Your Places or Mine

Clive Aslet & John Goodall
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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. The Bank of England: Soane, Baker and the Most Controversial Building of the 20th Century

    5D AGO

    The Bank of England: Soane, Baker and the Most Controversial Building of the 20th Century

    Send us a text 2025 celebrates the rebuilding of the Bank of England by Sir Herbert Baker – if celebrate is the right word.  It remains one of the most controversial projects in 20th century architecture.  Baker’s name has been irredeemably blackened for his presumption in destroying the Bank of England created by Sir John Soane a century before.  Clive and John revive the debate, describing the history of this great symbol of British finance and might, asking whether Baker has had a fair press.   While Soane’s vanished interiors were a masterpiece, the financial operations of the British state had hugely expanded during the First World War.  Baker admired Soane but what was he to do?  The options were not favourable to conservation.  Baker was himself a Classicist and saw himself as speaking the same language as Soane.  Moreover, although a man of Empire, he was also – paradoxically perhaps – deeply committed to the Arts and Crafts Movement.  His Bank of England became one of the greatest commissions for sculpture and the decorative arts of its time.  Baker’s reputation was blackened by his erstwhile friend Lutyens, with whom he fell over over New Delhi.  Is now the time to redeem it?

    52 min
  2. Chim-Chiminee: The History of the Chimney

    DEC 11

    Chim-Chiminee: The History of the Chimney

    Send us a text This is the time of year when thoughts turn to mince pies, Christmas shopping, mulled wine – and chimneys, whether it is to settle around a roaring hearth or hope that Father Christmas pays a visit.  So John and Clive are turning their attention to the development of this architectural form, beginning with the appearance of walled fireplaces in the Norman period.  Chimneys reached a zenith of fantasy under the Tudors, when astounding feats of decoration were achieved by means of the novel building material of brick.  The invention of more efficient grates in the Georgian period led to another kind of design challenge, while the Victorians capped the countless chimneys which spread coal smoke over cities such as London with a myriad of pots and cowls. Which type of chimney is Santa’s favourite?   As this episode of ypompod reveals, he is spoilt for choice.

    1h 3m
  3. Vanbrugh at 300: Celebrating The Life and Times of Sir John Vanbrugh (With Charles Saumarez Smith)

    DEC 4

    Vanbrugh at 300: Celebrating The Life and Times of Sir John Vanbrugh (With Charles Saumarez Smith)

    Send us a text In today's episode of Your Places or Mine, John is joined by the inimitable Charles Saumarez Smith who divulges all he knows about the architect Sir John Vanbrugh in anticipation of the 300th anniversary of his death. Discover the remarkable life and legacy of Sir John Vanbrugh — playwright, architect, and one of the most unconventional figures of the English Baroque. From his daring comedies to his groundbreaking designs like Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, John and Charles explore how Vanbrugh’s bold imagination reshaped both the stage and the skyline. Join us as we uncover the wit, ambition, and controversies behind a man who refused to live—or build—by the rules.

    1h 2m
  4. Journalists and Gentlemen: How the Georgian Group Saved London

    NOV 28

    Journalists and Gentlemen: How the Georgian Group Saved London

    Send us a text The founding of the Georgian Group in 1937 was a milestone in the movement to save beautiful architecture.  With an anniversary around the corner, Clive and John discuss how the Group emerged from the parent organisation, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and why it was needed.  They reveal the extraordinary extent to the destruction inflicted on Georgian London after the First World War.  Not even town palaces, Georgian square or the works of the Adam Brothers, notably the Adelphi, were spared. Whereas SPAB’s interests were principally medieval and rural, the Georgian Group’s were metropolitan and post-1714.  It required a heroic effort to get it going.   The idea originated with the much put upon journalist Douglas Goldring, before catching the imagination of various grandees, including Lord Derwent; Robert Byron served as a brilliant propagandist.  Clive shares some of his own experience as the Founding Hon.Secretary of the Twentieth Century Society (the called the Thirties Society) to illuminate some of the issues.  The Georgian Group was a media success – but demolition on a scale previously unimagined came, courtesy of the Luftwaffe, during the Blitz.  With new challenges after the Second World War.

