The Georgian period gave us many of Britain’s most beautiful buildings – in cities, towns and villages. Yet much of our Georgian inheritance remains in danger...

£30

Since reopening to the public after a three-year restoration project and winning the Georgian Group Architectural Award for ‘Restoration of a Georgian Building in an Urban Setting’ in 2019, Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery has established itself as a place for creativity, debate and participation within Soane’s original county house. Members are invited to join us for a private tour of the manor, led by Director Clare Gough, including the Soane Restored exhibition, which focuses on the recreation of Soane’s decorative paint effects, the rebuilding of the spectacular light-filled conservatory and the restoration of the original stone features. The tour will begin with tea, coffee and cake in Soane’s Kitchen cafe.

This event is for members only.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£15

Members are invited to join us in the lovely surrounds of the Fitzroy Square gardens (weather permitting) for our summer drinks. This is an opportunity for members to meet and socialise in a relaxed atmosphere.  

This event is for members only.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£15

Members are invited to join us for a private tour of 20 St James’s Square led by Jerome Flinders, Associate at James Gorst Architects. 20 St. James’s Square is an eighteenth century townhouse of national importance designed by Robert Adam, one of Britain’s most important architects. John Summerson wrote:

“[20 St James’s Square is one of four surviving Robert Adam houses] of capital importance… These… represent perhaps, the highest point of imagination and artistry in the handling of the London house.” – Georgian London

Completed in 1775, it contains a series of Robert Adam archetypes including a highly original floorplan, immaculately decorated interiors and a celebrated seventeen metre Great Stair Hall. Commissioned by the infamous Welsh aristocrat, taste-maker and patron of the arts Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, it remained in the family until the its sale in the 1930s to the Distillers company who have used it as an office ever since.

The grand rooms are in excellent condition but a large extension in 1936 and various inconsiderate twentieth century alterations have left the secondary spaces in a state of considerable disrepair. Detracting piecemeal alterations include a steel and glass walkway oversailing the oval rooflight that is visible from the Great Stair Hall.

James Gorst Architects has specialised in the considerate adaptation of historic buildings for over 40 years and this will be the practice’s third Robert Adam house renovation. The practice was appointed to sensitively remove detracting elements, extend and tidy a confused and disordered roofscape, provide elegant facilities and seamlessly weave in the necessary infrastructure required to provide high quality office accommodation. The project architect Jerome Flinders, Associate has spent the last 5 years working exclusively on Robert Adam houses. Planning permission was granted on 20 July 2022.

This event is for members and Young Georgian members only.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Join the Young Georgians for a summer picnic after work in the royal park of St. James’s.

Attendees will enjoy an evening of riparian conviviality alongside the very same lake which was remodelled by John Nash under the orders of the Prince Regent.

A free event, all Young Members and particularly potential new members are warmly welcome. Please bring your own food and drink.

£5 members/£7 non-members

Thomas Robins the Elder (1716–1770) recorded the country estates of the Georgian gentry – their orchards, Rococo gardens, and potagers – like no other, with both topographical accuracy and delightful artistry, often bordering his gouaches with entrancing tendrils, shells, leaves, and birds. Robins’s skill was honed by the delicacy required for his early career as a fan painter and is shown too in his exquisite paintings of butterflies, flowers, and birds. Cathryn will introduce the work of Robins through his paintings of gardens at Honington, Painswick and Woodside alongside his extraordinary record of Bath as it was transformed by John Wood the Elder. Her recent publication on Robins is the culmination of over 15 years research and is the first study on the artist since John Harris’s Gardens of Delight (1978). Cathryn will also expand on what it is like undertaking this type of research, how she had to turn detective and how she set out to visit every site depicted in Robins’s sketchbook (V&A Museum) in order to piece together the story of  this most curious of Rococo artists. The book has won critical acclaim with Robin Lane Fox proclaiming it a superb new study that should win a prize! 

Dr Cathryn Spence is a museum professional, lecturer and historic gardens and buildings consultant. After a career in London and Bath museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Building of Bath Museum, she is now Lord Lansdowne’s consultant Archivist and Curator at Bowood House, Wiltshire. She has published several books on the architectural and social history of Bath, most recently The Story of Bath (2016). Her study of Thomas Robins is the culmination of over fifteen years research. Cathryn has worked with the team at Painswick Rococo Garden, a site restored using Robins’s paintings from 1984, for the last 6 years advising on the continuing heritage and conservation of the garden.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

(Image: Thomas Robins, Prospect of the Ornamental Garden and Long Water at Honington Hall, Warwickshire, 1759. Private Collection of Stephen and Amanda Clark)

£25

John Moses leads this three-hour walking tour of Walthamstow, which Pevsner says has more of its eighteenth-century houses surviving than any of its neighbours. This walk shall seek to discover the Georgian Village under the multicultural suburb before finishing at the William Morris Gallery, housed in the grade II* Water House, built 1762.

