advice on the particular fundamental corrosion problems to which early twentieth-century steel-framed buildings are prone. Peter Gibbs is a corrosion engineer with Taywood Engineering Ltd., and this document is essentially a second edition of a less well-known publication produced by Taywood in 1998 under the auspices of DETR project reference MT2C. This new edition has been enhanced by the addition of further illustrations, mostly from E G Warland's "Modern Practical Masonry" of 1929. and a valuable installation checklist for impressed current cathodic protection contributed by Robert Phillips of the National Archives of Scotland. The technical advice set out in this note is clear, well-written, wellorganised, well-argued and comprehensive, and is, frankly, very difficult indeed to fault. As an architect actively involved in the repair and conservation of structures of this age and type, I have found both this enhanced edition and its predecessor to be absolutely invaluable at all stages of the process, and can really only describe it as essential readino- for . b anyone mvolved with similar buildings. The only caveat which needs to be attached is that this is an immensely active and fastmoving technical field, as the first cathodic protection system in the UK on such a building was installed as rec_ently as 1997, and yet many techmcal refinements have since been made, and are still being made, to both the survey and treatment methods used. In fact, the only real claim which Scotland seems to have on this valuable advice is that rolled steel beams were first produced there all of four years before they were first manufactured in England. Nevertheless, this publication is likely to remain the definitive introduction to the analysis and treatment of steel-framed buildings from the first half of the 20th century well into the first half of the 21st, throughout the UK and further afield, and Historic Scotland should be thoroughly congratulated for making it widely accessible at a appropriate price. Ian Brocklebank, an architect with Acanthus Lawrence and Wrightson. He has recently prepared conservation guidelines and specified repairs to listed steel-framed London Underground stations, and is Hon. Editor of the Journal of the BuildinoLimes Forum. 5 42 After Jekyll The EnglishGardenThroughthe 20th Century Jane Brown, Garden Art Press Revised edition 1999. 287pp. Colour and black and white illustrations. Hardback. ISBN 1 870673 8. £25. Jane Brown is a prolific writer on garden history topics principally of the twentieth century. She is very well informe? and writes in a lively style which gives her books wide appeal. The English Garden Through the 20th Century is no exception, its attraction augmented by the lavish, clear and well chosen illustrations in both black and white and colour which account for half the volume. The book was originally published in 1987 as The English Garden in our Time from Gertrude Jekyll to Geoffrey Jellicoe. The new edition has been revised to give a fuller appraisal of a whole century of gardenino- thoucrht b b and development; and to take account of the new perspectives on garden history that have occurred in the subsequent 12 years. Chapter 2 for example has been renamed "The Arts and Crafts Garden", perhaps for better accuracy than its previous "The Return of Englishness", and to reflect the increased academic interest in and understanding of the period. Chapter 8 has been retitled and updated as "The Post-Modern Garden" although the author accepts her defintion of the post-modern period, from the Festival of Britain to the 1990s, is wider than that conventionally used. In most other respects the book remains as first published alternating extended studies of Gertrude Jekyll and Munstead Wood; Rodmarton Manor and the contribution of Ernest Barnsley; Lawrence Johnstone and Hidcote Manor; Vita Sackville-West and Sissinghurst with more discursive essays on the major themes of the century -Arts and Crafts crardens· Modern Movement; the "New ' Georgians"; and the Post-Modern period. Ms Brown sees the garden colossus of the latter part of the century as Geoffrey Jellicoe. Two final chapters are devoted to an exploration of"Geffrey Jellicoe and the Garden of the Mind", and a detailed study of his ':ork in the grounds of the grade I listed Sutton Place near Guildford in the 1980s. Munstead Wood, Hidcote and Sissinghurst were the most influential gardens of their period and no study of 20th century gardens could fail to mention any of these sites or their creators. The detailed essays examining these sites (and about which the author has written elsewhere) are perhaps the most successful parts of the book in which the author's knowledge of, and enthusisam for her subject come across most effectively. These chapters are well complemented by the accompanying colour illustrations. It is sometimes too easy for building conservation professionals to become too absorbed in the structure and planning of historic gardens and overlook the role of plantsmanship as part of the aesthetic and visual effect. Ms Brown does not fall into this trap, but conversely her catalogues of plants used sometimes stray sufficiently far in the other direction as to be tedious to the non-specialist. The extended essays that form the connecting thread of the book are its least successful element. Partly it is a question of style: the author allows her own thoughts to intrude into the historical flow. More so is the narrow field of vision particularly for the later periods. The philosophical and practical contribution to Arts and Crafts gardens (and beyond) by the best known practitioners such as William Robinson, Ernest Milner or Thomas Mawson are competently discussed, as is the conjoining of house and garden by contemporary architects like Lutyens, Voysey, Baillie-Scott, or Mallows. Nonetheless the wider dissemination of these ideas to the burgeoning suburban dwellings of the Edwardian mercantile classes by architects such as Edgar Wood or C.E. Bateman would have been a movement worth exploring. Similarly the discussion of Modern Movement gardens focuses closely on the work of Oliver Hill, Amyas Connell, and Christopher Tunnard, but nowhere mentions the contribution of, for example, Patrick Gwynne who, like many others of the time equally sought to mtegrate house and landscape in a smgle composition. The author notes that social change in the latter part of the century has led to the gradual demise in commissions for private "gardens" and the rise in interest for landscape settings for corporate premises and public places. Yet sadly very little attention is criven either to this subject or the othe; major trends of the late century - the rise of garden conservation and the tension between conservation, creativity, and natural change in established sites. In his_recent work Par/is and Gardens of B~itain -A Landscape History from the Air (1998) Christopher Taylor (reviewed in Context 63) observed that Continued on page 46 CONTEXT 71 SEPTEMBER 2001
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