Your Places or Mine

Clive Aslet & John Goodall

A podcast about places and buildings, with tales about history and people.  From author and publisher Clive Aslet and the architectural editor of Country Life, & John Goodall

  1. 20 Jul

    Guardsmen and Grandeur: The History of Buckingham Palace

    Send us Fan Mail Everybody in the world has heard of Buckingham Palace. The official London residence of the British monarch, it stands at the western end of St James’s Park, very near St James’s Palace.  As well as being used for great occasions of State, accompanied by the daily ritual of the changing of the guard, it was also somewhere that successive kings and queens lived when they were in town.  Now the decision has been made for HM the King to move out, giving Clive and John the excuse to consider its evolution as a work of architecture and changing taste.   The architectural story begins in 1703 when the Duke of Buckingham commissioned a house from the soldier-architect William Winde.  Winde’s design for Buckingham House, published in Vitruvius Britannicus, would prove highly influential on the development of later Georgian country houses.  Little remains to be seen of it now but it set the scale for what came later.  In 1761 George III acquired Buckingham House as a private retreat for Queen Charlotte, to which he added several libraries for his famous collection of books: the foundation of the British Library.  George IV turned the house into a palace, persuading Parliament to commission John Nash for the purpose.  Nash produced a scheme that was both characteristically elegant in concept and slapdash in execution.  The old brick building was clad in Bath stone, doubled in size towards the garden front, provided with wings to either side of a central courtyard, whose termination was a triumphal arch – later moved to the top of Park Lane and called the Marble Arch.  Nash was by then an old man and the project ran hopelessly over budget.  By the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, it also looked impractical: there were too few bedrooms and nurseries.  Edward Blore to close the courtyard with a new East Front facing the Mall.   When Victoria died in 1901, after a long reign and with the British Empire at its zenith, a fund was established to remember her.  This not only produced the sculptural composition of the Queen Victoria Memorial by the sculptor Sir Thomas Brock on a ronde-point (roundabout) in front of the palace but a revamp of The Mall culminating in Admiralty Arch by Sir Aston Webb – a set piece of imperial town planning.  There was even enough money to reface the east front of the palace – work that amazingly was carried out in three months while George V was at Balmoral.  Central is the most famous balcony in the world, on which successive generations of the royal family stood to wave to the crowd. Presumably there will be less waving now, given the palace’s change of function – which is all the more reason to consider it as a work of architecture and art.

    Guardsmen and Grandeur: The History of Buckingham Palace

  2. 14 Jul

    London’s Golden Orb: The History of Monument

    Send us Fan Mail The Monument, rising above the streets near London Bridge, is one of the City of London's most striking historical landmarks - a soaring Doric column erected to commemorate the Great Fire of London of 1666. Begun in 1671 and completed in 1677, it stands 202 feet tall, a height chosen deliberately: the distance from its base to the spot on Pudding Lane where the fire is believed to have started. But who designed it?  The candidates are Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke - Clive and John weigh their respective contributions in the light of new scholarship, discussing what it meant to design a building (with your name on it) in the 17th and 18th centuries. What a structure it is. Built from Portland stone, the column is topped with a gilded urn of flames, symbolising the fire itself. Inside, a narrow spiral staircase of 311 steps winds upward to a viewing platform, offering visitors panoramic views across London - a reward that has drawn sightseers since the 18th century. At its base, elaborate inscriptions in Latin recount the devastation of the fire, which destroyed much of medieval London, gutting over 13,000 houses and 87 parish churches, while a sculpted relief by Caius Gabriel Cibber depicts the City's destruction and subsequent restoration. The Monument was more than a memorial. In its early years it also served a scientific purpose: Hooke and Wren designed the structure as a giant zenith telescope, with a hollow central shaft intended for astronomical and gravitational experiments, though vibrations from passing traffic ultimately made such precise observations impractical. Standing at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, the column remains a quiet but powerful reminder of destruction and renewal at the very heart of the City.

