ISBN: 0 300 10910 5
A comprehensive guide to the buildings of South-West Lancashire. The great port of Liverpool dominates, with its cathedrals, mighty commercial buildings and warehouses, and Georgian inner city. Full accounts are given of its varied suburbs, complete with the churches, parks and villas of the mercantile élite. The industrial towns beyond include St Helens, still a thriving glassmaking centre; Warrington, with its own innovative New Town; and handsome Wigan, capital of the Lancashire coalfield. But most of the area remains rural, and in this distinctive landscape of moss and mere are some of England’s most memorable buildings: Sefton church with its opulent 16th-century woodwork, the gorgeous timber-framed Speke Hall, and Georgian country houses including Knowsley, ancestral seat of the Earls of Derby, and Ince Blundell, with its extraordinary Neoclassical sculpture gallery.
ISBN: 0300 10733 1
The first book in the projected three volume revision of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (1967). The beguiling architecture of the many towns, villages and resorts is explored in full, as are the charming villas and cottages ornés dotted around the spectacular coasts. But the Island also boasts architecture on the grandest scale: the powerful fortress of Carisbrooke Castle, with its evocative Saxon foundations; the rich and enigmatic Baroque mansion of Appuldurcombe; Osborne House, the domestic paradise of Victoria and Albert, with its formal gardens; and the extraordinary Quarr Abbey, a masterpiece of Expressionist brick by the French monk and architect Dom Paul Bellot. Other attractions include Roman villas, sturdy manor houses, powerful coastal defences built for Henry VIII (and reinforced under Queen Victoria), and the retreats of Tennyson and other Victorian notables, not to mention a well-established tradition of innovative modern design.