This event is for members and their guests.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£40

A study day in Norfolk focusing on the East Anglian-born architect William Donthorn. The day will commence at Silverstone Farm, North Elmham, with an illustrated talk by Rory O’Donnell on Donthorn, best known for his severe classical houses, of which only a few remain, that are rather Germanic in appearance. In the afternoon, there will be a tour of one or two local houses within a twenty-mile drive. Attendees to travel in own transport. Coffee and tea provided; participants should bring a picnic lunch.

This event is for members only.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Young Georgians are cordially invited to prepare and present a dish dating from the eighteenth century. Be it a pungent pigeon pie or a scrumptious syllabub, all submissions will be appreciated and thereafter consumed! A prize will be awarded by the host for the most delectable submission.

Our venue will be a private residence in Central London.  Please book in advance by contacting yg@georgiangroup.org.uk, a spreadsheet will be circulated to attendees to ensure no duplicate dishes are prepared!

This event is open to Young Georgian members only.

£5 members/£7 non-members

In Don Juan, the poet Lord Byron describes England as a ‘low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit country’. He makes this statement in the middle of a series of stanzas about the dire consequences of being exposed for adultery, specifically ‘when, without regard to “Church and State,” / A wife makes, or takes, love in upright earnest’. This leads ineluctably, the narrator explains, to a courtroom and ‘A Verdict – grievous foe to those who cause it!’. This is typically followed by a public scandal, ‘when the delicacies of the law [fill] the Papers with their comments various’.

Adultery was widely accepted, and even expected, amongst the aristocracy in Georgian England, where arranged marriages fostered a culture of sexual tolerance. However, although this louche libertinism was vehemently denounced by from pulpits, debated in parliament, and consistently attacked in print – that did not stop the public eagerly demanding what Byron mockingly calls ‘tales of love unlawful’. Using Byron’s poem Don Juan as a focal lens, this talk looks at some of the adultery scandals of the early 1800s and the resultant criminal conversation trials, and explores the power of these publicized adultery trials to shape popular mental landscapes.

Emily Paterson-Morgan is an independent scholar and the Director of The Byron Society. She has published a number of articles on various aspects of Byron’s life and works, recently edited a special issue of The Byron Journal, and is currently researching Byron’s engagement with adultery discourses in English print culture. She is based in Dubai, UAE, where she works as Head of Publishing for Knowledge E.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£40 (National Trust members £25)

From Iron-age roundhouses to a sophisticated, modern estate, Wimpole Estate has been lived on and farmed for over 2,000 years. Over the centuries, Wimpole has been owned by several families, and each has left its mark. The present house, at the heart of this estate, was the vision of Elsie Bambridge. Wimpole had been an empty shell until she filled it with pictures and furniture, bringing it back to a welcoming home in the 1930s. Intimate rooms contrast with beautiful and unexpected Georgian interiors, including Soane’s remarkable Yellow Drawing Room and wonderful plunge bath. The fascinating basement corridor offers a glimpse into life below stairs.

Georgian Group members are invited to join us on this full day visit led by Georgian Group Director, David Adshead (previous Head Curator and Architectural Historian for the National Trust). The visit will begin with an Illustrated short talk followed by a tour of the hall by David and Senior Collection & House Manager, Iain Stewart. This will be followed by a tour of the gardens and estate.

Members to make their own arrangements for lunch. This visit is for Georgian Group members only. 

If Georgian Group members wishing to attend this visit are also National Trust members, please use the discount code NTMEMBER at the checkout. Please ensure you bring along a valid NT membership card on the visit.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

An autumn outing for our young members (and potential young members) to meet and catch up in the splendour of Petworth House and Park (National Trust). There is no up-front cost to attend this trip which will be run on similar lines to the Hampton Court visit: attendees will organise their own travel and entry (£16/person), to suggested times published below.

We recommend meeting at Petworth House at 11am. If members wish to travel by train from London, the latest train to enable this is the 09:35 from London Victoria to Pulborough. There will be cars at Pulborough but please make sure to email yg@georgiangroup.org.uk to register your interest in attending so we know in advance how many members to plan for.

This event is open to Young Georgians and potential Young Georgians.  

