After last month’s column on Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, and Canterbury Cathedral, I will continue my ecclesiastical theme this month by exploring three of the great religious buildings in the north of England: York Minster, Durham Cathedral, and Whitby Abbey.
REVIEW BY ALISTAIR FAIR Simon Jenkins’ Short History of British Architecture ranges over several thousand years of cathedrals, castles, and grand buildings. Jenkins enjoys a good example and a memorable phrase. Inevitably in a survey, there is some unevenness, with…
Peter Wade-Martins has visited all 649 of Norfolk’s surviving medieval churches to study the stone types used in their construction. As a result, he has identified the use of conglomerate – along with grey quartzite, millstone grit, and tile, much of it reused from ruinous Roman buildings – as important indicators of the churches constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries, before the ready availability of limestone. Chris Catling reports.
had King Charles been in need of distraction or amusement during his Coronation in May 2023, he could have done worse than study all the graffiti carved into the woodwork of the Coronation Chair
Detailed analysis of an elaborate 13th-century mosaic at Canterbury Cathedral has revealed a medieval masterpiece that may be unparalleled in either Roman or medieval Britain. Warwick Rodwell explains further.
The former palace of the Farnese family in Parma contains no fewer than five cultural institutions. Dalu Jones is our guide to the recently renovated Pilotta complex, where the dukes of Parma put art, archaeology, and theatre to use.
How did the elements of what we now call Gothic come together in medieval Europe? Emma J Wells takes us back to this great age of cathedral-building, when masons set out to replicate heaven here on earth.
These days, the rugged and beautiful Caucasus Mountains – which stretch almost 800 miles between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea – are sadly perhaps most closely associated with the vicious series of ethnic and territorial disputes that have flared up along Russia's troubled southeastern border since the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The Friends have raised some £15 million towards projects as diverse as the purchase of a minibus for the choristers, the conservation of rare books in the library, the restoration of the splendid Tudor gatehouse, and the creation of a new garden in the cathedral precinct.
Have you ever wondered why there is often a big hole in the wall just inside a medieval church doorway? This book is primarily a study of the bar locks they were made to hold. Some were huge – like…
Viollet-le-Duc needed connections: he had elected not to study architecture, preferring to learn on the job.
The Cloister Cafe at London’s St Bartholomew the Great (used as a location for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, Sherlock Holmes, and Muppets: Most Wanted) is described as ‘an extraordinary cafe for an extraordinary church.