**Pointing persistently to heaven: A guide to UK cathedrals**Rich, rolling countryside and historic towns, scenic coasts and picture-perfect landscapes. The west of England and Wales has many attractions, and not least of these are its cathedrals. Here youll find some of Britains finest and most awe-inspiring. From the countrys longest cathedral, at Winchester, to its smallest, at St Asaph. From the tallest spire in the country at Salisbury, to the longest Gothic stone vaulted ceiling in the world at Exeter.Youll also find the cathedral founded in the nations smallest city by the man who would become the patron saint of Wales. One of the most impressive and famous cathedral fronts in the country, decorated with one of the largest collections of medieval statues in Europe. And one of only six abbeys saved from destruction during Henry VIIIs purge of the Reformation.**Book Four: The West and South West of England and Wales**

For centuries the great religious buildings of Great Britain have inspired and fascinated pilgrims and visitors from around the world. The beauty and diversity of British ecclesiastical architecture is superbly captured in this guide to over 60 of Britain's finest cathedrals. This definitive guide contains over 130 magnificent colour photographs that capture the enduring appeal of these great monuments to the Christian tradition. Extended entries are included on Durham Cathedral, York Minster, Lincoln Cathedral, Norwich Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, Ely Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, St Paul's Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Glasgow Cathedral, St David's Cathedral. This definitive guide contains over 130 magnificent colour photographs that capture the enduring appeal of these great monuments to the Christian tradition. Extended entries are included on Durham Cathedral, York Minster, Lincoln Cathedral, Norwich Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, Ely Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, St Pauls Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Glasgow Cathedral, St Davids Cathedral.

**Pointing persistently to heaven: A guide to UK cathedrals**Power, glory, bloodshed, prayer: cathedrals in the UK are as much about human drama as spiritual sanctuary, as much about political wrangling as religious fervour. From Christian beginnings in the Middle Ages through Reformation, Renaissance and Modernity, the great cathedrals of Britain have been both battleground and place of quiet reflection; created for the glory of God for sure, but also for the glory of men.Theres a litany of great deeds and a list of secrets tied up in our national cathedrals and all are revealed within our guides, the ideal companions to the stories behind the greatest cathedrals of all. Whether you are traveling to view the buildings themselves or being an armchair enthusiast, let us take you on a journey.**Book Two: London and the South East**Four out of six of the cathedrals in this book were created for God and the Church of Rome, five now answer to the Queen of England. And the seventh isnt in fact a cathedral at all, though youll see why it takes its place among these hallowed buildings.From tiny timber churches that grew into magnificent cathedrals, from a Catholic faith turned Protestant, the story of these cathedrals, some of the foremost in Britain, is tumultuous, awe-inspiring and splattered with violence.They count among their numbers the oldest cathedral in England and the oldest religious sites in Britain. Many were established in the glory days of cathedral building under the rule of William the Conqueror from the 11th century.But their foundations go back much earlier; to small churches, priories and monasteries. Some may have been Roman temples. Pre-dating that, its likely many were Pagan shrines and places of worship.

A comprehensive guide to the most important church and chapel buildings in Wales from the early middle ages to the present day. Introduced with an overview of the religious history of the country, this book explores and illustrates Wales's surviving churches and chapels by region.

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This book offers a new assessment of early Christianity in south-west Britain from the fourth to the tenth centuries, a rich period which includes the transition from Roman to native British to Saxon models of church. The book will be based on evidence from archaeological excavations, early texts and recent critical scholarship and cover Wessex, Devon and Cornwall. In the south-west, Wessex provides the greatest evidence of Roman Christianity. The fifth-century Dorset villas of Frampton and Hinton St Mary, with their complex baptistery mosaics, indicate the presence of sophisticated Christian house churches. The fact that these two Roman villas are only 15 miles apart suggests a network of small Christian communities in this region. The author uses evidence from St Patrick’s fifth-century ‘Confessions’ to describe how members of a villa house church lived. Wessex was slowly Christianised: in Gloucestershire, the pagan healing sanctuary at Chedworth provides evidence of later use as a Christian baptistery; at Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, a baptistery was dug into the mosaic floor of an imposing villa, which may by then have been owned by a bishop. In Somerset a number of recently excavated sites demonstrate the transition from a pagan temple to a Christian church. Beside the pagan temple at Lamyatt, later female burials suggest, unusually, a small monastic group of women. Wells cathedral grew beside the site of a Roman villa’s funeral chapel. In Street, a large oval enclosure indicates the probable site of a ‘Celtic’ monastery. Early Christian cemeteries have been excavated at Shepton Mallet and elsewhere. Lundy Island, off the Devon coast, provides evidence of a Celtic monastery, with its inscribed stones that commemorate early monks. At Exeter, a Saxon anthology includes numerous riddles, one of which describes in detail the production of an illuminated manuscript in a south-western monastery. Oliver Padel’s meticulous documentation of Cornish place-names has demonstrated that, of all the Celtic regions, Cornwall has by far the highest number of dedications to a single, otherwise unknown individual, typically consisting of a small church and a farm by the sea. These small monastic ‘cells’ have hitherto received little attention as a model of church in early British Christianity, and the latter part of the text focuses on various aspects of this model, as lived out in coastal and in upland settlements, on islands, and in relation to larger Breton monasteries. Study of 60 Breton sites has demonstrated possible connections between larger Breton monasteries and smaller Cornish cells.

WINNER OF THE FRANK WATSON BOOK PRIZE 2021. SHORTLISTED IN SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2021 The first full-scale, interdisciplinary treatment of the wide-ranging connections between the Gaelic world and the Northumbrian kingdom.

This volume focuses on new research on the archaeology of the early medieval Celtic churches c AD 400-1100 in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, south-west Britain and Brittany. The 21 papers use a variety of approaches to explore and analyse the archaeological evidence for the origins and development of the Church in these areas. The results of a recent multi-disciplinary research project to identify the archaeology of the early medieval church in different regions of Wales are considered alongside other new research and the discoveries made in excavations in both Wales and beyond. The papers reveal not only aspects of the archaeology of ecclesiastical landscapes with their monasteries, churches and cemeteries, but also special graves, relics, craftworking and the economy enabling both comparisons and contrasts. They likewise engage with ongoing debates concerning interpretation: historiography and the concept of the Celtic Church, conversion to Christianity, Christianization of the landscape and the changing functions and inter-relationships of sites, the development of saints cults, sacred space and pilgrimage landscapes and the origins of the monastic town .