Gainsborough – Thoughts of Pevsner

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner is my favourite architectural historian. Actually, he’s the only one that I can name, but he is such an authority and his judgement always seems sound to me. I was interested to read what he thought about the Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough, but he really wasn’t that keen. He describes it as:

“One of the dreariest of the Midland red brick towns. The factories are all red brick, and those in the centre cannot for a long time have been proud of the appearance of their buildings. Neither the manufacturers nor the council seem capable of thinking of their town in post-Victorian towns.”

Pevsner writes interesting walks, or perambulations as he called them, of towns, but he says about Gainsborough:

“A perambulation around Gainsborough is not necessary nor advocated.”

Ouch. I actually suspect he would have been less impressed at how it is today, as the council of the 1960s demolished some of the interesting heritage buildings in their road expansion obsession.