Every historic building has a story to tell
As the product of a rural environment, having cut my teeth (and prompted a few more gray hairs on my parents’ heads) on winding country roads, I’ve always been aware of the stories behind the names of those roads. Family names, nearby waterways, topographical features – and mills – all figure into many a historic (read more)
Oxford, first settled by Saxons, and now populated with students, tourists, and harried residents, is one of my favorite towns in Britain – and is a different town, I think, for each person who visits. The University of Oxford dates to the 12th century, and the architecture of the colleges and town combine for a (read more)
Categories: Architecture, England, English Heritage, Tourism
Tags: Ashmolean, Blackwell's, Bridge of Sighs, England Travel, Oxford
I’m a voyeur. At least where historic buildings are concerned – don’t worry, I’m not standing in front of your windows… I restrict my historic house lust to buildings actually open to the public. (Or abandoned houses in my native land, but that’s another story.) Combine my penchant for historic architecture with being a recovering (read more)
Categories: Architecture, Country house, England, Tourism
Tags: Brideshead Revisited, Castle Howard, Death Comes to Pemberley, Evelyn Waugh, John Vanbrugh, Yorkshire
It’s been years since anxiety gripped me about getting lost in Kentucky. Back when I succumbed to those fears, it was my driving skills that should have caused nervousness, not the likelihood that a wrong turn would result in me getting hopelessly lost for days. County roads meander like a crop of morning glories across (read more)
No, there hasn’t been movement at the CentrePit site – there will not be a reconstruction of Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) on Main Street. But on Tuesday, July 28, 2015, at the Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan House at 210 North Broadway, I will be talking about my experience as an Attingham Scholar in the 2014 (read more)
My parents inflicted a succession of ugly, misshapen station wagons upon us hapless children during my formative years. The one I remember most vividly was a putrid shade of pale yellow, appeared longer than a school bus, and was known as “the Tank.” It was in the Tank (the way back- station wagons in those (read more)
This post was originally written for the Smitten by Britain website I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Secret Garden when I was growing up – and I still haven’t lost the dream of one day having my own walled garden. (A garden ideally free from the rampages of dogs, and graced with perfect soil and (read more)
Architecture is much more than just shelter – it teems with symbolism. One of the first principles I learned in graduate school was the power of a building, and what messages the style, form, and materials convey about the owner or user. During the heady years after World War II, the United States boomed, and (read more)
Place is very important to most Kentuckians. We identify ourselves not by where we live, but where we are from – or where “our people” are from. I may live and work in Lexington, but I am from Mt. Sterling, and I cheer on efforts in my hometown that make it a more interesting, inclusive, (read more)
I fall in love with a different house (or sometimes a commercial or industrial building) at least once a week. Madly, passionately, head-over-heels in love, with blissful, giddy thoughts of scraping paint, refinishing floors, and restoring the overgrown yard to my platonic ideal of an English Cottage Garden in Kentucky. My latest crush is the (read more)
Categories: Art, Historic Preservation, Kentucky architecture, McCracken County, Tourism, Vernacular
Tags: Artist Relocation Program, Greek Revival, Lowertown, Paducah
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