News

26 April 2026 commemorated 125 years since the first meeting of the Engineering Standards Committee which Sir John Wolfe Barry helped establish. It would later become BSI(link).
There is a Substack newsletter called 'Building Passions' (link) with free content.

Welcome

The book Building Passions: Brunel, Barry and 'modern' Victorian architecture).is about the shared story of two families of 19th-century engineers and architects (link) who were passionate about building what would become iconic Victorian structures. One family was the Brunels (link). The other family was the Barrys (link). You can 'Buy the book' (link), or if you would just like to know more about its contents then please read on.

The key structures built by the Brunels and Barrys include:

  • Tower Bridge, London
  • The Houses of Parliament including Big Ben, London
  • Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol
  • The Royal Opera House and Floral Hall, London
  • Paddington Station, London and Box Tunnel, Wiltshire, part of the Great Western Railway
  • TheThames Tunnel, London
  • Highclere Castle (location of "Downton Abbey") and Cliveden House, Berkshire
  • The Travellers and Reform Clubs, London
  • The SS Great Britain, Western and Eastern

The book also refers to these significant structures:

  • The Crystal Palace, London (burned down in 1936)
  • The Grange, Ramsgate, UK
  • Oriel Chambers, Liverpool, UK
  • The Red House, Beckenham, UK
  • The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
  • Hotel Tassel, Brussels, Belgium
  • Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE

You can see a full list of the structures (link) mentioned in the book with further links to more information about them.