Kyle Leyden remembers working as Mark’s research assistant

Dr Kyle Leyden, Lecturer in Architectural History at the Courtauld Institute remembers working as Mark Girouard’s research assistant on the Biographical Dictionary of English Architecture 1540-1640 (2021)

In 2013, the BBC commissioned an anthology of authored films in which some of Britain’s leading artists, historians, writers, actors and musicians were asked to write and present a single documentary programme centred on their greatest passion. Subjects covered in the series ranged from the art produced by Viking raiders to the violins of Stradivarius; from the history of dolls houses to the pornographic publications of Jack Kahane. The penultimate episode was written and presented by the noted broadcaster, historian, writer, curator and polymath of seemingly limitless televisual extent, Dr Lucy Worsley. The programme opened with a shot of Dr Worsley confidently striding along the faux-battlements of Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire, a large book tucked firmly under her left arm, clasped tightly in her characteristically scarlet-gloved hand. The book, she explained, was one she had first encountered entirely by chance when, at the tender age of 21, she had wandered into New College library in Oxford on a languid and leisurely afternoon in the wake of her history finals, and picked up the text quite by chance. 

She explained how the elegant prose almost immediately “cast a spell” leaving her utterly entranced and unable to set the volume down. She eagerly consumed all 336 pages in a single afternoon with all the gluttonous, gourmand delight of the Elizabethan courtiers whose compelling stories and adventurous exploits filled every paragraph.

She declared that the work had made a “very deep impression” which was to change the course of her professional life. The text had revealed to her a new way of thinking about buildings. Rather than static, neutral backdrops to the lives and events she had studied in her history degree, they were receptacles for the stories of those who commissioned, designed, crafted, lived and interacted with them and, as such, they were critically important active agents in the story of these Islands. 

Reading, in elegantly crafted prose, of the exploits – personal and architectural – of the playboy courtier and dilettante William Cavendish inspired Lucy Worsley to seek her first job,  at the pleasure palace he constructed on a windy hillside above Bolsover, and to complete her Ph.D. on its patron. The rest, as Dr Worsley might herself say, is history.

The book which so shaped the life of one of Britain’s best loved historians was, of course, Mark Girouard’s Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House.

Like Lucy Worsley, I too fell under the spell of Mark’s work at an early age; but in this one area - and this one area alone - I can claim some degree of superiority over Dr Worsley, for I was but sixteen when I picked up a copy of Mark’s then magnum opus, Life in the English Country House which was to directly lead to a lifelong fascination with the country house and its inhabitants and my abandonment of the law and commencement of a Ph.D. in architectural history.  A precocious and – I will readily admit – rather odd teenager finding my way in the world amid the conservation-mania of the mid-1990s, I was also a keen subscriber to Dan Cruickshank’s Perspectives Magazine and avid viewer of the BBC’s One Foot in the Past series. As a result, I had an acute awareness not only of the erudite academic Mark Girouard but also the steely and determined conservation campaigner who had taken on the government of Harold Macmillan to try to save the Euston Arch and London Coal Exchange; who, in the summer of 1977, had been a leading belligerent in the Siege of Elder Street, forcing Britain’s most powerful developer to relinquish ownership of many historic buildings in Spitalfields marked for demolition; and who led the charge in persuading government and popular opinion alike of the huge importance of Tyntesfield near Bristol and the critical need for its preservation. 

As a result of the volume and quality of his work and the longevity of his career, the name Mark Girouard had taken on an almost mystical, other-worldly quality. To me, and I am sure, to many fledgling architectural historians, Mark existed at the apex of some heavenly architectural pantheon or manifested as a heroic figure presiding over some architectural Valhalla situated well out of earthly reach.

As a slightly jaded fourth-year Ph.D. student, to be presented, quite out of the blue, with the opportunity to work with Mark as a research assistant on his latest academic treatise, was, therefore, something akin to a similarly-equipped Physics Ph.D. student being asked to work out a few calculations with Sir Isaac Newton for publication in his Principia. It was both the most exciting and the most terrifying prospect I had faced in my academic career.

The completion of Mark’s Biographical Dictionary has been the ultimate story of triumph over adversity. The idea of Mark undertaking the work had first been suggested by the Medievalist and architectural historian John Harvey in 1956 to fill the gap between his 1954 Biographical Dictionary of Medieval Architects and Howard Colvin’s Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840. Mark set pen to paper a mere 56 years later when he commenced work with the Paul Mellon Centre in 2012. 

