Hampshire (southern England) north of roughly the latitude of Winchester is dominated geologically by the Upper Cretaceous Chalk Group and by a substantial outcrop of Tertiary clays and sands which, forming part of the London Basin, the county shares with Berkshire to the north. More than 115 churches, by in excess of 60 designers and architects, were rebuilt, built anew and/or significantly modified in this area between 1750 and the First World War in response to profound changes in population, sources of wealth and means of transport and communication. This work looks at their building...

The climate of the Earth has undergone many changes and for those times when geologic data are widespread and abundant the Mesozoic appears to have been one of the warmest intervals. This was a time during which the single continent Pangea disintegrated into continental units similar to those of today, a time when there were no significant polar ice caps and sea level was generally much higher than at the present time, and a time when dinosaurs apparently dominated terrestrial faunas and the flowering plants evolved. Understanding this alien world, ancestral to ours, is intrinsically...