Product Description

"Spectacular Vernacular" is a guide to London's 100 strangest and most surprising buildings, new as well as old, revealing their histories and their many odd associations. Some are open to the public, if you know who to ask. Others remain strictly off-limits, this secrecy heightening the sense of mystery which surrounds them. And many more are so familiar that few of us ever stop to consider, actually, just how curious they are. Only yards from the Royal Albert Hall, for example, a 300ft-high tower attracts barely a glance and many Londoners don't even know it's there. A few miles away the capital's widest building at nearly 1,000ft has been favourably compared to the Winter Palace at St Petersburg. And on the river at Chelsea a Tudor hall, moved brick-by-brick from the City a century ago, is today being remodelled as London's largest private house. Elsewhere there are the grand yet almost ostentatiously anonymous premises of London's traditional gentlemen's clubs, a handful of private palaces, fake castles, false house fronts that conceal a railway, and such peculiarities as an arts centre constructed out of old shipping containers, a replica Arab tent built for a Victorian explorer, and even a privately owned tunnel for running cable-cars under the Thames. Also featured are several buildings that, if they had been built, would have dramatically changed the face of London - such as Wembley's answer to the Eiffel tower and the Regent Street monorail. This beautifully illustrated book will be a revelation for Londoners who think they know all there is to know about their city.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9722 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

BBC Radio London - Robert Elms Show, 10 May 2006
It’s a book I think everyone should have - Robert Elms, BBC Radio London, 10 May 2006

Camden New Journal, August 2006
This admirably structured and coherent book draws attention to the uncontrived diversity in London’s architecture - Maxwell Hutchinson, past-President RIBA

Good Book Guide, May 2006
This lavishly illustrated book is a must-read for for lovers of London - Good Book Guide, May 2006

Customer Reviews

IT'LL OPEN YOUR EYES!
It's easy to think we don't need yet another book on London, but this one really does tell you something new.
Featuring some of the most extraordinary buildings in the country - new ones and old ones, inner-London as well as the suburbs - and with at least 150 photos illustrating them all, it's a guide to a city I barely new existed.
Weird castles and tottering towers, underground warrens, wacky houses you can't believe ever got planning permission, secret government installations, it's all in here...plus a guide to those old grand-looking gentlemen's clubs in and around Pall Mall: which is which, what goes on inside them, and what happened when the police raided one of them thinking it was a posh brothel...
With detailed descriptions of each of them, and some quirky historical background to the older ones, this is one of the most imaginative books on the capital I've seen in a long while.

Cabbies - so you think you have the knowledge ???
As a London Cabbie I pride myself on the knowledge I have not only of routes through and around London, but also the many interesting and different places hidden away or just not thought about as we pass along the busy thoroughfares of London. I think that the cabbies will like this one.

This is a book about London and its peculiar architecture, which we pass everyday in the cab without so much as a second glance. One hundred buildings are identified as being the strangest and enigmatic. The introduction describes London as lacking an urban masterplan and is shown in contrast to Nazi Berlin, Paris or even Babylon. London's chief glory lies not in the theatrical effect of triumphant avenues aligned along carefully drafted axes, or meticulously planned grid of street and square, but rather in its many historic and often highly individual buildings.So the introduction goes.

The book is full of excellent black and white photographs, that show the buildings in a light, which could not be done justice in colour strange as though they might seem. With each photograph most of which are full page, the author gives a brief pen portrait of each location, which includes a history.

The book has ten chapters and each section deals with a specific aspect of architecture. For example, in the first chapter entitled "Tudor Manor Born" the author introduces Abbot's House, Deans Yard, Westminster moving on to Albany and Piccadilly. Crosby Hall features and once we have read through the text we discover that Crosby Hall was moved brick by brick from the City to its current site in Chelsea in 1908. You will pass it on Cheyne Walk just after Danvers Street. There always seems to be something going on there and it looks as though the builders will be there for a while longer.

Not only does the book describe and illustrate interesting buildings within central London, the author also brings to our attention many other buildings which we might only know about if we lived in a particular locality. For example Severndroog Castle? Who? you might say. This is located in Castlewood Park, SE18. Many of us cabbies who did the knowledge will probably have seen the tower at Clock Tower Place N7. The story associated with this tower is that after several hundred years of cattle slaughter in the city it was decided to transfer the trading of livestock to Islington. The story goes that this market attracted the ne'er do wells and there was a large illegitimate trade attached to the market with thieves running alive. After the war it was knocked down for development and the more legitimate traders moved to Bermondsey. Hence the New Caledonian Market, which still exists today in Bermondsey Street by Long Lane.

There are many other illustrations and descriptions and the book would be an interesting addition to the bookshelves of those cab drivers who are interested in the aspects of London presented here. Most enjoyable and worth the purchase.

Coffee table tome meets un-put-downable read
If you thought you knew London, think again. David Long's book combines in-depth research, with a talent for quirky anecdote. Such human-interest brings the tasteful black and white photos to life and distinguishes Spectacular Vernacular from other, sometimes fusty, architectural manuals. It's easy to dip into as it deals with one building at a time - text facing photograph - so there's no need to flip back and forth between pages. Once your curiosity is piqued, however, it is hard to put down. Will appeal to Londoners, and visitors alike.