    1h 14m
  5. The Tale of Parliament Part 2 - The House of Lords

    NOV 20

    The Tale of Parliament Part 2 - The House of Lords

    Send us a text Last week’s Your Places of Mine celebrated the rebuilding of the House of Commons after the original interior was bombed during one of the last raids of the Blitz. This week, Clive and John consider the Palace of Westminster, otherwise known as the Houses of Parliament, as a whole.  After the old Palace had been all but destroyed by fire in 1834, Charles Barry won the competition to rebuild it, producing a building that may have shortened his life but is surely one of the herculean achievements of the Victorian age.  With the help of the superb designer of Gothic ornament, AWN Pugin, he produced a building that is both deeply traditional in its style and iconography and intensely modern in the technology that underpinned it.  The glorious, theatrical composition of turrets, pinnacles, and rich tracery purposefully evokes the virtues of an idealised medieval past, in the hope of inspiring the legislators of the present day. Only two years before the fire, the Great Reform Act had been passed.  Until that point much of the governance of the country had taken place in the splendid homes of the aristocracy, so the state of the Houses of Parliament may not have concerned them unduly.  The new building would be equipped with all the amenities that Parliamentarians could find in their London clubs.   It was at the same time more sumptuous and more middle class. Innumerable statues and paintings of saints, heroes and kings reminded post-Reform politicians of the standards they were expected to live up to.  The Lords chamber was always richer than that of the Commons – a contrast made all the greater when the Commons was toned down after the Second World War.  But the greatest richness of all was reserved for the monarch.  What does it mean?  How was it all done?  What does the future hold in store?  The subject is almost endless but Clive and John manage to do it justice in just an hour!

    1h 3m
  6. The Tale of Parliament Part 1 - The House of Commons

    NOV 14

    The Tale of Parliament Part 1 - The House of Commons

    Send us a text On May 10, 1941, an incendiary bomb destroyed the seat of British democracy, the chamber of the House of Commons.  This was not the first time fire had struck the Palace of Westminster: most of it had already been rebuilt after a disastrous fire of 1834, caused not by enemy action but the burning of obsolete tally sticks – a medieval system of accounting which symbolised the antiquated nature of the place.  Seventy-five years ago the House of Commons reopened, and John has joined the celebrations that are marking the anniversary.  This could have been an opportunity to reshape the Commons entirely, making it obviously modern.  That was not the approach favoured by Sir Winston Churchill.  In particular, he wanted the chamber to remain, as it had been before, slightly too small.  This meant that it would still be crowded when important debates were held, heightening the drama and sense of occasion.  The architect chosen for the work was Sir Giles Scott, famous for the Anglican cathedral at Liverpool as well as Battersea Power Station, the University Library in Cambridge and red telephone kiosks.  Scott designed the chamber we have today in a simplified version of Gothic with modern elements, whose practical if not workaday character heightens the contrast with the House of Lords, where Pugin’s ornament drips with gold.

    1h 2m
  7. Albi Cathedral: The Greatest Brick Building in the World

    NOV 6

    Albi Cathedral: The Greatest Brick Building in the World

    Send us a text This week John and Clive are bowled over by Albi Cathedral, a towering, outwardly austere edifice of rosy brick which is ‘quite unlike any other medieval structure that you will see – a work of abstract modernism made in the 13th century’.  They discuss the background to its construction, in particular the merciless crusade against the Albigensian Heresy which takes its name from the city.  Externally the cathedral appears to be as much a fortress as a religious building, expressing the authority and power of the Roman Catholic Church.  It was a big influence on some late Victorian architects looking for a new direction for the Gothic Revival, as well as surely on Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Scholars have called it the largest brick building in the world. Unlike most cathedrals, which have doors at the West End, Albi is entered from a late Gothic porch that could be a gatehouse on the side.  The external walls are buttressed by semicircular drums of brick that go the full towering heights of the buildings. The interior is equally unexpected – a vast space whose roof is a single span of over 60ft.  There are no aisles but the walls are lined with chapels. In contrast to the exterior – ‘Brutalism in brick,’ as John calls it – they are decorated by Renaissance artists from Italy in a scheme that remains almost entirely complete.  Each one is composed of a geometrical scheme.  There is a terrifying fresco of the Last Judgement at the West End.  The choir is separated from the nave by a wedding cake-like screen of stone filigree, which miraculously escaped destruction during the French Revolution.    Why was Albi constructed as it is?  That’s something to talk about – as  John and Clive do!

    56 min
  8. Magnates and Mansions: Who Were The American Millionaires That Loved the British Country House?

    OCT 30

    Magnates and Mansions: Who Were The American Millionaires That Loved the British Country House?

    Send us a text Phipps, Carnegie and Old Westbury Gardens In its turn of the 20th-century heyday, Long Island could boast no fewer than 900 country houses.  Since then, most have disappeared, leaving Old Westbury Gardens in a unique position – the only house to have survived complete with its collections, garden and archive.  Clive has just been there and shares its wonder with John, asking why the American country house is such a different beast form its counterparts in the UK.   The story of Old Westbury Gardens is romantic.  Jay Phipps, son of Andrew Carnegie’s partner Henry Phipps, built it for his English bride, Margarita Grace – who loved the life she had known growing up at Battle Abbey in Sussex and was only persuaded to marry him when he offered to create something similar on the other side of the Atlantic.  Westbury House, as it was originally known,  was therefore as English as possible.  And yet there are many differences from prototypes in the UK, revealing the difference between English and American priorities.  Andrew Carnegie was another builder of country houses.  John ponders why this should have been. The ensuing chat illuminates the values of the plutocracy in the Edwardian age, an age of super wealth and (sometimes) philanthropy.

    1h 9m
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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

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  • Creator
    Clive Aslet & John Goodall
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    37
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  • Copyright
    © 2025 Your Places or Mine
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    Your Places or Mine

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