The Building of Elizabethan and Jacobean England

by Maurice Howard

While the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s resulted in the destruction of much of England’s built fabric, it was also a time in which many new initiatives emerged. In the following century, former monasteries were eventually adapted to a variety of royal palaces and country houses, town halls and schools, almshouses and re-fashioned parish churches. In this beautiful and elegantly argued book, Maurice Howard reveals that changes of style in architecture emerged from the practical needs of construction and the self-image of major patrons in the revolutionary century between Reformation and Civil War.

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 19, 2008