Pevsner Guide revisions finally completed after 41 years

Yale University Press London and The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art have celebrated after completing a mammoth 41-year project to revise the Pevsner Architectural Guides: The Buildings of England 1983-2024.

A grand finale event took place in Central London on Friday 19th July at Mary Ward House, with publishers, authors, editors, researchers, architectural historians and journalists coming together to celebrate the achievement, which first began in 1983.

Simon Bradley, the joint series editor, said: "We are delighted to announce and celebrate the completion of the monumental task of revising all of the original Pevsner Architectural Guides to the Buildings of England, a project which began in 1983 with publication of the new volume for south London and finished with Staffordshire this year."

In total, 56 fully revised and updated guides have been published in the English series. The revised guides contain new research that updates and  expands the original volumes, alongside newly commissioned colour photography. In the same period, 15 volumes have been published for the Buildings of Scotland, seven for the Buildings of Wales, and thirteen guides to cities in England, as well as five volumes in the Buildings of Ireland series and one for the Isle of Man.

Sarah Turner, director of The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and Heather McCallum, managing director at Yale University Press London, added: "We are extremely proud to have partnered on this landmark achievement of scholarship and publishing, fulfilling Nikolaus Pevsner’s aspirations for the future development of the guides for a new generation. Through these books, the aim has always been to provide the general reader and the expert with informative and easy-to-use gazetteers of every structure of significance, from the prehistoric to the present day."

The Buildings of England guides have had two publishers in their long history: Penguin (the first guides to Cornwall, Middlesex and Nottinghamshire were published in 1951) and, from 2002, Yale University Press.

The Pevsner Books Trust was taken over by the Paul Mellon Centre in 2012, which has financially supported the research, writing and photography of the new volumes. Yale University Press has supported the editorial and publication costs of the revised guides and the new volumes for Scotland, Wales and Ireland.