Parish church treasures: the nation's greatest art collection

Abstract

Our parish churches constitute a living patrimony without precise European parallel. Their cultural riches are astonishing, not only for their quality and quantity, but also their diversity and interest. Fine art and architecture here combine unpredictably with the functional, the curious and the naive, from prehistory to the present day, to form an unsung national museum which presents its contents in an everyday setting without curators or formal displays. Because church treasures usually remain in the buildings they were created for, properly interpreted they tell from thousands of local perspectives the history of the nation, its people and their changing religious observance.

Contents

1. Inheritance, before the year ad 1000 -- 2. Genesis, 1000-1199 -- 3. The Church triumphant, 1200-1399 -- 4. The late medieval parish, 1400 -1535 -- 5. The Tudor Reformation, 1536-1603 -- 6. Protestant England, 1603-1699 -- 7. The Anglican Church, 1700-1799 -- 8. Revival and renewal, 1800-1899 -- 9. The twentieth century and the millennium, 1900 to the present.