Historic England – förlag

Aerofilms Ltd was born on 9 May 1919. An unprecedented business venture, it hoped to marry the still fledgling technology of powered flight to the discipline of photography. Its founders were Claude Grahame-White, an internationally-famous English aviation pioneer, and Francis Lewis Wills, a trained architect who had flown as an observer for the Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War. Together they embarked on a distinctively British tale of derring-do. From developing photographic glass plates in a hotel bathroom at the London Flying Club in Hendon, to producing many thousands of aerial images every year, they took a tool which had first been used for military intelligence, and repackaged it for the mass market. As a result, Aerofilms lived through and recorded one of the most tumultuous periods in British history. After surviving the worldwide economic crash of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and serving their country at the request of Winston Churchill during the Second World War, they were still on hand to help shape the Britain of the future, capturing the major reconstruction projects of the 1940s and 50s. Aerofilms: A History of Britain From Above draws on thousands of images, including many that are rare or previously unseen, to present a vivid picture of the nation in the first half of the twentieth century. Following the company’s enigmatic founders, daredevil pilots, skilled photographers and innovative advertisers, it explores how they manufactured and sold a potent sense of place and identity to the British people. The story of Aerofilms – the men and women behind the company and the photographs that they produced – is a story of innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, war, marketing and the making of ‘Brand Britain’.

Stonehenge is the world's most famous pre-historic monument and, since the middle of the 19th century, probably the most photographed. Using images from English Heritage's unique photographic archive (formerly known as the National Monuments Record), Stonehenge: A History in Photographs charts the last 150 years in the life of this extraordinary and iconic site. These largely unseen images touch on various moments in Stonehenge's history, from the leisurely tourism in the last years of Victoria's reign to the monument of today, a site visited each year by more than one million people from all over the world. This book is a celebration of Stonehenge, in fascinating and often very human images. The text is written by archaeologist and television presenter Julian Richards, someone with a genuine love of Stonehenge. This is a book for all who share a fascination with this magical monument.

The Raunds Area Project investigated more than 20 Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in the Nene Valley. This volume, on DVD, is the detailed monument and landscape analysis, environmental specialist reports, and finds reports catalogues (includes tables of data and interpretations and finds drawings).

Nikolaus Pevsner described Berwick-upon-Tweed as ‘one of the most exciting towns in England’ [Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of England: Northumberland (1957), 88] – a place where an absorbing historical tale can still be read in the dense fabric of its old streets and buildings. It attracts not only day-trippers and holidaymakers but also new residents who have learnt to appreciate the spirit of the place. But outsiders all too easily confine their attention to the space within the impressive Elizabethan ramparts, while local people are sometimes unaware or dismissive of the wider significance of the very things that they know so intimately.Berwick deserves to be known better, and to be celebrated not just as a vivid reminder of what many other towns were once like, but more especially as something unique and distinctive, shaped by a peculiar combination of historical and geographical circumstances. This distinctiveness is acutely apparent as one passes between Berwick and the contrasting, but historically intertwined, settlements of Tweedmouth and Spittal.This book presents something of the wealth of historic interest encapsulated in Berwick, Tweedmouth and Spittal, and explains how these places came to assume such varied and distinctive forms. Above all, it urges that a town anxious for stability and prosperity in the future must know where it has come from as well as where it is going.

Religion in Britain after the Reformation was remarkably unstable and places of worship were the focus of dispute and regular change. This book is the first substantial synoptic account of Nonconformist church architecture in England and aims to provide a history of Nonconformist architecture, using existing buildings wherever possible. It includes examples from the 17th century to the present day, covering all parts of the country and each of the main religious traditions within Nonconformity.Despite the loss of very large numbers of chapels in the past half-century, there are still around 20,000 Nonconformist congregations in England. The book includes some of the smallest wayside chapels as well as some grand urban structures and aims to mention the most influential Nonconformist buildings as well as giving examples of the most common types. These examples are set in the architectural, religious and cultural context of the development of English Nonconformity. The chronological arrangement allows the reader to follow the main architectural development in the Nonconformist worldThe range and varied nature of the architecture is illustrated with new photographs of both interiors and exteriors.

