Heritage Now

24   HISTORIC BUILDINGS & PLACES BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS Revising any Buildings of England volume is an enormous task, how long did it take and how do you plan such a task? The revision of Wiltshire took me seven years from 2014, when I finished working on Somerset South and West, until 2021. The initial contract was for three years, but I soon realised that this would be a big project, suggesting early on that perhaps Wiltshire might make two volumes as did the editions covering Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and Suffolk for example − how- ever the decision taken was for a single volume of some 900 pages. The Covid pandemic delayed the final stages somewhat, although I was lucky to have just three parishes (Stourton, Maiden Bradley and Kilmington) to work on when the country was locked down. I planned the task from the old Department of the Environment lists of historic buildings, these being arranged in groups of parishes within the then-existing district councils. So my revision circled the old districts of the county fromWest Wiltshire (I having settled in Brad- ford-on-Avon) to North Wiltshire, to Thamesdown (Swindon), to Kennet, and finally to Salisbury, finishing on the Somerset border with the little cluster of parishes around Stourhead. This is the fifth county you have tackled for Yale University Press, three in Wales and one in England. How do the experiences between countries differ? I began my Buildings of England career with the Welsh series of which I wrote three, but each in collaboration with two other authors, Tom Lloyd and Robert From prehistoric Stonehenge to the railway age and beyond Paul Holden Bowden Hill, Bowden Park, by James Wyatt, completed in 1796 Paul Holden talks to Julian Orbach about his new revision of Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England: Wiltshire − a county that boasts fine prehistoric sites, impressive ecclesiastical and secular architecture, pioneering railway and industrial heritage and striking towns and villages.