ABSTRACT
In British architectural history the word vernacular has tended to evoke a narrow range of stereotypical forms and features – cruck frames, cross passages, scarf joints and the like. As for architectural history itself, there is still truth in W. R. Lethaby’s lament of nearly a century ago: ‘We have been indeed betrayed by the mysterious word Architecture away from reality into a pretence about styles and orders and proportions and periods and conception and composition’.1
