Research Publications
Historic England carries out and publishes research into the historic environment.
We make this research available through a wide range of Historic England publications, journals and websites as well as partnering with other organisations.
These series include:
Industrial Heritage Titles
We have recently published a number of books on industrial heritage through Liverpool University Press. The authors showcased these in 'Historic England Research' magazine issue 26, where you can also get a reader's discount for those titles.
Historic England’s latest industrial heritage publication, produced in partnership with Liverpool University Press and National Grid, is ‘Gas Holders – a History in Pictures’ .
Using a combination of archive and contemporary photographs, engineering drawings, prints, paintings, adverts and diagrams, it looks at the history and evolution of gas holders, engineers and manufacturers, their place in society and impact on the English landscape. The final chapter considers the future redevelopment of these sites, including those where gas holders are being successfully re-purposed.
Informed Conservation
This popular series highlights the special character of some of our most important historic areas and the development pressures they are facing.
There are over 25 titles in the series, some looking at whole towns such as Plymouth, while others focus on particular building types such as historic warehouses in Manchester.
The books are written in an engaging style and include high-quality colour photographs and specially commissioned graphics.
You can buy Informed Conservation volumes through the Liverpool University Press bookshop.
A recent addition to the series looks at the once ubiquitous railway goods sheds and warehouses
Historic England research monographs
Historic England has its own series of monographs where we publish the latest research on subjects as comprehensive and wide ranging as The Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confrontation 1946-1989 through to England’s Motoring Heritage from the air. Look for monographs through the Historic England bookshop.
Publishing with external partners
We are committed to making our research available to as wide an audience as possible.
As well as our own publications, we also partner with other publishers.
Examples of the publications include:
Space, Hope and Brutalism, English Architecture 1945-75 by Elain Harwood
This is a major, award winning academic survey of post-war architecture by building type, something that has never been attempted as a book before.
Dr Elain Harwood, is a Senior Investigator with Historic England. Elain was recently awarded the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain's most prestigious award, the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion, for Space, Hope and Brutalism: English Architecture 1945-75 (published by Yale University Press in 2015) and the prize was presented to Dr Harwood by Professor Maurice Howard, President of the SAHGB, at the Courtauld Institute, London, on 17 October.
Pete Herring, former Historic England Head of Historic Places South and West said:
This monumental and authoritative book, sweepingly comprehensive and also minutely detailed when necessary, is engagingly written and beautifully illustrated by James O Davies’ sumptuous photographs. It is a culmination of decades of work by Elain on all aspects of post-war architecture and design, all aspects of post-war life – public and private housing, schools, universities, hospitals, industry, commerce, administration, communications, leisure, worship and culture.
It is, however, just one of many substantial outcomes of Elain’s clear-sighted and fiercely determined work. Many of the listings of such buildings, often controversial at the time of their designation, have used Elain’s research. And she has contributed much, through books, papers, talks and walks, to the wider conversations that have seen a considerable warming in public opinion about buildings and places that were once commonly misperceived and little loved.
England’s Post-War Listed Buildings by Elain Harwood and James O. Davies, Batsford Books, August 2015.
This is the third edition of Elain’s earlier book describing every single post-war building, in 534 entries, this time with the help of colleagues in the Designation Team. Each entry is superbly photographed by James O. Davies, Historic England's chief photographer.
Apethorpe: the Story of an English Country House by Kathryn A Morrison with Emily Cole, Nick Hill, John Cattell and Pete Smith, Yale University Press with Historic England 2015
Our understanding of the historical development of Apethorpe in Northamptonshire was transformed by an intensive programme of investigation and research carried out by English Heritage (now Historic England) in 2005-2014.
While the entire span of the property’s history is discussed – including its medieval origins and its period as an approved school – the book focuses on the 1620s, when the house was extended at the command of a frequent visitor, King James I.
Lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings.
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