us exactly what we have lost. Reproduced in this haunting volume are hundreds of fascinating photographs of cities from Plymouth to Dundee, all of streets and buildings that are gone for ever. In the accompanying text, Stamp traces their creation and destruction, remembering the massive campaign to save the Euston Arch, wantonly demolished in 1962, and mourning the loss of lovely medieval Coventry, which was already doomed by the city planners even before German air-raids intervened. Alternately engrossing, enraging and heartbreaking, this is an extraordinary evocation of Britain's architectural past and a much-needed reminder of the importance of preserving our heritage.

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Featured Reviews

Reviewed by Samuel Carpenter, Book Buyer, RIBA Bookshops

Here is a printed memorial, a lament for the damage wrought on Britain's cities through mechanised warfare and a broadside against the exacerbation of those wounds by mechanical planning. Hundreds of vanished buildings are mourned with controlled anger and bracing blasts of invective at a world made for King Car - identified by Stamp as "inimical to urban life", a judgement that will resonate with many city dwellers. The tone for the most part avoids the easy traps of reflexive nostalgia and curmudgeonly crustiness, while the descriptions of what's lost are informative and loving. Thoroughly illustrated with archive photos, this is worth it for Dundee's singular Royal Arch alone.