The text was certainly no poorer for the delay, for it now encompassed a long life’s work researching the period. It was also much enriched by growing interest in and scholarship on a period which had been much neglected as a result of the enduring critiques of eighteenth-century Palladian and nineteenth-century Gothic purists. Mark’s work continued apace until ill-health again brought the project to a halt. Through his indominable spirit and determination, as soon as his recovery started, he was back to the manuscript. By early 2020, the manuscript had been typed and the publishers were prepared to begin the final checks before printing.

And then the dreaded plague descended. Shorn of research assistance, Mark battled on, but with the gradual lifting of restrictions in Summer 2020, the need for final research and technical help to bring the Dictionary over the finish line became clear. And that is where I came in.  Having been offered the opportunity to work with Mark, I eagerly grabbed the chance with both hands. I was told to contact Mark by telephone to organise a meeting when he could decide whether I was suitable for the job.  They say “never meet your heroes” and, with that old chestnut ringing in my ears, I nervously dialled the number. First impressions were not felicitous. Mark was slightly hard of hearing and this, combined with my thick Ulster accent, did not make for easy communication. Having set a date to meet in person, I hung up utterly convinced that Mark was far from impressed with my potential.  It was thus not without some significant trepidation that I arrived at that tall, cliff-like stucco fronted house at the corner of Colville Road to finally meet Mark in person. A place I now associate with the most pleasant memories of conviviality, on my first visit, climbing the steps to Mark’s rooms on the first floor was utterly terrifying. 

The author of a blog about Spitalfields life has described their own first visit to Mark at home, climbing to Mark’s rooms and finding him “sitting high up in house…surrounded by a lifetime’s collection of books, pictures and research materials”. This much was certainly true; but I rather take exception to the description they give of Mark’s rooms as “a silent eyrie high above the street”. The silent, still, cool observational detachment and peaceful restfulness of the eyrie is a far cry from the dynamic engine room I experienced there, filled with life and joy, furnaces stoked with a whole lifetime’s passionate enthusiasm burning with the bright flame of continued passion and enlightenment. Quiet it may often have been – well at least until the arrival of Mark’s beloved granddaughter Ottilie on whom he doted – but still, detached, observational, and cold it certainly was not. In this, it was less eyrie and more a sleek 1930s ocean liner, giving the impression of smooth, ordered, and silent grace to the outside world, but internally buzzing with convivial warmth and fevered activity.

My first impressions of Mark seemed much in line with a lot of what had been written of him. He was soft-spoken, kind, thoughtful, disarmingly charming and seemingly slightly shy. He was also shockingly unassuming for one of his great fame and public stature: there was not one hint of the academic hauteur or aristocratic bluster I had perhaps expected of the deified Mark Girouard I had constructed in my head. Famously, Sir John Betjeman wrote of “dear little Mark, so good, who never says a word” when describing Mark’s activities on the founding committee of the Victorian Society. Mark, with great self-deprecation, included this anecdote in his book Friendships; but it really did him a great disservice. The steely clarity of purpose and determination of the man who had (quite literally) chained himself to the gates of St Botolph’s Hall to prevent its demolition in 1978 were ever-present in my dealings with Mark. As, too, was his entirely disarming, utterly charming, and very surprising boyish and deliciously irreverent sense of humour. 

After our rather strained telephone call, I had arrived on my first day armed with what I thought were terribly impressive and very earnest speeches about what I was working on in the hope that I could finally impress Mark. I launched into what I hoped would be a sure winner by expounding my theories on the symbolic meaning of the architecture of Castle Ward in Co Down. I was aware that Mark was a key member of the team brought in by the National Trust to research the architectural history of the house when it was presented to them by Viscount Bangor in lieu of death duties in 1953, and I fully expected Mark to enter into a deep exposition on its architecture and meaning. Mark listened silently and interestedly until my speech turned to the bizarre Gothick plasterwork in the boudoir with its pendulous ogee-vaulted ceiling. Again, launching into myriad theories about the origins and meaning of the ceiling, Mark interjected to exclaim “oh yes: the boudoir! Howard Colvin and I used to call that ceiling Lady Bangor’s Bangers” because of its apparent similarity to the aged chatelaine’s décolletage. From that moment, all hint of terror dissolved and I knew that I had found a true kindred spirit who, far from detached quasi-deity, could become not only a colleague, but a true friend. And so it was to be.

