Annual lecture, 2023

Applications are now invited for the Society's 12th Annual Lecture at Cowcross Street in London on Friday 10th November 2023, starting at 6pm. We are also hoping to make the lecture available online at the same time via Zoom. Non-members are welcome.

Our speaker will be Charles Hind. The title of his talk is Voysey – archives and history.

The Royal Institute of British Architects holds by far the largest collection of original Voysey drawings and other documents, together with a few of his personal artefacts. Charles will provide some intriguing and entertaining revelations about how it came to acquire this material.

Charles Hind is the Chief Curator and H.J. Heinz Curator of Drawings at the RIBA. His areas of specialty are Andrea Palladio, Anglo-Palladianism and more generally British architecture of the 17th to early 20th centuries. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Visiting Fellow at the Centro Palladio, Vicenza.

Charles is also Deputy Chairman of the Lutyens Trust and has just become a trustee of Hestercombe, in Somerset, which has a restored 18th century landscape garden and a major Lutyens-designed garden as well. He has been heavily involved since the mid-1980s in Great Dixter, the house and garden at Northiam in East Sussex created by Lutyens in 1910-12 for and with Nathaniel Lloyd, father of the late gardening writer, Christopher Lloyd. Nathaniel became so enthused by architecture through his collaboration with Lutyens that in middle age he turned his hand to architecture and architectural history. The history of the English house, which he published in 1931, inspired Charles to pursue a career in architectural history, via Sotheby’s and The Macmillan [now Grove] dictionary of art. He is a Foundation Trustee of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust, Chairman of its House Committee, and wrote a new guidebook to the house and garden in 1995.

Charges

Attendance either in person or via Zoom will be free of charge to members and non-members alike, including (for those attending in person) a glass of wine or soft drink and nibbles. We would still like you to book, please, for planning purposes.

Joining instructions

The event will take place in The Gallery at 77 Cowcross Street, Clerkenwell, in the London Borough of Islington.

The Gallery was created from the basement of a Victorian warehouse which was originally owned by Thomas Cook & Sons and is now the home of Alan Baxter & Associates LLP.

The postcode is EC1M 6EL.  The nearest London Underground station is Farringdon (on the Elizabeth, Circle, Metropolitan, and Hammersmith & City lines). Farringdon is also a station on the National Rail network. Location map

At the street entrance to The Gallery, pass under the arch and walk to the end of the courtyard, passing the glass-fronted reception of Alan Baxter & Associates. At the far end of the courtyard, turn right down the steps.

Instructions for gaining online access via Zoom, if it proves possible, will be issued to participants nearer the day.

How to apply

Please complete our online application form.

Page last amended 8th August 2023