Survey of London

Description

The Survey of London is a long-running series of volumes that documents the buildings of London past and present, covering their development, architecture, history and associations; it is based in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London (UCL). It began in 1894 as a volunteer effort to list and record the surviving historic buildings and monuments of London, and its area-by-area approach has since grown into a detailed work of urban and architectural history, built on documentary research and on-site investigation and illustrated with measured drawings, maps, archive images and specially commissioned photographs. The London County Council backed the Survey from 1900 and took it over entirely in 1953, after which it was run by the Greater London Council from 1965, the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England from 1986 and English Heritage from 1999; since 2013 it has been part of the Bartlett, where it also has a teaching and research role. Its main series covers the former County of London area by area, usually one historic parish at a time, and a shorter monograph series deals with individual sites and buildings. Areas covered include much of the historic West End, Kensington and Knightsbridge, Clerkenwell, Poplar in Docklands, Lambeth, Woolwich and Battersea; most earlier volumes can be read online through British History Online, and a volume on South-West Marylebone is in progress. Recent work includes a study of Whitechapel, begun in 2016 with the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the Bartlett, which gathered histories from local communities through an interactive website before publication as two volumes in 2022, and a 2026 monograph on the Bloomsbury campus of UCL, published for the university bicentenary as the first volume in the series from UCL Press.

Follow the Survey on Vimeo and read its blog.

Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

1894

Contact details

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Categorisation

Type

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University affiliation(s)

University College London (UCL)
London