|
Books > Arts & Architecture > Architecture > Religious buildings
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.
Rosslyn Chapel is a deeply enigmatic 15th-century Gothic
masterpiece, situated near Edinburgh. Although generally referred
to as a 'chapel' and acting as a local parish church these days,
Rosslyn is actually much more than either - and in fact most people
who have studied the site in detail come to the conclusion that
those who created the structure in the 15th century were not, in
reality, intent on building a Christian church at all. In fact,
nothing at Rosslyn is what it seems. With its overpowering air of
mystery, its superlative stone carvings and its strong Templar and
Freemasonic connections, Rosslyn represents one of the most
absorbing historical puzzles in Britain. The discovery of new
evidence by the authors puts a new slant on the motivations of
those who decided to create a New Jerusalem in the Scottish
Lowlands. The signs pointed the authors to a lost holy relic - the
skull of St Matthew the Evangelist, in whose name the chapel is
dedicated. There is startling evidence that this skull came to
Rosslyn in the early 15th century, brought there by polymath,
librarian and all-round genius Sir Gilbert Hay, who also put
together a substantial library. What follows is no less than an
adventure, using the clues from the lost books to locate St
Matthew's skull - now in Washington, DC. The authors also embark on
a thorough examination of Rosslyn Chapel's credentials, both a
Christian church and as an icon of the impending Renaissance, a
reconstruction of King Solomon's Temple and an astronomical
observatory - all suffused with ancient beliefs that would have had
the chapel's builders burned at the stake if their true motivations
had been discovered.
This pivot sets Muslim shrines within the wider context of Heritage
Studies in the Muslim world and considers their role in the
articulation of sacred landscapes, their function as sites of
cultural memory and their links to different religious traditions.
Reviewing the historiography of Muslim shrines paying attention to
the different ways these places have been studied, through
anthropology, archaeology, history, and religious studies, the text
discusses the historical and archaeological evidence for the
development of shrines in the region from pre-Islamic times up to
the present day. It also assesses the significance of Muslim
shrines in the modern Middle East, focusing on the diverse range of
opinions and treatments from veneration to destruction, and argues
that shrines have a unique social function as a means of direct
contact with the past in a region where changing political
configurations have often distorted conventional historical
narratives.
|
You may like...
The Green Man
Richard Hayman
Paperback
R245
R203
Discovery Miles 2 030
F. X. Velarde
Dominic Wilkinson, Andrew Crompton
Paperback
R1,084
Discovery Miles 10 840
|