Palaces for pigs : animal architecture and other beastly buildings / Lucinda Lambton
English Heritage, Swindon : 2011
255 p. : il. ; 26 cm.
ISBN 9781850749899Materias:
Construcciones rurales -- Inglaterra.
Establos -- Inglaterra.
Biblioteca Sbc Aprendizaje A-728.9 PAL
OPAC Millennium
Throughout the centuries there have been castles, great and small, for
animals as diverse as goats and guinea pigs, deer and dogs, cows and
bees, pigs and horses, as well as bears and even salmon. Thus
cone-shaped homes were provided for doves in 1742, while in 1883 a
Grecian temple with tapering Egyptian windows was built for pigs in
Yorkshire. A red sandstone elephant with a castle on its back was
designed for bees in Cheshire in the 1800s, while at Exton in Rutland, a
c18th-century Gothic-arched cattle shelter topped with a pinnacled
dovecote, enhances the park in which it stands. With such architects as
William Kent designing a cowshed, as well as Sir John Soane devising
classical 'canine residences', these buildings are not mere
curiosities; John Nash applied himself at his most picturesque to a
dovecote, while Capability Brown was commissioned to create a classical
menagerie and Henry Holland designed an elaborate Chinese Dairy.
Rather than just laugh-a-minute novelities, these buildings are the
happy results of the British passion for both architecture and for
animals - of indulgence in unrestrained and often unnecessary
extravagance, simply for the love of building and their beasts. When
designing for animals, architects and their patrons could realise their
wildest flights of architectural fancy; the inhabitants could never
complain, however idiosyncratic their dwelling - as George Eliot wrote
in 1857, 'Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions,
they pass no criticisms' - allowing the builders' imaginations to
flourish unbridled, often with scant observance to architectural
convention. Architecture for animals has been and still continues to be a
tremendous British tradition. Palaces for Pigs - fully illustrated
with striking photographs by the author - celebrates this tradition,
telling the fascinating stories behind the buildings that housed animals
and the monuments that commemorated them.
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