The garden created by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, at Kenilworth Castle in the early 1570s was one of the wonders of Elizabethan England. It is also the best documented of all the great gardens of its age, providing the starting point for English Heritage’s ambitious re-creation in 2009. This beautifully illustrated book presents the extensive research that informed the scheme and describes the process by which the new garden was designed. Seventeen chapters, written by specialists and experts in the field, range widely, covering: the place of Kenilworth in garden history; the Earl of Leicester as a cultural patron and his work at Kenilworth; the results of the excavation of the garden site; detailed consideration of key aspects of the Elizabethan garden, including the fountain and the aviary; and important new work on the early Elizabethan flower garden. The overall philosophy of re-creating the garden and the practical aspects of doing so, are also considered. This book represents a major addition to the study of English garden history.

The Isles of Scilly are renowned for their natural beauty, wild flowers and temperate climate, but there is another reason to visit these paradise islands. Since the 16th century they have been in the frontline of this country’s military defences and successive generations of fortifications have survived in Scilly, unmatched in any other location around Britain. This unrivalled survival was due to the lack of pressure to develop the islands and happily because the feared enemy rarely attacked. However, there is another threat to this precious heritage, the power of the sea. William Borlase in the mid-18th century recorded how much of the islands’ history had succumbed to rising sea level, and today increasingly turbulent weather patterns may be accelerating the process of coastal erosion.This book celebrates the unique survival of military fortifications on the islands, but it also serves to illustrate the value and vulnerability of the whole country’s coastal heritage. Like King Canute, we cannot turn back the sea, but we can celebrate these precious survivals from the colourful history of our island nation.

What do characters as diverse as Alfred the Great, the architect Sir Christopher Wren, diarist Samuel Pepys and the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins have in common? All had some involvement in shipwrecks: in causing, recording or salvaging them. This book examines a variety of wrecks from logboats, Roman galleys and medieval cogs to East Indiamen, grand ocean liners, fishing boats and warships - all are woven into the history of shipwrecks along the coastline of England and in her territorial waters.Wrecks are not just physically embedded in this marine landscape - they are also an intrinsic part of a domestic cultural landscape with links that go beyond the navy, mercantile marine and fishing trade. Evidence of shipwrecks is widespread: in literature, in domestic architecture and as a major component of industrial archaeology. Shipwrecks also transcend national boundaries, forming tangible monuments to the movement of goods and people between nations in war and peace. In peacetime they link the architecture and monuments of different countries, from shipyards to factories, warehouses to processing plants; in time of war wrecks have formed a landscape scattered across the oceans, linking friend and foe in common heritage.England's Shipwreck Heritage explores the type of evidence we have for shipwrecks and their causes, including the often devastating effects fo the natural environment and human-led disaster. Ships at war, global trade and the movement of people - such as passengers, convict transports and the slave trade - are also investigated. Along the way we meet the white elephant who perished in 1730, the medieval merchant who pursued a claim for compensation for nearly 20 years, the most famous privateer for the American revolutionary wars and the men who held their nerve in the minesweeper trawls of the First World War. Highly illustrated and based on extensive new research, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in England's maritime heritage.

The Story of Silbury Hill sets out the archaeological story of Silbury: from an early recognition of its importance to antiquarian and archaeological investigations of the hill.For the first time, the results of the recent work are set out in detail, describing early activity on the site, the origins of the monument and the construction techniques used. Numerous new and vivid reconstruction drawings present a unique interpretation of this iconic prehistoric monument. The authors propose a new theory of the construction and thus a new way of interpreting Neolithic monuments.

