Green men are figures or heads that were carved in churches, abbeys and cathedrals from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Inspired by the illustrations in book margins where heads were used to terminate trails of foliage, they were usually carved in the form of human masks, cats' or demons' heads. The earliest architectural green men are found in the churches of the wealthy and influential, such as Henry I's private chapel in Derbyshire but they were still produced in lesser numbers into the nineteenth century. Richard Hayman discusses the origins and definitions of these fascinating figures and traces their many declines and revivals throughout history - a valuable guide for any church history enthusiast.

Stretching to nearly 4,000 miles, the Yangzi is the third largest river in the world and without a doubt China's single most important river artery. These high quality hypsometric-shaded, relief maps feature numerous captions informing the traveler of geographical, cultural and historical facts about the river and surrounding areas along the upper and lower regions of the Yangzi.

An illustrated history of Britain's coal mines and the lives of the miners who worked in them. Coal heated the homes, fuelled the furnaces and powered the engines of the Industrial Revolution. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the coalfields - distinct landscapes of colliery winding frames, slag heaps and mining villages - made up Britain's industrial heartlands. Coal was known as 'black gold' but it was only brought to the surface with skill and at considerable risk, with flooding, rock falls and gas explosions a constant danger. Coal miners became a recognised force in British political life, forming a vociferous and often militant lobby for better working conditions and a decent standard of living. This beautifully illustrated guide to Britain's industrial heritage covers not just the mines, but the lives of the workers away from the pits, with a focus on the cultural and religious life of mining communities.

The Reformation transformed England forever. From peasants in the lanes and fields to the court of Henry VIII, no life was left untouched as the Roman Catholic Church was replaced as the centre of the nation's religious life. Emerging from a dense mesh of European ecclesiastical and political controversy and Tudor dynastic ambition, the English Reformation ended with the Pope supplanted as the head of the national church, the great monasteries - owners of much of the country's land - disbanded and destroyed, the Latin Mass replaced by vernacular services and the colourful wall paintings of parish churches whitewashed. This is a fully illustrated introduction that looks at the main players - Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell and others - as well as the broad sweep of this era of bitter controversy, brutal persecution and seismic upheaval.

Timber-framed buildings are a distinctive and treasured part of Britain's heritage, with such noteworthy examples as Little Moreton Hall, Anne Hathaway's Cottage and Lavenham Guildhall. The oldest are medieval but their numbers peaked in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a revival in the nineteenth. The majority of timber-framed buildings are houses, but wood was used in all kinds of other buildings, including shops, inns, churches, town halls and farm buildings. In this beautifully illustrated book, Richard Hayman outlines the history of timber-framed designs, and considers the techniques used in their construction, the regional variations in style that can be found, and how these buildings displayed social status. He also guides the reader in identifying structures now concealed behind later work and explores how these buildings have been treated in subsequent centuries.

The Holy Grail and Holy Thorn explores the legends of King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury and how their influence has been felt from medieval to modern times. Joseph was said to have built at Glastonbury the first church in Christendom, which made it a center of medieval pilgrimage, and gave Glastonbury an international profile in the fifteenth century. Through the winter-flowering holy thorn, said to have grown from Joseph's staff, and later the Chalice Well, Glastonbury remained a focus of superstition in the Protestant centuries. In medieval romance Joseph of Arimathea had been the first keeper of the Holy Grail, a mystical past that was revived by Romantic writers and artists and ensured that Glastonbury retained a place in our national culture. In the twentieth century Glastonbury's reputation was further elaborated by the belief that Joseph was the great-uncle of Jesus Christ, and that when he first came to Britain he brought the young Jesus with him, an idea suggested by William Blake's Jerusalem. In the same mystical tradition, in the 1960s John Michell saw in Glastonbury the dimensions of New Jerusalem, which proved crucial in making Glastonbury the capital of New Age culture.

From the monumental splendour of Tower Bridge and the august span at Westminster to the engineering masterpieces at Ironbridge and the Forth, bridges comprise some of the most recognisable landmarks in Britain. Whether the smallest arch or the largest overpass, each has a rich architectural, economic, social and sometimes even religious history. This beautifully illustrated introduction by Richard Hayman explains how piety built and maintained bridges in the Middle Ages; how economic forces inspired a new generation of road bridges in the eighteenth century, such as the Menai Bridge in North Wales, and how technological prowess gave us soaring Victorian railway viaducts and the concrete road bridges of the twentieth century.

Chinoiserie, a decorative style inspired by the art of the Far East, gripped Britain from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Despite taking its name from the French word for 'Chinese', the style also incorporated influences from other Asian countries, helping to shape the period's popular fantasy of the 'exotic Orient'. Wealthy consumers jostled to obtain imported wallpaper, lacquered cabinets and hand-painted porcelain, while domestic manufacturers such as Royal Worcester and Chippendale met demand with mass-produced items of their own. Though interest in the style waned as the Gothic Revival took hold, many examples of Chinoiserie have been preserved. In this beautifully illustrated book, Richard Hayman tells the story of this fascinating phenomenon, and explores the profound impact of Chinoiserie on the material culture of the West.

The rood screen was the visual focus of the medieval parish church, dividing the nave from the chancel. Most were built of wood and were adorned with intricate carved decoration painted in bright colours, often with images of saints. Defaced and often dismantled during the Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, most surviving screens have been restored to their former glory since the nineteenth century and are now among the most prized treasures of our parish churches. This fully illustrated book explains the symbolic and practical significance of rood screens and describes the ways in which they were constructed and decorated. There is also an extensive list of churches in England and Wales where screens can be found.

