Building the Parish Church in Late Medieval England: Architecture, Art, and Collaborative Gothic Monument

Building the Parish Church in Late Medieval England investigates the architectural, artistic, and socioreligious cultures of local places of worship between the Black Death and the Reformation. Zachary Stewart provides the first systematic account of a new type of parish church distinguished by the absence of any structural division between the nave and chancel. Tracking the development of this type across time, place, and setting, he explores how its integrated format expressed, reinforced, and reproduced collective processes related to the conception, construction, and provision of parochial space. The result, he argues, was nothing less than a novel kind of public monument to collaborative action. Informed by a wealth of fresh archival, archaeological, and architectural research, with special attention to East Anglia, Stewart's study demonstrates the importance of the parish church as a center for innovative material production in late medieval England. It also reveals how non-elite social configurations shaped local life on the eve of the modern era.