Cambridgeshire is a large and diverse county, and this is reflected in its churches. In the south, chalk provided flints for even the grandest of churches. The Fens in the north and east had no building materials of their own, so limestone was transported from further north and may best be seen in those churches that were owned or established by monastic houses. In the former county of Huntingdonshire limestone dominates, and bricks made from the local clays make an early appearance. In this book author John E. Vigar presents a selection of the most interesting churches from across the county, including the former counties of the Isle of Ely, Huntingdonshire and Peterborough, covering every period and type of church, from simple Saxo-Norman churches such as Hauxton, to late medieval churches where money was plentiful such as Whittlesey. Former monastic houses are represented by March and Ramsey, a rare seventeenth-century church at Guyhirn and one of the most important nineteenth-century churches in England at Cambridge All Saints, as well as many other ecclesiastical gems in the county. This fascinating picture of an important part of the history of Cambridgeshire over the centuries will be of interest to all those who live in or are visiting this attractive county in England.

Even in an age of soaring skyscrapers and cavernous sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence still retains a rare power to astonish. Yet the elegance of the building belies the tremendous labour, technical ingenuity and bitter personal strife involved in its creation. For over a century after work on the cathedral began in 1296, the proposed dome was regarded as all but impossible to build because of its enormous size. The greatest architectural puzzle of its age, when finally completed in 1436 the dome was hailed as one of the great wonders of the world. It has gone down in history as a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture. This book tells the extraordinary story of how the cupola was raised and of the dome's architect, the brilliant and volatile Filippo Brunelleschi. Denounced as a madman at the start of his labours, he was celebrated at their end as a great genius. His life was one of ambition, ingenuity, rivalry and intrigue - a human drama set against the plagues, wars, political feuds and intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence, the glorious era for which the dome remains the most compelling symbol. Brunelleschi's Dome was voted Non-Fiction Book of the Year by American Independent Booksellers.

This is the third in a series of four volumes that are intended to present a complete Corpus of all the church buildings, of both the Western and the Oriental rites, built, rebuilt or simply in use in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem between the capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusade in 1099 and the loss of Acre in 1291. This volume deals exclusively with Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom from 1099 to 1187, leaving the churches of Acre and Tyre to be covered in the fourth and final volume. The Corpus will be an indispensable work of reference to all those concerned with the medieval topography and archaeology of the Holy Land, with the history of the church in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, with medieval pilgrimage to the Holy Places, and with the art and architecture of the Latin East.

Suffolk boasts by far the greatest number of Domesday churches than any other county surveyed by William the Conqueror in 1086. Over the centuries, many of these buildings have been added to and altered, whilst others have sadly disappeared either completely or partially from the landscape. Some of Suffolk's churches are more recent additions. The present-day churches of Suffolk, therefore, offer a diversity of styles of architecture and of construction, both inside and out. They range from flint round towers to whole buildings built using prefabricated cement blocks, from meticulously carved pew ends to flamboyant ceilings bursting with colour, and from angelic musicians depicted in stained glass to demonic wall paintings. For this book, the author presents a selection of not only the best of Suffolk churches but also the curious and intriguing, all of which tell the rich history of Suffolk and its people at prayer over the centuries. This fascinating picture of an important part of the history of Suffolk over the centuries will be of interest to all those who live in or are visiting this attractive county in England.

It is fascinating to think that many hundreds of generations of Londoners lie beneath the city without us knowing. Over many centuries burial grounds have been developed, built over and then forgotten, often beneath playgrounds, gardens or car parks. When modern development takes place, remains are disturbed and we are reminded of a London that has long since disappeared, particularly with recent archaeological discoveries across the city. In London's Hidden Burial Grounds, authors Robert Bard and Adrian Miles seek to uncover many of the capital's lost graveyards, often in the unlikeliest of places.

The mosaics in the Rotunda in Thessaloniki are the most significant decorations that remain from the early Byzantine period. Th is richly illustrated book invites the reader to enter the building and experience the splendid golden and silver mosaics that cover the cupola and vaults. It includes a timeline and a list of recent publications. Colour photographs, many specially taken for this publication, document the spectacular qualities of these magnificent mosaics. After an introduction to the architecture of the Rotunda, the authors focus on the mosaics, discussing such issues as imperial patronage, the martyr portraits, the pictorial programme, as well as mosaic technique and the aesthetic qualities of the multi-coloured images. The succinct text provides an up-to-date introduction to the mosaics.