Mark was always fond of telling that story about his daughter Blanche being asked at school what her father did for a living: she quickly replied “he lies on the sofa and scribbles all day”. Mark’s writing practices were indeed slightly idiosyncratic and deliciously old-fashioned. By the time I arrived, the sofa of Blanche’s youth may have been replaced by a day bed positioned with a fine view of the streets of Notting Hill, but Mark was generally to be found atop the bed literally buried beneath dozens of books, still scribbling away. His remained a world of index cards, ancient manuscripts, venerable leather-bound volumes and hand written drafts which were later beautifully typed by his tireless niece Liz. To the despair of editor and research assistant alike, he was an avowed and quite deliberate stranger to the modern practice of referencing. I was later to find, however, that this disinclination towards referencing was founded on the fact that a large percentage of his references would have been to his own work, such was the volume and calibre of his academic output.

The first task of each day was to extract Mark from beneath his self-constructed bibliographic cavern and to be presented with a series of instructions, research prompts and perfectly written pieces of prose to be typed into the manuscript. Invariably, these presented themselves scribbled in Mark’s idiosyncratic handwriting on the back of old envelopes and bills, scrap pieces of paper and even the tattered remnants of ancient book dust covers. These research notes were found scattered around his rooms tucked inside books, used as coasters under mugs, or reused to leave notes for Blanche or to take notes from a telephone call.  Finding them was often an investigative operation worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

Research was (thanks to Covid restrictions) in the main dealt with online and working directly with Mark in his rooms. It is a measure of the value placed on the name of Mark Girouard that no request made to any archive or library during covid lockdowns was too great: once I had indicated from whom the query had emanated, information flowed freely and abundantly into Mark’s little Apple laptop despite the huge impediments placed on the operation of archives during covid… oftentimes it vanished into some computerised black hole or emerged translated into some ancient script as a result of Mark’s not altogether successful technological tinkerings. But all of this surface chaos belied a truly great, active and organised mind. No note was ever forgotten nor any task left undone. I was often left utterly flabbergasted when, upon asking Mark about a particularly obscure entry in the dictionary, he could immediately recall not only everything he had included about the subject of that entry, but also everything he had left out, including myriad life stories, tales of those to whom the artificer was related and even who the artificer’s five-times great grandchildren were, together with all of the contemporary family scandal they had recently been involved in. Mark’s was a mind which burned with a flame just as bright at 89 as it did at 19. I could only stand back in awe.

Completing the dictionary was a masterclass in steely determination and really tough detective work. Later prejudices against late Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture persisted well into the 20th century, and thus much archival material detailing the processes of architectural construction in the period covered languished unloved, unread and uncatalogued in private muniment rooms or was simply not preserved. This dearth of records was compounded by the complete lack of a systematic means of recording building practices in this period. As Mark himself conceded, identifying the subjects of the dictionary in a world where spelling was not standardised presented significant foundational difficulties in itself. Francoys Hony, for instance, appeared in documents spread across several archives with 5 variations in spelling of his surname and six of his forename and was sometimes referred to as a Frenchman, sometimes a Dutchman and sometimes as a Londoner. Sometimes he appeared as a sculptor; sometimes as a worker in terracotta; other times as a decorative painter. The Goverson family appear in archives just as often referred to by the name of Arnold without explanation; whilst the Akroyd family used more than 30 different spellings of their name in their own family archives. The dictionary is thus a masterwork of archival synthesis which could only have been completed by someone with the sharpest possible mind and a lifetime’s experience of the period. 

Less than a month after starting work with Mark, a further travesty occurred when another COVID lockdown was imposed. Work was suddenly shifted to telephone and email (with the odd clandestine dash through the eerily silent London streets to Notting Hill), but continued apace. By the end of the year, the text had been completed and was ready for submission to our able editor and, having undertaken the delicate task of diplomatic intermediary between editor and author, the text was completed by early 2021. 

Far from resting on the laurels of this titanic achievement, having just turned 90, Mark immediately commenced work on a novel centred on the life and death of Arbella Stuart. He asked me to continue to act as assistant and informed me with a devilish look that this novel was going to be “rather salacious” and he hoped I might be able to offer some guidance in injecting some scarlet language into the text. Rather perturbed by the thought of having to research the language of the noted author E.L. James, I was relieved when Mark later found a deep interest in Puritanism and the ways in which it had impacted Arbella’s life and thought. We were choosing images to append to the final draft manuscript when the shocking news of Mark’s sudden passing reached me whilst in Paris. It is testament to his tireless work ethic that at the time of his death, Mark had not only just completed work on this novel, but had commenced academic works on the architecture of Curraghmore in Waterford and Tyrone House in Dublin and was very excited about the prospect of writing about the life of his mother who had been a noted writer and journalist and an influential force in the Celtic revival in Ireland.

