In Liquid Assets journalist Janet Smith, author of a history of Tooting Bec Lido and herself a keen swimmer, traces the development of Britain's surprisingly rich stock of lidos, starting with their muddy beginnings in London's parks, through their fashionable heyday in the 1930s, to their battle for survival today. Lavishly illustrated with both archive and contemporary photographs, Liquid Assets highlights some of the nation's outstanding architectural examples. But if lidos were once to be found in virtually every town and city, since 1945 many have been closed, often despite the efforts of thousands of vociferous campaigners. Liquid Assets charts the best of these lost lidos, including one in Purley where the towering concrete and steel diving board now form the curious centrepiece of a garden centre. The book also provides a unique listing of all lidos still open in Britain, with detailed case studies of the most impressive.

Liquid Assets: The Lidos and Open Air Swimming Pools of Britain

History

Smith, Janet

Europe

Historic England

Played in Birmingham is the fifth book in a groundbreaking English Heritage series celebrating Britain’s rich and diverse sporting heritage. Lavishly illustrated and adopting a completely new approach to the study of sporting and urban history, Played in Birmingham leads readers along a trail of fascinating locations and little known buildings, landscapes and waterscapes, in all corners of the city and its surrounds. Birmingham is a city founded upon hard work, enterprise and civic pride.  Its stock of historic public baths includes three of the oldest operational swimming pools in Britain. In 1888 a Birmingham draper was responsible for setting up the Football League, the first in the world.  Birmingham also has a proud record at grassroots level.  Following on from the pioneering example set at Bournville by the Quaker brothers, George and Richard Cadbury, during the early 20th century Birmingham industrialists invested in a network of sports facilities for their employees that gave rise to the largest works football association ever known. Birmingham was the cradle of lawn tennis, in the 1860s, and the setting for the world’s first snooker championships, in 1927.  Its numerous workshops have also been responsible for supplying medals, cups and trophies for generations of international competitions, plus no fewer than 200 million Acme Thunderer whistles, the first choice of referees around the world since 1884. For those who do not know the city, or perhaps dismiss it as a mere concrete jungle, Played in Birmingham also reveals a wealth of green space  parks, golf courses, cricket grounds and bowling greens  several barely more than a mile or so from the Bull Ring.  Perhaps even more surprising, Birmingham’s topography is interlaced with rivers, brooks, lankes and pools, with Edgbaston Reservoir forming one of the great waterscapes of urban Britain  a magnet for anglers and sailors alike. This is a book full of delightful surprises and quirky details, many of which are little known, even within the Birmingham area.  There has never been a history of the city quite like it.

Played in Birmingham: Charting the Heritage of a City at Play

Inglis, Simon

Beauchampe, Steve

Ramsgate: The town and its seaside heritage (Informed Conservation)

Franklin, Geraint

The English Folly: The Edifice Complex

If this were a novel, the tales of astounding wealth, sexual perversion, murder, munificence, rape, insanity, brutality, slavery, religious mania, selfishness, snobbery, charity, suicide, generosity, theft, madness, wickedness, failure and eccentricity which unfold in these pages would be too concentrated to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief. All these sins and virtues, and more, are displayed by the characters in this book, some exhibiting several of them simultaneously.Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders. If there was madness in their building, fortunately there was no method in it.

Arts & Photography

Headley, Gwyn

Meulenkamp, Wim

Architecture

This is the first biography of John Francis Bentley (1839-1902), best known as architect of Westminster Cathedral, since his daughter Winefride de l'H�pital's Westminster Cathedral and its Architect (1919). Bentley was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, and went to London to work in the office of Henry Clutton, a distinguished High Victorian architect who became a Roman Catholic in 1856. Bentley also converted, and, after setting up his own practice in 1860, came to be widely recognised as the best Catholic architect of his time. He built comparatively few complete churches, but did extensive work in adding to and furnishing other architects' churches. He had remarkable skill in the design of woodwork, metalwork, stained glass, and organ cases, all of which are covered in the book. His finest parish church is Holy Rood, Watford, but the climax of his career was the commission in 1894 to design Westminster Cathedral, which was almost complete when he died in 1902.

John Francis Bentley: Architect of Westminster Cathedral (Victorian Architects)

Biographies & Memoirs

Howell, Peter

Arts & Literature

If this were a novel, the tales of astounding wealth, sexual perversion, murder, munificence, rape, insanity, brutality, slavery, religious mania, selfishness, snobbery, charity, suicide, generosity, theft, madness, wickedness, failure and eccentricity which unfold in these pages would be too concentrated to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief. All these sins and virtues, and more, are displayed by the characters in this book, some exhibiting several of them simultaneously. Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders. If there was madness in their building, fortunately there was no method in it.