A comprehensive guide to the individual churches, catacombs, embellishments and artefacts of Early Christian Rome. The author describes precisely where the extant features are situated and provides details on what can be seen. The ground plans of each site studies allows the reader to compare the proportions of each church with another From the 1st-century visits of the Apostles Peter and Paul to the end of the 9th-century Carolingian Renaissance, the book also includes dates of emperors and popes, and important historical events relating to this period in Rome. A historical introduction places the monuments in the context of the Early Christian period and its development in Rome.

Built around 1100, the church of Asinou in Cyprus is decorated with accretions of images, from the fresco cycle executed shortly after construction to those made in the 17th century. This volume sets Asinou's art and architecture in the context of the surrounding area's changing fortunes under Byzantine and Ottoman rule.

Edinburgh was founded as a Royal Burgh by King David I in the early 12th century though there had been a settlement on what became the castle rock for centuries before that. King David is also thought to be responsible for the city's oldest building, a chapel built in honour of his mother, Queen Margaret, who was later declared a saint. Churches of Edinburgh looks at the city's churches from this earliest surviving example to the award-winning Chapel of Saint Albert the Great opened some 900 years later, telling their stories, discussing their architecture and pointing out their notable features as well as outlining the important part that some of Edinburgh's churches have played in major events in Scottish history such as the Reformation or the National Covenant. The churches featured include, among many others, the ruined 13th century Abbey that was once a meeting place for the Scottish Parliament, the church that retains a seat for Queen Victoria and the one that has its own canal boat. There is also the story of the fifteenth century church that was demolished in 1848 but was later partially rebuilt elsewhere and that of the important artworks that lie hidden beneath the paintwork of another city church. This fascinating picture of an important part of the history of Edinburgh and Scotland over the centuries will be of interest to all those who live in or are visiting Scotland's capital city.

This book explores the intersection between two key developments of the fourth through seventh centuries CE: the construction of monumental churches and the veneration of saints. While Christian sacred topography is usually interpreted in narrowly religious terms as points of contact with holy places and people, this book considers church buildings as spatial environments in which a range of social 'work' happened. It draws on approaches developed in the fields of anthropology, ritual studies, and social geography to examine, for example, how church buildings facilitated commemoration of the community's dead, establishment of a shared historical past, and communication with the divine. Surveying evidence for the introduction of saints into liturgical performance and the architectural and decorative programs of churches, this analysis explains how saints helped to bolster the boundaries of church space, reinforce local social and religious hierarchies, and negotiate the community's place within larger regional and cosmic networks.

This is the first of a series of three volumes which are intended to present a complete corpus of all the church buildings in use in the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem between the capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusade in 1099 and the loss of Acre in 1291. Volume II completes the general topographical coverage begun in Volume I, while Volume III will deal specifically with Jerusalem, Acre and Tyre. When complete the Corpus will contain a topographical listing of all the 400 or more church buildings of the Kingdom and individual descriptions and discussion of them in terms of their identification, building history and architecture. A feature of the Corpus is the standardized format in which the evidence is presented; this also extends to the plans and elevations which are drawn to a uniform style and scale. The Corpus will therefore be an indispensable work of reference for all those concerned with the history and architecture of the Latin east.

With meticulous research and carefully chosen illustrations, Phoebe Stanton here explores the influence of the English Gothic revival on American church architecture in the mid-nineteenth century, arguing that this fundamentally conservative movement provided a foundation for a new aesthetic. Examining the writings of the movement's leading proponents as well as a variety of important buildings, Stanton offers a comprehensive survey of the architectural principles and models that became most influential in America. She also confirms the importance of the Cambridge Camden Society, which provided the theoretical atmosphere and practical examples that helped to establish new standards of excellence in American architecture.

Aspects of Georgia's unique history can only be told through its extant rural churches. As the Georgia backcountry rapidly expanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the churches erected on this newly parceled land became the center of community life. These early structures ranged from primitive outbuildings to those with more elaborate designs and were often constructed with local, hand-hewn materials to serve the residents who lived nearby. From these rural communities sprang the villages, towns, counties, and cities that informed the way Georgia was organized and governed and that continue to influence the way we live today. Historic Rural Churches of Georgia presents forty-seven early houses of worship from all areas of the state. Nearly three hundred stunning color photographs capture the simple elegance of these sanctuaries and their surrounding grounds and cemeteries. Of the historic churches that have survived, many are now in various states of distress and neglect and require restoration to ensure that they will continue to stand. This book is a project of the Historic Rural Churches of Georgia organization, whose mission is the preservation of historic rural churches across the state and the documentation of their history since their founding. If proper care is taken, these endangered and important landmarks can continue to represent the state's earliest examples of rural sacred architecture and the communities and traditions they housed.