History records that the Olympic Games originated in ancient Greece nearly three thousand years ago, died out around 393 AD, and were triumphantly reborn in 1896, in the Greek capital of Athens. Rather less well known is how, during the intervening centuries, an assortment of British writers, romantics, sportsmen and visionaries helped nurture that revival. Indeed, as sports historian Dr Martin Polley argues in this, the 12th book in the acclaimed Played in Britain series, our nation’s fascination with all things Olympian has played a pivotal role in shaping the Games as we know them today, culminating in London becoming in 2012 the first city ever to stage a third modern Olympiad. Consider, for example, that the first published use of the word ‘Olympian’ in the English language dates from around 1590. Its author? William Shakespeare. And that the first games of the post-classical era to adopt the formal title ‘Olympick’ took place in the Cotswolds village of Chipping Campden in 1612. It was an English traveller, Richard Chandler, who rediscovered the lost site of Olympia in 1766, and a Shropshire doctor, William Penny Brookes, who, in 1850, founded the Much Wenlock Olympian Games, an annual community festival that inspired Pierre de Coubertin to revive the Games at an international level. Other Olympic festivals surfaced in London (to celebrate Queen Victoria’s accession), in Liverpool, and in the north-east town of Morpeth, while the words ‘Olympic’ and ‘Olympian’ became steadily more ingrained in the popular imagination throughout the Victorian era. Britain’s Olympic heritage gained added momentum in the 20th century. At White City in 1908, London built the world’s first modern, purpose-built Olympic stadium, while in 1948 London stepped in to save the Games by offering Wembley Stadium. Also in the late 1940s, at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, the modern Paralympics were born when sporting contests were organised for injured servicemen. Thus the 2012 Games represent the culmination of over four hundred years of British enthusiasm and ingenuity; an attachment that has left in its wake a trail of fascinating stories, characters, sites, buildings and artefacts. Leading the reader on a marathon journey, The British Olympics charts them all, making this a vital and entertaining source for anyone with an interest in the Games, in sport, and in the wider narrative of Britain’s social and cultural heritage.

Haughmond Abbey was a prosperous house of Augustinian Canons north-east of Shrewsbury. Today it is an extensive ruin in the guardianship of English Heritage.The work reported on had its origins in excavations carried out in and near the cloister in 1975-79, but the scope has been broadened to place the site in its historical, theological, architectural and landscape context. The finds from the excavations and previous clearance work, including significant groups of Romanesque sculpture, funerary monuments, pottery and floor tiles, are the subject of a full range of specialist reports. There is a comprehensive analysis of the surviving claustral buildings, while a survey of the earthworks surrounding the site has revealed the precinct boundary, water management systems and a series of formal gardens.Different strands of evidence are pulled together to present the development of the site from its origins as a late 11th-century eremetic community, through regularisation under a distinctive version of the Augustinian Rule in the early/mid 12th century, the lavish rebuilding of the church and cloister in the late 12th century, extensions and additions in the 13th and 14th centuries, the use of the cloister for the burial of lay benefactors, remodelling c.1500, subsequent conversion to a country house, decline in status to a farm and the incorporation of the ruins into a late 18th-century landscape park. Among the conclusions is the suggestion that Haughmond makes a plausible context for the composition in the 13th century of Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group of writings.

This book presents the first overview of Muslim architecture in Britain, from the earliest examples in the late 19th century, to mosques being built today. Key architectural stages are identified and explained alongside the social history of Muslim settlement and growth. The analysis focuses on the way in which the mosque as a new cultural and architectural form has benefitted into the existing urban fabric of Britain’s towns and cities, and how this new building type has then impacted its urban landscape, socially, culturally and architecturally. The British Mosque is an architectural as well as a social history, and describes the evolution of Britain’s Muslim communities through the buildings they have built. By presenting this architectural narrative for the first time, the book opens up a new field of British Islamic Architecture. The architectural story charts a course from the earliest mosques formed through the conversion of houses, to other large scale conversions through to purpose built mosques and with these the emergence of an Islamic architectural expression in Britain. As the mosque is not solely considered in terms of its architectural style, but also from its social history and cultural meaning, this book provides an observation into the character of British Muslim life and practice and how these have been embodied through its buildings. The future of Islamic architecture in Britain is also considered, and how this will be affected by the growing cultural and social diversification of Britain’s Muslim communities.

