The first version of this three-volume work was published in 1829 as a question-and-answer book of 80 pages. The eleventh, and definitive, 1882 edition of this hugely popular, highly illustrated work, reissued here, was published at the urging of Sir George Gilbert Scott, and consists of two volumes on Gothic ecclesiastical architecture and a 'companion' volume on church vestments. Matthew Holbeche Bloxam (1805 88), a solicitor by profession, was an enthusiastic architectural historian with a passion for churches. In the preface, as well as explaining his reasons for another edition, Bloxam...