Tracing its origins and development, Bloom reveals that the Minaret, long understood to have been invented in the early years of Islam as the place from which the muezzin gives the call to prayer, was actually invented some two centuries later to be a visible symbol of Islam. From early Islam to the modern world, and from Iran, Egypt, Turkey and India to West and East Africa, the Yemen and Southeast Asia, this richly illustrated book is a sweeping tour of the minaret's position as the symbol of Islam.

For nearly eighteen centuries, two fundamental spatial plans dominated Christian architecture: the basilica and the central plan. In the 1880s, however, profound socio-economic and technological changes in the United States contributed to the rejection of these traditions and the development of a radically new worship building, the auditorium church. When Church Became Theatre focuses on this radical shift in evangelical Protestant architecture and links it to changes in worship style and religious mission.
The auditorium style, featuring a prominent stage from which rows of pews radiated up a sloping floor, was derived directly from the theatre, an unusual source for religious architecture but one with a similar goal-to gather large groups within range of a speaker's voice. Theatrical elements were prominent; many featured proscenium arches, marquee lighting, theatre seats, and even opera boxes.
Examining these churches and the discussions surrounding their development, Jeanne Halgren Kilde focuses on how these buildings helped congregations negotiate supernatural, social, and personal power. These worship spaces underscored performative and entertainment aspects of the service and in so doing transformed relationships between clergy and audiences. In auditorium churches, the congregants' personal and social power derived as much from consumerism as from piety, and clerical power lay in dramatic expertise rather than connections to social institutions. By erecting these buildings, argues Kilde, middle class religious audiences demonstrated the move toward a consumer-oriented model of religious participation that gave them unprecedented influence over the worship experience andchurch mission.

Canterbury Cathedral possesses a unique marble mosaic pavement, dating from the early 12th century, which has long intrigued scholars and been the subject of speculation and debate. It forms part of the floor of the Trinity chapel, adjacent to the site where the shrine of St Thomas Becket stood, prior to the Reformation. Since the mosaic is older than the chapel itself and partly destroyed a pavement of figurative roundels, laid c.1215, it must have been moved here from elsewhere in the cathedral. This volume explores the history and archaeology of the Trinity chapel, the pavement and the physical remains of the cult of Becket, based largely on hitherto unrecorded and unpublished evidence. In the early 12th century, Archbishop Anselm rebuilt the eastern arm of the cathedral, introducing architectural elements from his native Italy, and these included a magnificent mosaic pavement, composed of the most expensive marbles, which lay in front of the high altar. In 1170, Archbishop Becket was murdered in the cathedral, and his body rested overnight on the pavement before being buried in the crypt. Thomas was immediately revered as a martyr, and in 1173 was canonised by the pope; a simple shrine was erected over his tomb. In the following year, a fire (arson) destroyed the eastern arm of the cathedral, precipitating the construction of the present Trinity and Corona chapels, wherein St Thomas’s remains were enshrined. After decades of delay and political strife, the enshrinement took place in 1220, in the presence of Henry III. The shrine comprised a great marble table, supported on six clusters of columns. On top of the table was a marble sarcophagus containing the saint’s body in an iron-bound timber coffin, over which stood the sumptuous feretory, a gabled timber ‘roof’, plated with sheets of gold and adorned with jewels. East of the shrine lies the small Corona chapel in which a fragment of Becket’s skull was separately encased in a ‘head-shrine’, and to the west a large area was paved with forty-eight figurative stone roundels, created by French artisans. All around, stained-glass windows display the early miracles of Becket. The layout of the Trinity chapel underwent transmutations, first around 1230, when the mosaic pavement was taken up from the old presbytery, reduced in size and relaid in front of Becket’s shrine, where is it today. Second, the chapel was reordered in c. 1290, when the podium carrying the shrine was enlarged and the paving around it reconfigured. Medieval tombs were now being installed in the chapels, including those of the Black Prince and Henry IV. The end came in 1538, when Henry VIII ordered the thorough destruction of Becket’s shrines, but a great deal of archaeological evidence remained in the floors, walls and a few surviving fragments of the shrines, all now recorded and discussed in this beautifully illustrated volume for the first time.