The arrival of aerial photography came at a particularly significant moment in terms of the visual appearance of England. This selection of photographs makes use of the Aerofilms collection, acquired by English Heritage in 2007 and subsequently digitised and made available on the Britain from Above website. When Aerofilms fliers first went up in the skies in 1919, they captured a country that, with the obvious exception of some large scale structures such as aircraft hangers and munitions factories, had more or less been preserved in aspic in 1914. What we are looking at in many of the earliest photographs in this book is essentially Edwardian England, with towns and villages generally quite compact, with fields reaching almost up to the High Streets in many cases, and little sign of the sprawl that was to engulf them in the 1920s and 30s. The streets of many towns, especially the seaside resorts that provided the aerial photographers with many of their earliest subjects, have an orderly, almost pristine appearance to them, with the Victorian and Edwardian houses undisturbed by any out of place redevelopment.The purpose of this book is to show just how radically that position changed over the ensuing half century. We trace the outward expansion of places brought about by the availability of the car: the new suburbs and ribbon development. We see how new arterial roads came into being to meet the needs of motor transport and how the centre of cities start to be rebuilt to accommodate it. We witness the growth of sprawl around road junctions on the edge of built up areas and the arrival of new types of building there to service both cars and people: the filling station, the roadhouse. We see how the car encouraged more people to go further afield for sport and pleasure: to the seaside, the races or to new forms of attractions such as the amusement park in the country. And we see how public transport changes over the period from trams to buses with the advent of new facilities such as bus stations. The scale of traffic congestion becomes apparent by the late 1930s. In addition, the impact on the landscape of large motor factories and provision for motor sport is made clear.

For more than 200 years, and especially since the rediscovery of ancient Egypt by Europe in the 19th century, the exotic Egyptian style in architecture has been a sign of our fascination with a civilisation that has had a long-lasting and deep-seated influence on British culture. From its fashionable success in the Regency period to its varied uses in the 20th century, Egyptian-style architecture has much to say about what ancient Egypt represents to us. Egypt in England is the first detailed guide to the use of the Egyptian style in architecture and interiors in England, and to those that survive, most of which can be seen or visited by the public. Fully illustrated, it combines a series of topic essays giving the architectural and Egyptological background to the use of the style with a guide allowing sites to be located, and explaining what can still be seen. A variety of buildings and monuments – from cinema, supermarket, synagogue and factory, to folly, mill, Masonic temple and mausoleum – are highlighted in the book. For those who don't know their architrave from their entablature, or their Anubis from their Uraeus, there are also glossaries of architectural terms and ancient Egyptian deities. This engaging book is an accessible and practical guide for a general audience, but has enough depth to be useful to scholars in a range of subject areas.

John Nash is universally recognised as one of the most important architects of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. As the man responsible for the creation of Regent Street and Regent’s Park, he left an indelible mark on the West End of London, and his two most famous buildings – the Brighton Pavilion and Buckingham Palace – are crucial to any understanding of the monarchy in the age of the Prince Regent (later George IV). Yet, even before he became involved in these ambitious projects, he made a major contribution to domestic architecture through the design of a series of stylistically varied villas, country houses and cottages in which he applied the doctrines of the Picturesque with an inventiveness and panache that has rarely been surpassed. No complete study of Nash’s work has been published since Sir John Summerson’s, The Life and Work of John Nash, Architect in 1980. Since then, new scholarship has revised some of Summerson’s conclusions and cast new light on several important aspects of Nash’s work. The aim of this book – which originated in a symposium held by the Georgian Group in September 2009 – is to bring together this recent scholarship in a single volume, and so bring this most engaging of architects to a new generation of readers.

The English Heritage Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey (RCZAS) programme has produced a wealth of new information, with over 45 survey reports now completed. Alongside this, the offshore survey completed as part of the Marine Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund has increased understanding of early prehistoric coastal change, while other researchers have extended back the time scale for a human presence in England to at least 900,000 years. From a wider Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management perspective, there has been increased participation by English Heritage in Defra and Environment Agency initiatives. It is apt, now, to review what has been achieved and learnt from the RCZAS and other recent coastal historic environment studies. The book will include an introduction to the coastal historic environment, a consideration of long-term coastal change, an outline of survey, recording and characterisation methodology, a national review of the coastal historic environment and a separate discussion of regional significance, a set of research priorities for the future, and a final section considering how England’s coastal heritage should be managed in the future. The fact that climate change will impact significantly, and mostly adversely, on the coastal historic environment, gives a special urgency to this new publication.

