Reviews

( 76 ) REVIEWS. Short Notes on the History of the Parish and Church of Chart next Sutton. By the Bev. Paul Atkins, Vicar. May, 1944. THESE Notes have been issued in a stenciUed form and in a limited edition of 60 copies. The price is 2s. 6d. but this sum is excused as any profits from the sale are to go to the general expenses fund of the Parochial Church CouncU. The Notes, which cover eight foolscap pages, deal with the manorial, and parochial history, the Rectors and Vicars, the Church and its BeUs, the Vicarage, and a few topographical notes but httle of the vUlage and its lay-out. We must acknowledge that here we have the estimable practice of putting together details of parochial and local history for the use of aU who belong to or visit a place but it is far preferable to issue these as a handy pamphlet of a standard size with a few illustrations, and at a reasonable price instead of in the temporary and troublesome form in which these Notes appear. TTT._ ._ „ W.P.D.S. Henry Yevele—The Life of an English Architect. By John H. Harvey. B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1944. 15s. net. THIS most interesting book, and unique in its way, deals with a man who from being httle more than a name, comes into the hmelight as a genius who had his finger on most of the architectural development of the second half of the fourteenth century and one who had official dealings with Chaucer (pp.43and 45). While the reviewer is inclined to discount some of the author's enthusiasm for his subject, and, personaUy, has no great love for the Perpendicular style, he must aUow that the book unfolds, with its architectural life history of men who preceded, worked with and succeeded Yevele, a remarkable period of planning and design. The book wUl certainly force architects and historians to turn a more critical eye on certain famous buUdings and weigh the author's pros and cons. In one case he would seem to be rather far fetched in his suggestion that the plan of Wardour Castle may be compared with that of Queenborough (although he claims the latter as the model for the coast defence forts of Henry VIII), and again when he brings Bodiam Castle into his net. In his enthusiasm there is his inclination to carry supposition too far although he has brought out the fact of widespread construotural and artistic development in the fourteenth century which must have been due to some master mind with a " school ". We agree with him in his estimate of the Gothic Revival, and with the satirical vein in which he treats this controversial subject and the REVIEWS. 77 present-day concrete style, such a blot in positions where it cannot be hid. On periods the author seems inclined to bring the " Dark Ages " down into post-Romanesque times when the normal dating for this darkest period in our history is 450 to 597. Again as to the Black Death and the mortahty due to it (p. 19), Dr. G. C. Coulton has studied this subject and his conclusions are that the death rate has been much exaggerated. As I have indicated, the book wUl induce a closer study of some of the buUdings the author praises. Among these is the Abbot's house of 1372 at Westminster, and the evidence brought out (p. 39) that the contract for work at St. Dunstan's in the East " contained a clause specifying that the work was to be to the design (la devyse) of Yevele ". Another interesting detaU which the attthor gives but which I should have thought told against Yevele as one of the two Bridge-Wardens, was sending to Rome without funds a John Pecchee, their emissary, when there was an intermediary on the spot—John Chirchman—able to carry the business through the Papal Chancery. The book is lavishly iUustrated and it is only unfortunate in its period of pubhcation that the text has to be so rigorously compressed into a hmited number of pages, and many of the plans so reduced in size. FinaUy, the K.A.S., foUowing on the author's paper on Yevele " And His Works in Kent" in Vol. LVI, pp. 48-53, wUl value the fuller treatment which this book now gives us, and which, as concerns Canterbury, owes much to Mrs. Gardiner. W.P.D.S.