The neighbourhood co-op store was an essential element in the English shopping landscape for a century and more. Initially identified by the iconic co-operative symbols of beehives and wheatsheaves, eclectic store designs by local architects made a lasting impact on the townscape. Robustlyindependent local co-operative societies and lack of overall branding happily produced an unusually diverse range of architectural styles. And they were much more than just shops - their integrated educational facilities, libraries and halls made them a focal point for communities. The Co-opeventually offered a "cradle to grave" service for its members. Behind the network of stores was the Co-operative Wholesale Society, the federal body responsible for manufacturing and distribution. Its factories employed thousands during the productive peak of the 1930s, and its architects broughtmodern design standards to bear on the whole gamut of co-op buildings. Co-op architecture is still around us countrywide, with everything from Victorian edifices to post-war artworks there to be seen and enjoyed. Using a wonderful selection of archive and modern illustrations, this book reveals theintriguing story behind the co-op's buildings, from corner shops to vast department stores and innovative industrial structures. Remember, it's all at the co-op now!

England’s Co-operative Movement: An Architectural History (Historic England)

Pearson, Lynn

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Dover Castle is one of England's greatest fortresses. At its heart lies the Great Tower, a huge Anglo-Norman keep that has dominated the White Cliffs since the 1180s, remaining in continuous use thereafter. This book explores the history and development of the Great Tower in detail, beginning with its construction in the reign of Henry II and ending when the Ministry of Works took it over in 1930, to conserve and open it as a monument for public visits. The book is comprised of several chapters by thirteen contributors, and looks at three main themes. The first examines the making of the Great Tower as the centrepiece of Henry II's rebuilding of the whole castle on an immense scale in the 1180s, pointing to its English and Continental ancestry as well as the people and political circumstances which brought about its creation. The second theme is concerned with the subsequent history of the building as an occasional royal residence, the end of royal interest in the 17th century and its later use as a prison, barracks and ordnance store between the 18th and 20th centuries. A final theme examines trends in how the building has been interpreted as a public monument since 1930 and especially its most recent presentation, in 2009, to evoke appreciation of its use as envisaged when first built in the late 12th century.

The Great Tower of Dover Castle: History, Architecture and Context (Historic England)

History & Criticism

Tall conical and pyramidal buildings, topped by white cowls or louvred vents, are a distinctive sight on the farms in the villages of Kent, East Sussex, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Surrey and Hampshire. In these buildings, hops were dried, pressed, and bagged for despatch to breweries. In Kent and Sussex, they are called 'oasts' or 'oast houses', and in other counties 'hop kilns'. Oasts and hop kilns are testimony to a specialised and important rural industry, and for hundreds of years, they were a defining feature of the countryside. By the late 19th century, there were as many as 8,000 hop kilns and oast houses in England. This book is the first comprehensive account of the history of oasts and hop kilns in England and includes a comparison with hop drying buildings in Continental Europe and the USA. The 400-year evolution of the kilns and their machinery is pieced together from surviving buildings, books, archives and local lore. In this richly illustrated volume, the charm of oasts and hop kilns on the countryside is captured in sketches, diagrams and photos by the author and others.

Oasts and Hop Kilns: A History (Historic England)

Grattan, Patrick

Notable undiscovered architects, like undiscovered composers, are implausible, yet Frances Xavier Velarde OBE, 1897-1960, could be just such a person hiding in plain sight. A stylish architect who took a road less travelled then died as he was getting into his stride. There have been no followers. Yet whenever enthusiasts gather to discuss modern church architecture his name will be mentioned. He was no earnest modernist; instead he loved patterns, bold colour and gold. The Catholic churches he built in Liverpool and London are closer to European Expressionism than International Modernism; many of them have a toy like quality and come with a campanile like a rocket. Today his buildings seem fresh and playful, but also poignant as they evoke the 1950s, brightening the drab parts in which they are to be found and serving to make both spiritually and architecturally aware those who visit. Many are threatened and have been published here for the first time. Dominic Wilkinson and Andrew Crompton have combined Velarde's papers with interviews and archive images, including many by his friend and famous photographer Edward Chambré Hardman. Their book, lavishly illustrated with new photography by Historic England, is a must for architects, students and connoisseurs wanting to discover a different route that modernism could have taken.

F. X. Velarde (Twentieth Century Architects)

Wilkinson, Dominic

Crompton, Andrew

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Historic England publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Historic England

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Historic England publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Liquid Assets: The Lidos and Open Air Swimming Pools of Britain

Played in Birmingham: Charting the Heritage of a City at Play

Ramsgate: The town and its seaside heritage (Informed Conservation)

The English Folly: The Edifice Complex

John Francis Bentley: Architect of Westminster Cathedral (Victorian Architects)

The English Folly: The Edifice Complex

England’s Co-operative Movement: An Architectural History (Historic England)

The Great Tower of Dover Castle: History, Architecture and Context (Historic England)

Oasts and Hop Kilns: A History (Historic England)

F. X. Velarde (Twentieth Century Architects)