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England's Thousand Best ChurchesSnagging.org In association with Amazon.co.ukOnline Shop | Property Guides | Kitchen & Home | Garden Tools | Power Tools | Consumer Electronics Get the Snagging Checklist Here!  List Price: £22.00 Amazon.co.uk's Price: £15.39 You Save: £6.61 (30%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 709 EAN: 9780140297959 Edition: New edition ISBN: 0140297952 Label: Penguin Manufacturer: Penguin Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 880 Publication Date: September 28, 2000 Publisher: Penguin Studio: Penguin Related Items:
Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review: Churches, for Simon Jenkins, "have Ruskin's sense of "voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy ... which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity." In this fascinating compendium, beautifully illustrated with photographs by Paul Barker from the Country Life archive, Jenkins scours the hills and dales, cities and hamlets for England's Thousand Best Churches and comes up with some old favourites, welcome inclusions and surprising additions. Alphabetically divided by county, Jenkins' parish churches cover all epochs and denominations and are star-rated from one to five. Each church merits a description that is never less than engaging and instructive and serves to remind us of a time when the church was the hub of parochial life in a way that in many areas has diminished today. The church of St Mary and St David in Kilpeck, Herefordshire, for example, "widely regarded as England's most perfect Norman church", boasts some astonishing grotesques: "a pig upside down, a dog and a rabbit, two doves, musicians, wrestlers and acrobats. All the life of a busy and bawdy Herefordshire village is depicted on its church, with no respect for the decorum piety." St Senara in Zennor, Cornwall, possesses a 15th-century bench-end depicting the legendary "Mermaid of Zennor", as well as being the resting place for the last Cornish speaker in the county. The remote timber-frame church of St Thomas à Becket in Fairfield, Kent, rises up from Romney Marsh and has sheep grazing around the door. Jenkins pays particular attention to the exquisite Wren and Hawksmoor churches in the City of London, such as St Bride Fleet Street and St Martin Within Ludgate, erected during 1670-1720 as part of the rebuilding of the city following the Great Fire of London in 1666. Most were damaged in the Blitz of World War II, but have been extensively restored, even though their parishes have disappeared around them. England's Thousand Best Churches is a varied, informative and entertaining overview of what constitutes, in Jenkins' view, "a Museum of England". From Cumbria to Cambridgeshire, "it is through the churches of England that we learn who we were and thus who we are and might become. Lose that learning and we lose the collective memory that is the essence of human society." --Catherine Taylor Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Wonderful...What a splendid reference book. Naturally I was thrilled to see several parish churches of mine included... Simon Jenkins' reviews are spot on, the pictures detailed, the reviews wordy without loosing the reader or being patronising. Often when I've passed a church on a train, or am going to a particular part of the country, I check to see whether there is anything of interest, and I'm often surprised to find out the most bizarre facts! A thoroughly good book. Rating:  - A lovely book but .....This is in many ways an excellent book, the photographs wonderful and the writing, as others have commented, very much a la Pevsner at his pithy best. ... brass rhubarb for the unhelpful keyholder at Dorney, Bucks. indeed - marvellous! I do, however, have three criticisms: The first is to do with the book's organisation. Given the ever-increasing fluidity of modern administrative boundaries, which ebb and flow seemingly with each successive Local Government Act, why not use ALL the old, historic, pre-1965/1974 county boundaries, still largely adhered to in the Buildings of England series? Granted we are presented with the recently recreated Rutland and Herefordshire, and even the long-departed Huntingdonshire, so why do we still have to suffer that amorphous lump of "Cumbria", or "North Yorkshire", instead of dealing with the three historic ridings, or the indignity of lovely West Riding churches treated under, horror of horrors, Lancashire. It may be pertinent that Mr Jenkins has seen fit to go by the old counties in southern England but not in the north and that brings me to my second grumble, namely a slight but still discernable southern bias. We all know that Somerset and Norfolk have outstanding church architecture but so too, as Mr J admits himself, does Yorkshire. So why is it that there are so many more entries for the former than for his "N Yorks" section? And as for Northumberland and "Cumbria", so scanty is the coverage I'm left seriously questioning whether his journeyings actually took him up the A1 much past Wetherby. Quibble three is that, ex-Anglican or not, there is a wee bit too much concentration on the fourth rate C of E to the exclusion of some first rate Catholic and especially Nonconformist buildings. Yes, Cheadle and Walpole and Tewkesbury Old Baptist are there, but I sought in vane for Newbiggin (Durham), the World's oldest Methodist chapel, or Brigflatts or Colthouse Meeting Houses, and where is the National Trust's lovely Loughwood in Devon? That said, Simon Jenkins has given us a very fine book and I do hope that he may manage a sequel. Might I be so bold as to suggest a companion 1000 covering the other home countries, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, plus the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands? But please, if you're reading this Mr J, can we have Radnorshire and Sutherland and not "Powys" and "Highland"?! Rating: - A good start to viewing Englands fine medieval churches.THIS BOOK HAS BEEEN A CONSTANT SOUCE OF PLEASURE SINCE I PURCHASED IT. THE BOOK WILL BE THE START OF MANY A WEEK-END BREAK AND OFFERS A GOOD REFERENCE TO VISITING CHURCHES IS MANY PARTS OF THE COUNTRY. Any book can be critisised for missing some churches out these churches may not figure in the broad brush picture the author paints. Some feed back to the author could be appreciated. good value. Here's to the next 1,000, this is assuming the author can manage it Rating: - Recommended!Every reader will wonder "Why didn't he include St ****?"! But by definition every such selection will be subjective. So just accept that and you'll thoroughly enjoy the book. Faultless prose and wonderful photographs. Rating: - original, stimulating, a superb aid for the curiousWe spent two enjoyable days revisiting the haunts of her youth with my 87 year-old mother-in-law;the detail and opinionated nature of the "reviews" interested us all and encouraged us to seek out churches unknown. This is Pevsner's heir with more punch.  Try searching the Internet for "England's Thousand Best Churches" or Ebay for "England's Thousand Best Churches". You might also be interested in the following great products:
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