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Gloucestershire 2 : The Vale and The Forest of Dean
David Verey and Alan Brooks
Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean and its companion, Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds (0 300 09604 6), provide a lively and uniquely comprehensive guide to the architecture of Gloucestershire. Alan Brooks's extensively revised and expanded editions of David Verey's original volumes bring together the latest research on a county unusually rich in attractive and interesting buildings.
The area covered lies on both sides of the River Severn, rising from the flat alluvial lands on its banks to the lower slopes of the Cotswold Escarpment on the east and the rough wooded hills of the Forest of Dean on the Welsh border, with its distinctive industrial inheritance. Architecture is generally more varied and unpredictable than in the Cotswolds: stone, timber, brick and stucco all have local strongholds. The Vale of Gloucestershire is most famous for its two great churches, Gloucester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey, both Norman buildings with brilliantly inventive late medieval modifications. Less well known are the intriguingly diverse monastic remains at Gloucester, which also preserves a remarkable industrial enclave around its nineteenth-century docks. The other major settlement is Cheltenham, the greatest English spa town of Regency days, with its fine parades of houses in stucco and stone. Country houses include Thornbury Castle, greatest of Early Tudor private houses, timber-framed manors such as Preston Court, and the extravagantly Neo-Gothic Toddington; churches range from the enigmatic Anglo-Saxon pair at Deerhurst to Randall Wells's Arts-and-Crafts experiment at Kempley. Amongst the memorable post-war landmarks are the suspension bridges and nuclear power stations on the banks of the Severn, and Aztec West, one of the best British business parks, on the commercial northern fringes of Bristol.
A full overview is given in the scholarly introduction, which includes specialist chapters on the earlier periods, vernacular architecture, and geology and building materials. Numerous maps, plans and over 120 photographs enhance the text, which also has a glossary and comprehensive indexes. Visitors and residents alike will find their understanding and
enjoyment of west Gloucestershire transformed by this book.
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