The Eighteenth-century Church in Britain

This ambitious and generously illustrated study is an in-depth account of the architectural character of a vast range of ecclesiastical buildings, including the Anglican parish churches, medieval cathedrals repaired and modified during the period, Dissenting and Catholic chapels (as well as town-house, country-house, college and hospital chapels) and mausoleums. The first substantial study of the subject to appear in over half a century, it explores not only the physical aspects of these buildings, but church-going activities from the cradle to the grave, ranging from how congregations were accommodated and how vicars lived, to how the finances were organized and musical events were arranged.

Terry Friedman guides the reader through the church, identifying its various components along the way, and confronts such issues as the use of authentic colour and the worship of images (with special attention to pictorial painted glass). He describes the multifarious causes of rebuilding and new-builds - decay, destruction by storms and fire - the contributions of architects, builders and craft persons, and the construction and maintenance of the fabric of the buildings. Friedman also traces the progress of Gothic and how it was expressed in hundreds of churches up and down the country, and discusses hitherto disregarded aspects such as the revival of Romanesque and the idiosyncratic hybridisation of Gothic and Classical in the same building (the 'Bastard Breed').

The Classical tradition is treated in separate, distinct categories: the Baroque of Antique temple forms; the persistence of Palladian, Jonesian, Wrenian and Gibbsian patterns; the emergence and development of Neoclassicism in the works of Adam, Chambers, Dance, Stuart and others; and, the dazzling example of Greenwich Hospital Chapel. A closing chapter charts the impact beyond Britain, especially in America and the burgeoning United States. In addition, fully documented, chronologically sequenced design and construction histories of 272 key ecclesiastical buildings are presented on an accompanying CD-ROM.