The History of the King's Works
The History of the King's Works is a standard work in British architectural history. The six-volume work was edited by Howard Montagu Colvin from 1963 to 1982 and published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office . It deals with the buildings of the English and British monarchies from the time of the Anglo-Saxons to 1851.
The Ministry of Works commissioned the work in 1951 and published the first two volumes under its new name as Ministry of Public Building and Works. From volume three, the Department of the Environment was responsible for the publication. In particular, it deals with the history of the Office of the King's Works and the structures it built.
In terms of its content, the book built on the building in England by Salzman, published in the 1940s , which dealt specifically with medieval construction technology. This part of the history is treated relatively briefly. The work also tries to limit the pure description of architecture in relation to the history of architecture to a minimum. However, different authors within the work have very different approaches. Over the 20 years of its creation, the editorial focus has changed. While the volumes on the Middle Ages - which appeared in the 1960s - focus almost exclusively on written awards and the chronology of the administration, the volumes published in the late 1970s and 1980s are devoted in detail to the design and architecture of individual buildings, their functionality and effects the architecture on the function.
The work itself has been called a monument to history in the 20th century . The wealth of details is overwhelming. Reviews also criticized the purely aggregate character of the work, which flooded with details, but lacked any critical assessment and interpretation. The editors were so overwhelmed by the wealth of material in the archive that they failed to select. This leads to innumerable passages in which "workers improved something unnamed" or long treatises on trivial buildings are written.
List of volumes
- Volume 1 and 2: the Middle Ages
- Vol. 3 and 4: 1485-1660
- Volume 5: 1660-1782
- Volume 6: 1782-1851
- Supplementary volume: plans
literature
The History of the King's Works
- London: HMSO , (1963) to (1982)
- ISBN 0-11-670571-X
- ISBN 0-11-670568-X (v.3, pt 1)
- ISBN 0-11-670832-8 (v.4, pt 2)
- ISBN 0-11-670571-X (v.5)
- ISBN 0-11-670286-9 (v.6)
- ISBN 0-11-671116-7 (Plans 5–7)
Secondary literature
- GR Elton: Review: The History of the King's Works , The English Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 362 (Jan. 1977), pp. 190-191
- Andor Gomme: History, Chronicle or Research File? Reflections on "The History of the King's Works" (Review), Architectural History, Vol. 29, (1986), pp. 197-203