Over the period I knew him, Mark and I had established not only a solid working relationship, but a firm friendship. Working on the country houses of Ireland meant that I was something of a window into Mark’s happy childhood memories. He had spent much time in Ireland in his youth – at one point, he had considered moving there to take on the running of Belvedere, a Palladian villa in Westmeath.  At the end of each working day, over mugs of earl grey and slices of rich fruitcake, I was regaled with tales of sumptuous teas served at his mother’s home at Curraghmore during the war and the rather less sedate parties in the 1960s with no doubt more interesting substances being served at Carton and Leixlip Castle in the company of Mariga Guinness, Compton Mackenzie, Ian Fleming, Prince Rupert Lowenstein, Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger. I was able to update these scandalous tales with news on how the Irish houses were faring, adding such titbits of gossip as were in current circulation in Ireland, much to Mark’s relish and delight.

To anyone who knew Mark, the fact that his last architectural book should be a Biographical dictionary came as no surprise as what has interested Mark throughout his career and what his writings fundamentally display is his innate, genuine and enthusiastic interest in people. He had pioneered the idea of buildings being in effect the crystallised stories of those who commissioned, designed, built and lived in them. No less than any of Mark’s other works, his Dictionary displays this unending delight in the stories of people. The entry on the military engineer Stefan von Haschenberg, for instance, opens with the intriguing question “was he, or was he not a con-man?” and goes on to recount how he was summarily dismissed from employment in 1543 for having “lewdly behaved himself”.  One of my early research tasks for Mark involved the monument to four generations of the Thorpe family of surveyors in the church at Kingscliffe in Northampton. The entire text had been scratched out on the surface of the monument. Mark’s later researches in the College of Arms revealed that very few of the Thorpe wives were named in the Heraldic Visitations of Northampton by the splendidly named Rouge Rose Pursuivant. Mark had thus constructed an elaborate and highly scandalous tale of bed-hopping, incest and illegitimacy in rural Northampton which had proven all too much for the Victorian sensibilities of later vicars who expunged all evidence of it from the church walls. His theory  – alas – foundered when he later discovered that the text had in fact been destroyed by orphan children housed in a local institution who were weekly marched into the church to suffer the interminable sermons of an over zealous rector. Sitting in a now lost gallery constructed at the height of the memorial, bored little fingers had found employment in scratching away at the surface of the venerable monument to Kingscliffe’s most famous sons.

Mark’s deeply held and enthusiastic love of people shone though his every piece of writing and, personally, made him the very easiest and indeed, the very best of friends to make and keep. As Mark himself wrote in his book Friendships, “friendship has nothing at all to do with fame or success, but with that sudden click of reciprocity or pleasure in companionship that helps make life worth living”. Mark counted among his many, many friends Dukes and domestic servants; bishops and escorts; academics and rock stars and, from the universal outpourings of respect and affection emanating from all, it is clear that he met each with the same earnest curiosity and generosity of spirit. For me, he was a shining exception to the rule that one should never meet one’s heroes: my awe and respect for Mark was merely supplemented with the very deepest affection and true friendship.  

Yet above all, he wore his incalculably vast knowledge lightly. To my enthusiastic declarations that he had inspired countless thousands to a deep interest in architectural history, he always responded by recounting the story of his daughter Blanche, having been required to write a discursive essay for homework, penning a piece entitled “Boring Old Buildings or why I Hate Architecture”. With great equanimity and self-deprecating wit, he enthusiastically donned the mantle I had once jokingly suggested, when I declared that the volume of his work had rendered him “the Barbara Cartland of architectural history”. 

The boyish embarrassment and gleeful pride Mark always displayed when someone raised the fact of Lucy Worsley’s having chosen his book as her greatest passion was the strongest possible indicator of his great modesty. For someone whose work had effected a radical revolution in thinking about architecture; whose dedication to conservation had saved large swathes of Georgian London and raised awareness of the true cost of its loss; and whose elegant writing and approachability of style had truly inspired countless thousands to take interest in the built environment, Dr Worsley’s imprimatur should have been the very least acknowledgement to be expected. An academic colossus standing astride nearly seventy years of utterly flawless work, unrivalled in its penetrating scholarship, Mark Girouard directly shaped several generations of architectural historians who, like Dr Worsley and I, could not be more proud to call ourselves Girouardians.