Blackpool is Britain’s favourite seaside resort. Each year millions of visitors come to walk on its three piers, ride donkeys, enjoy shows at the Winter Gardens, scream on the thrilling rides at the Pleasure Beach and ride the lift to the top of the Tower. Generations of holidaymakers have stayed in its hotels, lodging houses and bed and breakfasts and all have succumbed to its delectable fish and chips. Two centuries of tourism has left behind a rich heritage, but Blackpool has also inherited a legacy of social and economic problems, as well as the need for comprehensive new sea defences to protect the heart of the town. In recent years this has led to the transformation of its seafront and to regeneration programmes to try to improve the town, for its visitors and residents. This book celebrates Blackpool’s rich heritage and examines how its colourful past is playing a key part in guaranteeing that it has a bright future.

Alston Moor is a large rural parish in Cumbria which historically both depended upon and provided important services for the agricultural and mineral industries of the North Pennines.Much of the area's settlement is dispersed among hamlets and single farmsteads. Isolated from major northern cities such as Carlisle and Newcastle by the surrounding hills and moors, the parish's wild upland landscape provides a conditioning influence on a distinctive tradition of vernacular building types, ranging from the bastle to its later 18th- and 19th-century derivatives and 'mine shops' providing lodgings for miners close to their place of work. Found across the parish, and with urban variants present in Alston itself, these buildings have in common first-floor living accommodation whilst the ground floor is used for cow-byres in more rural areas and for general storage, workshops and shops in urban and industrial contexts. This development of the bastle, a fortified house type found on both sides of the Anglo-Saxon border is nationally significant yet remains under-examined at the level of architectural and historical synthesis. This publication presents an informed account of Alston Moor's vernacular buildings from their earliest survival onwards, and sets them within their regional and national context. It explores how houses of various types combine with a rich legacy of public and industrial buildings to create places of distinctive character. It takes a whole-landscape view of the area, relating its buildings and settlements to the wider patterns of landscape evolution resulting from agricultural and industrial activity and the development of communications.

Although perhaps best known today as the home of Vauxhall Motors, Luton’s industrial roots run much deeper. Long before it became associated with motor cars, Luton was the centre of ladies’ hat production in this country – a success founded upon the earlier regional industry of straw-plaiting. Many surrounding towns and villages fed into the industry and helped to make the region globally renowned. At its peak in the 1930s, the region was producing as many as 70 million hats in a single year; however, it entered a rapid decline following the Second World War from which it never recovered. This has left Luton, Dunstable and a number of other local towns with a challenging inheritance of neglected and decaying fragments of a once vital industry.This book is intended to be an introduction and guide to the area’s historical depth and to its distinctive and varied character, seeking to explain the development of the region as the centre of the hatting industry in the south and exploring the lives of the people working there during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The historic links between the surviving building stock and the hatting industry are assessed and the book highlights the significance of the surviving fabric and the potential of the historic environment within future conservation and regeneration plans.

There is a powerful sense of place at the seaside. You know what to expect. Fishing villages usually have a pier, boats, lobster pots, and masses of seagulls while resort towns have esplanades, piers, grand hotels and gardens. Certain seaside towns have just about everything: Weymouth, for example, has a grand parade of hotels, a wide esplanade and a small fishing village. Blackpool has more of everything – three piers, miles of hotels, the Tower, Winter Gardens, trams, illuminations – but no fishing and no castle! There is something about the seaside that brings out the beating heart of John Bull in the English: doggedly erecting our wind-breaks to capture every vestige of a watery sun; wrestling with deckchairs; wrapping up against the determined wind on the verandas of our beach huts; accepting that ‘sand’ in ‘sandwich’ means just that! But we still love it and nowhere else in the world can match its myriad charms and eccentricities. For too long the English seaside has suffered from bad press, accused of being tatty, cold grey and windswept. Peter Williams’ evocative photographs in this fully revised edition of his acclaimed book will make you want to rediscover what a fantastic place the seaside is – full of character, charm and ‘Englishness’.