The Pinecone is set in the village of Wreay, near Carlisle, where a masterpiece in Victorian architecture stands - the strangest and most magical church in England. This vivid, original book tells the story of its builder, Sarah Losh, strong-willed and passionate, an architect and an intellectual who dumbfounded critics with her genius and originality. Born into an old Cumbrian family, heiress to an industrial fortune, Sarah combined a zest for progress with a love of the past. The church is Losh's masterpiece, richly decorated with symbolic carvings there are images of ammonites, scarabs and poppies, and everywhere there are pinecones, her signature in stone. The church is a dramatic rendering of the power of myth and the great natural cycles of life and death and rebirth. The Pinecone is also the story of Sarah's radical family, friends of Wordsworth and Coleridge; of the love between sisters and the life of a village; of the struggle of the weavers, the coming of the railways, the findings of geology and the fate of a young northern soldier in the Afghan war. Above all, though, it is about the joy of making and the skill of local, unsung craftsmen. Award-winning Jenny Uglow (author of The Lunar Men, Nature's Engraver and In These Times) crafts this moving story of a beautiful and ornate church, a pioneering and imaginative woman, and the changing life of a small northern village in the face of the Industrial Revolution.

? Professor Rodwell is the foremost expert in church archaeology? Full color throughout over 240 color photographs?Churches are a hugely popular subject, with best selling titles such as Simon Jenkins England s Thousand Best ChurchesChurches are Britain s most completely surviving class of historic monument. They are also usually the oldest buildings within their settlements. As such, these structures, from parish churches to cathedral, from medieval to Georgian, are a huge architectural and archaeological resource.The last couple of decades have witnessed an unprecedented upsurge of public interest in the historic environment, and the growth of the tourism and heritage industries has focused new attention on churches. While some visitors to churches, cathedrals and monastic ruins seem content to wander around with little or no understanding of what they are looking at, many have an interest in learning about the history or usage of the building. How far does it go back? Where is the earliest part of the building? Warwick Rodwell discusses the archaeological techniques that can attempt to answer such questions. In this highly illustrated, informative guide, Professor Rodwell explores the buildings themselves, their component parts, from doorways to turrets, their sites, furnishings, fixtures and fittings, as well as churchyards and monuments.REVIEWS 'You will not regret purchasing (the book).'Cathedral City Guide"

The churches of Hampshire are as varied as the landscapes they occupy. Remote rural churches that have changed little in 900 years are so far removed from those found in medieval market towns or bustling seaports that one might imagine that they have little in common. Yet the building materials of natural flint, imported stone from Normandy or the Isle of Wight and, later, local brick hold these diverse buildings together. As an early regional capital Winchester attracted powerful individuals whose influence spread through the county. Monastic houses flourished and have left us grand churches. Courtiers and courtesans have left their marks across the county, as have eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrialists, many of whom rebuilt or restored churches. This book looks at fifty Hampshire churches from the Saxon gems of Breamore and Titchfield through Romsey Abbey to isolated churches in the folds of the Downs at Idsworth and Wield to nineteenth- and twentieth-century churches that rank amongst England's finest. Together with their rich memorials and furnishings there is something for everyone, and Churches of Hampshire will encourage all those who live in the county or are visiting to discover the history on their doorsteps.

Less than ten years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the new religion of Islam arrived in Egypt with the army of Amr ibn al-As in AD 641. Amr immediately established his capital at al-Fustat, just south of modern Cairo, and there he built Africa's first mosque, one still in regular use today. Since then, governors, caliphs, sultans, amirs, beys, pashas, among others, have built mosques, madrasas, and mausoleums throughout Egypt in a changing sequence of Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, and modern styles. In this fully color-illustrated, large-format volume, a leading historian of Islamic art and culture celebrates the great variety of Egypt's mosques and related religious buildings, from the early congregational mosques, through the medieval mausoleum-madrasas, to the neighborhood mosques of the Ottoman and modern periods. With outstanding architectural photography and authoritative analytical texts, this book will be valued as the finest on the subject by scholars and general readers alike.