Illuminated manuscripts are among the most beautiful, precious and mysterious works of Western art. Before the printing press was invented, books were produced by hand and their illustration using brightly coloured pigments and gold embellishments was a labour of love and an act of piety in itself. The results are stunning. The works emanating from the scriptoria of monasteries were mainly religious texts, including illuminated bibles, psalters, and works for private devotion known as books of hours. Illuminated Manuscripts describes the origin and history of illumination in the Middle Ages, covering the artists and their techniques, and the patrons who commissioned them. It explains the subject matter found in medieval works, such as saints and Bible stories and the use of ornamental flourishes, and is illustrated with many fine examples of the genre including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells.

The parish church is a symbol of continuity, a cornerstone of the urban and rural landscape, and a treasure trove often as rich in cultural history as any museum. This compact and accessible guide explores all of these aspects of the parish church. It begins by examining why churches are built where they are, and then goes on to explain how both church buildings and churchyards have changed over time. It also describes the fixtures and furnishings in the parish church, including fonts, screens, stained glass and monuments, explaining their ritual and symbolic purpose and how their significance has shifted over time. Lavishly illustrated with colour photographs, this book will provide an indispensable introductory guide to anyone who is curious about the nation's parish churches and wants to explore them further.

A guide to Britain's churches, which talks about the richness and diversity of over 1500 years of Christian heritage. It also explains the importance of place in the siting of a church, the architectural styles, the layout of the interior in relation to religious practice, the purpose and meaning of stained glass and wall paintings, and more.

Trees are special, being bigger than us both physically and metaphorically. "Trees: Woodlands and Western Civilization" is an account of our relationship with them. Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden for eating from the Tree of Knowledge and the great tree Yggdrasil was central to Norse mythology. Tacitus, followed by German nationalists and historians of liberty, located freedom in the German forests. Medieval forests were both protected hunting parks and the refuge of Robin Hood. Shakespeare contrasted the simplicity of life in the Forest of Arden with the artificial manners of the court, and indeed poets from Virgil to Hardy have drawn inspiration from trees. While eighteenth-century aristocrats controlled trees in plantations around their houses, Romantics delighted in vast untamed forests, and the American Henry Thoreau withdrew into the woods to reintegrate himself with nature. Throughout history, our views of trees have been affected by the changing use of woodland and the effects of deforestation and urbanisation. How we see trees today will dictate how trees are treated in the future.

Who built Avebury and Stonehenge? Why and when were more than 600 stone circles, and thousands of barrows and cairns, erected in prehistoric Britain? What were they used for and what do they tell us about the beliefs and culture of their builders? Riddles in Stone is a history of the extraordinary variety of answers that have been given to those questions, by amateurs and professionals, archaeologists and astronomers, mystics and system theorists. While modern excavation and radiocarbon dating has undoubtedly advanced our knowledge of the sequence and date of the monuments, their purpose and meaning is still today hotly debated . Indeed no previous century has changed its mind so often as the twentieth - or provided such a welteer of conflicting opinions. Each theory has as much to say about its own time as it has about prehistory. The stones have been used to enhance the authority of the Bible, to endorse the civilizing mission of the British Empire - and to argue that the Ancient Britons could work a computer. In a reaction to modern industrial society, they have been credited with spiritual powers and natural energies.Even the views of modern archaeologists often reflect the latest adademic fad, rathen than a lasting solution. Riddles in Stone: Myths, Archaeology and the Ancient Britons is an entertaining and instructive account of a debate on a subject of endless fascination. Richard Hayman is an archaeologist. He read archaeology at University College, Cardiff, and has subsequently specialised in post-medieval archaeology, while maintaining his early interest in prehistoric monuments. He has also worked as a photographer.

The Ironbridge Gorge (midway between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury) was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. The site is best symbolised by the Iron Bridge itself, cast in Coalbrookdale and erected across the River Severn in 1779. It was immediately hailed as one of the wonders of the age. The area had already established itself as the cutting edge of technological innovation and attracted engineers such as Telford and Trevithick. In 1709 Abraham Darby I successfully adopted coke for smelting iron - after which the Coalbrookdale Company spearheaded developments in the iron industry. During the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries other companies and products became synonymous with the district: Coalport porcelain, Broseley roof tiles and clay tobacco pipes, and decorative tiles from Maws and Craven Dunnill. Using archaeological and historical evidence, the authors chart the rise and fall of the iron, clay and coal industries of Ironbridge and bring to life the communities that worked in them. They have written the definitive guide to the surviving buildings and archaeological remains, portraying the distinctive character of a string of small settlements.

Iron was the catalyst of the Industrial Revolution - the material of Ironbridge, the Crystal Palace, railways, steam engines ships. But what made it so important and why did Britain become the major producer of iron in the world? The iron industry sucked in a mass of skilled and unskilled labour, and transformed rural landscapes with mines, railways, and new villages and towns. Without iron there would have been no Industrial Revolution and few parts of Britain from the Highlands of Scotland to Cornwall have not been touched by the iron industry. Richard Hayman concentrates on the period when coal replaced charcoal as the industry's fuel source, discussing the changing technology, geography and economy of the industry as well as its social history. From those heady days at Coalbrookdale on the banks of the Severn to the decline of a once-mighty industry, he tells the story of iron and its place in British history.