Gloucestershire

Book excerpt: Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean and its companion, Gloucestershire I: The Cotswolds, provide a lively and uniquely comprehensive guide to the architecture of Gloucestershire. Alan Brooks's extensively revised and expanded editions of David Verey's original volumes bring together the latest research on a county unusually rich in attractive and interesting buildings. The area covered lies on both sides of the River Severn, rising from flat alluvial lands to the lower slopes of the Cotswold Escarpment on the east and the rough wooded hills of the Forest of Dean on the Welsh border, with its distinctive industrial inheritance. Architecture is generally more varied and unpredictable than in the Cotswolds: stone, timber, brick and stucco all have local strongholds. The Vale is most famous for its two great churches, Gloucester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey, both Norman buildings with brilliantly inventive late medieval modifications. The other major settlement is the spa town of Cheltenham, with its fine parades of Regency terraces. Country houses include Thornbury Castle, greatest of Early Tudor private houses, timber-framed manors such as Preston Court, and the extravagantly Neo-Gothic Toddington; churches range from the enigmatic Anglo-Saxon pair at Deerhurst to Randall Wells's Arts-and-Crafts experiment at Kempley. Amongst the memorable post-war landmarks are the suspension bridges and nuclear power stations on the banks of the Severn, and Aztec West, one of the best British business parks, on the northern fringes of Bristol. Visitors and residents alike will find their understanding and enjoyment of west Gloucestershire transformed by this book.