Mark Child – författare

More poeple than ever are visiting churchs, but they are often baffled by the architectural and technical terms that abound in guidebooks.This book helps to identify ecclesiastical architecture. It is a dictionary explaining in simple language over 600 terms likely to be encountered on a church visits and is illustrated with more than 300 drawings.

The Windrush is the largest of the Cotswold rivers. Running for about forty miles through parts of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, it is also the longest. It is the waterway that turned Bourton-on-the-Water into an inland resort, and it fl ows adjacent to the major tourist venue of Burford. It runs alongside historic Witney, and close to the picturesque Slaughters. This book begins with a description of the river, its uses in the past, the countryside through which it passes, and its value today. It then follows the entire course of the river from Snowshill, just north of its source, to the point where it debouches into the River Thames at Newbridge, describing all thirty-six towns and villages along the way. Those who wish to travel its length, or visit specifi c places, will fi nd this an invaluable guide. The book includes descriptions of the history and architecture of every place, the part played by the River Windrush in its past as well as now, and what is to be seen there by the visitor today. The book is illustrated throughout with the author's own photographs.

Constructed in Cotswold style in the sixteenth century and standing on a ridge above the river at Malmesbury, next to the famous abbey church Abby House was built as a residence for the family of one of England's most important Tudor clothiers. It was raised above the remains of a thirteenth-century building, still in situ, that was associated with the Benedictine abbey. Today, it's surrounded by some of the most beautiful private gardens in the country, which are open daily in season to the public. This is the story of Abbey House, a tale that begins at the birth of Christianity in the area, spans the Dissolution of the monasteries, and encompasses the renaissance of trade that succeeded it. The book describes the buildings that have been on the site, and the people who lived in them: entrepreneurs and tradesmen, politicians and soldiers, surgeons and doctors, nuns, aristocrats and landed gentry. It tells how the history of the nation affected Abbey House, and how the estate engages with the story of Malmesbury. Here too is a comprehensive description of Abbey House, inside and out; an exploration of how the gardens were made, and of each season in them; and an account of the many craftspeople whose work is represented throughout the house and the grounds. It tells how the now world-famous 'Naked Gardeners' got their name, and what naturism means to Ian and Barbara Pollard, the creators of Abbey House Gardens. It is illustrated throughout with the author's own photographs.

Old Town, the original Swindon, developed slowly and modestly throughout the medieval period, on a hill some 450 feet above sea level. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it was still a small country town. Almost every worker was employed in some form of agriculture, or as a servant to the gentry who were beginning to build their villas a decent distance from the low, thatched cottages and the traders' premises at its centre. The railway arrived in 1840 and changed all that. As the new industrial town snarled and snapped at the foot of the hill, Old Town remained self-contained and independent. It expanded slowly, advancing inexorably towards that watershed in its future when the old settlement and the new town would conjoin physically and administratively, allowing the latter to dominate. Yet Old Town is still a place apart within the conurbation; it is where Swindon began and where its history can best be felt.

Central Swindon is the retail core of the modern town and its residential environs. It began in the 1840s, when the model village for railway workers was laid out on marshy ground to the north of Swindon hill. By the 1860s, pockets of development had been established around its edges, and by the mid-1880s, New Swindon on the plain had twice the built-up area of Old Swindon on the hill. Industrial Swindon expanded southwards, slowly pushing red-brick and Bath stone dressings towards the hill. This book details the line of this exploration, from its base in the railway village to the point where it set out to climb into Old Town. It was a route that would become the town's shopping centre, and along which New Swindon, eager to assert its superiority, erected most of its best buildings.

The first biography of a cultured nineteenth century benevolent industrialist, friend of Prince Albert, Wellington and Robert Peel, whose former estate houses the RHS Bridgewater Garden.