    London’s Golden Orb: The History of Monument

  3. 6 Jul

    An English Icon: The History of Warwick Castle

    Send us Fan Mail As a great expert on the English castle, John has been thinking about one of the great icons of England: Warwick Castle.  This extraordinary building, created over centuries, has come down to us intact, not having been slighted after the Civil War in the 17th century – something exceptional. Equally remarkable is the mythology that surrounds the place, including the medieval legends attached to Guy of Warwick, after whom one of the castle’s famous towers is named.  Although Guy may never have existed, his story was revered by the Earls of Warwick as their foundation myth.  In an attempt to contain the Earl of the day, Henry I took away a portion of his earldom from the Earl of the day and bestowed it on a favourite, who built Kennilworth Castle, only five miles away.   The result was a rivalry that lasted through the Middle Ages, which was conclusively ended when Kennilworth was reduced to the ruin that it is now. Founded by William the Conqueror, when travelling to Yorkshire to inflict the vengeful punishment known as the Harrying of the North, Warwick Castle occupied a powerful position at the heart of the country, overlooking the river Avon.  The 16th Earl of Warwick became known as  Warwick the Kingmaker, from his ability to tilt the scales of the Wars of the Roses in favour of the side he supported at the time.  Later centuries associated Warwick Castle with the England of Shakespeare, who was born in Warwickshire.  It was arguably the first building to have been copied in recognisable form during the early Gothic Revival.   A visit to Warwick Castle still stirs the imagination.  Listen to John’s account and you’ll see it with fresh eyes.

    An English Icon: The History of Warwick Castle

  4. 28 Jun

    The History of Greenwich, Masterpiece of the English Baroque

    Send us Fan Mail Clive has taken the riverboat to Greenwich, one of the most spectacular sites of London.  ‘Good Duke’ Humphrey, brother of Henry V, built a retreat here in the 15th century, which Henry VII developed into a palace.  This was where Henry VIII jousted in his early years, and where his armour was made.  To the early Stuarts Greenwich’s was important from its position at the mouth of the Thames: this was where foreign ambassadors landed on their way to the court: Inigo began a revolutionary building for James I’s Queen, Anne of Denmark, and finished it for Henrietta Maria who was married to Charles I.  The Queen’s House, as this structure became known, was where Charles kept some of the best of his art collection – alas, dispersed by the Civil War.  After the palace was roughly treated after the Civil War, it was earmarked to become once more a palace for Charles II.  He succeeded in building only one block before the money ran out.   Instead of a palace, the Royal Observatory arose at the top of a hill, as a place to study the heavens away from the smoke that was already obscuring the skies of London.  The terrible carnage of the Dutch wars of the 1660s and 1670s, fought at sea, touched the heart of the future Queen Mary, who would ascend the throne with her husband William III, Prince of Orange.  As a result, Greenwich became home to the Royal Naval Hospital, in a magnificent parade of buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren.  They include the Painted Hall, a masterpiece of the artist Sir James Thornhill, and a chapel that was redecorated in the 1780s by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart after a fire.   The complex that Vanbrugh built for his family on Maze Hill, next to Greenwich Park, also survives. .A generation ago, Greenwich – no longer a hospital but a naval college – was difficult for the public to see. Now it houses a university and a music school, and a dazzling restoration of the Painted Hall has proved, literally, a revelation – previously invisible details have been brought to light, such as the figure of Louis XIV who appears beneath William III’s foot in the ceiling.  John is as much enraptured as Clive.

    The History of Greenwich, Masterpiece of the English Baroque

  5. 20 Jun

    A Tudor Treasure, The Gem of Lincolnshire: Doddington Hall

    Send us Fan Mail Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire is one of those country houses you find only in Britain.  The attics are full of old toys, military headgear, unwanted commodes and a giant figure of the White Rabbit, left over from an Alice in Wonderland-themed event.  A collection of Roman antiquities, some found on the estate, is displayed in the downstairs lavatory, along with a child’s pedal-operated aeroplane with patriotic RAF roundels.  From the roof, you can see Lincoln cathedral on a good day.  Built around 1600, Doddington has hardly been changed outside, and in half a millennium, it has never been sold. Best of all are the tapestries.   Due to the antiquarian tastes of its 18th-century owner John Hussey Delaval, the Georgian revamp was old-fashioned for the 1760s, and included bedrooms close-hung with tapestries in the manner of the William and Mary era.  The Doddington tapestries are now a rare survival, although not perhaps for the reason that might be imagined.  They are not of the first quality, but relatively workaday– and which is exactly the sort that have most commonly perished.   Clive and John are both enthralled by this house, which – thanks to the conversation of the stables to a shopping experience – is going through something of a golden age.   It was where Clive first rode an electric bike.

