Bell's Cathedrals: The Church of St. Martin, Canterbury

Routledge, C. F. (Charles Francis), 1838-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
189K words
Chapters
19

Tags

English Originals Architecture Gothic ArchitectureReligious ArchitectureReligious ArtArchitectural HistoryArchitectural GuideStone CraftEnglish TravelMedieval HeritageSacred SpaceBritish Religion

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Bell's Cathedrals: The Church of St. Martin, Canterbury by C. F. RoutledgeAuthor: Routledge, C. F. (Charles Francis), 1838-,Language: English, Class: NA: Fine Arts: Architecture, Release Date: Aug 20, 2013

Editor's review

This book is one volume in the Bell's Cathedrals series, devoted to the Church of St. Martin, Canterbury. St. Martin's is one of the oldest surviving churches in England and, together with Canterbury Cathedral and St. Augustine's Abbey, forms part of the Canterbury World Heritage Site. The author, C. F. Routledge, examines the church's form, structural elements, and successive alterations within the broader evolution of English church architecture, allowing readers to understand continuity and change in church building from late Roman times to the high Middle Ages. As a free Project Gutenberg e-book, it preserves the original text and possible illustration information and is easy to search, making it a useful introductory reference for the study of architectural history, church history, and English cultural heritage. When reading, it is advisable to consult floor plans and photographs to translate verbal descriptions into spatial understanding; for specific dates and stylistic judgments, it should be read alongside related architectural surveys of Canterbury.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the preface and contents first to clarify the book's scope and format, then proceed to specific chapters
  2. Consult maps of Canterbury and floor plans of St. Martin's while reading to build a sense of spatial orientation
  3. Look up architectural terms in a specialist dictionary first to avoid unclear meanings affecting understanding of formal descriptions
  4. Read alongside architectural surveys of Canterbury Cathedral to compare the historical positioning of the two buildings

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19

FAQ

Is this book suitable as an introductory read on English church architecture? It can serve as a topical introduction but not as a systematic textbook. The book focuses on a single building, St. Martin's, and follows a format of architectural survey and scholarship; it is suitable after one has a basic framework of architectural history. For complete beginners, it is better to read a general history of English architecture first and then use this book for an in-depth case study.
What is the special status of St. Martin's within the Canterbury architectural complex? St. Martin's is one of the oldest surviving churches in England and, together with Canterbury Cathedral and St. Augustine's Abbey, forms part of the Canterbury World Heritage Site. This book focuses on the church's form and successive alterations, helping readers understand its place in the evolution of English church architecture.
What should be noted when reading the Project Gutenberg edition? This is a free e-book with searchable text, but layout and illustration presentation depend on the reading software used. A reader that supports images and hyperlinks is recommended, and attention should be paid to the correspondence between original page numbers and plate numbers; for scholarly citation, check against the print or authoritative edition.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Routledge, C. F. (Charles Francis), 1838- Author · 1838

Charles Francis Routledge (born 1838) was a nineteenth-century English writer on ecclesiastical architecture and cathedrals. Public information about him is limited, and his life, nationality and career cannot be described in detail; all that is known is that he was born in 1838 and that one work by him is held in the collection. His representative work, Bell's Cathedrals: The Church of St. Martin, Canterbury, belongs to the "Bell's Cathedrals" series, which introduces English cathedrals and ancient churches through words and illustrations, covering their architectural development, historical anecdotes and religious art for general readers and visitors, combining the functions of a guidebook and a work of knowledge. Routledge follows this format, attending to architectural detail and historical sources in plain, clear prose that helps readers understand the early church remains of St Martin's, Canterbury. Such books helped popularize knowledge of church architecture in nineteenth-century England and remain useful references for the history of the churches they describe.