ABSTRACT
At first sight, British writings on architectural history may seem to be atheoretical. They give an account of buildings from the past and hardly ever openly address issues that are usually associated with architectural theory, such as matters of design or style. Antiquarian writing also had important theoretical implications, because antiquarians were interested not only in the remains of classical 'high culture' but also in all material remains of the British past, including humble objects such as bones, pot shards or fragments of pavement. Whereas antiquarianism was a European movement, the appreciation of the mediaeval architectural heritage in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was very much a British phenomenon. John Wood took a much more radical approach in his attempt to rewrite the history of European architecture by presenting the Bible and sacred history as historical sources that possessed the same or greater value than Vitruvius.
