The buildings of England

Architectural Review, The, May, 2005 by Sutherland Lyall

I couldn't imagine that I would ever have a kind word to say about English Heritage, that body staffed by closet would-be riders to hounds, haters of modern architecture and ageing members of the I-Dined-with-the-Earl school of architectural history. The site which had brought about my vaguely Damascene conversion is Images of England at www.imagesofengland.org.uk/enquiry which is based on the work since 1999 of a small army of volunteer photographers.

The ambition is to 'create a point-in-time record of the 370 000 buildings listed at the turn of the millennium'. This kind of thing takes a long time and you will still have to use the NMR photographic material until Images gets into the swing of things. Some time in the future, I'm afraid. So maybe I'll take back quite a lot of that retraction.