Brett, C.E.B.
Towers of Crim Tartary. English and Scottish architects in the Crimea, 1762-1853.
Donington, Shaun Tyas 2005.
Full Description
4to. xiv + 154pp, 90 photo ills (mostly colour). Publisher’s cloth, in dustwrapper. No ownership inscription but Sir Howard Colvin’s copy, with an enclosed typed letter, signed, from the author, and an autograph letter, signed, to Colvin from Peter Howell.
This provides a well-written and scholarly account of Count Vorontsov’s palace at Alupka, designed for him by the English architect Edward Blore and constructed and carried to completion under the personal supervision of an English builder, William John Hunt. Brett also discusses the restoration in the 1820s of the old palace of the Tartar Khans at Bakhchisaray by an architect named Philip Elson, who may or may not have been English but who relied on accurate survey drawings made in the 1790s by a Scottish-born architect, William Hastie.