Please note: This product is a map. The Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site is internationally important for its outstanding prehistoric monuments. Stonehenge is the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world, while Avebury is the largest. Around them lie numerous other monuments and sites, which demonstrate over 2,000 years of continuous use. Together they form a unique prehistoric landscape.There is no better way to learn about and experience the monuments than to go out and explore the World Heritage Site on foot. This map is ideal for walkers and others wishing to explore the fascinating landscape of the two areas of the World Heritage Site. The map uses an Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 base and draws upon information from the English Heritage Archive and recent archaeological investigations. With Stonehenge on one side and Avebury on the other, the map shows and describes both visible and hidden remains, with information about where you can find out more.The map is divided into two parts on a durable double sided waterproof sheet.

This fascinating survey ranges from the communal buildings of the early 19th-century political radicals, Owenites and Chartists, through Arts and Crafts influenced socialist structures of the late Victorian and Edwardian period to the grand union ‘castles’ of the mid twentieth century. There are also chapters on the ubiquitous co-operative architecture, long forgotten socialist holiday camps, and those memorials associated with the hidden story of radical ex-servicemen and their remembrance of war dead. The countryside is also not forgotten with rural labour buildings, as well as the clubhouses of idealistic socialist cyclists. The book though is not just about bricks and mortar but uncovers the social history of the men and women who worked so hard locally to achieve their goals. Though many buildings have been lost over the years, the book outlines the recent struggle for their preservation and details many which can still be visited.

This volume holds a datelist of 1285 radiocarbon determinations carried out between 1981 and 1988 on behalf of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage. It contains supporting information about the samples and the sites producing them, a comprehensive bibliography, and two indexes for reference and analysis. An introduction provides discussion of the character and taphonomy of the dated samples and information about the methods used for the analyses reported and their calibration.The datelist has been collated from information provided by the submitters of the samples and the dating laboratories. Many of the sites and projects from which dates have been obtained are published, although, when many of these measurements were produced, high-precision calibration was not possible. At this time, there was also only a limited range of statistical techniques available for the analysis of radiocarbon dates. Methodological developments since these measurements were made may allow revised archaeological interpretations to be constructed on the basis of these dates, and so the purpose of this volume is to provide easy access to the raw scientific and contextual data which may be used in further research.

The Hoo Peninsula is located on the north Kent coast 30 miles east of Central London. This book raises awareness of the positive contribution that the historic environment makes to the Hoo Peninsula by describing how changing patterns of land use and maritime activity over time have given this landscape and seascape its distinctive character. It uses new information, which involved historic landscape, seascape and farmstead characterisation, aerial photographic mapping and analysis, area assessment of the buildings, detailed survey of key sites and other desk-based research. It takes a thematic view of the major influences on the history and development of the Hoo Peninsula and demonstrates the role that the Peninsula plays in the national story. The book is an important step towards changing the perception that the Hoo Peninsula is an out-of-the-way area, scarred by past development, where the landscape has no heritage value and major infrastructure can be developed with minimum objection.

This volume holds a datelist of 882 radiocarbon determinations carried out between 1988 and 1993 on behalf of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage. It contains supporting information about the samples and the sites producing them, a comprehensive bibliography, and two indexes for reference and analysis. An introduction provides discussion of the character and taphonomy of the dated samples and information about the methods used for the analyses reported and their calibration.The datelist has been collated from information provided by the submitters of the samples and the dating laboratories. Many of the sites and projects from which dates have been obtained are published, although, when some of these measurements were produced, high-precision calibration was not possible for much of the radiocarbon timescale. At this time, there was also only a limited range of statistical techniques available for the analysis of radiocarbon dates. Methodological developments since these measurements were made may allow revised archaeological interpretations to be constructed on the basis of these dates, and so the purpose of this volume is to provide easy access to the raw scientific and contextual data which may be used in further research.

