Heritage: Buildings

Burne-Jones? Yes. But who has heard of William Wailes? Yet on the evidence offered here, Newcastle-born Wailes produced stained-glass windows to rank among the best. The typical Wailes window shows a stunning use of colour, in dense almost kaleidoscopic patterns that still allow the image to stand out. Retired Sunderland engineer Ronald Torbet has done a valuable service in bringing Wailes to wider notice through this book, which includes not only a biography and general account of his work, but lists his commissions, all over England, both chronologically and by place. York Minster, Durham Cathedral and Ripon Cathedral all contain Wailes' windows, but some of the very best are in the recently-restored mansion of Saltwells Park, Gateshead, where the book is on sale.

THE ENGLISH ABBEY EXPLAINED by Trevor Yorke (Countryside Books, £7.99)

A COMPACT introduction to the subject, amply illustrated with black and white photographs and architectural-type drawings by the author. It covers the origins, architecture, development and demise of the abbeys.

THE SUTTON COMPANION TO CHURCHES by Stephen Friar (Sutton, £12.99)

WITH 500 double-column pages this A-Z, running from Abacus to Yew Trees, is virtually an encyclopaedia of church features and customs, with good examples singled out. Like this: ""SHEELA-NA-GIG: A grotesque female form particularly associated with Romanesque decoration. Possibly a vestigial pagan fertility symbol...There are notable examples at Kilpeck, Herefordshire, Whittlesford in Cambridge, and Fiddington, Somerset."

THE AGE OF THE CLOISTER by Christopher Brooke (Sutton, £10.99)

THE ideas that created and drove monasticism, turning it into a worldwide force, are here carefully explored by a leading scholar, former professor of ecclesiastical history at Cambridge University. Beekeeping, farming and the wine trade come into it, but what stands out is how the founding ideals were corrupted as monasteries gained wealth and wielded power, not always benignly, far and wide. Brooke tells its all so well that one wonders why there hasn't been a TV series.

CASTLE by Marc Morris (Pan, £12.99)

NOT the kind of Pan book, with cheap paper and crowded type, remembered from of old. Nicely printed on glossy paper this history of what the author calls "the buildings that shaped medieval Britain" gives rare attention to the overlooked role of the castle as a home. Kitchens, chapels, lavatories and sleeping quarters enjoy the limelight with keeps, moats and drawbridges. After all, "the Englishman's home..."

Published: 12/04/2005