    A Tudor Treasure, The Gem of Lincolnshire: Doddington Hall

  6. 30 May

    A Parade of Characters and Art: the Glittering Story of Stansted Park, Sussex

    Send us Fan Mail Clive and John have both been to Stansted Park, outside Chichester, though at different times.  Clive remembers it from the time he helped the owner Eric Bessborough revise a book in the 1980s, whereas John’s connection is more recent.  They both find it an astonishing example of an economic revival, apparently inspired by the Covid years when the public was desperate for open space.  As a result, the house and park are beautifully maintained, while estate buildings have been well developed as a retail experience.   Stansted has a long and colourful history, which ushers a glittering array of characters onto the stage.  Owners have ranged from kings to wine merchants, Dukes to the remarkable Lewis Way, who made it a seminary for converted Jews who were supposed to go out to the Holy Land and spread Christianity.  This enterprise was not successful but the poet John Keats attended the dedication of the chapel, made from a fragment of a Tudor building.   The main house was destroyed by fire in 1900 and rebuilt by a member of the Blomfield dynasty. In the 1920s it was bought by the 9th Earl of Bessborough, a Governor General of Canada, who furnished it with the contents of the family’s Irish country house, Bessborough House, in County Kilkenny, which had been removed before Bessborough was burnt during the Troubles.  Today, Stansted still looks out over a well-treed landscape with avenues created during the Baroque period. Few country houses have such a varied history or have been so happily revived.  Clive and John are enchanted.

    A Parade of Characters and Art: the Glittering Story of Stansted Park, Sussex

  7. 16 May

    Dons and Divinity: The Marvellous History of Cambridge

    Send us Fan Mail John has been to Cambridge to see the castle, the mound of which still survives.  Although a graduate of Peterhouse and now a Visiting Professor of Architecture, associated with the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Downing College, Clive comes new to this early history but many stories of more recent times.  Together the pair mull over the development of this remarkable city, famous for one of the most beautiful ensembles of buildings in England.   The castle reminds those who might have forgotten – or never knew – how important this fenland settlement was to William the Conqueror in the Norman period.  Scholars arrived from Oxford in the 13th century, to establish what became the university.  It rose to glory under the patronage of Henry VII, his mother Lady Margaret Beauford and his son Henry VIII.  King’s College Chapel was finished in this era; Trinity College, St John’s College and Christ’s College were all founded.  It is not only the buildings that give Cambridge its character but the open landscape of the Backs, one of the triumphs of the Picturesque.  Today Cambridge is a boom town, thanks to the knowledge economy associated with the university’s record in scientific and mathematical research.   There has been rapid growth in housing, served by two new railway stations, Cambridge North and Cambridge South.  Can the qualities for which Clive and John love the place survive the pressure?

    Dons and Divinity: The Marvellous History of Cambridge

  8. 9 May

    The Story of the American Country House: Developing an Idea

    Send us Fan Mail Clive is writing a book for Yale University Press on the Story of the American Country House. John indulges him by discussing an introductory overview of the subject, with which Clive has been engaged since Yale published his The American Country House in 1990.  Here is a rich and colourful theme, celebrating a sometimes spectacular architectural tradition shaped by remarkable individuals.   There are numerous reasons people in Colonial American and the developing United States wanted houses outside the city.  Rural simplicity expressed a godlier life; country air was good for the health; the drama of the American landscape appealed to the Romantic imagination.  By 1900 there was a school of highly sophisticated architects who could serve any need.  While some American country houses bore a resemblance to their cousins across the Atlantic, they were, in the early 20th century, built for a different purpose, which was recreation and sport.  There was little sense that these were dynastic seats.  As soon as fashion changed or money ran out, owners moved on.  Hundreds of country houses on Long Island, for example, were demolished after the Great Crash in the 1920s. Clive and John consider these and other aspects of the subject, in the light of the renaissance of country house building that can be seen in many parts of the US today.

    The Story of the American Country House: Developing an Idea
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About

A podcast about places and buildings, with tales about history and people.  From author and publisher Clive Aslet and the architectural editor of Country Life, & John Goodall

Information

  • Creator
    Clive Aslet & John Goodall
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    60
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Your Places or Mine
  • Show Website
    Your Places or Mine