Victorian Turkish Baths is the first book to bring to light the hidden history of a fascinating institution—the 600-plus dry hot-air baths descended from the ancient Roman thermae—which opened between 1856 and 1975. They started in Ireland, almost immediately spreading around Britain and the countries of the 19th century British Empire. Soon they were copied in Europe—where they are known as Irish-Roman baths—and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, where they could be found in almost all of the United States of America. Malcolm Shifrin traces the bath’s Irish-Roman antecedents, looking at how its origins were influenced by the combination of physician Richard Barter’s hydropathic expertise, and idiosyncratic diplomat David Urquhart’s passion for the hammams of the Middle East. The book reveals how working-class members of a network of political pressure groups built more than 30 of the first Turkish baths in England. It explores the architecture, technology and sociology of the Victorian Turkish bath, examining everything from business and advertising to sex–real and imagined. This book offers a wealth of wondrous detail – from the baths used to treat sick horses to those for first-class passengers on the Titanic. Victorian Turkish Baths will appeal to those interested in Victorian social history, architecture, social attitudes to leisure, early public health campaigns, pressure groups, gendered spaces and much else besides. The book is complemented by the author’s widely respected website victorianturkishbath.org, where readers can find a treasure trove of further information.

This book presents a series of conference papers which explore a topic that has received a good deal of interest in recent years, namely the material culture of the country house and its presentation to the public. This links in with academic interest in the consumption practices of the elite, and in the country house as a lived and living space, which was consciously transformed according to fashion and personal taste; but also ties in well with our concern as curators to present a coherent narrative of English Heritage and other properties and their contents to the modern visitor.The proceedings address a number of current academic debates about elite consumption practices, and the role of landed society as arbiters of taste. By looking at the country house as lived space many of the papers throw up interesting questions about the accumulation and arrangement of objects; the way in which rooms were used and experienced by both owners and visitors, and how this sense of ‘living history’ can be presented meaningfully to the public. The conference was international in scope, so the experience in the United Kingdom can be compared with that in other European countries, throwing new light on our understanding of consumption and the country house.

The railway station is one of England’s most distinctive and best-loved building-types. Yet over the past century the nation’s stations have often been overlooked or dismissed, and have suffered accordingly. Today a new interest in railways – fuelled by the need for sustainability, by a growing awareness of the realities of transport economics and by the dedication of enthusiastic volunteers at heritage railways across the country – has sparked a renaissance for the historic railway station and a new appreciation of the aesthetic virtues and regeneration potential of imaginative station architecture. The English Railway Station is an accessible, engaging and comprehensively illustrated general history of the architectural development and social history of the British railway station, from the dawn of the Railway Age to the ravages of the 1960s and the station’s rebirth at the end of the 20th century. It traces how the station evolved into a recognisable building type, examines the great cathedrals and the evocative country stations of the Victorian era, and looks at how the railway station has, over the last fifty years, regained its place at the heart of our communities.

Britain’s tiny Jewish community (about 263,000 people) is the oldest non-Christian minority in the country. In 1656 Jews returned to England after an absence of nearly 400 years and the Jewish community has enjoyed a history of continuous settlement in England since 1656, a record unmatched anywhere else in Europe. Jewish Heritage in Britain and Ireland celebrates in full colour the undiscovered heritage of Anglo-Jewry. First published in 2006, it remains the only comprehensive guide to historic synagogues and sites in the British Isles, based on an authoritative survey carried out with the support of English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The guide is simple to use, covering more than 300 sites, organised on a region-by-region basis. Each section highlights major Jewish landmarks, ranging from Britain’s oldest synagogue, Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London, through the Georgian gems of the West Country to the splendid High Victorian “cathedral synagogues” of Birmingham, Brighton, Liverpool and Glasgow. Relics of Anglo-Jewry’s medieval past are explored in York, Lincoln and Norwich, and venerable burial grounds with Hebrew inscriptions are found in the unlikeliest of places. Curious oddities are not to be missed, including a 19th-century private penthouse synagogue in Brighton and an Egyptian-style Mikveh [ritual bath] in Canterbury. The new edition has been completely revised and features many new images including, for the first time, of sites in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The easy-to-follow heritage trails around former Jewish quarters in the major cities have been updated and full postcodes are now given for SatNav users.