David Knight

not on display for sure. but worth an email - ta!

The best gig I ever saw cost £4. Spiralling concert prices are a cultural disaster | John Harris Tickets for big tours have vastly outstripped inflation, while smaller artists and venues struggle. The magic is in danger of being snuffed out entirely, says Guardian columnist John Harris

The best gig I ever saw cost £4. Spiralling concert prices are a cultural disaster | John Harris

Speaking Out: Oral History for Architects | Architecture Foundation A conversation with leading oral historians at the Art Workers Guild

SPEAKING OUT: ORAL HISTORY FOR ARCHITECTS | With Cristina Monteiro I am hosting an exciting event for the Architecture Foundation, focussing on oral history in relation to place and architecture. With brilliant oral historians Mary Chamberlain and Jerry White. More info + tickets:

@oldweirdalbion.bsky.social have you got, or have ever seen, a map of the land that Vera Pragnell bought/owned? I have all the historic mapping for the lifespan of the sanctuary in its pure form. but not its extents.

amazing, thanks @oldweirdalbion.bsky.social - I think this might be my first major bluesky research achievement!

do you by any chance have a copy, digital or otherwise, of Vera Pragnell’s Story of the Sanctuary?

seems ok now!

Speaking Out: Oral History for Architects | Architecture Foundation A conversation with leading oral historians at the Art Workers Guild

SPEAKING OUT: ORAL HISTORY FOR ARCHITECTS | With Cristina Monteiro I am hosting an exciting event for the Architecture Foundation, focussing on oral history in relation to place and architecture. With brilliant oral historians Mary Chamberlain and Jerry White. More info + tickets:

The Remains of a Circle Telling my daughter about the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry

My first childhood explorations of woodcraft described (with holiday photos taken by my Nan!) in a new essay The Remains of a Circle open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

The Remains of a Circle Telling my daughter about the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry

Strange and wonderful things that happened in a New Forest woodland. knightdavid.substack.com/p/the-remain...

Like Jeremy Corbyn and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, I grew up in Woodcraft Folk. Here’s how it changes children’s lives | Phineas Harper The leftwing alternative to Scouts turns 100 this year. If Keir Starmer wants to empower Britain’s young people, it has much to teach him, says writer and curator Phineas Harper

Like Jeremy Corbyn and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, I grew up in Woodcraft Folk. Here’s how it changes children’s lives | Phineas Harper

The Subversive Survey What Arquitectura Popular em Portugal - a mid-century survey of vernacular architecture – can teach us about the potential of architectural research to shift culture.

A piece of my writing about the beautiful & influential Arquitectura Popular em Portugal (1961), exploring its role in subverting oppressive state power in dictatorship-era Portugal to develop a progressive, locally-inflected architecture in challenging times. open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

Found John I. Williams’ biography of CLR James both inspiring and enlightening. Like all good biographies it feels like a study of an era and a culture as much as of a single human. And who knew that much of The Black Jacobins was written in Portslade of all places?

How Community Ownership can Save our Grassroots Venues | The Quietus The sprung wooden floor of The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge is no stranger to dancing. It’s hard to imagine today, but its modest upstairs hall was built in 1924 for graceful ballroom affairs – all wa...

Good stuff on the relevance of the club/trades hall model to contemporary venues and community spaces from @thequietus.com - class is an important consideration here. thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

nice! I am doing my first railway carriage bungalow using secondhand Annie & Clarabels. x

Other Plans #2: Juniper Hill A ‘squatted’ hamlet encircling a public house.

Other Plans #2 explores a squatted settlement on former common land in Oxfordshire, where the houses cluster around the public house. knightdavid.substack.com/p/other-plan...

On Colin Ward Celebrating the anarchist thinker and 'propagandist' in a text originally delivered at the Garden Museum, London, in 2014.

An old text this time (2014!) celebrating Colin Ward, originally written to be delivered at the Garden Museum in London. open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

A Sanctuary: New Writing & Artwork Inspired by Victor B. Neuburg and the Vine Press A beautiful, extremely limited edition, zine-style publication of academic research, poetry & artwork inspired by the 1920s poet, publisher...

@oldweirdalbion.bsky.social is bringing the Steyning-based Vine Press back to life and fundraising via sales of this wonderful anthology about the world of the Vine Press, Victor Neuburg and Vera Pragnell: oldweirdalbion.bigcartel.com/product/a-sa...

A tribute to Robert Venturi on the centenary of his birth. His work continues to inspire me and I recently wrote an essay exploring his use of mirrors, doubling and copies. Here is the sublime Trubek House, a complex, awkward and difficult little object, but also beautiful and perfectly realised.

Blackwater Side Podcast Episode · Fire Draw Near · 20/06/2025 · 52m

absolutely exquisite episode of @firedrawnear.bsky.social this time - Blackwater Side podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/f...

The Spring Line | David Knight | Substack The Spring Line is a collection of illustrated writings by David Knight. It mixes fiction and non-fiction to explore the built environment and how it is made. Click to read The Spring Line, by David K...

In the past month or so I have been trying to write more on the built environment, here: open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

Other Plans #1: Laine A piece of town defined by agriculture

OTHER PLANS is an occasional series of short essays on alternative methods or tactics of planning. I’ve been collecting these for 15 years and am now writing them up. The first is about Brighton’s North Laine, structured by its origins as an agricultural landscape. open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

Haress. Acid Horse Festival 2025. The Barge, Honey Street, Wiltshire

“I don’t feel like I want to go louder. I feel like I want to go deeper and broader, rather than projecting out. It’s like you want to get right into the ground and the shape of the hills...”

#Haress Interviewed

buff.ly/q70xXns

My most recent short essay on the Spring Line is about the urgent need to conserve buildings which speak of Britain's history of self-build and plotland development.
knightdavid.substack.com/p/handmade-h...

Why we should urgently be acting to protect, conserve and documenting our remaining plotland dwellings and their close cousins open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

Mean Building Cultural hegemony at the birth of British statutory planning

I have tidied up and refocussed a lost fragment of my phd as a short(er) piece about the politics of early planning, and its complex power structures and elitisms. It is called Mean Building. open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

Low Culture Podcast: Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary, by M.R. James | The Quietus Crumpets and sherry dear subscriber? Would you like to pull your chair closer to the roaring log fire? Are you comfortable with your slippered feet up on that pouffe? Well, in that case John and Luke ...

This brilliant @thequietus.com conversation on M. R. James explores his influence and connections, and @luketurner.bsky.social comes up with the excellent phrase ‘dolmen for goalposts’ when discussing the risks of tweeness in folk nostalgia. thequietus.com/subscriber-a...

Excellent review of a magical record, Shirley Collins’ ‘southern journey’ through the music of Sussex recorded before her southern journey into the US to record folk song with Alan Lomax. Remarkable, potent stuff.

Bungalow Town (an extract) The text that follows purports to be an edited extract from the journal of Sussex local historian Edward Moderlove (1888-1956), dated May 1921.

‘I moved past them, window to window, carriage to carriage, such that I had the curious sensation of standing motionless on a platform with the train steadily departing, the mysterious lives of its diverse passengers glimpsed only for a moment as they passed.’ open.substack.com/pub/knightda...

DEEDS An essay exploring alternative and opportunistic land practices, resurrecting historical models such as Whiteway Colony, Ruigoord and Beaulieu Rails as precedents for action in the present.

I wrote, a little while ago, about alternative land practices from history. DEEDS is up now on my substack, thank you Clare Cumberlidge for the original commission. open.substack.com/pub/knightda...