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Peter Lindfield FSA, AFHEA, MA (Hons), MLitt, PhD (St And)

Dr Peter Lindfield

(he/him)

FSA, AFHEA, MA (Hons), MLitt, PhD (St And)

Lecturer

Welsh School of Architecture

Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am an architectural historian specialising in Georgian and Victorian architectural fashion—especially the Gothic Revival—as well as the broader vocabulary of architectural ornament and architecture’s application to the allied arts of interior design, decoration, and furnishing.

A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London since 2016, I joined The Welsh School of Architecture in 2023 from the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool where I taught architectural history and theory across Parts 1 and 2, and from Manchester Metropolitan University where I taught MA courses on building and decolonising the English country house.

I have held five fellowships at Yale University, two at the University of Oxford, and one at Durham, and between 2016 and 2019 I was a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow working on forged antiquarian material culture in the Georgian and Victorian periods. 

Publication

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2007

Artefacts

Articles

Book sections

Books

Exhibitions

Websites

Research

My research is interdisciplinary in nature; it concentrates upon the recovery, transmission, and revival historical architectural styles and related forms of applied deign across time and space. My PhD, ‘Furnishing Britain: Gothic as a National Aesthetic 1730–1840’ (St Andrews, 2012), and the arising monograph, Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture, and Interiors, 1730–1840 (2016), established my methodology and reputation in this interdisciplinary field of design history.

I’m interested in exploring how architectural ideas and forms cross disciplinary boundaries and what this process says about the broader role of architecture within historic culture and society. I am also interested in researching the work, methodologies, and approaches of figures (including architects, historians, connoisseurs, and antiquaries) who have charted and applied such knowledge to their own practice.

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, my Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship (2016–19) enabled me to work on the creation of forged historical antiquarian material across—cultural heritage—across the arts including literature, art, sculpture, and architecture; one of the outputs is my second monograph: Unbuilt Strawberry Hill (2022), and my next monograph will offer an account of this interdisciplinary Georgian and Victorian history. I have also worked extensively upon the early Victorian architect, antiquary, and forger George Shaw (1810–76) of Uppermill, and more research on his architectural and antiquarian practice is forthcoming.

Teaching

I teach architectural history and theory, in particular for Buildings Through Time, and Architecture in Context.

Biography

I am an architectural historian specialising in Georgian and Victorian architectural fashion—especially the Gothic Revival—as well as the broader vocabulary of architectural ornament and architecture’s application to the allied arts of interior design, decoration, and furnishing. My teaching has concentrated upon the country house—building, design, and decolonisation—C20 architecture in Britain, and history in general. 

A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London since 2016, I joined the Welsh School of Architecture from the Liverpool School of Architecture where I taught architectural history and theory for Parts 1 and 2, and from Manchester Metropolitan University where I taught MA courses on building and decolonising the English country house.

I have been in receipt of five research fellowships at Yale University, two at the University of Oxford, and one at Durham, and between 2016 and 2019 I was a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow working on forged antiquarian material culture in the Georgian and Victorian periods. 

My publications concentrate on Gothic design, forgery, and related subjects inlcuding heraldry, antiquarian pursuits, and the recovery of 'lost' antiquaries' biographies, working methods, and interests. I have also written on the depiction of Arthurian legend in British art. My two monographs to date are: Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture, and Interiors, 1730–1840 (2016), and Unbuilt Strawberry Hill (2022); my essays on forgery and, recently, forged Tudor material culture within the context of heritage and preservationism have appeated in: Architectural History, The Burlington Magazine, The Georgian Group Journal, History Today, British Art Journal. 

Honours and awards

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (elected 2016)

Academic positions

2022–23: Lectureship in Architectural History and Humanities, Liverpool School of Architecture, The University of Liverpool

2021–23: Lectureship in History and the Country House, The Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)

2019–21: Senior Research Associate, MMU

2016–19: Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, MMU/University of Stirling

2015–16: AHRC-Funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Stirling

2013–15: Tutor, Centre for the Study of the Country House, University of Leicester

2012–13: Visiting Lecturer, Kunsthochschule, University of Kassel, Germany

Speaking engagements

2023

‘The Henry VII Marriage Bed: A Study Day’, Saddleworth Historical Society, Uppermill.

