Pevsner's Buildings of England

Introduction

The Compendium of Pevsner's Buildings of England is an electronic index of the facts recorded for buildings and furnishings in 42 volumes of the Buildings of England series. Each volume covers a county, part of a county or two counties, as they were before local government reorganisation in the 1970s. The London volumes are excluded from this first release but it does include recent revisions of the other volumes up to 1994. It is NOT the text of the books but refers you to the page number(s) of the relevant volumes. It is a way of finding information on types of buildings and artefacts across a range of places.

The data can be searched by building category, place-name, artist or architect name, period, and various combinations of these fields. You can search a single volume at a time or conduct national searches. For example, you can search for medieval misericords throughout England or for industrial housing in Nottinghamshire. There is a brief description for each recorded item, and page references to the appropriate printed volume.

The printed volumes of Pevsner's Buildings of England are shelved at LB 0.942 PEV in the JB Morrell Library. There is also a complete set at King's Manor Library. Check the Library Catalogue for details.

Full explanations are given in Online Help.

For further information please contact Sarah Thompson (ext. 4515).

[Back to the top]

Access to Pevsner's Buildings of England

Windows 2000 supported PC's -

Click on Start/Programs/Teaching/Library/Buildings of England CD and the database will appear on the screen.

Note that staff users will initially have to install the database using Start/Settings/Control Panel/Run Advertised Programs. Find the title in the list then click on Run and follow the steps as necessary. The database will then appear as above.

[Back to the top]

Searching the database

The database contains two types of records: category records and name records. A Category search allows you to search the database on buildings and architectural features. A Name search allows you to search on the names of artists and architects. Click on the one you want to use.

For effective searching you need to follow the same basic search procedure in the defined order every time you carry out either a Category or a Name search.

[Back to the top]

Category

You can search all volumes for any category or narrow down your search to a specific feature in a specific area:

Select a volume eg. Yorkshire: North Riding
Select a category eg. Secular buildings (domestic)
Select a place (optional) eg. Castle Howard
Select a period (optional)  
Select a decade or decades (optional)  
Select a part of a church (optional)  

Click on Search to display the results. This search finds 2 matches which fit your criteria. To find all the records attached to Castle Howard use Cross-references (see below). The references to very specific items within a building can only be found by entering all the detailed fields in your original search. To go back to the Search window click on Close Grid.

Within the choice of six building categories you can specify a subcategory and a place and period. To move from category to subcategory and back double click on the highlighted entry. Categories and subcategories with subdivisions are marked with a "+". An example of a subdivision of a subcategory is the division of Church furnishings into Church and churchyard furnishings, Brasses, Other monuments and Medieval monuments in unusual materials. Furnishings then has around 140 subcategories eg. altar, clock, cross. The part of church option can only be used with Church of England churches or chapels and the period Saxon/pre-Conquest or one of the medieval periods.

[Back to the top]

Name search

You can search for the work of an individual, partnership or firm across all the volumes and all categories, or refine your search by specifying a particular area, category of building, architectural role or date.

Select a volume eg. Yorkshire: York & East Riding
Select a category eg. Religious buildings
Select a place (optional)  
Select a role (optional)  
Select a name (optional) eg. Moore, Temple
Select a date (optional)  

Click on Search to display the results. This finds 14 matches for churches in the East Riding restored by Temple Moore. You can use Cross-references to find all the records for each individual church (see below).

For the place, period, decade, part, role and name options you need to click on the down arrow for the relevant window before typing in your search term. Only those terms which match your chosen volume and category search are shown in the list. Either scroll down the list or type in the term for the match to be displayed. If there is no match try the Gazetteer and Artefacts Help for alternative terms. To do a national search use All Volumes as the volume option.

Category and Name records can be linked but at the level of the larger buildings categories only. This means that you can confine a name search to a particular category type eg. all church monuments by the sculptor Niccolo Bazzanti of Florence.

[Back to the top]

Displaying results

When you have selected the required terms click on Search and the Search Result window gives a one-line display for all the buildings in the specified category and place. This has the full information for each entry. It can be viewed by using the left and right arrows at the bottom of the screen to move right and left along the records. Alternatively double click on an individual record to see it in the Full Record window. Both windows include the title and page number(s) of the relevant printed volume of Pevsner. To get back to the initial Search window click on Cancel and then click on Close Grid at the bottom of the Search Result window.

[Back to the top]

Online Help

The Help screens take you through the searching techniques in useful detail. As well as explaining how to search and display the results, it enables you to locate sites and subcategories quickly by providing help with gazetteer and artefact cross references.

Gazetteer Help

If you are having difficulty finding a place or site where you expect it to be choose Gazetteer from the Help menu , select the initial letter of the place-name you want and scroll through the list. Click on any place-name to display its Help entry. The entries contain two types of information. A SEE reference gives the place-name or site as it appears on the database. A SEE ALSO reference points to adjacent sites or other places or sites that may be of interest.

Artefacts Help

If you are interested in a particular building or furnishing feature, eg. an arcade or a campanile, but are not sure in which category it appears use the Artefact Help. When the main Artefacts Help screen appears click on Search for the list of artefacts.

[Back to the top]

Cross references

The cross-reference facility enables you to find all the records attached to a building in your results list. Mark the building you want in the Results window by clicking in the left-hand margin. From the Results menu select Cross-References. All the relevant records are then displayed in the Cross-References window.

For example, a search in the Yorkshire: York and East Riding volume on Church of England churches in York in the perpendicular period finds 18 records. One of these is Holy Trinity Micklegate. A cross-reference search on Holy Trinity produces a further 12 records for this building.

[Back to the top]

Sorting and Editing Records

Records from results or cross-reference windows can be sorted into different orders by clicking on the heading of the column and then clicking on Sort on column from the Results menu.

Records from a results or cross-reference window can be edited and annotated using the edit window. Click on Editor from the Results menu and select All items. In the subsequent Edit Window you can then choose which items you want to save and edit them for output.

[Back to the top]

Saving and Downloading

All records or a selection from a results or cross-references window can be saved to a file for downloading. If you want a selection highlight them in the window by clicking in the left hand column. Select Editor from the Results menu. Click on All items or Selected items as required. The Edit window displays your chosen selection. You can edit this text before downloading or download by choosing Save as from the File menu. Type in your chosen file name with the type .TXT (e.g. mickle.txt).

Available drives

You may save either to a floppy disk (drive A:) or to a zip disk (drive E:).

[Back to the top]

Printing

Printing does not currently work but you can copy and paste into a word processing file.

[Back to the top]

Ending your search

Click on File then Exit.