Lucinda Lambton

Throughout the centuries there have been castles, great and small, for animals as diverse as goats and guinea pigs, deer and dogs, cows and bees, pigs and horses, as well as bears and even salmon.

With such architects as William Kent designing a cowshed, as well as Sir John Soane devising classical ‘canine residences’, these buildings are not mere curiosities; John Nash applied himself at his most picturesque to a dovecote, while Capability Brown was commissioned to create a classical menagerie and Henry Holland designed an elaborate Chinese Dairy. Rather than just laugh-a-minute novelities, these buildings are the happy results of the British passion for both architecture and for animals – of indulgence in unrestrained and often unnecessary extravagance, simply for the love of building and their beasts.

Architecture for animals has been and still continues to be a tremendous British tradition. Palaces for Pigs – fully illustrated with striking photographs by the author – celebrates this tradition, telling the fascinating stories behind the buildings that housed animals and the monuments that commemorated them.

Come along and revel in a quintessentially British practice with writer, photographer and broadcaster, Lucinda Lambton.