2022

‘Arthurian Art in Georgian and Victorian Britain’, An AutoChichen Crisis modelling conference.

‘Building, Designing, and Re-Designing Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill’: online lecture for the Georgian Group, London.

2021

‘Collecting fakes in Georgian Britain’: online lecture for the Georgian Group, London.

‘(Re)Fashioning Chetham’s Library in Nineteenth-Century Britain’: public lecture Chetham’s Library as part of the Manchester Libraries Festival (https://youtu.be/6BTr7RXReh8)

‘Deciphering Ordsall Hall’s Layers of Gothic History: Medieval to Victorian’: public lecture to celebrate the anniversary of the HLF restoration or Ordsall Hall (https://youtu.be/7HuelY1sMf4)

‘How William Kent’s work on the Minster shaped Georgian Gothic design’: Lecture to the York Georgian Society

‘Making and Faking Classical Antiquities for the Grand Tourist Collector’: Lecture for the Manchester Classical Association and George Street Community Bookshop, Glossop. Recording available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtyEpt2pM20&

2020

‘Eighteenth-Century Gothic in Context’: Lecture for the MMU Gothic Summer School

‘Gothic Connexions: Manchester and Salford’, Guided tour for the Not Quite Light Festival

‘Manchester’s Country Houses’: Guided tours organised with Rapha, Manchester

‘Gothic Architecture and Furniture at Ordsall Hall, Manchester’: Lecture organised with Ordsall Hall

2019

‘George Shaw: Faker of Elizabethan Furniture’: Public Lecture at Chetham’s Library, Manchester

‘Makers and Fakers: the characteristics of Neo-Medieval furniture in the early Gothic Revival c.1750–1840’: Lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

‘The Parian Chronicle Debate and concepts of authenticity in Antiquarian science’: Lecture, The Society of Antiquaries of London

‘Art, Architecture and Museums: Durham’s Gothic Architecture’, Gala Theatre, Centre for Visual Arts and Culture, University of Durham

2018

‘To Found and Build a University, in Durham’, at Architecture Now!, Centre for Visual Arts and Culture, University of Durham

‘A fake at the heart of the Arundel Marbles: an eighteenth-century controversy over the Parian Chronicle’: Lecture, the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

‘The Gothic House in Georgian Britain’, Lecture, The Georgian Group, London

2017

‘Walpole as Designer’, Walpole’s Tercentenary Lecture Series, University of Durham

‘Walpole’s Paper House’, Walpole’s Tercentenary Colloquium, University of Durham

2016

‘Antiquarian Furniture: Welch and Glastonbury’, Strawberry Hill Furniture Study Day, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham

‘William Beckford’s Architectural Imagination’, Annual Lecture, Beckford’s Tower Trust, Bath Preservation Trust

Committees and reviewing

-External PhD examiner for Murray Tremellen, “A palace Within a Palace”: The Speaker’s House at Westminster, 1794–1834, University of York, Department of Art History (2023)

-Reviewer for The Antiquaries Journal (from 2020)

-Outer international assessment board member for the Irish Research Council (2017) 

Supervisions

Past projects

MArch dissertations:

  • A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Vernacular Architectural Practice
  • A Critical Analysis of the Global Translation of Rococo and its Application in China
  • Ambiguous Space: The Research of Transparency in Western Architecture and 'Garden Nature' in Eastern Architecture
  • Architecture and Five Senses: A Study of Sri Lankan Vernacular Architecture and its Impact on the Five Senses.
  • Feng Shui: Superficial or Beneficial in Tropical Architecture?
  • Is IKEA the Realisation of The Bauhaus Dream?
  • Portable Living Spaces

MA (History) dissertations:

  • An exploration of the cyclical nature of Classical Columns as used in British Country Houses, c.1500–1780
  • Decolonisation and the Country House
  • The Bridgewater Estate: The Decline or the Reinvention of the British Country House?

Contact Details

Email LindfieldP@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone +44 29225 14817

Research themes

Specialisms

  • Architectural history, theory and criticism
  • forgery
  • Gothic Revival
  • Furniture design
  • Interior design