England East — Sydney R. Jones, The Studio Publications (1954)

Opening

Jones opens the preface to his third and final volume by quoting Sir Thomas Browne: "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." It is not a cheerful epigraph. Browne wrote those words in Norwich during the upheaval of the Civil War. Jones was writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, watching England's historic fabric being demolished in the name of progress. The parallel was deliberate. This book is both a record and a farewell.

The Book

England East is the third and final volume of Sydney R. Jones's illustrated survey of England, published by The Studio Publications of London and New York in 1954. Jones states in the preface that with this volume he brings his adventures in books to a close, and the valedictory tone runs throughout. Where England South (1948) had been elegiac and England West (1950) panoramic, England East is consciously retrospective: an artist in his early seventies completing a project he had been building toward for most of his working life.

The volume covers the eastern half of England as defined by an imaginary vertical line from the Thames to the Scottish border at the Tweed — a division that was the editorial proposal of Jones's publisher, Frank A. Mercer of The Studio Publications. The book opens with the country immediately north and east of London and moves steadily northward through the Chilterns, East Anglia, the Fens, the East Midlands, and finally Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland to the border. Its five chapters cover: North of the Lower Thames (Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex); East Anglia and Fenland (Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire); Midland Country (Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire); and North to the Border (Central and East Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland). Seven hand-drawn regional maps are included.

The illustrated subjects are exceptional in their range. Blickling Hall, Norfolk, serves as the frontispiece. Burghley House, Bolsover Castle, Holkham Hall, Houghton Hall, Castle Howard, Fountains Abbey, Durham Cathedral, and Alnwick Castle all feature alongside parish churches, fenland abbeys, and the industrial townscapes of the Yorkshire Ridings and County Durham. Jones explicitly acknowledges the coalminers of Durham in the same breath as the Northumbrian Percys — a rare editorial gesture for a book of this kind in 1954. The printer was William Clowes and Sons Ltd of London and Beccles.

The Maker

Sydney Robert Fleming Jones (1881–1966) was born in Birmingham and trained as both an architect and artist. He studied in Birmingham and later at the Royal Academy Schools in London, where he became a regular exhibitor. His work spanned etching, engraving, watercolour, and pen-and-ink illustration, and he maintained a parallel career as an architectural draughtsman throughout his life. He lived for many years in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, and died there in 1966.

His earlier published works include Old English Country Cottages (1906), Village Homes of England (1912), London Triumphant (1942), and Thames Triumphant (1943). Original pen-and-ink drawings from Village Homes of England are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection in London. A significant bequest of his work entered the V&A through the Art Fund in 1968, two years after his death. Works are also held in the Art Institute of Chicago. England East was Jones's final major published work.

Significance

England East closes a project that took Jones six years to complete across three volumes and represents one of the most sustained acts of topographical documentation in twentieth-century British publishing. The trilogy belongs to the same cultural moment as Pevsner's Buildings of England series (begun 1951) and John Betjeman's verse and prose on the threatened English landscape. Jones's approach differs from Pevsner's in being personal, literary, and visually led rather than systematic and encyclopaedic, but the two projects are complementary records of the same England at the same historical hinge point.

The East volume's coverage of East Anglia is particularly valued. The Stour Valley, the Norfolk Broads, the Fenland abbeys, and the wool churches of Suffolk are documented with drawn detail that predates most of the post-war photographic surveys. The Northumberland and Durham sections, covering the colliery landscape alongside the castles and abbeys of the border country, demonstrate Jones's willingness to engage with industrial England rather than edit it out of his pastoral record.

Bibliographic Details

Author: Sydney Robert Fleming Jones (1881–1966)

Publisher: The Studio Publications, London & New York

Publisher's Editor: Frank A. Mercer

Address: 66 Chandos Place, WC2, London

First Published: 1954

Printer: William Clowes and Sons Ltd, London and Beccles

Series: England Trilogy — Vol. 3 of 3 (final volume)

Earlier Works (title page): England South (1948); England West (1950)

Format: Hardback, green cloth, gilt lettering, 26 cm, approx. 272 pages

Opening

The Book

The Maker

Significance

Bibliographic Details

References