Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield

Worley, GeorgeProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1
Word count
141K words
Chapters
15

Tags

English Originals Architecture Historical ReappraisalReligious ArchitectureCathedral TourCultural Relics ProtectionIllustrated GuideTravel GuideDetailed ResearchLondon LandmarksGothic StyleVictorian Era

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 Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, SmithfieldAuthor: Worley, George,Language: English, Class: NA: Fine Arts: Architecture, Release Date: May 17, 2007

Editor's review

This book is a dedicated volume in George Worley's Bell's Cathedrals series, focusing on the Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great in Smithfield, London. It is not a general tourist guide but an architectural historian's close reading, tracing section by section the plan, structural features, and successive alterations of this medieval monastic church. Its identification of Romanesque and Gothic elements and its account of damage and restoration let readers understand how an old building is repeatedly rewritten by time. As a public-domain ebook, it preserves the rigorous format and line-drawing illustration tradition of early architectural monographs, making it suitable as study material for architectural history, religious architecture, and London local history. It is best read alongside plans and on-site photographs to appreciate the text's antiquarian interest. For readers who want to understand one specific church rather than survey cathedral types, this short volume offers a solid and focused sample.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First consult a plan and current photographs of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, comparing spatial locations as you read.
  2. Prepare a short glossary of architectural terms and note Romanesque and Gothic component names as they appear.
  3. Read in chapter order, paying attention to the narrative threads of successive alterations and restoration.
  4. After finishing, use historical maps of Smithfield, London, to understand the church's relationship to the city.

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

FAQ

Is this a complete history of the church or a single monograph? It is one dedicated volume in the Bell's Cathedrals series, concentrating on the Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great rather than surveying all cathedrals. The content centers on the church's architectural evolution in a concise format, suitable for in-depth case study.
Can someone without an architecture background understand it? Yes, but with some patience. The book uses terms such as Romanesque and Gothic, so keep a plan and glossary at hand. Readers entirely new to architectural history may want to read one or two introductory articles first.
Is this the original English edition, and how difficult is it? This is a public-domain English ebook written in the rigorous formal prose of early architectural monographs, with long sentences and considerable terminology. Readers with university-level English can manage with a dictionary; difficulty is moderate to high.
Does the book include illustrations or plans? As an early architectural monograph, the original typically included line drawings and plans. Whether the ebook edition preserves them fully depends on the file description of the version you obtain. It is advisable to have a separate plan of the church on hand while reading.

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About the author

Worley, George Author

George Worley is an author about whom relatively little is publicly known; his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background all await further verification. Two of his works are currently held in the collection, both belonging to the "Bell's Cathedrals" series, respectively introducing the Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, and Southwark Cathedral. Judging from their subject matter, Worley focused on historic English church architecture, and his writing emphasizes the history, architectural features, and religious and cultural context of individual churches, placing his work within the genre of church guides aimed at general readers. Such works typically combine on-site observation with archival research, employ plain language, and stress spatial description and historical sequence, making it easier for readers to understand London's historic religious buildings. Although records of Worley's personal life are scarce, his two extant works nevertheless reflect a systematic attention to the heritage of ecclesiastical architecture and may serve as reference for students of architectural history and religious culture.