A View of the Church

The cover photo is of All Saints church, at Feering, in Essex.

Another post on The Observer's Book series.

This is a book I've owned and found very useful for quite a while; The Observer's Book of Old English Churches.

While I was researching for this post, I found that there’s a rare version of this book, with the cover in a glossy finish; I’ve seen it for sale for £118! But my 1965 copy with the same cover design is worth just what I paid for it; £3.50.

That’s okay; it means that I don’t mind taking it with me when I‘m working on my blog, The North Bucks Wanderer.

This is what the book is intended for. The general arrangement of this book is designed with this in mind; the contents list is not in page order. Instead the list is in alphabetical order, so that you can easily find the right section.

Lake Monster Photo

Personal events mean that I'm not able to post this week, but here's your chance to have a little look through my archives...

Here's a guide to the Lake District. It's a beautiful part of England that I haven't been to in 25 years, but this book is 108 years old.

 

Here's a children's book about a monster who is, as the saying goes, a bit "tasty".

 

Here's how to take pictures the easy way, with film cameras. And no automation.

England is Beautiful

This is one of the earliest guide books in the Beautiful England series that Blackie and Son published from about 1910 until the 1950s.

As far as I can work out, this copy was published in 1911.

There’s a dozen plates of softly coloured watercolour paintings, and a square detail from one painting pasted to the front cover.

Chapters are named for parts of the district; Windermere and Coniston, and Rydal and Grasmere are just two chapters.

It’s not a thick book; there’s only about 60 pages of text. As usual with books this age, the plates are separate and not numbered, so they add another twelve leaves, in a smoother, denser paper and only printed on one side.

What prose! Here is one line, concerning the people of Thirlmere and Helvellyn:

“Here were a people, ranging as individuals from peasant to yeoman, to put it roughly; four hundred square miles, say, of freehold farmers, who have never known a landlord since the Crown in the sixteenth century held them as tenants on Border service; a complete democracy among themselves, into whose lives the influence of an aristocracy, as exerted everywhere else without exception in Great Britain, never entered.”

I didn’t think you could stack semi colons like that, but the whole book is written like this.

Once I got my head round it, I was fine and enjoyed it.

I was given this book by a woman I did some work for; it was by her front door, ready to go to the charity shop. She must have spotted me as "A Reader".

Much of the information here will be long outdated, but the book is a lovely thing; I’ll be keeping it.

The English Lakes   Described by A.G. Bradley, pictured by Ernest Hazlehurst.