£10 – Young Georgians

Come and join an evening walking tour from Portland Place up to Park Crescent and through Park Square Gardens before traversing the Inner and Outer Circles of Regent’s Park. A walk in which you’ll see many of John Nash’s celebrated works in the form of the huge sweeping Regency Terraces that line the park as well as the work of Decimus Burton, including the Burton residence ‘The Holme’. Regent’s Park was originally called ‘The Regent’s Park’ as it was intended to be a pleasure garden proposed by The Prince Regent (the future King George IV) and the stuccoed terraces built in the 1820s represent the high status of the area and its grandeur. Of the private villas that are scattered throughout the park, some have survived, while others have been demolished. There will be plenty to see for those Young Georgians with an interest in the early 1800s and its architecture.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is open to Young Georgians only. 

*Please note new start time of 5.30pm*

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£70/£35 (student ticket)

Following successful symposia held by the Group in previous years, on the Adam Brothers, James Gibbs, Women and Architecture and Georgian London Revisited (online), this year’s symposium will address Architecture and Health in the long eighteenth century. Appropriately, it will be held in James Gibbs’s Great Hall at St Bartholomew’s, an institution celebrating its 900th anniversary.

A series of short papers by both established and younger scholars, and from a range of disciplines, will examine how and where medicine was studied and debated, how knowledge was disseminated and how healthcare was provided in what spaces and through what mechanisms.

The symposium will be held from 10am to 5pm and will be led by Ann Marie Akehurst. Tickets include a buffet lunch and reception. A limited number of student tickets are available here.

9.30 am Arrival/Registration
10.00 am – Welcome

SESSION 1 – TRANSMISSION OF MEDICO-SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

Matthew Walker
The Architecture of English Anatomy Theatres 1660-1800

Janet Stiles Tyson
Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal and Bart’s

Danielle Wilkens
Health in the Academy: Jefferson’s University of Virginia and Landscapes of Inequity

SESSION 2 – OUTSIDE THE INSTITUTIONS: HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

Joana Balsa de Pinho
Health, Architecture and Urbanism in the early Modern Era: from prevention to treatment

Allan Brodie
Georgian Margate: a landscape and townscape of health

India Wright
The Spa at Hampstead

SESSION 3 – PLACES OF CONFINEMENT

Anna Jamieson
‘Bedlam’s Picture Gallery’: Health, Performance, and the Built Environment at Bethlem

Leslie Topp
Early Asylums and the curious Appeal of Prison Designs

Marina Ini
John Howard and the Quarantine Centres of the Eighteenth-century Mediterranean

Sarah Akibogun
The (Other) Woman in The Attic: Considering Post-Colonial Lenses on the Treatment of Madness in Georgian England

SESSION 4 – ENDURING HOSPITAL SPACES

Tessa Murdoch
French Protestant Hospital in Clerkenwell, 1742

Elisabeth Einberg
Hogarth’s Use of Architectural Space to bring home the message

Dan Cruickshank
Bart’s Great Hall

Will Palin
Bart’s Heritage

5pm Drinks reception

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£15 members/£18 non-members

John Wood, the most successful town planner of English eighteenth-century architects, was ferociously eccentric. The very idea that Bath, his grand artefact and a byword for classical order, should owe as much to the prehistoric stone circle at Stonehenge and the Second temple in Jerusalem strains credibility, but that is the historic truth presented here through Wood’s own writing and a whole body of archival material. This lecture by Timothy Mowl will consider the improbable sources that inspired Wood in his creation of Georgian Bath.

Professor Timothy Mowl is an architectural and landscape historian. He is Emeritus Professor of History of Architecture and Designed Landscapes at the University of Bristol. He is also Director of AHC Consultants. He was awarded the Hawksmoor Medal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain in 1987, was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1993, and served as a member of Council of the Garden History Society between 2002 and 2007. He has published over thirty books on architectural history, landscape and garden history, biography, planning and conservation. His latest book is a re-issue and update of his 1988 study on the architect John Wood of Bath.

Copies of the newly illustrated and revised edition of Architect of Obsession: John Wood and the Creation of Georgian Bath (first published 1988) will be available for purchase on the night at the discounted price of £30 (cash or cheque only).

The talks starts at 6.30pm, doors open from 6.15pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£15 members/£18 non-members

Life in the court of the House of Stuart has been shrouded in mystery: the first half of the century overshadowed by the fall and execution of Charles I, the second half in the complete collapse of the House itself.

Lost to time is the extraordinary contribution the Stuarts made to the fabric of sovereignty. Provost of Gresham College and Chair of the National Lottery Heritage Fund Simon Thurley takes us from Royston and Newmarket, where James I appropriated most of the town centre as a sort of rough-and-ready royal housing estate, to the steamy Turkish baths at Whitehall where Charles II seduced his mistresses.  The everyday lives of the monarchy is presented through the buildings in which they lived and the objects they commissioned, bringing to life the Stuart age.

The talks starts at 6.30pm, doors open from 6.15pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.