Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

A major difficulty for those who wish to understand and enjoy Scottish medieval churches is the ecclesiological groundwork was not carried out in the nineteenth century in the way that was done for England and other parts of Europe. In an effort to interpret what they see when visiting Scottish churches, many people attempt to apply techniques of analysis they have learned from English publications but that way madness lies. Even in the twelfth and eleventh centuries, when architectural relationships between Lowland Scotland and England were close, Scotland followed its own course in many respects, while in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Scottish architecture followed an almost completely different course from that of England. The present ground-breaking work makes good this deficit and analyses the planning and detailing of Scottish churches from 1120 to 1560 with hundreds of illustrated examples that can be firmly dated. The result is a book that will be welcomed by scholars but, equally importantly, will also be treasured by the hundreds of thousands of ordinary church-crawlers who value this aspect of Scotland's medieval heritage. For them this book, overdue by more than 100 years is a must.

From the first surviving cathedrals of the early twentieth century through to those built for the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic Churches of the modern period, they tell a fascinating story of architectural thought and changing forms of worship over 900 years.This is the first book to study all the cathedrals as a building type, with a guide to understanding their architecture andthe way they served the Church and specially commissioned plans of all the medieval cathedrals.