{"product_id":"westminster-abbey-chapter-house-book-richard-mortimer-9780854312955","title":"Westminster Abbey Chapter House","description":"This volume tells the complete story of the Westminster Abbey  chapter house, which ranks as one of the spectacular achievements  of European Gothic art and architecture; and that is precisely  what its builder, King Henry III, intended. Begun in the  mid-1240s, and completed within a decade, its pre-eminence was  recognized in its own day, when the chronicler Matthew Paris  described Westminster as having 'a chapter house beyond compare'.   Papers by leading scholars in the field of medieval art and  architecture reveal the reasons for the construction of the  chapter house and trace the possible influences upon the master  mason in charge of the project. The subsequent history of the  structure is revealed as it evolved from a meeting place of the  king's Great Court, the predecessor of the English Parliament,  and as a royal treasury into a repository for government archives  after the Dissolution, home to the Public Record Office until the  late 1850s, and its subsequent restoration at the hands of Sir  George Gilbert Scott.  Now under the care of English Heritage, the chapter house has  just been cleaned and restored again, leading to the spectacular  light-filled building that we see today, to which full justice is  done by this richly illustrated book, filled with pictures of the  architectural and sculptural details, the medieval tilework and  the wall painting that justify the motto inscribed in the chapter  house floor: 'as the rose is the flower of flowers, so is this  the house of houses'.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49568283492625,"sku":"GOR008317780","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0854312951.jpg?v=1751297022","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/westminster-abbey-chapter-house-book-richard-mortimer-9780854312955","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}