Looking Like England

I then chuckled to myself because last month, while visiting Normandy, my partner and I kept saying to ourselves that "this really looks like France." We said it so much on the first day of our holiday that it became a joke with us, and whenever we saw a really pretty half-timbered house or a beautiful stone-walled courtyard and described it as "so French," we would have a little laugh. I think that a foreign visitor could be secretly transported to Salisbury or south Wiltshire and on disembarking would know immediately that he or she was in England. The Cathedral Close, Winchester Street, Harnham Mill, St. Giles' Church in Great Wishford, the bridge over the Avon in Fordingbridge. All these places and hundreds more all around us are thoroughly and truly "English-looking."

Probably none of us really thinks about this on a day-to-day basis. It may only hit us after we have been out of the country, and returning home we find that things look a little bit different than they did before we left.

It's not something that we should take for granted, though. Just because we are in England does not necessarily mean that a place will look like England. If, for instance, we again secretly transported a foreign visitor, but this time dropped him or her off in Canary Wharf or beside an office building in the City of London, or even in the city centre of Birmingham or Manchester, he or she might think they were in any big city in Europe or North America. Similarly, I think parts of Beijing and Shanghai are changing so fast, with so many modern buildings designed by architects from around the world that I am afraid I wouldn't feel like I had really visited China if I ever did have the opportunity to visit those cities.

Architecture has become truly international, and some styles and tastes seem to be becoming universal. I am glad, though, that I can walk from Laverstock into Salisbury and have a real sense of place.