Architecture and society

This is the north aisle of the church at Gaddesby, the finest Decorated church in Leicestershire and one of the best in the country. I have explored the social and cultural background to this church in two articles:

‘Lay administration and cultural patronage in the fourteenth century: the Gaddesby family of Leicestershire’, East Midlands Historian, 16, 2008, 5-14.

‘Gaddesby: a Decorated church in its social and cultural context’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 82, 2008, 171-188.

I've also had the privilege of presenting a talk on this material to the people of Gaddesby in the church itself. In my work I have stressed the backgound of the Gaddesby family as capable administrators, rather than the merchants or magnates often associated with lavish architectural display. I have also sought to draw a connection on aesthetic grounds between the work at Gaddesby and the chapel of Merton College, Oxford. This has rested in part on a detailed study of the evolution of the form of buttresses. This work has links to my broader interest in the relationship between architecture and society, especially the nature of management in that society.

I would like to take this work further by

• doing a broader study of the form of the buttress in Decorated architecture (there are interesting parallels, for example, with the buttresses at Gloucester Cathedral)
• looking at the Victorian Anglo-Norman church at Thorney and its connection to the eccentric squire and cleric Christoper Nevile, father of the brewer Sydny Nevile
• exploring the relationship between management theory and architecture, especially as seen in the work of Owen Williams at Boots in Nottingham
• relating the built form of the Liverpool pub to management systems